Web logs (or blogs for short) are dismissed by some people as self-indulgent and often pointless ramblings.

But some canny entrepreneurs are now starting to turn them into lucrative part-time business projects!

Thanks to the Internet, blogs are one of the simplest, easiest methods of self-publishing you can find.

Blogs vary greatly in content and quality, but essentially they are online diaries or journals.

Some are devoted to single topics, such as pets, poetry or politics.

Others are stream-of-consciousness musings on anything and everything. Most blogs are updated daily. Often they are (sometimes idiosyncratic) collections of thoughts, short essays, dialogues, personal trivia and links to favourite websites.

Many are started as hobbies and abandoned after one or two postings. Those that last, however, can build up a very devoted following.

No one knows exactly how many blogs there are.

Technorati, a San Francisco research company, claims that there are now about 2.5 million blogs worldwide, with 10,000 new ones being created each day. The Pew Research Centre estimates that between 2%-7% of adult Internet users write a blog, and 11% visit blogs.

Although blogs have been around for about five years, it is only in the last year or two that they have started becoming a moneymaking opportunity. And that is in the USA, where they tend to be ahead of the UK in Internet matters.

Over the next few years moneymaking blogs are likely to boom in the UK too – and boom big.

The availability of easy-to-use blogging software has increased their popularity and made it much easier for almost anybody to get started.

Bloggers who ramble on about anything and everything, and whose readership consists of a few dozen friends and family, are not likely to make much money. To pull in a commercial readership, a site should be about a specific subject (or product).

The information should be unique, useful, valuable and interesting. Search the Internet for existing successful blogs to get ideas, or help spot gaps in the market.

Business blogs, on the other hand, tend to include content that is more focussed and direct.

Although they are often designed to promote and market products and services, successful business blogs must contain more than just press releases and advertisements.

Good business blogs have genuinely useful content that may come in the form of relevant news and events.

For example, a business blog about computer gadgets may share news about upcoming developments, or little known fixes or ‘get it to work better’ tips. Other blog content that will be welcomed in business blogs are: Product and media reviews, letters and testimonials from customers, short articles, tutorials, tips, and photo essays.

You can create your own blog using any basic website software, perhaps using the free web space offered by your ISP. However, there are now many specialised blog hosts, applications and software systems available to people who wish to start their own blogs. Do an Internet search to find some and check out the features of each.

Depending on your requirements, here are some points that you need to consider when choosing where and how to blog:

Purpose: What are you planning to use your blog for? If it’s for personal use, you may not require a lot of functionality and features. On the other hand, if you wish to set up a group blog, you should look for a blog host/system that has administrative functions that will allow you to add authors/bloggers and moderate posts.

Technical Knowledge: How good are you with a computer and the Internet? If you don’t want to get involved with programming and design then you should choose a blog host/system that requires the least possible technical know-how to set up and operate.

Value: Many blog hosts/systems are available for free, but may deliver unsolicited advertising to your readers. A paid-for version (such as WORDPRESS) will allow you to take control of your own advertising and may offer upgraded features/functions.

(You can always try a free version first before paying for any upgrades.)

Some top bloggers are able to make hundreds or, in a few cases, thousands of pounds a month from a blog that takes them just 20 minutes a day to write. However, even a modest blog could make £50-£100 a month if exploited properly.

An essential principle of blogs is that you never charge a subscription free.

A blog is not an e-mail newsletter or e-zine or a news or subscription website.

Part of the attraction of it is that it is a literally free representation of free speech and free thought.

Instead you need to use more subtle methods to persuade readers to pay you for the information and ideas you are providing them with.

There are basically three ways to generate money from your blogs once they are up and running. You can use one or more of them for each blog you create:

One: Accept Advertising

The percentage of blogs that have ads. is still quite low, but it is likely to grow quickly now that a number of services are being developed to make it easy for bloggers and advertisers to connect.

However, some people fear advertising will corrupt blogging and encourage bloggers to write for money, not passion. So it’s important that your advertising is more carefully selected and placed than if you were selling advertising in an e-zine for example.

There are several ways to attract advertising. First, you can contact suitable advertisers and ask them if they would like to pay to advertise on your blog. They should also be reputable, ethical companies so as not to compromise your blog. The products or services they sell and the way they are presented should be carefully selected so that your advertising seems more like a service, or a ‘don’t miss this’ recommendation, than an ad.

You can also include an ‘Advertise Here’ appeal within your blog. The logic of this is that people owning or working for companies who would be suitable advertisers on your blog are quite likely to read your blog anyway!

Lastly, there are now a number of blog advertising agencies which will find advertising for you, or connect blogs and advertisers, in return for a small fee. You can find these using an Internet search, or check in the Appendix. For example, Blogads is a US service which will find advertisers for blogs in return for 20% of the advertising revenue.

Two: Ask For Donations

One of the easiest ways to generate a profit from your blog is simply to ask your readers to make donations towards the cost of running your site. This works on an honour basis. Only readers who are willing to pay do so and the amount is up to them. Those who choose not to pay can still read the blog. Simply add a box stating something like ‘Please Donate To Help Keep This Site Free’, and occasionally make appeals for donations in your blog copy.

Although this might seem an unlikely way to make a good income the experience of many bloggers proves that it can be quite lucrative. They have found that a sizable minority of readers will donate, and on a regular basis, either because they highly value your blog – or simply because they feel a little guilty about getting something for nothing. Successful bloggers report lots of £5 and £10 donations, and sometimes get donations of hundreds of pounds! Others report that total donations exceed the amount that they could hope to make by selling a similar product on subscription.

You can collect donations easily using a service such as PayPal. Another method is to use Amazon’s ‘Honor System’ programme. This allows a given blog’s readers to click through and make donations to the blogger using Amazon’s own secure payment system.

Three: Exploit Revenue-Generating Links

Linking to other sites that generate revenue is a more subtle way of making money from your blog than accepting paid advertising. There are several different ways of doing this, of which these are just two examples:

Google Adsense: Instead of selling ads on specific sites, Google Adsense sells ads. linked to certain words that appear in the content of sites. Bloggers say they like this approach because it provides relatively unobtrusive ads their readers might actually want to see. You can join Google Adsense quite easily by inserting the HTML code they will supply on your blog.

Adsense cleverly matches up the blog with suitable advertising. For example, a site that covers gardening and includes a lot of gardening-related words will attract garden-related advertising. So, when visitors go there they might see an ad for ordering bulbs and seeds online.

Advertisers pay Google each time a user clicks on their ads. Google gives a portion of this revenue to the site where the ad appears. Some blogs make £200-£500 a month just from this source.

Amazon Associates: While technically not advertising, Amazon.com has offered bloggers and other Web sites a way to make money since 1996 through its Associates programme. Blogs that join the programme link content on their site to books, consumer electronics and other products sold on Amazon. If a visitor clicks on the link and buys the product, the blog site gets a percentage of the revenue. This commission can be up to 10.5% depending on the product and the number and value of sales.

With Amazon Associates no ads show up on your site, but if visitors click on a book or DVD, for example, which you write about they will be linked to Amazon.com. It’s important not to comprise what you write by mentioning too many linked products of course, although it’s up to the reader whether they want to use the link. Many blogs earn £100 a month from this method.

FOUR: Sell the site for Profit

Currently blog flipping is making big money for a small number of people, and it is likely to become more popular. Written by Tony Newton, and endorsed by Tony shepherd, the course shows how anyone can easily build a lucrative online business quickly using free tools,

I have personally used blog flipz and I was impressed by its ingenuity and simplicity.