How to add Amazon and Adsense accounts to your blog!

There are some really great ways to monetize your blog.

A few of them are  by adding Amazon and Adsense accounts.  Amazon is...well, Amazon.  The Amazon Associates program allows readers to buy a book you may be reviewing, or promoting.

An Adsense account allows Google to place advertisements on your blog based on the content of your posts.  There are a few ways to set it up, including pay-per-click, or pay per purchase.

How to add the Amazon Associates account:

First, go to the Amazon home page and scroll to the bottom.  Under the section titled, "Make Money With Us", there is a 'Join Associates' button.  Click that and it will take you to the Amazon Associates home page. 

Next, on the right hand side of that page you will see an area to log in.  You should see a button under that saying, "join now for FREE'.  Signing up is very simple.  Amazon will have you fill out a minimal amount of information.  After that they will take 1 to 3 business days to go over the information you provided about what kind of website you have and how you run it in order to approve you.

Then, you will select a payment method and boom!  You're signed up

Now, for the Adsense account.

If you have a blog on Blogger, it is very, very easy.

All you have to do is go to your Blogger homepage, and find the button that says 'Monetize' at the top.  Next, you will click "create Adsense Account".  Then you will again fill out some basic information to sign yourself up.  Google is very generous with their choices and variey of ways to input ads in your blog.  You can put them all different places depending on the look you want.

In order to do that you should go to your dashboard on Blogger and click the 'design' button.  From there you will click "add a gadget'.  once you find the Adsense gadget you go through the steps to place the advertisements.  Once you save your new changes, voila!  You're done, and you can start making money!

It's really simple and a great way to make money if you do it right.

Successful Blogs, and How To Write One

What makes a successful Blog?

Well, I suppose the answer to that question could vary, depending on what you want the blog for.  If you just need a place to vent and let out your frustrations and questions to no one in particular, than creating a blog that is successful for you probably wouldn't be too difficult.  You'd just sign up, type whatever you want, post it, and log off. 

The thing is, a lot of people have a different definition of a 'successful' blog.  To the majority, a successful blog would be one that received a large number of views, or one that brings in money.  This is a little harder to achieve, but with a little effort, you can have one of your own.

First of all, write about something you actually care about.  Seriously.  If you're just writing about something you have to write about, without any passion or care, it's never going to turn out as well as you would like, no matter how much effort you put into it.  Remember that your audience isn't stupid.  And when you're bored writing the post, that boredom will seep through the screen and make them bored as well. 

A successful blog is a reliable blog.

Don't just throw stuff in your blog that you think is true.  Do your homework!  Your audience wants to be able to trust you.  They want to be well informed about whatever the subject is and, as the author, you absolutely must provide them with worthwhile information.  Besides, you learn a lot too, when you do your research.

As far as getting blog traffic, there are more than a few tricks to the trade.  I don't know even close to all of them, but I'm learning.  Slowly but surely.     For starters, a teacher of mine tells me that the key to blog traffic is making Google happy.  There are certain things you can do in the HTML that Google can read and then use to 'categorize' your blog, making it more available to Google users. I use header tags, or H tags.  Another way to let Google categorize them is by using the "Labels" section at the bottom of the posting window.  There, you will put in keywords; anything that relates to the blog.  For instance, I will be putting the words "Successful Blog Posts" and, "How to write a successful blog", and "Good Blogs" and, "H-tags" etc., etc.  Any key words in my post.

If you want a successful blog, your going to have to do homework, not only on the subject of which your writing, but on the specific blogging website you are using, and certain "Google tricks" like the ones I've shown above.

Here's a guy named Matthew Winn who has a few really good video tips for you guys as well.  Check it out!

Monetizing Your Blog

If you're looking to make your blog successful in the way of making money (monetizing your blog), then there are lots of ways to do this.  I'm just starting my research in this area, but I've found that once you put in the time and effort, it can be a great way to "supplement your income", as a teacher of mine would say. 

There is something called AdSense which is where you allow Google to insert advertisements on your blog page, and then every time an ad is clicked on, or something is bought, you receive a certain amount of money, or a certain percentage of the sale.  There are a lot of other things you can do, like inserting specific web site's advertisements, or commercials.  You can also insert an Amazon tab to your blog.  There are tons of ways to do this, and I'm excited to learn more about it.

One thing's for sure though.  If you want to have a successful blog, you're going to have to care, and you're going to have to spend a little time and effort into making it that way.  Just like everything else in life.  For some people, it's worth it 100 times over.  For others...not so much.  I believe it's going to be worth it for me, and I can't wait to find out for sure!