The result – down the road a bit – would be a substantial income that needed little more than maintenance time. An hour or two a week – maybe less.

For the basics you need to choose one of the themes from PremiumPress. I say one of the themes because there are a number of alternatives here – and that’s what makes this so attractive.

What I’ve written here is an outline of a few ideas. You’ll soon get the hang of it, then you can implement your own versions.

Let’s start of with ShopperPress. A Wordpress theme that’s actually a shopping cart. Aah you say, but you’ve got nothing to sell…

On the contrary, you can sell anything you like. You can sell any of the range of Amazon products for a start.

Here’s the idea. Pick a range of products at Amazon (or anywhere else that has an affiliate program with a good range of products), set up a store using ShopperPress with your affiliate links all over it. Use ShopperPress’ built in article function to write articles that draw real customers and appeal to the search engines. Support it with article marketing.

Doesn’t matter if it’s in a competitive field – in fact you need it to be reasonably competitive. You’re not going to make $10,000 a month but you should be able to pick up decent income.

Then you create another store – because once you’ve paid for ShopperPress you can use it as many times as you like. Try targeting smaller areas or specialist niches. You can set up a many as you like, and it’s going to cost you no more than a domain name and a bit of hosting each time. Pizza money.

Another approach – DirectoryPress

Here’s another theme from PremiumPress. This one sets up directories. How do you make money from this? Two potential revenue streams really, you can charge people to be in the directory (I provide a free listing and then offer an upgrade) and then most people would try selling ad space.

I don’t. I show ads, but I use ads from affiliate programs I belong to. That way I don’t have to try to sell ad space or manage it.

What kind of directory? There must be directories in almost any subject you can think of and there is always room for another. Where do you get the info from? Existing directories, yellow pages, magazine ads… Like with the stores above, it doesn’t need to be the best directory in the world ever, it just needs to pick up some traffic. You don’t even have to sell any listings… this is aimed at picking up affiliate revenue really with listing upgrades a bonus.

How profitable? As above, little bits add up to a big whole. Easy to do as well. Once set up all you have to do is add three or four listings a day when you’ve got a spare minute or two. Within a few weeks you’ve got hundreds of listings – each a little bit of search engine bait. Start new directories as and when you can.

I’m not going to bang on and on about this. The other themes available are a classified ads theme (run your own classifieds in any niche you like), and, currently in development, a price comparison theme and a membership site theme. If you can’t see the potential here you probably ought to be looking at a different way of making money

Have a look at PremiumPress, browse the pages and I’m sure you’ll come up with a fistful of ideas. Use your writing skills with article marketing to drive traffic and you’ve got the potential for dozens of sites each bringing in handy lumps of cash. Once set up, these can run for years with next to no input.

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So is it that simple to make money writing blogs?

Well yes and no.

Here’s the thing. There’s the usual heavy dose of hype and “get-rich-quick” bull associated with pro blogging. There are scams and cons galore. There are also ordinary folks like you and me earning not just good money but extraordinary money from writing blogs. They are doing stuff they love and getting paid a fortune for it. It’s definitely do-able.

I say “just from writing blogs” but then of course there are tips and tricks. Tactics that are proven to work – and there are others that seldom, if ever, produce results no matter how much effort you put in.

Truth is, effort is required. When you compare it with traditional business models the ‘effort” a bit of a joke, as is the tiny investment required. You don’t need thousands of dollars, you don’t need to invest in premises and stock, you don’t have to be up all hours of the day and night, working all weekend (although obviously if you want to change where you are now, you’re going to have to find some extra time).

Perhaps that’s why so many people fail. Is it too easy to make money writing blogs? If the only effort required is to repeatedly, consistently put in computer time until it pays off, do some people fail because they think it should be tougher?

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it’s hugely frustrating. Sometimes it’s disappointing. Early on you can wonder why you’re doing it…

Then something works. You earn your first dollar, your first hundred… then you “get it”.

Some people quit before then. Not because “it” doesn’t work, not because you can’t make money from writing blogs, but because it just wasn’t for them. I’m not going to say that people who don’t make it are lazy – or stupid – it’s just that some people aren’t cut out for it. It takes a certain kind of discipline, a kind of determination not to quit, not to let the bastards grind you down. Full-time freedom does have a price.

But let me tell you, it’s definitely worth it!

There are two people who helped me enormously when I started, they are Yaro Starak and Chris Rempel.

Yaro produced an ebook a few years ago called Blog Profits Blueprint which changed a lot of people’s ideas – mine included. If you don’t know Yaro he’s an Australian and full-time blogger, something of a pioneer in fact when blogging was still very new. I think it was the year before last that he set off around the world for six months, blogging as he went, whenever he could get an internet connection. When he got back his business was stronger than ever – because of course you can run a blog from anywhere.

Anyway, Blog Profits Blueprint is an in-depth look at how to build a proper business blog. It doesn’t matter which method you use to make money writing blogs (we’ll look at several) the information in here is gold dust – and it’s free! – so not getting a copy would be dumb!

Second guy is Chris Rempel. AKA The Lazy Marketer. I don’t for one minute believe that he is truly lazy, but like me Chris doesn’t believe in doing more work than is necessary or make things overly complicated. What Chris does, although not always blogging, is particularly relevant to us.

His ground-breaking ebook “Confessions of a Lazy Super Affiliate” is, unfortunately, not free but it’s more than worth the little money you need to pay and a positive investment in your future. Affiliate marketing is arguably the most profitable method of making money writing blogs and Chris is a master.

Let’s wrap things up for now. In my next post I’m going to look at a few of the alternatives for making money writing blogs. In fact it’s more about making money writing, with the blog being the most effective tool.