It sounds like the perfect job doesn’t it? Writing your thoughts in a blog and somehow getting rich because of it – what a life. Of course, most of the stories you hear of people getting rich blogging are about those few whose blog has become hugely popular, enabling them to make a fortune. It is fair to say that these are the exceptions and that for each success story there are millions more blogs that are seen by very few people and from which the authors get hardly any income.

However, the way to make money from blogs is not to just Start Blogging and hope you are one of the few who get fantastically lucky. You may as well just buy a lottery ticket. The process is not magical or mysterious and you can take a tried and tested and logical approach to it, which will guarantee you a decent income in time. Blogs make money because visitors click on adverts or follow affiliate recommendations. That is where the money comes from, so the only way to get that money is to have lots of visitors to your blog, and your income increases in proportion with the number of visitors you have. If you have visitors, you will get money – simple as that.

Which leads us onto the question of how you actually get those visitors. You can’t just write about what you want and hope visitors will find your blog – they are not likely to find it unless you get very lucky. If you want to be guaranteed visitors, you need to choose the right subject for your blog, and optimize it for search engines. The visitors you need to attract to your blog are from search engines, because these are free and plentiful. The choice of subject for your blog is absolutely crucial, because you must find a niche that is of interest to enough people, without being in competition with lots of other websites and blogs. Only if you do this can you hope to achieve high enough ranking in the search engine results to get lots of visitors. Proper research is therefore essential.

Even if you choose the right topic, that will not be enough in itself to get visitors. You need to create and promote your blog in such a way as to make sure the search engines rate it as an important and useful site. This is called search engine optimization and among other things involves selecting the right key phrases for your posts and getting other sites to link to your blog. Backlinks from other sites are seen by search engines as an indication of quality and importance.

Let’s suppose you get all this right, choose the right niche, select the best keywords and get links back to your blog so that it shows up in search engine results and gets a steady stream of visitors. Well done, because that is quite an achievement in itself, but it is unlikely to earn you more than a few dollars a day. The only certain way to earn serious money from blogging, is to create lots of other blogs that meet the same criteria as the one we have just described. I mean ten, twenty or even a hundred blogs, all attracting different visitors and earning money every day. Then your income really is worth having.

The problem is the time it takes to create this number of blogs, or any kind of website. You can’t skimp on the proper research for the right niche and keywords, and neither can you skimp on good content or all the search engine optimization you need to do, so how can you possibly make enough blogs to earn serious cash? Not surprisingly you can’t, unless you employ some sort of tool or software, or combination of tools, to automate as much of the process as possible.

There are lots of tools available to do with generating and promoting blogs, but you need to be careful to avoid any which just enable you to churn out junk blogs full of second hand content and adverts. While claims of putting blogs up without having to write content may sound appealing, search engines hate duplicate content and such blogs will never rank well enough to get decent traffic. What you require is something that will guide you through all the stages you need to go through to create a quality blog, while automating as much of the process as possible.

Blogging means something different for everyone, but it is important to find out exactly what it means to you. Without being able to define blogging for your own situation you run the risk of targeting the wrong market and not meeting your objectives. There are a few common reasons why people blog:

1. Those Who Blog For Fun

Maybe you just want to create an online journal of your life, your cat or whatever else is going on in your life. This this is how you define blogging.

2. Those Who Blog For Money

Can you make money from blogging? Of course, with pro bloggers making over $20,000 a month there are a lot of pro blogger wannabes trying to get a piece of the actions as well, and if you are one of them this is how you define blogging.

3. Those Who Blog For Credibility

Do you have a lot of knowledge in an area and want to leverage this knowledge to create a profile for yourself online? Blogging is an excellent way to build yourself as a brand.

4. Those Who Blog For Network

Do you blog to build contacts for new ventures or to meet new people? There is a lot of potential to acquire new business and new ideas by through the people you meet with you blog.

And although these are the most common reasons why people blog, they are not the only reasons. People may also define blogging as a mixture of the above reasons and this is ok as well. there is no hard and fast definition as to what blogging actually is.

Make blogging what you want it to me – define blogging for yourself.

The 21st century is ushering in the new social learning revolution. Today’s workers come from a variety of cultures and generations, and we must address the requirements of this diverse, global audience. Companies understand that the current trends are all about interaction. The following are some of the trends we’re seeing:

Webinars. Virtual classrooms will continue to expand and technology will become increasingly more sophisticated allowing more interaction than ever before. Instructors still hold classes, only the participants don’t have to be together.

Video. Low-end videos include those you see on YouTube. All you need is a camera and some basic editing savvy. High-end videos are expensive, but the cost can be justified for certain types of training. You can include pauses where learners interact or perform certain tasks, and make the experience very participatory.

Social networks and social learning. This involves sitting at your computer or mobile phone and interacting with others. Social networks are creeping into companies and many have embraced Twitter within their own organizations. Others have created home-grown internal social networks. In addition to instant messages (IM) and chats, these are other avenues for people to get information and answers to questions quickly.

3-D. Although this technology is new for L&D, it’s expected to become the next generation of training.

Podcasts and blogs. These are associated with more formal learning and are gaining strong footholds in the L&D repertoire.

Simulations and virtual labs. These are used mostly in technical and scientific learning. You can make a quick simulation, drop it into the learning experience, and learners experience a simulated lab.

Suitcase programs. Curriculum is created and taken to offices around the globe. Local trainers deliver the program and sometimes one or two facilitators travel with the program. Some programs incorporate video and videoconferencing.

Expertise locations. This is where subject matter experts (SMEs) within a company, regardless of where they’re located, will be called upon to share their special knowledge and skills.

Mentoring. Mentoring programs are adding a lot of zest to L&D as companies are providing mentoring for orienting new hires, bridging the multi-generational and cross-cultural divides, transitioning people into management roles, and spearheading succession planning.

Mobile. Mobile technology is still evolving for training purposes. Presently, what may work well on one mobile phone, may not work well on another. However, components of more complex learning will work on most mobile phones and are being used now.