How to Blog and Make the Most Money

How to Make More Money From Your Blog

How to Make More Money From Your Blog
Image Source: Public Domain image
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hundred_dollar_bill_01.jpg

I have several blogging experiments running.  My goal is to compare several ways to make money blogging to determine what works well and what doesn't.  Since Google and other search engines frequently update their search engine algorithms, I plan to keep these experiments running long-term to monitor for changes in web traffic patterns.  Some of these experiments have been running for 16 months now, providing valuable data on the best ways to make money blogging.

Experiment 1:  Blogger vs HubPages
As of today, I have published 82 posts on Penny Pincher Journal 82 featured Hubs on Dr. Penny Pincher's blog at HubPages.  I started both of these projects within one week of each other and have added posts/Hubs to each at about the same rate, so I have a good comparison.  I monetized my Blogger site in a similar way to HubPages monetization using AdSense, Chitika, Amazon, and eBay.

Experiment 2: eBook
I used Smashwords to publish an eBook.  I published my eBook for free and even received an ISBN for my eBook.  You can buy my eBook on sites including Amazon, Apple, Sony, Barnes and Noble, and many more.  This link to my eBook Penny Pincher Journal: How to Save Money Every Day shows many of the retailers that carry my eBook.

Here is an article that tells you how to publish and eBook for free and get it sold at all of the popular on-line book retailers:  How To Publish an eBook for Free! 

This experiment is looking at how much you can make selling eBooks vs revenue from advertising and affiliate marketing on a blog or website.

Experiment 3:  top-level .com domain vs subdomain
My latest experiment is to compare the performance of a top-level domain vs a subdomain.  My blogger site pennypincherjournal.blogspot.com is a subdomain of blogger.com.  My HubPages website is on a subdomain of hubpages.com.  It's URL is drpennypincher.hubpages.com.  Both of these sites are subdomains of major websites- blogspot.com and hubpages.com.

My latest website, dppmoney.com, is not a subdomain.  It is a custom top-level webdomain that I attached to my Blogger blog called Fast Money Answers.  This experiment will give me insight into whether search engines prefer domains over subdomains.  Some sources suggest this is true.

In fact, HubPages is running its own experiment with this right now.  They have selected some Hubs as "Editor's Choice" hubs and place these on the top-level hubpages.com domain.  I have had a number of hubs selected as Editor's Choice, so I have another way to compare the performance of top level domain vs subdomain in search engines.

Experiment 4: Short posts
I am running a blog called ClickFact which features very short and to-the-point answers to popular questions.  Supposedly short websites and blog posts are not preferred by search engines, but it seems that when I am doing web searching short pages are often near the top of the search engine results page.  Short posts are certainly easier to write, so I am giving this a try.

Experiment 5: ClickBank
I decided to try ClickBank to make money from my blogs.  Essentially ClickBank provides e-books that you can sell and get a very high commission- 50% or more.  Many of the eBooks are fairly expensive, so you can make $25 or more from each sale.  I won't reveal the complete results of this experiment, but you'll notice that none of my blogs have ClickBank links any more...

Expermiment 6: Amazon vs eBay
I have been running both Amazon and eBay affiliate marketing on some of my blogs and websites.  I have obtained a lot of data on the relative performance of these monetization tools.

Experiment Results- How to Make More Money From Your Blog

Optimize Your Blog to Make More Money
Image Courtesy of Edward Betts (CC-SA-30)

I plan to continue Experiment 2 (eBook) by publishing an eBook with detailed results of these experiments and tips to make more money blogging...  For now, keep reading Pro Blogging Journal!


Copyright © 2014  Dr. Penny Pincher.  All Rights Reserved.  Pro Blogging Journal

How to Make Money Blogging

How to Make Money Blogging

How to make money from a blog
Image Source: Dr. Penny Pincher

How much money does it cost to start a blog?

You can start today for free on revenue sharing sites such as HubPages or on Blogger.  Read on for details on how to start blogging today.

If you want your own web domain, you can register a domain for about $20 and purchase web service for about $10 per month.  This is a very low start-up cost to start your own business to make money blogging.

How much money can you make on a blog?

One of the benefits of owning a blog is that you own the content you produce.  This provides an opportunity to make passive income over time.  You can write an article once and get income from that article forever without doing anything else.  Some topics will age with time, for example my blog article on the best Android browser for your smart phone or tablet has a life expectancy of a couple years at most.

