Just like designing a logo, brochures, and websites, designing a blog requires one to look at several factors regarding design elements. Before you even start building your blog look at the following factors and make some choices so that you will know what you’re looking for. Over all, your blog should match your website and in fact, your blog should be on your website. Additionally, if you already have marketing collateral make sure that your blog matches what you already have. It is important to carry your brand through to all your marketing channels.

Color

The color of your blog matters tremendously. Color conveys emotions and an over all feeling when someone looks at your blog. If the colors do not match, or worse, burn the retinas — when a visitor looks at your blog, they will not stick around even if you manage to attract them. Choose your colors wisely. Take a look at a color chart of some kind to give you ideas of what goes together. Consider making sure it matches with your existing logo.

Fonts

On the web fonts look differently. People typically read websites and blogs on a browser and now more than ever on a mobile device. Make sure your fonts work on the web. Good fonts for web viewing are: Verdana, Helvetica, Georgia and the often used Times New Roman.  Make sure that you can comfortably read your font colors combined with your chosen background. People will leave quickly if your blog is not easily readable. Check out this funny website. (Put on your sunglasses)

Content

Your content is the most important aspect of your blog. Even if you fail on some of the other aspects, if your blog has information that people want and need they might throw on their sunglasses and read it anyway. So make sure that your content (your copy and your words) is targeted toward your ideal client or ideal visitor. Make sure that you are offering useful information that people really want to read.

Layout

The ideal layout changes from year to year so make sure that your layout is an updated, contemporary layout. For the most part the old fashioned “static” looking website is out of date and looks that way too. Take a look around at all the different types of layouts that are popular today and try to pick something that is easy to navigate and use as well as visually pleasing. Chose from some contemporary WordPress templates and you’ll be fine on this point.

Monetizing your blog is not hard to do. Let me clarify that statement. It’s easy to put the money making parts on your blog or website, but it can take months and years before you make a profit unless you work at it.  Now, I highly recommend that you do not monetize certain types of blogs or website with a bunch of flashy ads although I have put some on this blog to demonstrate what they look like. If you have a service site, an educational site, or you sell your own products it can be tricky allowing advertisements on your blog.

If you notice this blog: http://www.virtualassitantmoms.com there are Google ads under each post, and some of them actually point to offshore virtual assistance which is a bad idea, and since this is my blog, if they do not stop putting offshore ads there I will have to disable these ads completely. I do try to filter the ads but since they are content driven, and since more offshore ads are developed each day and you have to filter by URL, since they probably have hundreds of URLS, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to keep up. The money I make from this is very little anyway so I am considering removing them entirely.

Virtual Assistant Moms is specifically a blog that is a “niche” blog obviously directed toward Moms who are Virtual Assistants or who want to be. This is the easiest type of site to earn money and this site earns money. As you see a money making blog does not need to be special or attractive, just informative, useful and targeted. I don’t talk about other businesses on this blog only about being a Virtual Assistant.

I have just enabled one small 125×125 Google advertisement for demonstration purposes on this blog, you might see it to your right under my LinkedIn button. If you do not see it, and instead see a blank spot it is because the content on my site is not causing the keyword activated code to pick up any ads that an advertiser wants. Please, do not click it unless you honestly see something you want to buy because that would be wrong to click it unless you are really interested in the item because that is click fraud. Advertisers pay for each click of a Google advertisement on a site it can be anywhere from pennies to dollars depending on the popularity of the keywords the advertiser purchased.

As you see on my business website http://www.barrypublishing.com there are no advertisements. This is appropriate because I don’t want anyone buying things that aren’t on my site. I want people to buy my services, so to advertise would be confusing. It would simply cause them to click away from my site. Why would I want that?

If you’re interested in monetizing a niche blog or website it is as simple as signing up for a Google Adsense account via your Google account, if you have a Gmail, you have a Google account. Go to Google.com and sign in, and you’ll see what your account looks like. Another way to find the “my account” button is to click on “more” in your email and “finance” and then look on the upper right and you’ll see “my account” I have no idea why it’s that’ complicated, but if you know a better, faster way, let me know. Once inside your account on the bottom is a list of all the different Google possibilities such as Google adwords, adsense and analytics.

After all that, I will say this about making money from your blog. If you use complementary services and you can make a percentage of sales by joining an affiliate or referral program that is perfectly fine even on your company blog. Just make a page called “Tools” or something like that and talk about the services and tools you use, and link to the providers of that tool with the special affiliate link they will provide you.

photo credit: DeeganMarie