Increase your typing speed

One thing that a lot of bloggers could do to decrease the amount of time they spend blogging is to increase their typing speed. If you are typing at say 40 words a minute you are getting half as much done as you could be at 80-100 words a minute. Considering the amount of time you could save yourself, spending a few dollars on a typing tutorial may be the best investment you could ever make.
Here's the best typing tutorial I have found. I was able to triple my typing speed using it, and I know of a lot of other people who would recommend it to anyone. It is also the cheapest I have found at just $10.
Encore 8014398 Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 18

What blogging is not

I'd say that about 99 percent of people who think about starting a blog have the wrong idea what blogging is. Some people think it's this weird complicated thing that only the best can figure out how to do. It's not. It's rather simple to get started, and you will learn more and more as you go along. Other's think blogging is something that requires you to be on the computer all the time. That's also false. Most bloggers spend just a few minutes to an hour a day writing for their blog. However the more time you spend getting traffic to your blog, the more money you will ultimately make.
The most common misconception about blogging is that it is a way to get rich easily without doing any work. Get that out of your head. Most bloggers will give up before they ever hit the $100 Adsense minimum payout, and will probably be just wasting a lot of time they could be spending on something else. So if you are expecting to quit your job, and live on just a blog or two you will be very disappointed. Having said that, if you are someone who likes to write, or are good at writing than you can make decent money in time.
If you aren't someone who particularly likes writing, or don't have much patience than you should probably find an a different way to make money.

Squidoo

Squidoo is a great way to send traffic to your blog. More and more bloggers and website owners are making lenses(their word for web page) for the purpose of driving traffic to their site. You can just simply make a quick web page about whatever your blog is about, and throw in a few links to your blog, your rss feed, and maybe a few post from your blog and you're in business. Also Google and other search engine love Squidoo lenses and rank them very high so you can receive a lot of traffic.
That's not the best part though. The best part is you can make money from it too. I'm talking a lot of money. There are bloggers (myself included) who have tried it just to send traffic to a blog, and had so much fun they made more lenses. As of this writing I am working on lens number 12. Some people make thousands of dollars with Squidoo. There are a ton of people who have quit their jobs, and focused just on building Squidoo lenses. They also have a referral program.
If you are wondering what a Squidoo lens looks like, here are a few of mine. Here's one to drive traffic to my blogs. And here are a couple that I made just to have fun, and make a little money. Who makes the best footballs and Best Basketball
Another great part of Squidoo is the great community. There are tons of people in the forum trying to help out each other and make it more fun. It really is the most fun I have ever had making money.
Squidoo.com

Private Advertising

So many bloggers rely on Adsense for their earnings that they get discouraged and give up. Like I say all the time, Adsense will not pay as much as you think it will. Until you are getting like 10,000 hits a week Adsense is probably not worth getting your hopes up about.
Private advertising is definitely the way to go. You can offer text links for just $0.50 or a dollar a month when you are just starting out. If you can get 10-20 advertisers you are looking at $20 a month above what you are bringing in from Adsense. Once you are getting a lot of traffic you can charge a lot more. Like you could offer advertising for $10 a month, or a hundred dollars a year. Or if you have a spot for banners, find some other sites that may want to put those on your blog. You will find that this is by far the easiest way to make money when you are just starting out.
Where do you advertise your advertising space? I do it mostly at blog forums like Bloggeries or Bloggst. I will give you a list of blog forums to bring in traffic, and to bring in advertisers in a later post.

Free traffic sites

A lot of people want to boost their traffic just for the sake of saying they have more traffic. Maybe they want to sell advertising spots, and just need to say they have higher numbers than they really do. Or some people just want to be able to say they are getting a lot of traffic. Either way here are some great options to getting easy non-organic(people who weren't necessarily looking for you) traffic.
Traffic G is a free traffic exchange site that gives you around 1.1 visitors for every site you view. You just have to click on a site, wait 20 seconds, and click the right word. I would recommend doing it while you are doing something else, because it can get very boring. But it will give you the traffic it promises.
Free link exchange lets you advertise your blog on other blogs or sites by putting links on your own site. How many hits you get depends on how many times your links get clicked on.
Link Grand is a little different in that it lets you make money by putting links on your blog, and in turn use that to buy links. You can also just buy hits for just $5 for a thousand hits. I have done this a few times with some of my blogs. You can also make money with referrals.

