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After two years of steady blogging and selling my blogging services, I have discovered that there is a sure recipe for a happy blog ghostwriting customer. It might come as a shock, but it’s the shocking truth. The happiest customers I have are the ones who do nothing.

That sounds strange. But I’ve learned that my happiest customers are the ones who give me the keys to their blog and just let me drive. They may opt to sit in the passenger’s seat or might decide to get out of the car altogether, but they’re happy. And that got me to asking a very serious question: Why are my happiest customers not involved in their blog as much as the customers who go away unhappy? I think I know the answer.

Everyone wants their blog to shine. Who doesn’t? I mean, you spend all that time and money researching blogging, what it is, what it can do, why you should do it, etc. and you finally decide you want to set one up for your business so you can reap the benefits. But, you don’t have the time to write a blog. You need to hire someone to write it for you, or just not have one. And you’ve already decided that you need one. So it’s time to get out the whip and start cracking copywriters to get their nouns and verbs in shape.

Passion. It’s a killer. You know that rising divorce rate? It’s all because of passion. Men so passionate about their wives that they get jealous when she talks to someone at the phone company about the overcharges that appeared last month. It hits bosses too. So passionate about doing the right thing for the customer that they ride their employees like a bucking bronco. In two years they discover they have no more employees to ride. It’s a sad, sad story, and it happens all the time.

We understand that you want your blog to be the best. So do we. But let’s understand what that means: It doesn’t mean that every word is spelled correctly. It doesn’t mean that you have more words on the page. It doesn’t mean that your image is always reflected exactly as you see yourself. It certainly doesn’t mean that you’ll never have a complaint or a negative comment on your blog. So what does it mean?

With Internet marketing, people want the big ‘T’ word. Transparency. Not in a casual sense, but in a real world, I’m-human-too sense. In other words, a mistake here and there isn’t going to kill the business. In the blogging economy, a misspelled word can actually make you money. Of course, we don’t intentionally misspell words (well, not always), but think about it. A lot of people are poor misspellers. How many times have you seen someone spell “traffic” with a ‘k’ or Brian with the ‘a’ and the ‘i’ transposed? It happens all the time and they’ll do it in the Google search box too. What that means is, those are potential opportunities for you to capitalize on natural human error. You can’t do that with your company brochure, but you can do it with your company blog.

That’s just one way that blog marketing is different than traditional marketing. Many of our customers come to us with high expectations (as they should), but then when we show our human side and fail to meet every expectation (developed from years of doing business off line with overpaid copywriters) they want to crack the whip. They want the whole world to stop so that every little word can be spelled correctly. Sorry, but I’m sure 1,000 blog posts from now that one little misspelled word is going to be small potatoes. If it was your first blog post ever, only about five people will likely ever see it. Two months from now that blog post will be buried under a sea of keywords. I could go on, but I won’t.

So you want your blog to shine. It will. If you do one thing. Let us write us for you and don’t be overly concerned over the small things. Take a cue from our happiest customers. They’re making money on their blogs because they let make an error or two. That’s not to say we can’t take suggestions or receive ideas for blog posts. Our happiest customers send us those. Some of them fairly often. But our focus is on the bull benefit of the big picture and when we can focus on that big picture then we create happy customers.

When your company sponsors a community service initiative, your reputation within the community is increased exponentially. Many people trust companies who do community service more and there is no better, or cost effective, way to sponsor a community service initiative than with an informational blog dedicated to community service.

It doesn’t have to be elaborate. All you have to do is pick a topic that a lot of people would be interested in. Use the same blog optimization techniques and blog marketing techniques that you use with your company blog and write about that topic every day. You can have a blog that ranks well for a community service topic that people are interested in. In a very visible location on the blog, have your company logo and a link to your website, showing people that the community service blog is sponsored by your company. Other than that, every other link and content on that blog should be committed to promoting the community service initiative and providing useful information about that topic.

One other way to do this is to take other sponsors for the blog as well. Then you can sell advertising to companies that want to help you sponsor the blog. All of the money can be donated to non-profit organizations related to your community service drive. You can even partner with non-profit agencies in that community service field so that they get all of they donations regarding that topic and you maintain the blog over time as your commitment to the agency.