The amount of income potential your blog has will depend on your niche and how much traffic you generate.  If you have a topic that advertisers are willing to pay top dollar for advertising and you grow a big audience, the income potential is high.  I know of bloggers who make thousands of dollars every month from their blogs.  This level of income typically requires years of hard work.

How do you make money from a blog?

Making money from a blog is known as "monetizing the blog".  There are several ways to make money from a blog:

Advertising
Making income from your blog depends on getting traffic to your blog so you can earn revenue from advertising.  You can sell advertising to companies who want access to your visitors.  You can get paid for displaying ads, you can get paid when visitors click your ads, or you can get paid when users click an ad and then buy something at another site.  Or you can make money from all three of these types of advertising on your blog.  AdSense is the top advertising program for blogs, but it takes time and some quality content to get approved for an AdSense account.  There are many other advertising programs available for bloggers to choose from.

I signed up for Chitika recently- it only took 30 minutes to sign up and add Chitika adds to my site.  If you're looking to make more revenue from your blog or website, try adding Chitika ads.  It is easier to get approved for Chitika than AdSense.  Even if you already are using AdSense, Chitika gives you another revenue stream that does not interfere with AdSense ads.




Affiliate Programs
Another form of income is from affiliate links on your blog.  You can add links to products on other sites and get paid a commission for each purchase.  When you establish you blog you can apply to join affiliate networks.  Amazon, eBay, ClickBank, and FlexOffers are some popular affiliate networks for bloggers.

Sell Your Own Products
Another way to make income from your blog is to sell your own product on your blog, such as an e-book.  ClickBank provides an opportunity to sell existing e-books for a very high commission, typically 50% to 75%.  If you produce your own e-book, you can get 100% of the revenue from selling it on your blog.

How many hours per week do you need to work to make income from a blog?

When you are establishing your blog, you will need to put in a lot of work to find good topics and develop good content.  Promoting your work and adding the right affiliate and advertising programs also takes a lot of time.  I enjoy the work, so I spent a lot of my free time during the past few months working on my blogs to start generating income.  One nice thing about blogging is that there are no set hours or commitments.  You can choose to spend as much or as little time as you have available working on your blog.  Of course, the more time you spend, the more money you will be able to make.

How long does it take to start earning income from a blog?

It does take time to get established and rank well in search engine results pages (SERPs).  If you do not have experience, it takes time to learn search engine optimization (SEO) techniques as well.  Some income sources take time to establish, for example getting approved for AdSense or affiliate programs requires a certain amount of established content.  I established my blog on January 8 and made my first income on April 16.  Most blogs require at least 6 months of work to start making much income.

Darren Rowse of ProBlogger shares his experience starting up blogs in his book ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income.  Darren worked on his first blog part-time for several years before he had enough income to become a full-time blogger.  However, you can learn from the experience of successful bloggers who are willing to share to find a faster path to success.

What computer skills do you need to be a successful blogger?

You don’t really need much computer experience to put together a successful blog.  The ability to handle basic webpage html to make the format look like you want is useful.  You’ll need to learn to add HTML code for some affiliate programs.  You may need to edit your template file to add trackers for Google Analytics and Bing Webmaster Tools to provide the best data to evaluate your blog's performance.  The more computer skills you have, the better- but you can get started with basic skills.

What business skills do you need to generate income from a blog?

If you plan to make money from you blog, you’ll need to make business decisions.  Should you invest in registering your own web domain and renting web servers, or use free subdomains from Blogger or revenue sharing sites?  Which advertising programs should you sign up with?  Which affiliate programs make sense to join?  Even the selection of blog topics and articles is improved by an understanding of how to best create value for your blog.

You will need to handle intellectual property rights, for example correctly attributing images to their owners and following license agreements.  Affiliate programs also have rules that you will need to follow carefully to avoid losing income opportunities.

Unlike most other businesses, there is little at risk when you start a blog.  You won’t need to invest much to get started, and you can always start over if you want to.  However after investing a lot of time and hard work, the business decisions carry more importance and impact the success of your blog.

What writing skills do you need to earn money from a blog?

