Blogging for Dollars

Apparently, it's not a joke- people really are making BIG BUCKS blogging. I am not one of them, LOL.

Business 2.0 magazine arrived in the office today, with their September cover story being titled "Blogging for Dollars". (They still have the August edition online, so I can't link the article- sorry) It features a picture of blogger Drew Curtis, founder of Fark.com, which draws in nearly twice as much in a month as I make in an entire year. Needless to say, I was shocked.

Curtis isn't the only one making big bucks off of blog ads- Michael Arrington is another one pulling in 60k a month off of ads on his TechCrunch blog. Entire companies have been started, dedicated to nothing but matching up blogs with advertisers, like AdSense and Sugar Publishing. Sugar was founded in April for $250k, and is now estimated to be worth $10 mill. DAYUM!

I'm not a big blogger- never will be- but it sure would be nice, eh? The article lists 7 tips for making it big as a blogger:
1. Focus on a narrow niche, ideally one whose audience has a predilection for high-margin products, making your audience attractive to advertisers.

2. Think of your blog as a database- not a collection of newspaper articles. Make archived posts eashy to find through Google and Technorati by citing authors, publications, tags, categories, and keywords.

3. Post at least a half a dozen times before lunch, every weekday.

4. Use striking images in your posts, which will make it more attractive- not to mention the extra traffic from Google Image searches.

5. Enable comments- advertisers want your readers to be able to interact and discuss products easily.

6. Network with other bloggers, and share some linky-love.

7. Set up your blog so that each post gets its own URL for trackback purposes, and use descriptive, keyword-heavy headings which are more easily picked up on by search engines.

So there you have it, folks: how to blog your way to the bank. Somehow, I don't think I'll be doing that, but maybe some of you will!