Social bookmarking sites

Another great way to get more traffic to your blog is with social bookmarking sites. They are a great way to get some free backlinks. Most of them can actually get you a lot of hits by themselves. They take a little bit of time to sign up and submit every post, but they are definitely worth it. You can also get friends on these sites and submit each other's blogposts.
Digg
Stumble Upon
Reddit
Technorati
Del.icio.us
Mixx

Domain Names

A domain is your URL, or .com in layman's terms. It is what people type in to find your blog. The domain can be very important. For instance, my original domain for this blog was www.moremoneyblogging.blogspot.com. I bought the domain www.thebloghelper.com. Which one would you click on first? Which one sounds more professional? Obviously the one without the blogspot in it. Also if you are starting a wordpress or blogger blog you probably won't be able to get the URL you want.
A new domain is very easy to get. They are really cheap($10 or so. You just go to a domain registering site, buy the domain, and link it to your blog. It's that easy. Godaddy.com is the biggest domain registering site out there, but you may want to shop around to find the name you want cheaper somewhere else.

A couple things you may need for your blog

A hit counter. If you look at blogger forums a lot of new bloggers are always asking how they can tell how many people view their blog. Well there are a few of them out there, but the one I use is StatCounter.com. It is free to use, and pretty simple to step.
Another thing you will need is a spell checker if you don't already have one. Even if you are very good at spelling, you will probably slip a few times. A spelling mistake looks very bad. You can download a free spell checker to your web browser at this site. IESpell.com It only takes a minute, and can help you make your blog look much more professional.

Sites to submit your blog

Blog directories are a good way to get some extra hits. Also it's a free backlink. Here are a few that I like. These are all free. I would never spend money to submit a link to a blog directory. I would advise anyone else not to either.
Blog Catalog
Blog Explosion
Blog Hub
Blogville
Pinging sites do all the work for you, and submit your blog to a lot of other sites. They are the best way to build backlinks and get you ranked higher on Google or Yahoo. They are also a good way to get some hits from the sites that they submit your blog to.
Ping-O-Matic
Pingates
Ping My Blog
Pingler
Don't look for a bunch more hits from search engines right away. It takes a little while for them to catch up because there are so many websites out there.

Tips for writing a blog

Here are a few things to think about when writing a blog.

1. Be helpful. Imagine you're the reader. You aren't online to make some blogger a few pennies richer. You are wanting to learn about something. Whatever it is, if I don't learn anything from the blog or website I leave and never come back. If you are genuinely helpful people will be inclined to reading more or coming back, and thus more revenue for you. Make sure your blog is worth reading.
2. Be yourself. Don't use words that are too big for you, or try to be something you're not. People can usually see right through that, and will probably leave. Go ahead and let the reader know who you are. There are probably a thousand other blogs like yours. If it's not unique why should I read your blog as opposed to someone else's.
3. Know what you're talking about. I have read a lot of blogs that after a few lines have closed it, and thought this guy has no idea what he's talking about. Do some studying. I wouldn't even start a blog if I didn't know a lot about that topic to begin with.
4. Write only original content. Writing what someone else has said and calling it your own is plagiarism no matter how you look at it. If you are going to write something someone else has said give credit to the person who said it.
5. Write something you like writing about. If you are just pumping out blog posts to make money readers can see right through that. You might as well not be doing it if you don't enjoy it.

Have another reason for blogging besides money. First of all because it will probably take longer than you want for you to be making the money you thought you would, or someone else is making. But also readers can tell if it's just about the money. People won't subscribe or come back to your blog if they don't think they will learn something next time.