Writing a blog is a specialized form of writing.  Most web pages that do well in search engine results pages are a couple pages in length-around 1000 words- and contain a few images.  The writing must be clear and to the point.  People do not have patience- they are seeking answers or information and will click away from a page that has imperfect English or does not get to the point.  You’ll need to be able to produce clearly written articles with correct grammar and spelling that offer visitors the information they are seeking.

You will have the best chance for success if you can find a topic that you are interested in writing about and have some experience in that subject area.

What equipment do you need to start a blog?

• Personal computer: desktop or laptop to type your articles and do the page layout.  It is technically possible to do this with a tablet or smart phone, but using a computer is much easier and more productive.
• Digital camera: take images for your articles.  A cell phone camera will suffice
• Phone: advertising programs require a phone number to verify your identity.  Some programs will text a code to your phone number and you’ll need to enter this code to establish your identity.
• e-mail account:  You’ll need an email account: gmail or outlook work fine.   You can set one up in a few minutes for free if you don’t have one already using the links provided.

Steps to create a blog and make money

Step 1. Start a blog on an income sharing site or create your own blog website

Revenue Sharing Sites for Bloggers
The revenue sharing site will take care of most of the administrative issues and provide training on producing high value content.  This is the easiest way to get started blogging to make money.  The revenue sharing site will get a share of the revenue generated from your blog.  The author typically gets 50% or more depending on the site.  An advantage of a revenue sharing site is that you the author can focus more on developing content and less on managing website and advertising issues.  Also, you’ll have an opportunity to join a community of writers that provide advice and feedback on your writing.  This is very valuable, especially as you are getting started.  Another advantage of revenue sharing sites is that the site is well established and may rank higher in search engine results pages than a new site, resulting in more traffic to your pages.

My favorite of the revenue sharing sites for bloggers is HubPages.  This is where started and I continue to be active on HubPages.  Not to mention that I am making money there as well.  HubPages uses AdSense, eBay, and amazon programs to generate income.  The author gets 60% of the revenue from advertising and affiliate referral links, HubPages gets a 40% share.




Here is my list of popular revenue sharing sites to make money blogging:

HubPages
http://hubpages.com

Wizzley
http://wizzley.com/

Squidoo
http://www.squidoo.com/

Wikinut
http://www.wikinut.com/

InfoBarrel
http://InfoBarrel.com

Helium
http://Helium.com

Triond
http://www.triond.com/


Another option: Create your own blog site and keep 100% of the revenue

If you have some experience developing web pages, you may want to develop your own website and keep 100% of the revenue from your site.  The most popular site for this approach is Blogger (blogspot.com).  Blogger is owned by Google and provides free web hosting for your blog.  As you may have noticed, Penny Pincher Journal is hosted on Blogger.

Blogger platform for bloggers
Image Courtesy of Adrianemporio CC-SA-30

Blogger
http://www.blogspot.com

You can sign up for a subdomain on Blogger for free.  In other words, you'll get a URL like:
PennyPincherJournal.blogspot.com
Notice that the URL has .blogspot.com at the end.  This is known as a subdomain- you can pick the first part of the URL, but you get .blogspot.com as the last part.

You can register a custom domain name for your blog on Blogger for an annual fee of $10.  This will get you a top level domain.  Blogger will provide free web hosting for your custom domain.

For even more control, you can find your own web hosting service, register your own domain, and install blog software on your web server.  WordPress is a popular option to host your own blog independently

WordPress
http://wordpress.org/

Step 2. Create quality content that is valuable to readers and advertisers

You will want to choose topics for your blog content that you are interested in and have some experience with.  A lot of your traffic will come from search engine results pages.  People searching on Google are typically looking for answers to their questions.  You want your blog content to provide satisfying and correct answers and information.  People expect images and graphics that look good and are relevant to the page content.  People are sensitive to sites with too much advertising and will click away from annoying pages to look elsewhere for information.

When a visitor arrives at your blog, this is a great chance to get them to browse to some of your other relevant content.  You can design your blog so that visitors will be interested in reading several of your posts, increasing your page views and revenue.  If you can find a niche and develop deep content, your blog can become an authoritative source of information on your topic.