There are several ways to make a community service blog pay - for you and for the community you want to support. Two examples of community service blogs include:

Runaway Teens
Missing Children Blog

Start your community service blog today.

Do you read other blogs within your niche? You should. Here are 10 reasons why you should read other blogs within your niche:

1. Ideas for content - You don’t have to steal someone else’s content to benefit from it. In fact, reading other blogs within your niche will show you what your competitors are doing and help you to come up with ideas for your own blog.
2. Keep up with the competition - Your competition is doing things that you should be doing. And likely doing things you shouldn’t. By reading other blogs within your niche you can gauge what works and what doesn’t.
3. Get a better understanding of your customers - Since your customers and potential customers are reading those blogs and commenting on them, you can get a better understanding of their needs by reading their comments.
4. You can tap into their traffic - By reading other blogs within your niche and commenting on them, you can drive some of the traffic on those blogs to your blog and website.
5. Better optimization of your own blog - When you see something that a competitor is doing right, you can implement that into your own blog optimization strategy.
6. Keep up with industry developments - Let’s face it. Your competitors know people that you don’t. While you might think you are well connected, sometimes you can learn about changes in your industry from your competition because they will write about it on their blogs.
7. Reputation management - Are your competitors talking about you? If you don’t read their blogs then you’ll never know.
8. Know what they’re not talking about - In the same way that reading competitor blogs can give you new ideas about content for your own blog, you can see what your competitors are not doing and beat them to the punch.
9. Networking - Sometimes, your competition can be your best ally. If you have a common interest that has yet to be developed, you can partner to better benefit both of your customers.
10. Join the conversation - There is a conversation going on in your industry about what is important to you, your competitors, and your customers. By monitoring other blogs within your niche, you can be better positioned to join that conversation and to create a solution for problems that are pointed out.

I bet you can come up with reasons of your own for monitoring other blogs within your niche. Why not start today?

Since we at Blog Content Provider ghostwrite a large collection of real estate blogs, I thought I’d share a guest article on real estate blogging that I found at EzineArticles:

Realtor Blogs, Good News and Bad News
By Tara Jacobsen

About 6 months ago I started to see information about real estate blogging everywhere! It was in the National Association of Realtors Magazine the same month that it was featured in the Florida Realtor Magazine. It was in the Agent Direct News and the Broker Agent News. I read an article that said that one of the big brokerages was giving a blog to every one of their agents. Somehow blogging became a HOT HOT HOT topic and realtors around the country could not get enough.

Let me state for the record that I think real estate blogging is a fabulous thing! It gives agents a forum to show their expertise and allows the public to put a personality on the agent photo. It allows groups of agents and associated vendors like mortgage bankers and title people to get information out the public that is not common knowledge. I think that every agent (make that every human) who has something to say and who will say it several times a week should have a blog!

Some of my favorite stand alone blogs are Bloodhound Blog - a compilation of over 20 industry experts who have great conversations about all things real estate related. I also like local blogger Kris Berg of the San Diego Home Blog who mixes humor with practical information about her local market. I have also proudly been a part of launching The Tara And Sheila Show Blog which is a mix of real estate and marketing information. The main thing these blogs have are interested authors who are committed to provided quality content. They also have very different looks but still all are obviously maintained by professional people.

Active Rain is also a great spot for realtors. According to their site “ActiveRain is a Bellevue, WA based technology/media company hybrid that operates the largest and most active social network in the real estate space. ” They are showing that they have 78,412 active members today. This is a super easy interface to use that lets realtors communicate with each other and which answers civilian reader questions all in one place. The top 2 realtors are Sharon Simms and Randy L. Prothero and they are obviously very active in this blogging community. Sharon is a hometown girl, working in St. Petersburg Florida, right in my backyard!

That having been said there are MANY blogs with one or no posts. I was not going to call anyone out but this blog has so little information that there will not be any harm to the innocent! Also, do not begin your blog with a post that starts with “this is my new real estate blog”! Start it with a great post and carry that on throughout your entire blogging career!

