How I make hundreds of dollars a month from a single blog post

"Are you looking for ideas to make money from home?" Consider blogging; it's easy to start, and is a challenging and fun way to earn money.

Blogging is an excellent way for online home based business startups to generate revenue, and I'm going to show you how one of my blog posts earns more than $200 a month in pure profit.

The great thing about blogging is that it requires nothing more than a bit of imagination combined with some blogging, SEO and Internet marketing know-how - that's easy to learn.

If you haven't already got a blog, I recommend you set up a free account with WordPress, tumblr or Blogger.

How to make money with a blog post

Blogging doesn't make money by itself. It's the research, imagination, creativity and hard work you put into creating great blog content that makes money. The Internet doesn't reward anything but the most interesting, useful and engaging content.

Fortunately, you are allowed to pick any topic you like, so choose something you really love. This will make it easy to put in the required effort to make your blog content sparkle.

Here's the process I used to create the blog post entitled "Top 10 best home based business ideas to make money online in 2012" that brings in slightly more than $200 per month.

1. Identify a demand

It's not good enough to simply write tonnes of content. Blogging is labor and time intensive so you have to be very selective about what topics you invest your precious time in.

Do plenty of research until you have a blog topic you are excited about and that people are going to be interested in.

Why I chose "home based business ideas"

I chose to write about home based business ideas because many people are struggling in the current economic climate. As a result they are looking for creative ways to make extra money online.

Far more people are interested in making a few extra bucks now than a few years ago. Coming up with a list of ten really great ways for people to make money online using 2012 Internet technology and resources was always going to be a winner.

2. SEO keyword research

Selecting a great topic is a good start, but in order to ensure that a blog post generates as much traffic from Google and organic search, it needs to include targeted SEO keywords and phrases.

Look at Top 10 best home based business ideas to make money online in 2012. Notice that it contains phrases like:

• home based business
• business ideas
• make money
• make money online

How I selected SEO keywords

I researched these phrases using Google AdWords' Keyword Tool and found that these search terms generated around 40 000 monthly searches in the U.S. alone.

That was plenty of potential traffic, but what made these keywords really attractive was that each SEO phrase itself wasn't too popular - they were within range of my blog's authority.

Terms like SEO are so popular, very generic and highly competitive so it's not easy to rank on the first page.

For more information on how to select SEO keywords effectively, read Search engine optimizing blogs to the top of Google search results.

3. Quality information

The most important aspect of writing a blog post to make money is the value of the information it contains to the readers. It has to be:

1. useful
2. relevant
3. engaging
4. noteworthy

In other words, it needs to be something slightly out-of-the-ordinary so that people take notice.

How I came up with my "top ten" home business ideas list

Instead of rattling off the usual list of business ideas that have been repeated and repeated and repeated...

I tried to think of what the average person sitting at home could do to earn a bit of extra income and possibly grow to make real money. I thought about other people who had done interesting or creative things and made good.

All my ideas are focused on how people can take what they already have, and what they already know and turn it into money, using the Internet to help.

4. Marketing & promotions

A great piece of content can generate nice amounts of organic traffic by itself, but it's important to give it every chance at bursting onto the first page for some highly popular SEO keywords.

The best way to get a blog post to rank high up in search results is to spread it around socially. Get people talking about it. People sharing your content on Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, or any of the major social networks sends signals to Google that this is high quality content that deserves to appear on the first page of search results.

How I marketed this blog post

Since my blog post focused on small business, I shared this information with my Twitter followers - many of whom retweeted the article.

I also shared it with a select few groups on LinkedIn - predominantly in the small business and startup categories.

I also made use of existing relationships I have with content curators and other bloggers to have the blog post republished on a couple of high authority sites (this is something every blogger has to develop for themselves, over time).

5. Monetize with relevant advertising

Content drives traffic to a blog or website, but that is only half the equation. From there it is up to you to convert that traffic in some way or another. For example, making a sale, getting people to sign up to a newsletter, or click on affiliate links and ads.

How I make money off this blog post

One of the best ways to make money (at least for my blog content) is via Google AdSense. I find that the ads it presents are reasonably well targeted and there is no shortage of high quality products and services in the business industry.

The bulk of my earnings each month from this particular blog post come from AdSense ads. However, my site converts at around 1% for a number of other offerings, which lead to conversions and additional revenue further down the line.

Depending on your blog's niche, you might find that affiliate ads work better.

Have you made money blogging? What tips and tricks do you use to increase earnings from your blog posts? Share your money spinning blog secrets in the comments or join me on Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+ to continue the conversation.