Step 3. Get traffic to your blog

You will also want to do some research to find out that people are searching for in search engines.  A large and steady source of traffic to blogs is based on search engine results pages (SERPs).  You can use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to increase traffic to your blog from search engine results.  SEO techniques are ways to make your blog appear higher in the search results to get more traffic from search engines.

For example, someone types in search terms in Google, and your blog shows up on the first few pages of search results.  You will get lots of traffic to your blog from this- right?  Not necessarily.  This is a trick question- you will only get lots of traffic if it is a popular search.  If no one searches for the keywords in your content, it doesn't matter if it shows up high in the results.  This is where keyword research will help increase traffic to your blog.

Keyword research allows you to see what search terms people are entering in search engines so you can tune your content to match the exact searches that people are doing.  You will be able to rank high in search engine results for popular searches, resulting in lots of traffic to your blog.  Google's Keyword Tool allows you to see check keywords and see how many times these keywords were used in Google searches.

Develop your blog content to be relevant to popular keyword searches.  Use the keywords you have found through keyword research in your title and frequently in your content.  Don't overuse the keywords- this is known as keyword stuffing and can lower your rank in the search results.  Just use the exact keywords a few times especially early in the content.  This lets the search engine know that your content is highly relevant to the keywords and your blog will appear higher in the search results.

You can also see which topics advertisers are wiling to pay most for advertising rates.  Google's Keyword Tool  has a competition column in its results to indicate how competitive the market for advertising is for the keywords.

You can also use social media to drive traffic to your blog.  This involves creating connections over time through social media and establishing yourself as a reliable source of information.  People will share your blog within their social groups when you have become established.  Facebook, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Google+ are some key social media platforms that can generate traffic to your blog.  You can get lucky sometimes and have a blog post go viral on social media, generating lots of traffic and revenue.

Step 4. Generate revenue from your blog

Like many things, creating a successful blog is harder than it sounds.  If you enjoy creating blog content, running a blog can be a fun hobby with income potential.  If you are willing to treat blogging like a job and create lots of high value content that people are seeking- the sky’s the limit.  From my experience, blogging is not a get rich quick scheme.  It takes time to learn how to generate traffic and develop revenue generating programs on your blog.

Advertising is the place to start.  Develop content and apply for an AdSense account to get ads through Google.  It currently requires about 30 posts and at least a couple months to get approval for a new AdSense account.  If you want to get ads on your blog faster, you can explore some of the other advertising programs available such as Chitika.

Apply for affiliate network accounts that offer marketing opportunities that fit your blog content. Amazon, eBay, ClickBank, and FlexOffers are among my favorite affiliate programs.

Recommendations: Start Now and Make Money Blogging

If you’re new to blogging and want to give it a try, I suggest starting on HubPages.  You’ve really got nothing to lose since it is free to join and start blogging.  The sooner you start, the sooner you will be able to generate income.  You'll find help and advice on HubPages to get you started.  You can always establish a blog on Blogger or on an independent website after you gain some experience on HubPages.

If you’re already experienced at web development, you might like the higher amount of control you’ll have on Blogger or setting up your own website.  Check out some popular blogs to get ideas to implement in your own blog.  Here's some further info from Christian PF on making money with a blog to help you get started.

Copyright © 2013 Dr. Penny Pincher.  All Rights Reserved. Pro Blogging Journal

Start a Niche Blog to Improve Traffic and Increase Revenue

Niche Blog: Increase your Blog Revenue

Increase your search engine traffic with a niche blog
Image courtesy of Justinc CC-SA-20

A niche blog is a blog focused on a very specific topic.  Niche blogs are becoming more important due to recent Google search engine updates.  "Content Mills" are blogs and websites that have churned out tons of low-quality content.  Google is looking for ways to keep this low-quality content out of search results.  One of the ways Google is applying quality control in search engine results pages is known as Google Panda.  Among other things, Panda punishes sites with low-quality or duplicated content.  Panda also seems to reward sites that have original content on related topics.  This is one way having a niche blog can boost your search engine traffic and hence your blog revenue.



One reason Google favors sites with content focused on one topic is that these sites are more likely to have high quality material.  For example, sites dedicated to a specific topic are more likely produced by enthusiasts and less likely produced by content mills.  Content mills typically produce content on a wide range of topics- anything that will perform well in search engine results.  The writers of this material are not experts- they just do a little research and put together low-quality pages that use lots of keywords and rank well in search results.  Google is trying to ensure that pages with high quality content that are written by experts and enthusiasts rank high in the search engine results.