Visit http://www.marketingartfully.com for information how to pick your niche and market your business!

Realtors and mortgage bankers/brokers, please feel free to use this article provided this reference is included and all links remain active.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tara_Jacobsen

While real estate communities like ActiveRain can be great places to network with others within your profession, I would still encourage real estate professionals to have their own domain name. You can put a blog on your existing real estate blog for no additional expense or purchase a domain name separate from your existing website and set up a blog there for $10 per year. Having your blog on a domain that you control is the best way to build a brandable business blog. And there’s nothing that says you can’t have all three types of blog:

• Company blog on your website
• Promotional blog on a separate domain name
• Networking blog on ActiveRain or other real estate network

But you should have a blog to remain competitive. If you can’t write, don’t want to write, or don’t have the time to write your blog yourself then hire a ghostwriter.

This is a great article on what blogging really is like. It isn’t all cake and roses. But if you were to listen only to this message then you might be discouraged to give it a try. Nevertheless, you need to know what you’re getting into:

Starting a new blog might seem like a very simple idea. After all, anyone with a little determination and basic internet experience can establish and manage a blog. There are dozens of websites all dedicated to promoting free blogging platforms but when many of these businesses are trying to encourage new users to sign up they rarely tell you any of the downsides.

Establishing a blog is more than just answering a few questions on a sign up forms and starting write. Setting up a blog is establishing an extremely personalized web presence that requires some patience and knowledge of using FTP. If you are someone that is interested in trying out Wordpress this free blogging platform can be installed on your own domain. Wordpress boasts that all users can install the platform in five minutes but this is not always the case.

Yes, certain web hosts will allow you to set up and install WordPress in five minutes, but not all of them will. That’s why it helps to have a professional who is knowledgeable and experienced with WordPress help you with the installation and set up of your new blog. For a reasonable fee that won’t bankrupt you, you can have your new WordPress blog installed on your website quickly and easily by a professional who knows what he is doing.

While many new hosting companies offer “one-click” install options that really will install the blogging platform in five minutes not all users have web hosts that offer this perk. Many new users will have to manually install all of the php files needed to run Wordpress. This can be a challenge to anyone that is not used to installing programs. Before tackling a manual installation talk to someone from your web hosting company to double check that they do not offer a one-click install. You do not want to labor for hours only to discover the one click install option after you have done all of the grunt work.

Again, if you try this yourself and hit a snag, give us a call and we can take it over from where you get stuck.

Once you have installed Wordpress you must take the time to pick out a good theme. Your theme is going to give all users their very first impression of your new weblog. Having a very plain theme or overly busy theme can create the incorrect impression of your blog. Also, when you are choosing a theme you must think of more than just aesthetics. After you have gotten used to dealing with one sort of theme it might be very hard to switch over to a different theme style.

Understand that not all themes are created equal. Some themes are not SEOd very well at all. That can hurt your blog tremendously because a blog that is not SEOd well will not see its full traffic potential. Because each blog post is a separate web page, the search engines index each blog post separately. If they cannot crawl your blog because your blog theme isn’t SEOd well then that will mean fewer pages indexed at the search engines. A professional installer can find you a good theme that will get crawled.

When starting your blog keep in mind that not all search engine optimization tools can be used with blogging platforms. Many traffic analysis services will not work well with weblogs that are hosted on free sites or are on platforms like blogger. There are search engine optimization tools that have been made specifically for Wordpress and other blogging platforms but these tools usually only work with blogs that are hosted on their own domains with premium web hosts.

In order to get the most from your blogging experience, you’ll need to track traffic and user experience. There are tools you can use for that. Some are free and some are very expensive. But which ones you use depends a great deal on the goals you have for your blog. That’s another reason a professional can help you with your installation and SEO.

Do not let these things discourage you and keep you from becoming a successful blogger. It is extremely likely that you will be able to set up your own profitable blog but keep in mind that you will have to invest time and effort in order to properly promote your blog to the right audience. Developers are constantly creating more tools to help bloggers make their blogs search engine friendly so that your blog audience can be increased.

