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This is a guest post by Robb Sutton.

Blogging has become an incredible medium for income generation online. With thousands of internet entrepreneurs making a full-time income online through their content, thousands more eager bloggers are hitting the market to hit it big and live the life they dreamed. So there you are…wanting to start a blog but have no clue on where to start. While there is a ton of information online on how to setup a blog (you can even see my tutorials by clicking here), if you are looking to actually generate income through your content, you need to take some things into consideration before you even pick a domain name.

There Are 2 Types Of Income Generating Blogs

From what I have seen over the years, there are really two types of income generating blogs and you are going to fit in one of these categories.

1. Business blogs that use regularly updated content to generate free leads for their business.
2. Blogs that are the business generating income through advertising, affiliate marketing, information products, etc.

What may surprise you is that the plan of attack with each scenario is basically the same with differences in content production and site layout. As we look at each, one solid truth rings through…

We have to attract a buying audience and keep them on our blog.

Without a buying audience in either scenario…there is no dollars changing hands which equals no income for the blogger. You can not make income through content alone, so let’s get out there and find where the money is being made.

Finding A Buying Audience For Your Blog

If you are a company that is looking to generate more leads for your business, you are in luck. You already know who your customer base is so you can taylor your content to attract more customers. Once you get your new leads to your blog, you are going to want to capture those leads through an email newsletter and keep them up to date on what you have going on with your business. Easy enough…

If you are going to start a blog for profit, your job is a little bit more difficult. Your trick is to find a blog topic that is going to attract buying eyes to your pages so you actually have the possibility of making an income online. Here are a couple of things to look for as you come up with a blog topic (preferably one that you know a lot about…do not start a blog about blogging if you do not have a successful blog in another niche).

• Affiliate Programs – Affiliate marketing is one of the main ways that bloggers make their income online. By referring a sale, you get a percentage commission. Easy enough right? If you have several blog topics in mind, start looking around to see if there are a lot of affiliate programs you can sign up for. If there are, chances are there is some money to be made in that niche. If you find there are not any…you might need to reevaluate where you are headed. Remember…most programs are going to be through a network like Share-A-Sale, Commission Junction or a marketplace like Clickbank.
• Google Adsense – Google Adsense is most likely the largest online advertising platform in the world. While I don’t normally recommend relying on it for income generation, it is a fantastic tool for figuring out if advertising money is being spent in your target niche. By doing some simple Google searches for keywords in your niche, you can find out if there are advertising dollars being spent by looking at the ads on the right of the screen. If there are a lot of major players advertising, you have a niche blog topic that can attract direct advertising dollars.
• Google Adwords – Google Adwords is the backend management for Adsense. Google provides tools to advertisers so they can taylor their ads to specific groups. By using the Keyword tool in Adwords, you can find out local and global monthly search engine queries for keyword strings in your niche. This is a great tool for figuring out how large of an audience you are trying to capture that is searching for income generating keywords online. It can also tell you want kind of content you should be writing and which keywords you should be targeting for success.
• Size Up The Competition – If you are entering a market with very weak or no competition, you have either found an untapped resource or there isn’t any money to be made within that subject matter. When you have narrowed down your blog topic, start to look around at the competition and see how they are generating revenue. This does not mean those are the only ways to make money in that niche, but it will give you some insight into whether or not money can actually be made.
• Can You Help Your Readers Solve A Problem? – The fastest way to make money online is to solve people’s issues within a given niche. If you can create an informational product or provide solutions (with affiliate products) that solve a person’s problem, that is your fast track to success. If you are just reporting the news, be prepared to wait until you have a massive amount of traffic to make a small amount of income.

If you keep to those theories and tips as you create your blog from day 1, you are starting off on the right foot in respect to income generating blog production. Once you have found that perfect niche for you, rock out the content and create a email newsletter to capture those leads to keep them coming back to your content. The rest will be history…

Robb Sutton blogs about blogging and how to make money online through his experience with Bike198.com at RobbSutton.com. He also teaches people how to get over $100,000 per year of free review product with blogs in Ramped Reviews.