Right off the bat, I want to tell you that I have little experience when it comes to blogging for money. Actually a more accurate statement would be to tell you that I have little experience in blogging, and none at all in blogging for money.

The truth is I find blogging a little bit tedious, mainly because it involves committing myself to creating at least a post today. I don’t know what it is in my brain that rebels at the thought of being locked into something, but apart from being a husband and a father I tend to run the other direction when it comes to commitments.

Still, there are a lot of people out there making money by blogging, and one thing I am good at is understanding what they are saying when they outline how to do it. In fact I have a pretty good idea of what makes blogging so appealing, and how it is that some people enjoy good success at it.

I am going to provide a summary of my thoughts – garnered from research, mind you, not from experience – in this article, but for those of you who are interested in adding a blogging option to your writing repertoire I HIGHLY recommend stevepavlina.com.

This guy is trying to do for bloggers on his site what I am attempting to do for freelance writers on this one, namely providing solid information based on realism and in your face figures to help you determine if you have what it takes to succeed at blogging and then how to go about doing so (actually he is trying to do this for everyone who is smart, but it’s kind of embarrassing for me to write that).

Here’s a link to one of his best articles on Blogging for Money (though as he points out, at 7300 words it is hardly a quick read!).

So based on what my second favourite regular contributor to his own web site has to say as well as what I have garnered from lesser sources, here is what I can tell you about blogging for money.

1. It is going to take time! Far, far too many writers think that the second they post something up on the Internet people will come flocking to see what they say.
   Really successful blogs are blogs which have been up for a while. This is my main problem with the whole idea, as I mentioned: I like to see results, particularly in my bank account. I don’t like writing pieces every day in the hopes that one day I will earn $50,000 in a year.
   My preference is obviously to make that kind of money much more quickly by writing for other people, but that does mean I have to tackle a lot of meaningless subjects.
2. It is going to take talent! One thing I love about Steve is that he really lays it all out there. If you are not a very good writer, you are not going to make money on your blog. He puts it even more bluntly when discussing what constitutes talent, and makes it clear that the clay he is providing can’t be moulded by deficient hands.
3. It is going to take tactical thinking! (I am pretty proud of finding a T term to fit for this one.) Tactical thinking is what Steve, and most other developers, call web savvy. You have to know what options are available to you on the Internet when it comes to monetizing your site, generating traffic, and keeping those numbers high.

So when it comes to blogging for money, these are the basic steps you are going to need to follow. Blogging can actually be quite a bit easier than developing a web site, because you don’t necessarily have to define and stick to one theme. You can fire off random blogs every day, of varying shapes and sizes.

The key is to engage people through your writing style or through the information you provide, and of course we can’t stress patience enough. Those who consider a two month relationship a commitment should probably cross blogging for money off the list of possible career options.