For more ideas on blogging check out Random Woman or the Random Woman Blog.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Meka_Mcspadden

You don’t have to be discouraged at all if you are just starting out. A professional blog ghostwriter can help you write good content for your blog as well. Whether you are selling a product or service, driving traffic to your AdSense blog, or promoting a service company, your blog deserves the best and highest quality content that you can give it. You can spend months meandering your way through the content maze and try to learn SEO on your own or you can hand it over to a professional who can get your website crawled and fill it with SEOd content from Day 1. Blog Content Provider can manage every aspect of your blog from start to finish. Give us a try.

Jennifer Osborne wrote a terrific blog post on the usefulness of a blog strategy. I thought the post was interesting for several reasons:

• No. 1, it seems that she has some of the same challenges that we at Blog Content Provider have.
• Her answers to frequently asked questions are some of the same answers that we give to our clients

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• And, thirdly, since she deals specifically with the question “How to sell your client on a blog strategy,” I thought it would be relevant for our blog because we have resellers who could benefit from this information as well.

Jennifer answers the following questions in her post:

• Why would I think about implementing a Blog Strategy?
• We have always resisted a Blog because we’re not sure anyone would read it. Who wants to read an online diary about plastic products / rugs / or the petroleum industry ?
• That makes sense but I’m also worried about running out of ideas for posts. My biggest concern is the potential resource requirement that a Blog might create.

These are all great questions and deserve thoughful answers. Jennifer does a good job on her blog, but I’d like to take a stab at it.

1. Why should anyone think about implementing a blog strategy? Well, first, let’s distinguish between implementing a blog and implementing a blog strategy. A blog is simply throwing up a blog and getting started writing. Some people can do that, but I don’t recommend it. I think you need a strategy. That is, you need to define your blog’s purpose and make sure every blog post you write goes to fulfilling that purpose. If you want to use your blog, for instance, to drive traffic to your website, that’s a different strategy and requires a different way of writing than using your blog to take newsletter subscriptions or to sell site memberships. Define your purpose and the strategy usually takes care of itself.
2. Who wants to read an online diary on (the most boring subject in the world)? This is often the most often asked question and reveals a fundamental misunderstanding about what a blog is for. It’s true that blogs started out as online diaries, and many people still use them that way. But businesses have started using blogs as marketing tools. A business blog is as much an online diary as a brochure is a love letter or a TV commercial is an after dinner visit to the neighbor’s house. These are tools for marketing your business. A blog has many useful marketing tactics to include better SEO, mass communication with your customer base, receiving feedback on your products and services, and many more. It can be one directional (that is, you talk and they listen) or it can be bi-directional (comments encouraged). Some blogs are quite useful in assisting a client’s website rise in search engine rankings for their keywords. Let me ask you this: If you could see your website rise from Page 10 in Google for only one of your important keywords all the way up to Page 1 above the fold, would it be worth it? For most businesses it would, and for most business that is entirely possible just by implementing a blog. In fact, we have done just that for several of our customers, not only for a single keyword but for multiple keywords.

3. OK, so how do you get ideas for blog posts about boring topics? Well, it isn’t easy. But it is possible. It starts with identifying your most important keywords. If we know what your top 10 most important keywords are then we have a month’s worth of blog posts just by coming up with three ways to write about each keyword. Most keywords, however, have hundreds of ways they can be written about. Even on the most boring of topics. For instance, let’s take restaurant furniture. Now, there’s a topic that just gets people jumping for joy. But did you know that there are hundreds of different styles of restaurant furniture and as many different ways of arranging it effectively for a pleasant dining experience? When it comes to blogging, no topic is too boring. Restaurant owners need to learn how to arrange their furniture and they need to know the different types and styles of restaurant furniture available. So let us tell them.

Commercial blogging is here. I don’t think it is going anywhere. Not only is there a human audience for every topic under the sun, but the search engines are dying to feed off of the content that you deliver them. You might as well brace yourself for the feeding.

Businesses of all shapes and sizes are starting to wake up to blogging. Everyone seems to understand that they need a blog to remain competitive, but few people know how to go about it. If you are thinking about starting a blog for your business, the blog marketing e-book Small Business Blogging Essentials: How To Use Your Blog As A Marketing Tool is for you.

