Are you a stay at home mom or a working mom that is hoping to make money blogging so you can keep your kids out of daycare? Many moms are doing it, making money blogging that is. Making money online has grown from a gimmick to a reality for many moms just like you. I’ve even jumped on the blogging for money band wagon.

If you want to make a living blogging, here are the first steps you must take:

1. Get a free Google account and then start up an account with Blogger. You can have a free blog, just like the one here, and use the Blogger platform to create it and have Blogger host it for free. This is a great place to start. After you get your feet wet in the blogging world and start making some money, you can buy your own domain name.
2. Choose a niche. Writing about anything that crosses your mind is great for a personal blog, but if you want to make money blogging you need a niche and the more specific the better. What is so great about Blogger is you can easily (through the “monetize” tab) place items for sell from Amazon directly on your blog. If a visitor clicks on one of your Amazon links and then makes a purchase you get commission for the transaction. Pretty neat, huh?
3. Get rid of that ugly blog. You need to get a Blogger template to jazz your blog 
4. up. There are a lot of great things to say about Blogger, but they’re templates look generic and unprofessional. You can make your blog more eye catching with any number of free templates. Here are some of my favorite sites to go to for free Blogger templates:
   1. Sharnee at Yummy Lolly makes some very unique templates. Most of her templates are very feminine. If you’re shopping for a free girly Blogger template, then Sharnee has got you covered.
   2. Gisele Jaquenod is known around the web for her Birdie template designs. Her style is super unique. Nothing else looks like her Blogger templates. She offers several free Blogger templates on her site.
   3. Blogger Styles is your one stop site for a huge variety of free Blogger templates. Yummy Lolly and Gisele Jaquenod offer great templates for feminine style blogs, but Blogger Styles has a ton of different style blog templates, many of them look very professional.
   4. If you want to keep one of Blogger’s basic templates but just want to change the background, then you need to check out The Cutest Little Blog on the Block. They offer a wide variety of free Blogger backgrounds for your blog. The benefit of changing the background over the whole template is that it makes it much easier to deal with the page elements on your blog and you never have to touch your blogs HTML code.
5. Now that you have a blog host, niche, and snazzy new template, it’s time to add some content. This is what is going to get visitors to your site.
6. After you have about two weeks worth of content on your site, it’s time to join an advertising program. The main ones are AdSense, AdBrite, or Kontera. Check out those three sites, choose one, and join. After you put their code on your site, your only job will be to keep adding great content to your site and keep marketing so you continue to get traffic.

If your blog grows, gains visitors, and becomes successful, you can look into adding affiliate sales to your blog. The main companies I trust for great affiliate programs are: Share a Sale, Link Share, and Commission Junction.

I wish you a ton of blogging success. Happy earning.

Image: Michal Marcol / FreeDigitalPhotos.net