Pay per click ads

Most people use pay per click ads. This is the most simple and effective way to make money. I think if you are just starting out you probably want to keep it simple. Too many ads can clutter up your blog and the readers will become uninterested very quickly.
There are hundreds of sites you can use for putting ads on your site, and most have their own advantages and disadvantages, but for now I will just tell you about the one I use the most and why I like it. I will tell you about a lot of others later.
Bidvertiser.com
Why do I like it? It doesn't necessarily pay the most or have the best ads, but it is very easy to use and has a great affiliate program. They pay by PayPal every month which to me is much simpler than other methods of payment. The minimum payout is only $10 compared to $100 or more from other sites. Also there are others that have not paid all that they promised. Also there is no minimum age limit, unlike most other sites.
Also it has a great referral program. For a while when I was starting out I made more from referrals than I did from ads. They will pay you $10 for each referral that earns $10, and if that referral earns $50 they will give you another $40. Also if you can get any advertisers to sign up and they spend $10 you will get $5, and $20 if that person spends $50. It's almost worth it to join Bidvertiser just to make money that way.

How to get more people to your blog

Well this is where a lot of the work comes in. You can be a very good writer, with very good content to your blog, but if nobody can find you it won't matter. How much money you make depends strictly on how much traffic you can get.
There are a multitude of ways to get more hits to your blog. The two biggest ways are with advertising and SEO (search engines like google). I will talk more about these later. Right now I will just give you a couple ways to boost your traffic.
1. Tell your friends. You probably have 500 friends on Facebook or Twitter or whatever that would check out your blog. This can be a great boost.
2. Comment on other blogs like yours. Find other blogs in your niche and comment on them. Do not write a comment like this: "nice blog! Check out mine www.myblog.com". That is spamming is is frowned upon by everybody. If you write a genuine comment the blogger should be nice enough to check out your blog, maybe even put up a link on his own blog.
3. Blog catalogs. There are several blog catalogs out there that you can submit your blog for free to. An example of one is Blog Catalog.
4. Comment on blog communities or other sites or forums. A lot of times you can have a link to your blog in your signature that a lot of people will see.

I will talk a lot more about getting traffic to your blog in later posts including how to get people to come back to your blog.

Just starting out?

Well everyone was there at one point. One thing to keep in mind with blogging is that you will not make ton of money right away. One blogger that is making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year with his blog took several months before he made a dollar. The thing is to just keep trying, and to not give up. Blogging does take a lot of work if you want to make a lot of money.
Here are a few things to think about before starting a blog.
1. What is your topic? Make it something broad enough to attract a lot of people, but narrow enough so that people can find it easy enough. Also make it something you know a lot about. You can usually tell if someone knows what they are talking about.
2. What is your goal? Obviously you want to make money, but that isn’t always the only reason for blogging. Some people have blogs to get the word out about something, or to inform people. Others just write because they enjoy writing. Blogging can be a lot of fun once you know what you’re doing.
3. How much do you want to invest in it? Basically you will get out of it will depend on what you put into it. Some people write a new post 2 or 3 times a day, others maybe twice a week. The ones that post more frequently have people checking their blog more frequently, and thus more revenue. Another thing to consider is investing money with advertising and web hosting. It is possible to run a blog and never pay a cent, but it will be a very very long time before you will ever see any money from it. There are ways to spend a little money to make a lot more money in turn.

Hello

Blogging is all the rage these days. And for good reason. It might possibly be the easiest way to make big money. Blogging is very simple, practically anybody can do it. All you need is adequate knowledge of spelling and grammar rules and a little bit of knowledge about your topic.
Making money with blogging can be very confusing though. It's not really that hard, you just have to know how. That's why I am starting this blog. To show people how they can make the most money blogging. I already have 3 blogs so I think it's safe to say I know a quite a bit about it.
If you are an experienced blogger, a newbie, or someone thinking about blogging I will help you with all the aspects of making the most money blogging.