Making Money From Home with Blogging
Hello friends. First, thanks for stopping by my little blog. This Blogspot has been around a while and seen lots of different topics. One thing has remained the same though: Self Sufficiency.
Although I've stopped talking about farming and raising 4H animals (for now), I will always be talking about how to make money. Mostly because it seems to the one topic that always has a new iteration and a steady crowd of listeners who are interested in the same thing.
Since I've been a computer nerd my whole life, finding ways to make money with my computer has always interested me. What REALLY interests me is figuring out how to make money from my computer while traveling. I haven't quite nailed that one yet.
Ultimately, I dream of making enough that I don't have to work for someone else in a 9-5 cubicle. It is not an easy task but it can be done. Patrice does it at Rural-Revolution and SurvivalBlog takes care of JW Rawles quite nicely.
So, my blog today is more of an overview of new things I'm trying online. If you are interested in how to make money online with blogging, you are in the right place. I'm not selling anything. Just sharing what I am doing. I believe the more people you help, the more blessings will be poured out.
So let's get started!
Income School and Project 24
If you are into blogging or have been checking it out, you may have heard of a company called Income School. They are growing quite a fan base on YouTube and seem to have figured out their own little formula to making passive income with blogging.
They have an expensive membership club ($499) for behind the scenes information but share a lot of what they do on YouTube for free. You can see their free channel here.
After showing several videos of theirs to Wifey, we've decided to pursue this model of income from home. It is a model that uses specific steps for building a blog and monetizing it. I have always liked to write and blogging is the perfect platform. Figuring out how to do it AND make money would be great.
Old School Blogging Knowledge Still Applies
One of the reasons I like the Income School model is that I'm very comfortable with blogging. My background, just like many of you, starting when blogging was first getting going many years ago. Back then, the things we did naturally brought us more visitors (page views). Things like joining other blogs of like-minded bloggers. I would join Rural Revolution's adventures and read her posts. Then leave a comment on her post about what I thought. That comment would have my icon next to it which, subsequently, linked back to my blog. Anyone reading my comment would see my blog's title and if they wished, they could click on me and visit my blog. That's how you would build up traffic back in the old days.
We also swapped links with each other. I would post Patrice's blog on my sidebar and she would post my blog on her sidebar. Through this link sharing, our blogs would get more exposure. The more exposure you get, the more people visit your website.
It tickles me to see the new generation of bloggers coming on board and voicing their concern about how to increase page views. They're looking for online services that will sell them "backlinks" to help increase their chances of ranking higher on Google search results. "Backlinks" are the same thing I just mentioned that happen quite easily when you just get involved with your audience.
Niche Blogging and Choosing a Niche
The most used phrase now is "niche" blogging. Simply put, it means picking one topic and writing only about that. But newcomers are obsessed with finding the niche that will make them the most money, the quickest. Which wasn't what blogging was about in the old days. Blogging was about sharing your passions with like-minded people. Guess what? it can still be that way AND make money.
The advice I've been giving out lately to new bloggers is "pick a niche you personally enjoy and engage." Don't decide that you should write about "Losing belly fat for 30-40-year-old females" because some keyword tool told you that was the more lucrative topic.
Here's the cardinal rule, rule #1 about blogging:
Only blog about things you enjoy. Because if you are blogging for any other reason, you will burn out and get tired of writing about the subject. And worse, your disinterest will show through your writing and your audience will pick up on it.
I know, because I did it over a decade ago. Now, I write about what I enjoy. This blog was a perfect example of journaling my daily life as a dad trying to be self-sufficient while raising a family. If you look back through my archive, you'll see all kinds of goofy stories about how I had to watch all six daughters for a weekend while Wifey went on a retreat. I share all the crazy stories that happened and what I learned.
The Niche Blogging Method
So, today I'm going to share with you what I'm blogging about on the side, how the blog is doing and what I do to monetize it.
My first "niche" site under the Project 24 plan (Income School has 60 steps to follow ) took me two months to decide on. I was stuck in the "what will be the perfect market" quandry just like everyone else starting this process. Then I realized "This is blogging, I'm not new to this." So I picked something I knew very well. In fact, it's what I do for a living.
My first niche is The Radiologic Technologist (TheRadiologicTechnologist.com). I've been working in this field for almost 20 years and I still am. Many of my first choices for domain names were taken: Xraytech.com, RadTech.com and the like. In the old days, it was taboo to pick a really long domain name because you risk people not being able to remember it.
Nowadays, people don't memorize domain names. They bookmark them into their favorites or better yet, you just start typing the first three letters into the URL bar of your browser and Google auto-suggests what it knows you have typed in the past. Memorizing an entire URL is no longer needed.
So I settled on the proper name for my profession and had to add "The" to the front because the truncated version was taken, just like everything else.
I hosted the domain at Blue Host per the recommendation of Project 24 and set out blogging about my job. But this is where things veer away from our old school ways of blogging. You don't just blog about current events anymore. I mean you can, but there's a method to madness sometimes.
Feed the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg
Now that Google has been around a while, they amassed quite a bit of information from us humans. I'm sure you've used Google just as much as the rest of us. What time does the store close? Google it. What movies are playing at the theater? Google it. How do you spell that big, long stupid word that you always misspell? Yep, Google.
So the Income School philosophy capitalizes on this. Since one of Google's main jobs is to find the answer to the question you have asked, they also have a vested interest in sending searchers to the best websites who can most accurately answer the questions. If they do a bad job finding your answer, searchers may start using Bing or Yahoo. So, Google scours the internet for websites that answer the questions that searchers are looking for.
