Recently, I was looking through my draft folder on mymarketer, which holds all the posts ideas I’ve wanted to write but saved for a slow rainy day. I noticed that my oldest blog post idea dates back to August of 2007. I feel 33 months is a bit too long for a draft idea to stay dormant, and obviously that slow rainy day isn’t coming anytime soon.  The occasion has come to blow off the cobwebs and allow this idea to come to fruition.

My idea stemmed from an article in the Wall Street Journal, which gave some interesting data about the importance of business blogging.  I have always had a keen interest on this subject. Mainly, because business blogging is what really launched my Internet marketing career. Having seen a great deal of success with blogging, I am an avid believer that, if done correctly, blogging can be a great online tool for boosting a business’s bottom line.

I am always a sucker for swag, particularly cool swag. So, when Affiliate.com offered to send me their cool shirt I couldn’t resist. However, the condition of receiving this great swag was that I did a post on how I wear the shirt. Well, we received the shirt and I realized as cool as the shirt was, it looks far better on someone else—my 10 month old daughter.

Meet Chloe

auction-tag One of my favorite things to do is to find wordpress plugins. In fact, the plugins are what made me fall in love with wordpress. There are so many things that you can build and do with plugins. The nice thing is that you don’t have to pay someone to create these programs. I always tell clients, when I am using wordpress as their CMS solution, that there is probably few things they will ever need to build since the wordpress opensource community is so vast.

Currently, I am creating a finance website and was asked to include an auction into the site. Surprisingly, there are not a lot of auction plugins. However, I did find a plugin I was impressed with—wpauctions.com (yes, this is an affiliate link). Unfortunately, to get all the plugin’s functionality you need to put down $40 (they do have a free version you can use to test drive the plugin).

However, for me it was worth it because it added an additional layer to the overall site. The function that was valuable for me was the ability to put an auction into any of my posts or pages. I have a real gripe with ecommerce solutions that require a defined page or post that I am restricted to.

For the last several months I have been working with Janet (aka newspapergirl.com) on creating a title for her new online pr book. That’s right, I said several months! We have gone through hundreds of possibilities. Personally, my favorite so far is, “Lois Lane’s Complete Guide To Online Press Releases” (her blog tagline is: The Lois Lane of the Web). Something about not infringing on trademarks keeps her from going with that title. Can you really trademark Superman!

It would not surprise me to learn that Janet has lost some sleep over her struggle of coming up with a nice catchy title. So, I decided I would help her further and research the titles on books people like. I’ve read hundreds of people’s top 3,5,10 books list. As I read these lists I would copy to a text file titles I liked. Soon I was creating a rather comprehensive list of my own.

I realized that my research might be of use to others so I compiled them into categories and created my own (rather large) top list. I do give full disclosure that I have not read most of these books. Though, I do start out with a list of the books I have read, which are books found in other lists. I also must disclose that each book links to Amazon for you to buy, and yes, my affiliate code is embedded (hey, this list represents countless hours of my life, the least I can ask for is 15% of your purchase ).

Having a license plate with BLOGGER on it I get stopped a lot and asked questions about blogging. The number one question I get is, “Can someone really make money off of blogging?” This question is always followed up with, “How can I make money off blogging?”

Often people do not like my response. Mainly because I dispel any belief of someone starting right away making thousands of dollars a month. The blogosphere is full of stories of well known bloggers who took years to make the money they are currently making. It is a rare, rare example of a blogger who in month one made several thousands of dollars (regardless of what some hyped-up ebooks may tell you).

If my tales of blogging hardship hasn’t discouraged my listener than I proceed to share what I have learned.

Advertising Works…Sometimes
First, advertising can make you money. Darren over at Problogger and Jeremy at Shoemoney are proof of this. However, the likelihood of becoming an A++ blogger is rather unlikely. I’ve experimented with advertising but haven’t really taken to it. Not to say one shouldn’t, and maybe someday I will go down that path. For now, though, I prefer the clean, concise look of a non-ad-littered website

The Community Is Key
The number one resource in bringing me consistent revenue has been the community around my blog. My readers have introduced me to more opportunities and consulting jobs than anything else. In fact, it was due to a reader that made it possible for me to leave my corporate job.

Community Building Is Not Easy
Which conveniently takes me to my next point–you don’t build a community overnight. When I first started blogging I had no readers what-so-ever. This being the case, I had to work at Oracle during the day and blogged at night for almost a year. A community is a fickle thing. If you don’t continually work it won’t grow, and if you stop building it will die. I am reminded of a millionaire I once spoke to. He told me, “If a business isn’t growing it’s dying.” Your blog is no different. Many web snakes will tell you that you can put a blog on automatic and you will make lots of money. I am here to tell you this is rarely true, particularly since I have tried to do just that with another blog. Both my business partner and I have learned the hard way that blogs take nurturing and time.