Blogging Skills That Pay!

Making money with a blog. Such a nice concept. Nobody hates making money doing what they love, but sometimes you have to improve yourself to put yourself in a position to make money online. I personally never believed in blogging for money. I started blogging in 2004 because I had something to say, and I wanted to express myself. But if I ever made money, I wanted to be deserving of it. When it comes to blogging, making short-term money is not that hard. A lot of folks are doing it on a daily basis. But they do so by stealing others RSS feeds and putting garbage out.

The right way to make money with a blog is by creating a community where folks want to be a part of and advertisers want to get a play in. A way to do that is by implementing features that enhance communications on your blog. It’s truly amazing how many bloggers make absolutely no effort to learn technical skills to help themselves improve their blogs. Everybody wants to outsource these days, and I am all for it. But knowing some HTML hasn’t killed anyone.

As more bloggers make their way to the online world, the markets will become more saturated and only the cream will rise to the top. If you are not a technical person, that doesn’t mean you are not going to make it in this business. Blogging is not about who knows more about Windows, but wouldn’t you be more productive if you know how to backup your project files or how to organize things on Windows?

Learning a few things hasn’t heard anybody, has it? It’s always better to have something and not need to use it than needing it and not having it. That’s why you should try to pick up a little on the following skills:

• Photo Manipulation: what is a blog with no image to show for it? Whether you are a Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro person, you should try to know at least a bit about how to use these software packages. You don’t want to hire folks to do the simplest things if you can do it in a flash (Learn Photoshop tutorials here).
• HTML/Javascript: For some strange reason, folks assume that HTML is rocket science. It’s not that hard to learn the basics of HTML. You don’t have to be a master at it. But you should know what “/>” means. W3C has some of the best tutorials on Javascript and HTML.
• Search Engine Optimization: search engine optimization can get complicated but it wouldn’t hurt to master the basics here. There are plenty of sources available that can help you get started. SEOMoz and SEOBook are two of my favorite SEO resources.
• Social Media: a big part of being involved in the blogging world is engaging with others in the social media. Whether you are on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, there is a certain etiquette that you need to stand by. Seth Godin and Dosh Dosh are two resources that I follow on a daily basis.
• Your Software: whether you are a heavy Mac User or addicted to Outlook, learning how to get the best out of your software investment is a must to succeed in the blogging world. The key here is to find a way to spend less time doing more!

Blogging may look easy from the outside, but that doesn’t mean you should stop learning new skills altogether. Most young bloggers know a thing or two about all the above items, so the time to learn is now!

Did I miss anything? What other blogging skills would you add to the list?