Making money on the internet is a never ending battle of (1) optimization, (2) writing, (3)link building and (3)time management. If you, like me, run more that one site then the last one is the most crucial as the writing, optimization, and link building need to fit in with your schedule. This is especially important if blogging is not your “career”.

This is where the process really comes into play. Everyone has their own style so everyone’s process will be different. The important thing is to understand how you are going to get the above 4 things done. Here is a overview of the process I go through:

Writing:

Set up Google Reader with a keyword search for each one of the topics I write about on sites such as Google News, various blogs I follow, and other sites. For example, on my The Running Guy blog I have a search for “running a marathon”. This way I can see topics for potential articles and for other people’s articles that I could comment on to help build links.

Optimization:

I try to do one thing per day on each site that helps me do some SEO optimization. Following my SEO Book as a guide for best practices, I pick one thing that I could do to improve my rankings. I know I have a long way to go but every small step counts.

Link Building:

Link building is all about getting links to your sites on as many quality sites as possible. I try to email one webmaster per day to request a reciprocal link. I also try to comment on other quality blogs and ensure my signature and link is included. One caveat on this is to ensure you are providing quality comments and not just 1 - 2 word comments that point to your site. You will not get any value out of this.

Time Management:

This is the toughest one - especially if you hold a full time job, a family, or whatever else that eats your time away. Add in writing, link building, SEO optimization and multiply this by 3 sites and you will quickly run out of time. Here is what I do:

1. Use my HTC S710 to do my writing, while I take the train to work. I can write an email to myself with the post and then quickly upload the post to the site when I get home.
2. I set up a calendar item for each day to remind myself of which blog I am to write to today. This focuses me on one post per day and provides some structure to ensure I post consistently.
3. Once the post is posted, only then do I focus on link building and SEO optimization. Posting consistently is more important than anything.

This process works for me, let me know what works for you.

Reminder: SEO Book is the standard in SEO optimization. It has worked for me and many more bloggers who are WAY more successful than I am.

If you have been blogging or creating sites with the purpose of generating internet cash flow to make more money then you have heard of the importance of search engine optimization. The standard in SEO education is Aaron Wall’s SEO Book.

One of the most successful bloggers, Darren Rowes of Problogger.net, has this to say about the SEO Book:

If you have a budget for your education and want to learn from a real expert in SEO I highly recommend checking out Aaron Wall’s SEO Book. It costs $79 and is the best resource I’ve found on the topic with 328 pages of instruction (with free updates - and Aaron does update it) plus a nifty little bonus called 33 Days to Online Profits. It has a 100% Money Back Guarantee if you find that it’s not for you.

Darren makes approximately $100,000 per year in income from the internet, so I would suggest he is a good gauge for what works, what doesn’t, and most importantly where to spend your valuable time.

Here is how Aaron describes the book:

My 328-page SEO Book (with free lifetime updates) offers pure step-by-step knowledge designed to get you what you’re really after—significantly more traffic to your website.

I’m so confident that this information will help you that I’ll happily eliminate 100% of the risk by providing an unconditional 90 day money back guarantee. You get the rankings and the traffic you need, or you don’t pay a single penny.

From my experience it is the most comprehensive SEO guide, and there are a lot of them! Here is a description of what the pros and cons are, and my own personal experience with the product.

Pros:
* Quick start checklist
* In depth discussion on copy writing and usability
* Writing content for search engines (navigation, page titles, linking)
* Search engine interactions - including link building, the best text to have on incoming links and more
* Regular updates
* Pay Per Click strategies
* Monitoring your results and the impacts SEO is having on your site

Cons:
* The book is very big and can be a lot to digest at first
* Covers how to hire a SEO consultant, which for many bloggers is not the best use of funds
* Can seem a bit disorganized at first as there is so much to do in the book.

My Experience:
The first thing to note with SEO Book is that it is actually updated when new processes are required to be effective in SEO. Most (99%) of the guides out there do not do this. The second thing is that SEO is a huge endeavor and going into it without an education is like buying stocks without any research - you can thrash around for awhile but eventually you will get lambasted. To highlight one particular tip that worked for me, I recently altered the way I used keyword density on my site Albertatourist.com and saw a jump in traffic of 10%. To me this was huge as the site has just floundered in the past and is showing signs of life again. That alone was worth the investment.

Recommendation: Very strong buy. If you buy just one product to improve you internet cash flow and make more money, then The SEO Book should be it.

This is an interesting question that was posed over at Chris Garrett on New Media. He provides a quote from a previous article that I think really sums up his thoughts on this:

Anyone could make money from blogging but only a percentage of people actually go all the way and succeed. Critical to success is having staying power, not being defeated by minor setbacks, being willing to put yourself out there and put in the hard work. If you stick to it and can do all those things then yes, I am sure anyone can do it.

In essence, there are those people who make some extra income online and then there are those that make real lifestyle sustaining internet cash flow that pays the mortgage and the food bills. I think what the article does not point out is that there are many bloggers who are quite content to supplement their career income with the extra cash flow that an online business creates. I would say that describes my approach.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to be able to retire and live off my earnings from this site and other ones in my network. However, I am not prepared to put in the time at the expense of my family life and my career, which provides me with a great income, to do this. I enjoy blogging as a hobby and am quite happy to see how high I can get the supplemental income my internet businesses provide. I do take it very seriously and am constantly looking for ways to increase my income but there is a determined limit to what I will sacrifice. We all make those choices and need to be comfortable when one month after starting a blogging career we are not taking in over $20,000 per month. As Yaro talks about in his video post, there is a great deal of work and planning that goes in to his earnings.