Small Business Blogging Essentials: How To Use Your Blog As A Marketing Tool was written by Blog Content Provider’s operation manager, Allen Taylor, and Caroline Melberg, owner of Melberg Marketing. In this book, the two of them share their insights into blog writing and marketing and include essential knowledge for the small business owner who wants to get down the basics before moving on to the hard stuff.

Allen Taylor has written thousands of blog posts. Prior to working with Blog Content Provider he was stationed in Iraq as a National Guard officer for 11 months and spent 18 months in military uniform as a full-time National Guard officer when his unit was activated for service in August 2004. Prior to that he was a newspaper editor and freelance writer. He’s also got several years of sales experience to back it up.

Caroline Melberg adds her years of experience as a blue chip marketing maven and delights in bringing her Fortune 500 knowledge to bear for small businesses. Their partnership in this book is absolute asset to any small business owner looking to get the most out of 21st century marketing.

Small Business Blogging Essentials: How To Use Your Blog As A Marketing Tool covers such important blogging topics as:

• The different types of blogs available to small business owners
• Whether or not you should write your own blog
• If you use a ghostwriter for your blog, how should you choose the one that is right for you?
• Detailed information about the benefits of blogging
• And you’ll also get necessary information on social bookmarking, directories, SEO, and other useful methods of marketing your blog

Small Business Blogging Essentials: How To Use Your Blog As A Marketing Tool is only $19.95. But if you order a blog from Blog Content Provider then you’ll get a full refund. This is the best starting place for information on blogging for anyone who still doesn’t know what a blog is or is unsure as to what a blog can do for your business.

Ever wonder what SEOs eat and drink?

And to wash it down …

Of course, if it were my list, I’d add BlogBits. They come in plain and peanut with various flavors. My favorite! MMMM–mmmmm. Good.

I found an excellent article on WordPress plugins that could make monetization of your blog easier. But I’d like to offer this word of caution before you use any of these plugins or try to monetize your blog in the ways that this article suggests: Be sure that you are absolutely committed 100% to monetizing your blog this way; otherwise, you could ruin your credibility.

Top WordPress Plugins - Monetize Your Blog With Ads

By Jim R Regan

One of the questions I get all the time is how to you monetize your WordPress blog with plugins. This is probably the most efficient and easy-to-use method of getting advertisements up on your website. The best part is, most of these services allow you to take payments and disperse ads automatically! Cutting out the middleman is an excellent option for any blogger. If you can manage your ads yourself, you can take 100% of the earnings instead of having to pay commission fees.

There are many ways to utilize ad space on your website. Some of the more popular methods are 125×125 banners, 468×60 banners and text links. As the internet develops, websites are becoming more and more slick with Flash, AJAX, Mootools and other ways to become Web 2.0. With this, advertising has branched off into “peel away” ads snug in the upper corners websites, bar ads across the top of the page and even video ad units. I think that a lot of this is overkill, so we will focus on traditional banners and text. Lets take a look into the top WordPress plugins for placing ads on your blog.

When it comes to making money with your blog, nothing is overkill. You’ll know it’s overkill when you actually start losing money because your traffic will go away and so too will your advertisers. That’s when you’ve gone too far. Before you go that far, however, be sure to run tests. Will your users leave if you employ these tools? If so, you’d better pull out before you are entirely committed.

1. OIOPublisher

This is a brand new WordPress monetization tool that is by far the best in class, luckily for us it is also the most cost-effective . With a solid amount of options (review posts, text links, banners, inline text, etc), OIOPublisher is what I use here at theNetFool.com! This is the only plugin that I have ever paid for, and at just $37 one-time cost, this thing literally pays for itself and almost anyone can afford it. When you install the plugin, it opens up a whole new section of your WordPress administrator backend, a “business” tab that offers extensive options and tracks all of your clients. Everything is very easy to use and understand, I had mine up and running in just 30 minutes!

