When you decide to start blogging for money you need to make or change your current Internet business plan, so it can focus on building a strong income stream that can support you for a short or long period of time, it all depends on what your goals are. There are many ways to turn the virtual real estate of your blog into an asset, but its needs to match your overall goals or you will set up your Internet business for failure.

Also, having a business plan will give you a road map to follow and keep your efforts focus on achieving your goals. But, your need to be flexible and be ready to change, because the Internet is a medium on evolution, which makes your Internet business plan an ever changing blueprint... You can call this one of the golden rules of monetization.

Let's take a look at the three elements for effectively applying your "blogging for money" efforts, that will build a successful online home business:

Content

I mention content as the number one of the three golden rules of making money blogging because without a good up to date content your blog is just another static site, which is OK for some things, but not for a these type of sites. People and search engines expect for a blog to be updated constantly.

To be successful you need to provide content that is of high quality, original, useful to others, and closely relevant to your targeted niche. Is true that some bloggers still mix their personal stuff with their niche content, but if you put yourself in your reader's shoes, why do think they visit your site for? To read what happen to you in the super market or to read what your blog tagline or slogan is promising. Remember that your content is why people go to your site, that's why having good information will generate targeted traffic if is relevant to your main topic.

Traffic

Many call traffic the Holy Grail to build a successful online business, which is true only if that traffic is highly targeted, if you try to get everyone to visit your website, eventually nobody will, because they know that you don't have the information they are looking for. So, make sure you get a lot of visitors to your site that are really interest in the topic or niche of your blog.

Use traffic sources that can send good quality visitors to your site, develop a good link building marketing campaign, focus on SEO strategies to get free search traffic, for faster results invest on PPC or Adwords (Note: Make sure you learn how to use PPC advertising right before using it, or will cost you a lot of money and you may get low responses), advertise on top relevant blogs to gain more exposure, use viral marketing to make your message spread fast, and don't forget to use the traffic power of social media or web 2.0 tools.

Income

You can't be blogging for money if you haven't set up a good income mechanism and sales process. You need have a good income source structure that will earn you passive revenue, you can set a few types of lucrative assets for your site, here is an example of the elements that can be monetize:

• Virtual real estate space.
• Specific words.
• RSS feeds.
• Blog posts or articles.
• List building.

You don't have to make money from each of these elements, in fact some blogs do just fine by monetizing one or two of those elements. Just test and track everything you do until you find the best profit centers for your site and your niche.

Now what's important is the type of income sources you decide to use for each or few of those profit centers. Remember that your visitors are your priority, so try to find quality sources of revenue without upsetting your readers. Some of the things you can do use are:

• Sponsor image ads.
• Sponsor links.
• Google Adsense or other type of contextual ads services.
• Affiliate programs (digital or physical products).
• Inline word ads.
• Paid reviews of products or merchants.
• Blog post sponsor links.
• And recommend your own products.

To successfully make your blogging for money effort worth while make sure each profit center in your site have monetization sources relevant to your main topic, this way your or sponsor conversion rates will be higher.

Make sure you apply the three golden rules to your blog with a good Internet marketing plan to boost your success factor.

Learning as much as you can about blogging for money can help you grow your income, this is why that's one of the main topics I write about at the Internet Marketing Tips blog.