I just read an interesting article in Website Magazine’s Small Business Lab titled Blogging on a Benjamin.  The article details how a small business could set up a blog for under $100.

You can definitely set up a blog for under $100 and the article illustrates several avenues to do so for far less than than $100 in most cases.  My problem with, however, is that the article advocates using free blog hosting which I believe is some of the worst advice any legitimate business could follow when it comes to setting up professional blog.

In my opinion, there are basically two types of blogs…

1. Personal blogs that have no objective to generate any type revenue or brand awareness directly, or, even indirectly.
2. Professional blogs which are designed specifically to generate revenue directly or indirectly, and/or, to increase brand awareness.

How Much Does Free Cost?

Surely, you’ve heard the saying, “You get what your pay for”. This is definitely the case when it comes to free blog hosting. Free blog hosts aren’t so altruistic that they are just willing to give away free hosting services without something in return.

Most free hosts put advertising on your blogs to subsidize the cost of the ‘Free Hosting’.  You wouldn’t believe the number of small business owners we talk to that want to know how they can keep their competitors adds from showing up on their freely hosted blog.

Free hosts also tend to be much more restrictive when it comes to the content you put on a freely hosted blog.  WordPress.com, one of the biggest free blog hosts out there, doesn’t allow affiliate links to show up anywhere in your content.

Free hosts often prevent you from generating your own revenue streams with your blog because your freely hosted content is part of their revenue stream which is why they offer the hosting for free.

Paid Hosting Isn’t That Expensive

It’s not hard to find top quality paid hosting for your blog and still be under $100 in start up costs which kind of baffles me as to why Website Magazine even recommends free hosting for business blogs in the first place.   Paid hosts like BlueHost, which we use here on Bloggerpreneur and is the number one recommended paid host by WordPress.org, costs as little as $5.95 to $6.95 per month and comes with a one-year domain registration.

We love BlueHost and are even a BlueHost affiliate, something that we might not be able to be if we were using  free hosting.  There are, however, plenty of quality paid hosts that won’t break the bank and I recommend using any of them over a free host when it comes to a professional blog…

So, you’ve started your blog.  You’ve added what you think is good quality content.  You’ve blasted your links to all the social bookmarking sites that you can think of, and, you’ve asked all of your Twitter followers and Facebook friends to Re-Tweet your links and Like you posts.  You seem to be doing all the “right” things when it comes to positioning your site to make money online, but, you have yet to make a single affiliate sale, no one is beating down your door trying to buy advertising in your sidebar, and you still haven’t earned enough via AdSense for Google even to send you your first check.

Over the past 8 years or so, I’ve been what most would consider to be fairly successful when it comes to making money online and I’ve spent a lot of time looking at other blogs and forums to see what tips and tricks I could pick up to improve revenue I was already making.  In that time, I’ve seen some variation of the question “Why doesn’t my blog make money“ asked, quite literally, thousands of times, and, although the range of reasons why most people’s blogs don’t make money is as big as the number of times the question itself has been asked, I believe there to be a core set of reasons most people that ask this question seem to overlook.

I’ve put together of list of 8 reasons why your blog doesn’t make money, and, although your blog may not suffer from all 8, chances are that if you are struggling with making money from your blog, it falls victim to at least a few of them.