One thing I especially like about OIOPublisher is the built-in widgets to encourage readers to buy ads. All of the unused banner spaces can be automatically filled with ads of your choice and redirect to your purchase page. There is even a widget that comes with the plugin to show how many ad spaces are available on your site at all times. I think that $37 is totally reasonable for this awesome WordPress plugin. Not only do you get an easy to use administrative section, you have everything automated for you and your one-time fee covers the plugin on multiple websites! If you are looking for an easy way to link directly with WordPress and get your blog monetized, look for OIOPublisher.

This looks like a good tool. Since I’ve never used it I can’t vouch for it, but if I were to go this route on my own blog then this would likely be a plugin I’d consider. The price does seem reasonable and it looks like you have quite a bit of control. I would probably not use this plugin on an out-of-the-box template. I would likely have a designer work me up a unique blog design that would be compatible with this plugin. I believe that would make your monetization efforts a lot more effective.

2. WP Text Ads

This was the popular monetization solution before OIOPublisher went public, and it is without a doubt a very good product. My problems with WP Text Ads are:

1. The product is overpriced at $127

2. There is no support for banner ads, text only

With these factors in mind, I am really not too bullish on the WordPress plugin. However. Taking the service as is, I think it is very good if you are interested in providing mostly text link spots to your advertisers. The ads are very easy to style, and you can even set the rates at which they run differently to ensure the maximum payback efficiency. Again, the one-time $127 is expensive… but if you are selling a steady stream of ads it should be too much of an issue since it is a one and done type deal.

I agree that this is overpriced. $127 seems expensive to me, especially since Google penalizes link sellers and buyers. You do want to exercise caution if you decide to sell text links. You should know that Google does penalize sites that sell text links for PageRank value. If you do sell text links, consider selling them for the traffic value and not for the PageRank or link juice value.

3. WP Bankroll

This blog monetization service really only applies to selling blog posts, paid reviews and paid plugs on your blogging website. It is definitely not as professional as OIOPublisher or WP Text Ads, but it gets the job done and can be used completely free if you are willing to provide a backlink to their website (else $20-$50). There are definitely some interesting features to point out. You can determine how many links are allowed to be active in each post, minimum word count and cost.

There is another very clever feature that allows you to randomly allow your guest posters links to appear in your sidebar. Overall, I wouldn’t really recommend WP Bankroll unless you are solely looking for sponsored/guest posting on your website and do not have any money to spare on a plugin. If this is you, then by all means use Bankroll… but I’d rather see you with OIOPublisher or WP Text Ads .

This looks like another reasonable recommendation. The same caution applies to paid reviews and sponsored posts as applies to text links. Do it for the traffic value and not the PageRank value.

4. Text Link Ads

I figured that it is only fair I include this opportunity, although they are really not what we are looking for by “cutting out the middleman.” Text Link Ads is a service that offers 50% commission for text ads, where they essentially handle all of the work for you. This is a nice option if you don’t want to go out and look for people to advertise on your blog, but I still figure that you would be better off with a down-payment and 100% of the gains.

This program is a lot more like buying into an Adsense or a BidVertiser type advertising program than the previous options. The plus here is that they install the ads for you and pay commission based of views and clicks. Downside is that the minimum payout is $25 and you are only getting half of your potential income. Still, a popular option that many choose as an alternative to Google Adsense.

50% is a big piece of pie and if you don’t earn at least $25 then you are out that. Doesn’t seem like a good deal to me. It may be OK for a short-term solution if you don’t have time to manage your own monetization efforts. If that is the case then you can use this service until you can afford to manage your own efforts, in which case you can switch over to the plugin and reap more of the benefits.

Monetizing your blog can be the smartest or the dumbest thing you can do to your blog. Before you intend on placing ads, you need to make sure that your design can handle it without looking cluttered and that you are seeing enough visitors to render the decision. Think of it this way, if you wouldn’t want to pay a toll to read your content, you are not ready to place ads on your website. These awesome WordPress plugins are just some of the monetization programs, and I wanted to focus on those that operate direct with your blog’s administration center. Stay positive, and keep posting new content… you’ll be seeing income in no time!

