How to Build a Successful Blog and Monetize It

First you need to choose a platform. There are 3 major ones: Blogger, WordPress.com and WordPress.org. Pick Blogger or WordPress.com if you don't want to spend any money. Pick WordPress.org if you want to feel safe with your blog and not get your blog removed if something goes wrong.

Generate traffic using these methods:

1. Guest posting: Find a blog to do a guest post for. Prepare the guest post beforehand and then ask whether the blog owner can publish it.
2. Blog commenting: Go and find a handful of relevant blogs and write meaningful comments.
3. Forum marketing: Find some forums that allow signatures and write some meaningful replies to threads that are already created. Put a link to your blog in the signature.
4. Blog carnivals: Submit your best posts regularly to blog carnivals. Do a search on Google to find some.
5. Submit articles to article directories: Write articles for directories like EzineArticles. Make sure they are straight to the point and of a good quality.
6. Link to other blogs: Find a blog with a trackback URL and ping them with it using a relevant blog post of yours.
7. Squidoo: Create a Squidoo page or Hubpage. This will ensure it is ranked highly in the Search Engines and get you additional traffic.
8. Join a blog community: Join a community like Technorati. Wait for some time for them to process your claim.
9. Submit your blog to directories: Find some important directories to submit your blog to. Examples are the Yahoo Directory and Google Directory.

Monetize your blog with these methods:

1. Ads: Sign up for an account with Google AdSense and start placing ad codes in your blog.
2. Affiliate marketing: Sign up for a ClickBank account and find a product to promote. Place links to the sales pages somewhere in your blog. If you want you can also use PPC advertising to promote the affiliate product.
3. Write your own ebook: Create an Ebook on your area of expertise and sell it on your blog.
4. Donations: Ask for donations on your blog and use a service like eJunkie to facilitate the transaction.
5. Start a joint venture: Find a partner to start a joint venture with when your blog has considerable traffic. This is better than affiliate marketing as it can bring in much more money.
6. Private ads: Sell some ad space on your blog when it has a good amount of traffic.