A Dry Erase Board

I think that this is extremely key for anyone who is blogging. A white board is excellent for jotting down ideas, and also provides a large canvas near your blogging setup that you can just look towards for ideas. My personal suggestion, and what I’m going to do when I get to my new place is to do this with it:

• Split the board into several sections, using electrical tape (or whatever other method you like). Label each section for each of the blogs that you have. If you only run one blog, include all the topics in your niche that you wish to cover.
• Create a section for any goals you wish to meet for the blog for the next quarter (3 months). These are going to be goals like technorati, alexa, backlinks, and perhaps monetary goals.
• Create a section for any ideas for blog posts that you might have for each blog, so this way you can keep track and look here if you ever get stumped.
• Keep track of advertising prices on your blog, and update this as needed. This way you have the information readily available, and you can tweak it here.

Having all of this information near your desk can help keep you organized and make your blogging much simpler. Being able to keep track of everything is extremely important.

A Journal/Notebook

These can be immensely helpful. Having a journal or notebook that you can carry around with you all the time is great for jotting down ideas, or even writing entire posts out if you’re not near a computer. I can’t tell you how many ideas I’ve lost because they were in my head and I never wrote them down. It really is a shame if you lose a lot of posts this way. It’s a simple thing you can do, and I’m positive you will have more ideas than you can possibly write about in one day!

Books and Magazines

Did any of you think this one would be here? Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. A great way to become an authority in your niche is to do a lot of research about it. If you’re going to blog about movies, like I do, get a subscription to Entertainment Weekly, so you can have some news to write about, and a little look into the inside of the industry.
Remember, Reading is just as important as writing when it comes to blogging. I recently wrote how important it is to read as well as write when you blog. I stress it again here… read about what you are going to write about, so it at least seems like you know what you are blogging about!

So there they are, my suggestions for offline blogging tools. What do you think, and what do you use offline when you are blogging?

Now.. what is so great about this theme that made me pick it over other themes? Well, when I first heard about it, I was a bit skeptical, as the creator, Ben Cope, took a while to get back to me about using his theme. It took a bit of email tag back and forth before we finally got things set up. Now that things are set up, I can honestly say that using this theme has really been a dream. I know it sounds kind of corny to say things like that, but it really is true. Allow me to explain a bit more about the theme.

The Wordpress Dream Theme is a Premium Theme, as I’ve mentioned before. Being a premium theme, you would expect to pay for it, and you do. Up front, the price tag is not particularly cheap. At $247, it is out of range of some bloggers out there. However, there are many reasons why it is worth it to pay the premium for the theme. The main reason that I would like to emphasize is the customer service that the Ben Cope provides for it. when you purchase the Wordpress Dream Theme, you not only get this wonderfully designed theme, but also the services of its creator! Ben will walk you through everything from setup, to customization and more! He even helped to design the logo for this site!

Having the services of the theme creator is invaluable. He knows everything about the theme, so he can help you customize it properly. He can answer any questions that you might have about the theme, and solve technical issues fairly quickly. I have been so impressed with the services that Ben has provided since I started using his theme. He has gone beyond my wildest dreams in terms of the things he has done for this blog! I only wish that I knew about the theme sooner so that I could have started using it sooner! While other premium themes have been helpful to me, I can say honestly that this is one of the best experiences I’ve had while blogging!

Again, the Wordpress Dream Theme may not be for you. However, if you’re looking for a well designed theme with all the support you could possibly need, then please check it out. It’s something that you definitely won’t regret. Remember, your Blog’s theme is very important so do yourself a favor and pick the right one to start. Redesigns can come later, but if you’re not happy from the get go, it can really hurt your chances of survival in the blogosphere!

My biggest suggestion is that you keep an open mind. Take everything you read with a grain of salt. Everyone can provide you with suggestions as to how you can make it, but in the end, it is up to you to decide what works and what doesn’t work. Here are a few suggestions that I have to help you make money online.

Google Adsense - This is the most basic tool that you can use to make money online. Almost every blog out there uses it, and its very simple to use. There are few (if any) requirements, which means that even the smallest blog can run it. Whether you’re using Blogger or Wordpress or any other platform, there is a way to make it work on your blog. Don’t expect it to be a huge earner, but it can be one of the best ways to get started. I have it at the top of this post here.

Affiliate Programs - These might be the biggest earners on the web, but they are by no means the easiest. An Affiliate program is a program linked to a company. By placing ads and writing blog posts about their products and services, you draw people to them. When people take an action on their services, whether it be a purchase, click, or subscribe, you get a comission. There are people who have made a killing off of this. For a simple approach at this, you can try signing up for Commission Junction. This is one of the biggest, most comprehensive affiliate programs that you can find out there. It’s not so much an affiliate program as it is a compilation of affiliate programs. Through Comission Junction, you can sign up for various companies and join their affiliate programs and start earning money!

Private Ad Sales - This is one of the most difficult things to do. Really big sites such as John Chow, John Cow, and Problogger do make money off of these. Private ad sales are banners or text links that people have approached you privately to buy on your site. The first step towards doing this is to set up an advertising page. It helps to have statistics on your site here. As this site isn’t big yet, it has no private ads. However, if you reach the point where people are contacting you for ads, you know that you’ve started to make it online.

Text-Link-Ads - Text link ads are kind of controversial. These are paid links on your site that people have purchased through the Text-Link-Ads company. If you didn’t know, this company has been targeted by google because google does not like paid links. I’ve written about how I’m all for using them, and how google even lets them advertise, but still takes them down when people sign up for them. Who knows…

There are a ton of other ad networks that you can try out there, and I’ll try to introduce you to some of them, as well as some affiliate programs/campaigns that I’m going to be trying out. Remember, it takes a lot of work to make a living online, and try to stay true to yourself. I’ve had that problem where making money became too important, and I know that my readers suffered as a result.

Hopefully you have found this article interesting. Please feel free to post your own tips in comments. Until next time!

While I do hope to one day be able to be like the big guys, I’m going to be sharing just my own thoughts on how I make money online (the small amount I currently make) and how you can try to work your way towards making your own “Blog Greens”. I’ll also be sharing any tips that you guys share with me that I think are useful. I’m really into making a lot of online friends, so feel free to leave a comment, and I’ll respond to you!

How possible is it to make some green online? It’s not as easy as everyone makes it seem, but I also don’t think that it’s as hard as everyone makes it seem either! I hope that you guys join me here often, and also on the other blogs in my network! If you’d like to guest post here, please let me know. I’m always looking for great content! Thanks for stopping by, please come back soon!