Income School teaches how to find the questions Google receives from searchers and create blogs that answer those questions. If you do a good job answering the questions, Google starts to send all those searchers to your blog... which leads to more traffic at your blog. The more traffic you get, the more money you can make through different things that you can do to monetize your site.
Once Google knows you have answers, they continue to send you traffic. At one point, according to their theory, you can stop writing posts and Google will continue sending traffic...hence, your blog continues to make money long after you have stopped posting.
Next, they teach that once you have established one blog with 30-40 posts, you can "let it ride" so to speak and start building niche site #2. These are 90-day cycles if you stick to their plan. So every 90 days you start up a new site.
Here's my example, using what I am actually working on:
I want to write about radiology, my career field. So I need to find out what questions people are asking Google about my field. There are several ways to do this.
1. Simple common sense. Because I've chosen my own field, I know what people are asking. If you choose a niche you don't know, you will have to rely on someone else to tell you what the questions are (and Income School teaches how they do this.) I know from experience that people are always asking "How much does a rad tech make?", "How do I get into Rad Tech school?", "What does a typical day look like for a rad tech?" and so on.
So I wrote blog posts simply answering those questions. Here's my current list of articles that I have written to answer Google questions:
- Difference between Rad Technologist and Technician
- How to write your resume (includes tips on volunteering)
- What a typical day looks like for a rad tech (hospital setting)
- What a typical day looks like for a rad tech (clinic setting)
- Successful interview strategies
- How much does a Rad Tech make per hour?
- Ways to pay for school
- Tips to get accepted into a program
- Can you work full-time while going to school
- Explanations of the whole imaging career pathway
- Common injuries for rad techs
- What are continuing education credits?
- Common misconceptions (a comedy piece really, and a little venting)
- How to be a traveling rad tech (or any tech really)
- Best states to work in as a rad tech (keep more pay in your pocket)
- What are the common injuries for Rad Techs?
- 5 Reasons to Choose a Career in Radiography.
- What does a Rad Tech wear to work?
- How to get accepted into Rad Tech school.
- Xray- the horror movie from 1981 with Barbi Benton
- A day in the life of a radiographer.
- Top 5 Rad Tech scrubs for men.
- 7 possible dangers being a Rad Tech.
- Forensic Radiography
- Goodbye RPA Career Path
- How to pass your ARRT board exams
- What is a registered radiology assistant?
- To shield or not to shield…your patients. (ACR says NO!)
- What is a Radiation Safety Officer and How Do I Become an RSO?
- History and Use of a Radiographic Technique Chart.
- Radiation Therapy: What You Need to Know About Becoming a Radiation Therapist.
- The Pros and Cons of Cross-Training Current Employees versus Hiring Outside Employees
These are all questions I see at my job that I know people are asking about. If they are asking me during their x-ray exam, there are people out there asking Google.
How Does It Make Money?
There are several ways to make money and I've talked about them before on this blog. But for TheRadiologicTechnologist.com, I have used Adsense advertisements in the sidebar and throughout blog posts. I have also used Amazon Affiliate links to promote different items in my posts. These are the two main ways for this site.
The more traffic you get on a site, the more money you make from these advertisements. This is an old school monetization. I've had Adsense and Amazon on this blog (OrangeJeepDad) for over a decade. This is nothing new. But the methodology of how to entice Google to send you their search traffic is the basis of this model.
Income School teaches that in their experience, it takes Google about six months to completely search your site, index all of your stuff and apply their own algorithm on how they are going to "rank" you according to all the other blogs out there providing similar information. Nobody but Google knows the exact formula of how blogs get ranked. There are tons of Gurus out there selling you their method but there is no guarantee it works. Income School simply teaches that you should write the best content that you can with no tricks. No attempts to fool them with "keyword stuffing" or paying someone to backlink 200 times to your site from their network of blogs. Just write solid information and wait.
TheRadiologicTechologist.com is only four months old and I am not seeing much organic traffic from Google yet. I am seeing some but only a few visitors each day. However, because I networked my blog just like we did in the old days, I still see some good traffic. Good enough traffic to earn me about $40 the second and third month of being "live."
Once I reached the last step in establishing a niche site (and I'm skipping a ton of information here to give you an overview), I moved on to niche site 2.
Who Loves to Go Kayaking?
We do! Wifey and I love to go kayaking here in southern Idaho. So that is what I picked for niche site #2: Kayak-101.com (Kayak-101.com) and I'm enjoying the heck out of it. It gives me an excuse to go kayaking and take more pictures. Then I search or questions based on kayaking and research the answers.
While we were kayaking yesterday, I was telling Wifey about foldable kayaks and rash guards. These were two questions that I recently researched and started writing posts about. Here's my current list of posts at Kayak-101.com:
- Beginner’s Guide: How to Transport a Kayak
- Kayak 101 – Basic Rules and Etiquette
- Ditch the Gym – Go Kayaking for the Best Exercise!
- Kayak Anchor System for Beginners
- Kayak Accessories Guide: What Every Beginner Needs
- 6 Killer Tips for Awesome Kayaking Photographs
- 13 Reasons Kayaks are Better Than Canoes
- 12 Tips on How to Keep Kayaking Fun for Kids
- The Dangers of Kayaking – Is Kayaking Safe?
- The 4 Best Ways to Take Care of Your Kayak
- What Should I Wear and Not Wear When Kayaking?
- 5 Things You MUST HAVE to Start Kayaking Safely
- Kayaking Boats for Beginners – Which Type is Best?
I hope this sheds some light on the method of blogging from home for income while using the Income School's Project 24 plan. You can find a lot more information about it at their website. Or, better yet, you can ask me and I'd be happy to help you.
If this post piqued your interest and you'd like to learn more, leave a comment below.
Thanks for stopping by!
