The passion of blogging

It has been quite a long time since I started to blog. What started before as a hobby became a passion for me to write anything. When I created my first blog site, I don't have any idea yet what to write, how to customize the theme, how to put links and images. A little patience in reading other peoples' blogs by searching the web quite helps me a lot.

What is a blog?

A blog or web log is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web (www) and consists of discrete entries or posts typically displayed in reverse chronological order. Most blogs provide commentary on a particular subject and others function as personal online diaries. Good quality blogs are interactive that allows visitors to leave comments that creates social relations with the readers and other bloggers.

image source: jordanschultz.com

Other blogs function as online brand advertising for a particular product or company. A typical blog combines text, images, ads and links to other blogs or websites.

Why blog?
This is what I thought at first when I created an account in blogger.com. Why should I bother to write and publish it in the web wherein I can still perform and indulge in other hobbies that don't need internet connection?

I develop computer programs and that has been my profession for two decades. I recalled during the early years of 1990s when I had my first access to the web. That was also the period where blogs emerged and started to grow in numbers. That time, it did not interest me so much visiting websites and searching the web. We used the internet before to send emails through Eudora (the most popular email client before than Yahoo mail).

So why blog anyway? I'm not a good writer in the first place and I got low grades in English composition when I was still a student then. I'm more adaptable to analysis, statistical and mathematical calculations. At first, I was hesitant to write a blog and published it in the web thinking that some visitors will only comment on my way or style of blogging, or will just laugh at my grammar. What are the advantages and disadvantages of blogging?

I Google search on how to earn extra money online. There are lots of possibilities on how to earn money online and most of the suggestions I found out is through blogging, social media, affiliate marketing and many more. I asked myself why not try these ideas? In the first place, I am knowledgeable in HTML, PHP and MySQL? But how will I earn money through blogging? Do I spend money to have my own domain and web hosting?

I applied in affiliate marketing programs but I need to have a blog or site to put my affiliate links. I continued to search for more ideas about putting up a blog or site. I found out that having a blog or site, you can monetize it by having advertising networks serve ads to the site. The most common and popular is the Google Adsense besides Adbrite, Infolinks and many more. Just simply apply an account in these sites and they will give you snippets of codes that you have to place in your site in order to show ads. You will be paid when your visitors click on the ads. Just so simple as that? I will earn extra money by having a blog or site and place ads there? At first I thought that's the solution but further searches gave me more ideas that for your blog or site to be visited, you need to optimize your site and write more and better content. Okay, so be it. I will create a blog and will put ads in it. So what's next? Any better free sites around to start with? I don't want to pay money just to have a blog or site of my own. I will just simply utilize the free sites and try to prove if I will earn extra money online.

I started to search for a free site that can provide me a blog of my own until I found one among the search results:

Blogger: Create your free Blog

www.blogger.com/

Create a blog. It's free. Template. Beautiful, customizable templates and layouts. ...Explore Blogs of Note. Want to learn more? Take a quick tour, watch a video ...

I told myself "This is it!". So I clicked the link and created an account. It took me sometime to familiarize with the dashboard, the tab links, the templates and everything before I started to write all about myself. I chose the simple template because I'm excited to write anything about myself and will place some ads later after applying an account in Google Adsense.

Google Adsense
I created an account in Google Adsense and will test if they will really pay me for clicks on their ads in my site. It took me 3 days before my application was approved and by that time I was too eager to learn more about Google Adsense and how to place the codes to my blog. I experimented the different ad units and learn the basics on the proper ad placement. I never bother to learn more on how to earn more by using Google Adsense. What matters most to me during that time was that I already have a blogger and Google Adsense account. I did not bother to read their program policies and TOS violations. What I was thinking at that time is that I already have an account and I can start earning extra money online. I suggest that you read Google Adsense Terms & Conditions first before applying an account.

Optimizing Google Adsense
What ad units help you increase your Adsense earnings? The Google Adsense Optimization Team suggest to "Go Wide". What does this mean? They suggest to use the 160x600 Wide Scraper and the 300x250 Medium or 336x280 Large Rectangle ad units instead.

Links that are worth to read first before placing Google Adsense ads in your blog or site:

To date, I already enjoy writing blogs and take time to post new articles in a regular basis. Please feel free to share you insights and ideas here.