A friend once asked me: "Is there a way to earn money online without spending your own money first?" My reply was "Absolutely. Can you write intelligently about any topic?"
Of course, I was referring to blogging. There is no wonder why blogging has gotten so popular these days. It allows people to write about what they like to talk about and at the same time, make money from it. And you don't have to spend any money to get started. Yes, that’s right. Not a single penny. Let me explain.
First, you don't have to an expert in any particular field. You just have to write interestingly enough to make people want to read your blog. It could be about your experience with anything, your hobbies or your personal opinions about a particular topic.
Starting a blog is easy and requires no fee. That's right. You don't have to buy a domain name or pay to host your website. You can create a free blog from many websites on the internet. The most popular ones are blogger.com, wordpress.com and livejournal.com. Just register with any of these services to create your blog. It’s free. Start making posts that are worthwhile reading. There is a huge audience out there and any topic that you could write about could be of interest to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.
After making a few posts, you would need to promote your blog to attract your reading audience. There are many ways to promote your blog without spending a single penny. Get your blog listed in web directories like dmoz.org, WebSorter.com etc... Submit your blog entries to news sharing sites like Digg.com, Reddit.com and NowPubic.com. Publicize your blog in your myspace page and other social networking websites. Submit your blog feeds to aggregator sites like FeedBurner, Squidoo, Feedboy, Jordomedia, FeedBomb, ect...
There are many ways to make money from your blog. One of the ways is to add pay-per-click ads from services like Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network, AdBrite and many others. Typically, these pay-per-click ads are targeted to the topic of your blog. If you are blogging about student loans, the ads that will show on your blogs will most likely be about student loans. Every time a visitor on your blog clicks one of those ads, you will earn some money. How much you will earn per click will depend on the kind of ads that are displayed on your blog and how competitive and lucrative that those ads are to advertisers. Other ways to monetize your blog would be to sell ad space directly to advertisers if your blog receives a significant viewership. To get advertisers, you can list your ad space for sale on AdBrite, AdEngage, AdSpace-Auctions Ad Marketplace etc..
If your blog has a decent Google PageRank (PageRank is an estimation from 0 to 10 of how important Google thinks your webpage is), you can also get paid by webmasters to have their links on your blog. Webmasters typically try to get as many links as possible to their websites in order to increase their website popularity in the eyes of the search engines. The higher your blog's Google PageRank is, the more valuable a link to your blog becomes, and the higher webmasters will be willing to pay for a link. To get webmasters to buy links from your blog, join webmaster forums such as Digitalpoint, Sitepoint or WebmasterGround and post in their marketplace section about your offers.
These are just a few ways to earn money from your blog. Remember, it costs nothing to start a blog. Write about something that you can make interesting enough for people to read. Promote your blog. Add ads to your blog. And you are on your way to earn money. How much money you can earn from your blog only depends on how much effort you want to put in it. The sky's the limit.