Submit Your URL to Google

Make sure that Google sees your URL on the net. Submit your site: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

4. Making Money Blogging - Earning Revenue with Advertising

Like I previously mentioned, Google is a huge company and isn't necessarily for the little. Even though some people do have success on it. I would suggest three advertisers at this point:

Adbrite - I love Adbrite. They work just like Google, and people rarely get disabled and if you do get disabled, say you are sorry, and fix the issue to get re-instated. The only time I have ever heard of anyone getting disabled on Adbrite is when the publisher accidently put an ad for one site on another site. You must make sure that when you create an ad zone that you place it where you said you would. Very simple.
Adbrite has Spottt.com, it is a link exchange program for sites that can't afford to pay for advertising. Adbrite supports the small business website owner, and that is why I will stick with them. You just create a little 250x250 pixel ad. It shouldn't be anything fancy.
I created mine using a free software application from Open Office called Draw. It has all the tools I need as a website creator, without the cost and expense of an Adobe Product. Don't get me wrong, I think Photoshop and Illustrator are amazing tools, but I only need a simple drawing program that has more tools than paint.

Bidvertiser - I don't use this one, but most people I talk to prefer this one over Adbrite.

Kontera - I like Kontera and they did well for me until I found adbrite. They do inline advertisements, which I think is great. They are great because they don't put an ad on every line of text, so your reader isn't overwhelmed by all those underlines in the content.

So, these are the advertisers that I would recommend to you as a beginner blogger. In fact, I know publishers that have been using them and have been blogging for years.
If you really want to go with someone like Google, I won't hold it against you, but don't be surprised if the worst happens.
If you want to go with a big name, use Yahoo Publisher. Yahoo Ads is still in the beta stage, but I think that yahoo will probably treat you with more respect than the other big ones.

For more information about Google issues:
Disabling the Politically Incorrect
Disabled with no Clicks
Has Google Adsense Ripped you Off
Another Google Account Disabled

3. Making Money Blogging - Public Relations

By now you have probably written several posts, or even several blogs, and you really want to start letting people know about your site. Well, that is pretty easy, I do it multiple ways:

• Tell friends and family and ask them to pass the word along.


• Place your blog URL as a signature on your emails, and request that your friends and family add the URL to their email signature also. It helps if you join Yahoo groups, but don't join them just to advertise your site, join them because you have a genuine interest.
  
• Message boards and forums. Join Boards and forums based on your blog. Just put your blog subject and the word board in a search engine and you will get amazing results. For example, I used the terms Vampire and Boards and I got over 3 million results. Remember don't join these boards just to announce your blog, give your opinions and interact with everyone, and then announce your blog. Maybe even address some of the issues that come up in the messages, and then direct the members to your blog.
  
• Join Twitter. (Which is work in itself to gather your followers. But it is simple to get followers. Do a search for the subject of your blog, and follow them. They recieve an email letting them know you are a new follower, and to return the favor. When they follow you, go to their page, and follow all their friends, who will usually in turn follow you. It can be an explosion of followers. When I started out, I got my first 200 followers in 24 hours.)
  
• Make lots of friends on Facebook and MySpace. Announce your blog everytime you post a new blog. There are people that have over 5000 friends each on Facebook and Twitter. And, then there is MySpace and many other social sites. I know that FaceBook has pimping sites, so that you can add new friends.
  

But you are saying hold on, what about ads. Well you may have already added Adsense through blogger, which I do not recommend. Remember Google has a lot of competition and I will give you details about this competition in the next post. You must build your traffic first before you add Google ads. If you get a sudden jump in page or ad hits, your account will probably be disabled. If a family thinks they are helping you out by clicking ads on a regular basis, you will be disabled. There is even a chance you will be disabled for nothing. I know someone who was disabled when he only had three clicks on ads, and he was never told why. Google even disabled sites with over 10,000 hits a day and they even disabled Incredimail. They have an algorithm that does the work for them. And even if you appeal (appeals are rarely approved), it could be months before you get re-instated and start getting revenue again. Yes, they pay the best, but they probably make 100's of thousands of dollars off newbies by disabling them before they are paid; any money you make is kept by Google. There was a court case where a gentleman won the money that he earned from google, but he wasn't re-instated.

Okay, lets talk about advertising.