8 Reasons Your Blog Doesn’t Make Money

1. You can’t write – Even though this should be one of the more obvious reasons as to why a blog doesn’t make money, it actually is the one more difficult reasons for would-be bloggers to come to grips with.  Whether it be because the language you are trying to blog in is not your native tongue, or, you simply have zero skills when it comes to putting words into print, poorly written blogs don’t generate revenue because visitors don’t tend to stick around long enough to convert.
2. You picked a horrible niche – I once had a conversation with a business owner who ranked number 1 in Google for 15 of his top 15 search terms.  What this business owner didn’t understand was why those 15 top placements in Google’s SERPs only produced a combined 72 page views per month on average.  This business owners problem was that the niche that he was clearly dominating, wasn’t one that customers cared about.  Each keyword that this business owner target generated less than 5 visitors per month.  Ranking number 1 in the SERPs means very little if no one is actually searching for the keyworld.
3. You didn’t pick a niche at all – When your blog is about baseball cards,   red automobiles, dog grooming, landscaping, and wedding planning, chances are such that you won’t rank in the SERPs very well for any of those keywords.  Your blogs content is all over the map, and, unfortunately for you, people who search various search engines tend to focus on a specific topic that they are interested in.
4. You blog about yourself  - Most of your visitors don’t care about how your day went, want to read stories about your dog, or look at pictures of your cat.  Personal blogs generally don’t make money unless your a a famous or infamous personality.
5. You don’t have your own domain name –  The intent of this post is not to wage the paid hosting vs. free hosting battle, however, if you are trying to make money online and didn’t feel it worthy to shell out the $5 to $10 it costs to register your own domain name, understand that a large percentage of your potential customers will not do business with you simply because you don’t look as professional.
6. You don’t get enough traffic –  No matter your niche, the amount you earn from your blog will be directly proportional to the amount of traffic that you get.  Assuming that you are doing everything else properly, increasing your traffic will increase your sales.
7. You are buried by your competition – When it comes to making money online from your blog, being on the first page of Google for your niche keyword phrase is where all the action is.  If you are buried down on page 10 for your keyword phrase, people searching for it rarely will find your site.  Before you enter a niche you need to analyze your competition to see if you realistically can compete with them for your niche keyword phrases.
8. You don’t follow the rules – It is especially important for bloggers trying to make money from programs like Google’s AdSense that they follow their rules and guidelines for using their service. Placing images next to ad units to entice visitors to click is egregious and will probably get your account banned, but, little things like failing to create a privacy policy or placing too many ad units on a single page will just keep you from generating revenue from clicks.

As I visit internet marketing forums and blogs around the web one of the most popular questions I see being asked, especially by folks new to blogging, is, “How do I get more traffic to my blog?“  This question is usually asked without any context to speak of and rarely is even the domain name of the blog in question supplied.  There is generally no shortage of answers like get more inbound links, socially bookmark your domain, list your blog in various directories and blog carnivals, and a plethora of other answers that, like the original question, generally have no context.

From time to time I’ll answer these questions by first asking three specific questions about the persons website that every blogger should know about their blog.  It never ceases to amaze me, however, the number of bloggers that can’t answer these three questions which are essential bits of information that will help you determine how to get more traffic to your blog…

Three things you should know before asking, “How do I get more traffic to my blog?”

1. What is your primary keyword or keyword phrase? – What is the number one thing someone searching Google, Bing, Yahoo, or some other search engine would type in and find your blog in the results?  To ask the question a different way, what is your blog about? You would be surprised at the number of bloggers that can’t really tell you what there blog is about.  I am here to tell you that if your primary keyword phrase doesn’t just roll off your tongue if anyone asks you what it is, wondering how to get more traffic to your site is really the least of your concerns.  (Knowing several of your secondary keywords is not a bad idea either)
2. How much traffic does your primary keyword phrase get? – Before you should ever worry about how to get traffic to a blog, you should research how much potential search engine traffic said blog can actually get.  I once consulted with a blog owner who was concerned that they weren’t getting enough traffic from search engines even though they ranked number one for their primary keyword on both Google and Bing.  What this blogger didn’t know was that their primary keyword was only searched for about 15 times per day.  They were getting traffic from 12 of those searches per day.  The moral of this story was that this blogger built an entire website around a niche that simply no one was looking for.
3. Where do you rank for your primary keyword? – A goal of most bloggers is to rank number one in the search engines for the keywords that they are trying to rank for.  If you aren’t ranking number one, you need to know where you rank because your position in the SERPs will help you determine the types of things you can and should do to get more traffic.  If you are no where to be found in the top 100, strategies to help your gain a higher ranking will ultimately bring in more traffic.  If you already rank high up in the SERPS, a social networking strategy, or possibly building a list, may help to bring in more traffic and even increase the number of repeat visitors that you get.

These three things you should know before asking, “How do I get more traffic to my blog?” aren’t the only things that you should know, but, they are essential in helping your determine your course of action.  Ideally, you would have researched these things before you write your first post.  If you didn’t however, it would behoove you to take some time to figure them out before you write your next one as they will only make getting more traffic easier.