How to Start a Niche Blog from your Existing Blog Content

A couple of my blogs are on saving money- you may have guessed that from my name.  Saving money is not necessarily a good topic for a niche blog since saving money touches so many different topic areas.  I write about all sorts of different ways to save money- to a search engine this probably looks like general content.  I have posts about bikes, food, computers, cleaning products- all focused on saving money, but on a variety of topics as far as a search engine looking at keywords is concerned.  I made the situation worse since I like coffee and had a number of blog posts about making coffee and not really about saving money at all.  I decided to move 13 coffee articles from one of my blogs on Blogger and coffee 7 articles from my site on HubPages to start a niche blog on coffee.


1. Move Posts from Blogger or HubPages to Start a Niche Blog
Moving the posts on the topic of my niche blog from one Blogger blog to another on Blogger was very easy.  I exported the blog posts to one file that I saved on my computer and exported the template to another file.  Next, I imported these files into my new blog.  This article explains in more detail how to download your blog posts and template from Blogger.

I set the import post feature so that the posts would not be automatically published.  I went through and deleted all of the posts except the 13 coffee posts that I wanted in my new niche blog.  Bringing material from HubPages was more difficult.  I ended up doing some copying and pasting to create new blog posts in blogger.  I also re-imported my images from the original image files, and I needed to recreate some amazon capsules into widgets the blogger can use.  The entire process took a few hours to create a new niche blog site with 20 posts.

2. De-index old pages before publishing them on your Niche blog
Before publishing any of the articles on the new niche site, I used Google Webmaster Tools to remove URLs to de-index all of the articles from the old sites, removing them from search engine results.  Google does not like duplicate content and will punish sites that it thinks is publishing duplicated content.  So make sure your old pages are gone from Google search results before publishing the articles on your niche blog.

I searched for text from each post and made sure the old pages were not in search results before publishing the posts on my niche blog.  The de-indexing process took about 8 hours.  It is painful to de-index pages that are at the top of search engine results and making money for you every day.  I decided that the pain was worth it to achieve better traffic going forward.

3. Publish posts on your Niche blog and submit to be indexed
Next, I submitted my new URLs in Google Webmaster Tools to be indexed in the search engine.  I also submitted the sitemap for the new niche blog.  It can take anywhere from a week to one month get a new site indexed- your site will not get any search engine traffic until it is indexed.  Waiting for a new site to get into search results is painful.  Use this time to create some new material for your niche blog while you are waiting for it to be indexed.

Update:  It has been 10 days now since I have moved blog posts to a new subdomain to start a niche blog- and the search traffic is still not back.  Some of my posts were on page 1 of the search engine results pages on the original blogs, but have not been picked up at their new location yet since moving them.  I think a lesson here is to start niche blogs from scratch if you can to avoid the need to move posts and wait for them to climb up in the search results.

Starting a Niche Blog from Scratch

Starting a niche blog from scratch requires discipline and the ability to plan ahead on what articles you will be able to write.  Having a library of material to choose from, it is easy to go through and find material that fits your niche blog.  If you haven't written the material yet, you need to select a topic that you have experience or expertise to support a lot of content.  I would suggest at least 20 articles on the topic of your niche blog.  You want to avoid starting a niche blog only to run out of material after 3 or 4 posts.  That would be a waste of time.  Try to list out your first dozen or so post topics to see if you'll be able to fill the niche blog with enough good content.

Benefits of a Niche Blog

Creating a niche blog has several advantages.  You will likely see a boost in search engine traffic.  The articles in your niche blog will enjoy boosted traffic, and your other material may get a boost as well since it will be more focused on a topic from the perspective of a search engine looking at keywords in your posts.

Having a niche blog makes it easier for people interested in your topic to find and share your blog.  People interested in coffee are not likely to sort through lots of articles about saving money to find a few about coffee.  But a site that is 100% about coffee has a much better chance to attract coffee fans and keep them there reading multiple articles.

Another benefit of having a focused niche blog- it is more obvious what to write about next on your blog.  The topic of my next post on my coffee niche blog is going to be about... coffee!