-The Net Fool

The author of this article is Jim “The Net Fool”.

He is owner of theNetFool.com If you’d like to learn more about blogging, you can visit http://www.thenetfool.com You’ll find all the information you need!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_R_Regan

I agree with his assessment that monetizing your blog using these plugins can be very smart or very stupid. That’s why you need to carefully consider whether or not you want to go this route before you do. I would not monetize a company blog using any of these methods, with one exception: Only sell advertising on your blog to companies within your niche that do not compete with you. For example, if you are a real estate agent and you are approached by a mortgage lender in your market to sell a link from your blog to theirs then that would be OK since you do not sell mortgage products; it’s actually a good fit. But I would tell the mortgage lender that the link would be “nofollow” so that neither of you lose any search benefits.

If, on the other hand, you are approached by another real estate agent in your market who wants to buy an ad on your website then refuse their offer. You don’t want your traffic, which you have worked hard to get, leaving your website or blog to go to the competition. You’d rather have their business long term than to take the short term benefit of advertising money. Wouldn’t you?

There is a type of blog, though, that I’d have no problem selling advertising on and that is a blog set up specifically for informational purposes. Let’s say, for instance, that you wanted to start a blog that caters to real estate investors. You aren’t selling a service; you are just writing an instructional blog to teach other investors how to find properties, the pitfalls to watch out for, how to evaluate a property for investment purposes, etc. Obviously, you aren’t going to make any money on this blog if you don’t figure out a way to monetize it and squeeze some benefit out of it for yourself. It’s perfectly acceptable to write this kind of blog. Here’s what I’d do to make an instructional/informational blog worth your while:

• Develop a custom blog design - You want your informational blog to be eye-catching and unique. It tells your visitors that you are serious about teaching them your skills.
• Decide what monetization models you will use before you begin - Very important. Have a plan then work your plan. Know before you write your first post that you will be selling banner ads, text ads, or paid reviews. Maybe it will be all of the above. But decide before you start how you will monetize your blog. But don’t implement any of the monetization models at this time.
• Before you do anything else, focus on building traffic - Before you sell your first ad or attempt to sell anything at all, focus first on developing great content and building up your traffic. If you only have two regular readers, your ad values will not be much. No one will want to buy an ad for a blog with only two readers. You must concentrate all of your efforts in the beginning to writing great blog posts and attracting loyal readers. How long will that take? It depends. It could take three months or a year depending on several factors such as your writing skills, your niche and its popularity, whether you own your own domain or you use a free host, and your ability to market your blog effectively. However long it takes, do not sell any ads until you get your loyal traffic numbers up to a point that you can safely say you’ve attracted an audience.
• Sell your first ad - Don’t go bonkers with ad sales until you test the waters first. You want to see what will be the most effective monetization method for your blog. Some blogs will do better with text links, others will do better with banner ads. Know what your visitors will go along with. If you start implement ads and you see your traffic start dropping then you probably want to stop selling those types of ads. All the ad sales in the world won’t matter if you don’t have any traffic. It is important that you keep your blog’s visitors in mind and only implement methods that they will tolerate.
• After testing the waters, start selling - Once you’ve reached a level of comfortability, begin selling ads full force.

Blog monetization through ad sales can be lucrative if done the right way. But everything you do on your blog must be done to serve your visitors. Otherwise, you will not get, or keep, that many visitors.

A ghostwriter can be a big asset if you do not have the ability to write. You’ll have to figure the cost of the ghostwriting service into your business plan from the very beginning. Will you write the blog yourself until you start selling ads? Will the ghostwriter write all the posts until you start selling ads? Make sure you define it in your plan and count the costs before you begin. Make sure that you have enough money in the bank before hiring a ghostwriter for several months with no profit so that you can work your way toward your monetization efforts when the time is right. And also make sure that your ghostwriter understands the long term vision for your blog. If you plan to sell ads later on then let your ghostwriter in on that knowledge right from the very beginning because it will make a difference in how he writes your blog for you and if he knows that you will be selling ads later then he can make that transition go more smoothly for you in the writing throughout the life of your blog.

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• Daily Blog Posting Service
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