Problogging: Making Money From Blogs
A weblog, which is more popularly known as a blog, is essentially a website that features informative articles related to the product / service being offered by the same. These regular entries are called ‘blog posts’, ‘posts’, or ‘entries’ that are written by an individual or a group. While writing a blog, the following methods or a combination of them is used:
- Straight texts
- Photographs or images also called a photoblog
- Video also called a videoblog
- Audio files also called an audioblog
- Hyperlinks
Blogs are essentially presented and arranged in a chronological order that has been reversed and are usually created for such purposes as, developing and online journal, for systematically managing content or can also be conceived as an online publishing platform. Blogs are written about all kinds of issues, they can be centered around any topic, but, generally exhibit certain similar components. These include:
- The date and time of the blog entry known as ‘Post Date’.
- The category that the blog belongs to, which is denoted by ‘Category’
- The title of the blog under the heading ‘Title’
- The main content of the blog
- RSS and trackback, which essentially links the blog back from other sites
- ‘Comments’ that request commentaries that are added by readers
- ‘Permalinks’ that basically reflects the URL of the full article
- Other optional items on the blog include,calendar, archives, blogrolls, and add-ons or plug-ins
As mentioned earlier, there are numerous types of blogs. Some of them have been mentioned in the following: political blog, personal blog, topical blog, health blog, literary blog, travel blog, research blog, legal blog, media blog, religious blog, educational blog, collaborative / collective blog, business blog, personification blog, spam blog, and more.
Typical bloggers post blogs on a regular, almost daily basis. The term “blogging” denotes the act of authoring, maintaining or adding an article to an already existing blog, while the term “blogger” denotes the person or the group who maintain the blog.
Presently more than 3 million blogs can be found posted on the Internet and this figure is growing as you read this article. Blogging is a convenient way to update or maintain the blog and can performed even with little or no technical background. This growing trend has lead bloggers to be categorized into 4 main groups:
- Personal bloggers
- Business bloggers
- Organizational bloggers
- Professional bloggers
Problogging, the short blogging term used instead of professional blogging refers to blogging for a profit. Probloggers or professional bloggers are people who earn money from blogging. These individuals can be in the form of an individual blog publisher or a hired blogger. There are a infinite ways of making money from writing blogs. There is nothing more profitable than this on the Internet, cpnsidering the skill-set required to pull this business to your favor. Below are just some of the many money-making opportunities for probloggers:
- Advertising programs
- RSS advertising
- Sponsorship
- Affiliate Programs
- Digital assets
- Blog network writing gigs
- Business blog writing gigs
- Non blogging writing gigs
- Donations
- Flipping blogs
- Merchandising
- Consulting and speaking
It is definitely possible to earn money from blogs. One just needs to be creative in his / her thought process and should be passionate and bold enough to take risks.