If you plan to earn enought money from blogging to support your lifestyle, then it pays to have a plan in place to achieve this goal. Many people (ahem.. myself included) have made the mistake of hearing that there is a fortune to be made from blogging and then gone and created a whole heap of blogs that start off great, but then fizzle out as time constraints and a general loss of direction takes hold.

Like I said, making money on the internet is really easy. However, making a living from the internet is a bit more tricky.

To start setting your goals to earn money blogging, then there are 3 basic things that you should take a look at:

1. Where are you now?
2. Where do you want to be?
3. How can you get there?

Let’s take a look at them in a bit more detail. (Tip: It’s a good idea to write these down. So get a pencil and paper or fire up your favourite text editor or task manager )

1: Where are you now?
Well this is pretty easy. Maybe you have just started to find out about blogging and how it makes certain people a fortune or at least a modest income. Or, perhaps you have a number of blogs on the go but have lost enthusiasm due to lack of traffic and low income. Maybe you already make money from the internet, but wish to expand into blogging as another income stream.

So, where are you know??? Write it down!

2: Where do you want to be?
Finding out what financial gain you want to get from blogging is paramount to what you need to do to achieve this goal. Do you just want a part time side-job that will pay your web hosting bills and maybe the odd pizza? Are you looking for a way to escape the 9 to 5 grind and start working from home on your own terms? How about becoming an internet mogul and living the life of riley on a white sandy beach with Miss/Mr Venezuala while a team of hard working individuals take care of your blogs?

Finding out where you want to be determines what you need to do to get there. Write it down!

3: How can you get there?
This part is a little more tricky and depends upon where you are and where you want to be. What you need to do here is make a list of the action steps that are required to get you from one to the other – and make sure you follow them through.

If you are a blogging newbie, then you will need to decide what you are going to blog about then set up a blog and then start blogging.

If you have a number of flailing blogs, then it may be time to take stock of you inventory and resources and start concentrating on get one or two of those blogs going really well before working on the others.

If paying your webhosting bill is all that you want to achieve, then you could probably stick some adsense on your blog and work on getting more traffic. If you want to earn enough blogging money to give up your job then you will probably benefit from getting one blog working and creating another.

I wish I could tell you how to become an internet mogul, but sorry, I don’t have the experience. The best thing to do here is find out what other really successful bloggers are doing and set some really audacious goals to follow through. You can bet they didn’t get there by just blogging about how they haven’t had time to blog recently because they’ve just been too busy and un-motivated!

Of course, you need to find ways of monetizing your blog. For this you could take a look at programs like AdSense and Text Link Ads for advertising revenue.

Also, take a look at moving into affiliate marketing by promoting the products on offer at Amazon.com and Commission Junction. However, this is material for another article, so come back soon to check it out.

Happy Blog Goal Setting

However, this is a very general statement since making a few cents a day can be achieved in a few hours simply by setting up a blog somewhere like Blogspot and sticking some AdSense on it and then getting some visitors.

But, making a sustainable living from the internet is not so easy – but achievable if a suitable system is put in place, goals set and fulfilled, and a bit of hard work and persistence is exercised.

Here is a simple list of things to do to set up a Wordpress Blog to get a money making system off the ground.

1. Domain Setup – Fundamental to setting up a website – you’ve got to have a domain. See Domain Registrars for more info on this.
2. Configure DNS – See this article.
3. Get Website Hosting – Another fundamental necessity as you need some space on a webserver to put host your pages. See Wordpress Website Hosting for more info.
4. Get Wordpress up and running – Here’s another list:
   • Install Wordpress – This is easy if your web hosting provider has one click install scripts for Wordpress, otherwise see this documentation to get it done.
   • Set Weblog Title and Tagline in Options -> General
   • Change the permalink structure to /%postname%/ in Options -> Writing – this is good for SEO purposes.
   • Delete the default comment, default post and default page.
   • Change the default category from ‘Uncategorized’ to something relevant to your blog. For instance, if your blog is about cars, then maybe change it to ‘Cars’.
5. Wordpress Plugins – Upload your favourite Wordpress Plugins. My standard issue plugins are – Better Feed (nice looking RSS); Related Posts (increased stickiness); Google Sitemaps (trying to make it as easy as possible for Google); wp-notable (social bookmarking); WP-ContactForm (easy contact form). Go here for more favourite WP plugins from different people.
6. Set up the Wordpress Theme – Here’s another list for this:
   • Upload the Wordpress theme that you will use.
   • Make sure the Title tab is configured for SEO in the Header. See this article that contains a paragraph of the importance of doing this.
   • Make sure there is a search facility for the Blog. Consider using the Googles Adsense for Search as a way of making more income.
   • Ensure that navigation around your blog is easy for the user. Think about using horizontal navigation bars for things like Home, About Us, Contact Us, News, etc… Also, utilize the footer for links to categories and other pages. Decide how much vertical space you would like to proportion between advertising and navigation.
7. Set up an email address for the website (if you are not using your own). Something like info@mysite.com.
8. Create the contact page for using with this email address.
9. Set up a newsletter email address. Something like newsletter@mysite.com.
10. Configure some mailing list software. Zookoda is free for this and pretty good.

So now all you have to do is start writing some quality content and work on getting some links.

And of course, you have to decide on how to monetize your website. More on this later.

Have fun

A good resource for Online PR can be found at Conversation Blog
that is run by Philippe Borremans and was set up because Philippe believes that there is a need for a new approach to what is called “Media Training” and he also wants to train communications professionals to use weblogs and RSS technology in their daily work.

Basically, Website Public Relations can take the following forms:

1. Contact people you know and telling them about your website

This is probably the simplest method. It can be done by talking to people and sending them an email or letter. The limitations of this method is that it is constrained to how many people you know or have in your address book. Of course, this method can be very effective if you…

2. Contact everyone in your Mailing List

A very effective way of promoting new content on your website to people who want to hear about it.

3. Submit Comments to Forums and Blogs

This method is considered by many to be a long term approach and is based upon the idea that you make a name for yourself as someone who knows what they are talking about. This builds trust in readers of the forum or blog and encourages them to visit your website. How do they know where your website is? For forums you include it in your signiture and for blogs it appears as the link for the name of the commentor.

4. Submit New Content to News Content Sites

This involves getting you content onto the pages of sites such as Digg, Fark and Newsvine. This can be quite a tricky process – but when successful can lead to a lot of traffic – to the extent that your web server could spit the dummy and crash. For more information about this, visit New Sites That Send the Most Traffic.

5. Bookmark Your Content at Social Bookmarking Websites with Tags

By doing this you are letting like minded people know about what you think is bookmark-able and therefore interesting. This method is known to generate considerable traffic if your page gets posted to the popular list. Good websites for this are del.icio.us, Spurl, Simpy, and Furl.

6. Using Online PR Websites

This is how to get journalists, bloggers and other newsy types to pick up on your content. For more information on this, Go here to find online PR.

While this is not an exhaustive list – there are after all many ways to skin a cat – it could be considered a good start. If you have any other suggestions or comments please add them below.

[tags]online+pr, pr, online+public+relations, pulic+relations, marketing, online+marketing[/tags]