Copyright © 2013 Dr. Penny Pincher.  All Rights Reserved.  Pro Blogging Journal

Make Passive Income From Your Blog

Passive Income from Blogging

Passive income is income that keeps coming in with no further effort required.  Making passive income from a blog is very desirable.  I remember a specific moment when I realized that I had achieved passive income from my blogs.  I was sitting in a coffee shop one evening, drinking a cup of decaf, and smiling.  I was smiling because I knew at that moment I was making money without doing any work.  In fact, I now make passive income 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from my blogs.  This is a feeling worth experiencing.

Make passive income from blogging
Image Source: Dr. Penny Pincher

Passive income is quite different than the income that most people ordinarily think of.  Most people are used to an income model where you work and are compensated for your time.  This model applies whether you are paid hourly or paid a salary- you are being paid for your time working.  Ultimately, you can make only a limited amount of income because your time is limited.  You are selling your time, and you have only so much time to sell.  Passive income is different.  You produce something of value that you own- in this case a blog.  You can stop working on the blog at any time, but it keeps generating income without any further effort required- this is the "passive" part of passive income.  Unlike time, you are not limited in terms of how much value you can produce.



The passive income concept is similar to income that an author gets from writing a book.  After the book is published, the author does not need to work any more, but the royalties keep coming in as the book is sold.  If an author publishes additional books, the royalties from the 1st book keep coming in.

Multiple streams of income is another important concept for earning passive income.  You typically only have one or two jobs that you work.  However in passive income, you can have many streams of income simultaneously.  You want to establish a stream of passive income, and then move on and establish more streams of passive income.  Let your earlier projects continue earning income as you build more value and more passive income.

How to get Traffic to your Blog to Support Passive Income

The key to making passive income from your blog is getting a lot of traffic to your blog.  The key to getting traffic to your blog is writing high quality content that people are searching for.  If you want to make passive income from your blog, you will need to write about topics that remain popular all the time- these are known as "evergreen" topics.  For example, if you write about a presidential election or other current event, interest in this topic will soon pass and you will get very limited traffic.  If you choose topics of enduring interest, you can publish blog posts that people will visit for years and years.  Coffee is one of my favorite examples of a topic that will be popular for a long time.

Search engine traffic is the key to making passive income on your blog.  It is possible to generate traffic to your blog from social networking activity- however this takes continuous work on your part.  Search engine traffic provides traffic even if you stop promoting your site.  This allows you to apply effort to creating more content rather than promoting your old content, allowing you to develop more passive income streams.

How to Make Passive Income from your Blog

Once you are getting a lot of traffic to your blog, you can use advertising to generate revenue from every visitor to your site.  AdSense and Chitika are my favorite advertising sources for my blogs.  This advertising on a blog supports a passive income model very well.  AdSense and Chitika automatically assign the advertising space on your blog to the highest paying advertisers- no work on your part is required.  The ads may change over time, but you don't need to change your blog or do any work to recruit advertisers- the ads are updated automatically and the money appears in your account every month.

Another source of passive income from blogs is affiliate marketing.  You can place links in your blog posts to relevant products for sale from sites such as amazon and eBay.  If someone follows a link to an affiliate site and purchases a product, you get an advertising fee from each sale.  In order to make money from affiliate marketing from your blog, you will need to get approved for each affiliate marketing program you want to participate in.  Once you place the links, the only work required is to occasionally check to make sure the products you linked are still available.  You can place affiliate links that show search results that are guaranteed to have products that are current.  However, I often like to link to specific products.  I think this is worth the effort so I can show the specific products I prefer in my blog posts.

Passive Income from Blogging Starts with Great Content

The foundation of making passive income from blogging is great content.  You need blog posts on topics that will remain popular in web searches over time.  You need blog posts that will rank high in search engine results- your goal should be to have as many of your blog posts rank on the 1st page of search engine results pages as possible.  This can be accomplished using keyword research to understand what people are searching for- you can write blog posts on the best topics and use the best keywords.

As you develop your blog, try to identify evergreen topics for some of your posts.  Use keyword research for at least some of your blog posts to start developing a lasting stream of traffic from search engines that will set you up to make passive income from your blog.  You can drink decaf and smile thinking about making money just sitting there while you are not working!

Copyright © 2013 by Dr. Penny Pincher.  All Rights Reserved. Pro Blogging Journal