This is a post that I thought of some few weeks back but I wasnt able to find enough time to accommodate it as I anticipated that this is going to be a lengthy but a fruitful one. This is also in response to the people who emailed me, the people who commented asking for tips how to start a new blog and most of all, my friends offline who are dying to start a blog and join me earn real money online.

I also figured, if I am to start teaching people how to make money from blogging, I should start at the very basics and that is how to start a blog. So, we begin.

What is a blog?
- A blog ( its a short term for “weblog”) is generally a website that is frequently updated. It is made up of basically, three elements; the header, the side bar and the post bar. Posts are arranged in a reverse chronological order wherein the latest post would appear on the top. For a good example for this one, take a look at my Teens Make Money Blog and try comparing it with other blogs.
Refer to the attached Pic

Click the image to enlarge

Choosing A Blog Host

We already defined what a blog is, the next part is to choose where to “put our blog in” or choosing a Hosting. Now basically, there are two kinds of hosting; free and paid. Examples of the former are Blogger and Wordpress while the some examples of the latter is TypePad. For a beginning blogger, I strongly recommend that you start with a free blog host like Blogger because its easy and perhaps, its the easiest there is so, this tutorial will focus more on starting a new blog with blogger.

Selecting a Topic

Now that we are done with choosing our blog host which is, i presume, Blogger, its time to choose a topic or it is known as a “niche” in the blogosphere (blogging world).

Your topic must be something you are interested in, something you can comfortably talk about and something that is not just a one-time deal, it must be a long term topic. Generally, people look at blogs as a “personal diary” or a “what-did-I-eat-for-lunch” notes which is a partly correct but more like a big misconception. You can actually make a blog about something you are passionate about and earn money from it, sure it will not make you quit studying or working but everybody needs some extra cash. So, this How To Start a Blog tutorial will focus on making a targeted blog to earn money.

There are alot of ways to select a topic and different bloggers have varied techniques about this one and quite frankly, I dont agree with most of them since I think my own technique will be more helpful. Let’s try it out!

Take a pen and paper, and yes, im serious about this one. Look around you and randomly write down everything that interests you for 2 full minutes. Anything at all! It maybe from a childhood experience, from a vacation trip, your everyday gadgets, celebrity gossip, world peace, green peas, black eyed peas (im having fun here lol). The point is, try to come up with as many things as you can.

After two minutes, continue reading below.

So, im sure you had alot of things on your list. Now, go over them and try to think about three things:

1. Longevity - Eliminate the things that are just short term, something short-lived and something in the past or ex-post facto event.
2. Relevance - Get rid of things that you cannot confidently talk about or you have very little knowledge about. So, if youre a high school student, make sure youre not talking about forex or engineering.
3. Audience Drag - This is the most important thing that you should think about. If you want to earn money from blogging, you want people to drive into your blog, get useful information, click on your ads, comment on your blog and come back next time around to do the exact same thing. Be sure your topic is something that people are interested in. Some examples are : Car care tips - People love cars and everybody has one. Now, you want to put in ways to clean a car, tips on how to shine a car and in the process, endorse products from car wax companies (I’ll teach you more about this one as we go on, so be sure to subscribe to my blog) this in turn will in turn, make your visitors happy and of course, with your commission, you end up as a happy lad each day. Sounds simple enough?

So, i came up with my mini-list in here, im sure you have alot more:

bikes, scouting, basketball, Summer Hong Kong Vacation, anime, military stuff, books, nursing, 2006 christmas, mp3 players

With longevity factor, im getting rid of 2006 Christmas Season and Summer HK vacation. Think about who’s going to be interested in your own experience which happened only one time in your life? And after you write everything that happened there, what are you going to write about in your next post? You see, you should avoid these circumstances in selecting your topic.

With relevance factor, I thought about my experience as a junior scout but that was 5 years ago, im not up to date with the informations, events or personalities so im skipping that up. For the military stuff, I dont know anything about military stuff because im still a student and im not even planning of joining the army so a big x over it.

The last one, the audience drag, hmmm. . . I came up with alot of topics here and this is going to become one of the crucial parts in selecting a topic. So, you have alot of things you are passionate about, something you can talk about for years but you are not sure if its a potential “money earner” and if people are searching for it. There is nothing more reliable in the internet than google and were using that to our advantage here since were going to monetize our will-be-blog with them. Were using Google’s Keyword Tool for this one. So click here.

And you will come up with this page: click image to enlarge

Input a keyword on the box and sometimes, there’s a captcha image verification so fill that form too. So, with this example, I used bikes and basketball as my keyword and i came up with results like these:

Basically, what we are looking for is a keyword that has lowest possible “advertiser competition” with the highest “Average Seach Volume”. What this means is that if there are alot of advertisers for that keyword, the chance of you getting on the first page in the search engines would also be low. Furthermore, you want the highest “average search volume” to have the biggest traffic possible and this is pretty much our goal. Take as much traffic with the lowest competition possible.

So, if you go down the list, you will see this set of keywords:

Now, based from our goal, were looking for the perfect keyword and on this particular set of keywords, the best possible keyword to use is “Full Suspension Bikes”. You might ask, but there are better rated keywords like “Mikes Bikes”. Yes, youre right but youre wrong. Let me tell you why. With the number of internet marketers, bloggers and pro-money makers on the web that saturate almost every keyword possible, the chance of you getting the Perfect keyword is very slim. So, were going after the next perfect keyword and on this particular list, “Mikes bikes” is something from a biker or something that you wouldnt like to promote because in the first place, how can you get clicks from this guy’s business? So, our best bet here is full suspension bikes.

Depending on your topic, this is going to take up much preparation time for you guys. Just take note though, choosing a topic is very crucial since its the foundation of your blog and changing to another topic will not do you much good so better choose wisely.

That’s it for today’s lesson guys! In the next post, I will show you how to start a blog after you have chosen your topic. I’ll give you some time to pause and think about your final topic. Be sure to subscribe to my blog to get more tips on how to make money from blogging.