Here is what you can do to get the eyeballs to look your way:

Promotion
If every good product sold on its own, advertising would not have been a career option. Even when you have hit the sweet spot with your product, you need to promote it. Try these ideas—based on a mix of conventional thought and the science of how bits and bytes behave in cyberspace:

Get other sites to link to you: In an ideal world, everyone you want will link from their site to yours. Poof, and you could be in business overnight. The more blogs and sites that link to you, the better you fare in search engine rankings. If wishes were horses! Keep trying, and you will have sites linking to you over a period of time. It may take a year or longer of blogging for things to start happening for you. Remember, other sites will link to you only if your content is good. Period.

Get yourself some links: Till WSJ.com does not link to you, visit the site and other blogs and leave comments on topics of shared interest—with your link. This is one way to generate some traffic faster – find blogs in your niche area and leave meaningful comments on posts with your blog’s address.

Link to others, selflessly: Provide links to blogs you like without expecting anything in return. These respective blog owners might come visiting to know about yours and someday do something for you too.
Grab all the free ad spots to publicize your blog: These include your visiting cards, email signatures, letterheads, mobile messages, bumper stickers and other such communication. Let your emails end with a prompt to a recent post of yours relevant to the recipient.

Be proactive: Respond to all those who leave comments on your blog or seek further information – make their effort seem valuable. Let them feel a part of your blog community and they will tell other people about you.

Send out mails: Mine every email address you have in your desktop and workplace, and send a message. Pitch specific posts, not necessarily your blog, to entice greater interest.

Make friends in the Blogosphere: And write guest posts and comments on each other’s blogs. Exchange links, too. There is no such thing as being competitors here. You have to realize you cannot be selfish—it is all about give and take to get ahead.

The title of your post matters: A simple yet overlooked factor that makes a big difference. Most people read blogs on RSS (really simple syndication) feeds. The title helps them decide whether they want to click on it or move to the next entry on the feed. Also include keywords in your title that people are expected to be searching for.

A social media strategy: Sites like Facebook, MySpace, Orkut and LinkedIn may have become a rage for their socializing and networking potential, but they are also highly effective to promote your blog. There are many ways to do so, as also elaborated in a later section, but here are some pointers to set you thinking:
Create a Fan Page on Facebook
Create groups on Facebook and LinkedIn and invite your contacts to be members
Take feeds from your blogs on to your profiles for your contacts to read even if they don’t visit your blog
Advertise if you have the budget
In your status updates mention the latest you have done on your blog for others to get alerted to and possibly visit
Twitter: A Microblogging platform, Twitter allows you to post messages not longer than 140 characters. Whoever is following your ‘tweets’ can get alerted to the latest on your blog and visit it if interested.
YouTube: If you have any video content on your blog, it is always a good idea to post on YouTube too. With its own captive audience, you can get viewers to your videos and they may want to explore your blog further for relevant content.
Flickr: Likewise posting any photos on your blog on to a Flickr account can get you eyeballs redirected from Flickr

You just cannot get results fast enough. It was only after a year of blogging that things started happening for me. Other sites will link to you only if your content is good. Leaving comments with your blog URL is one way to generate some traffic faster—find blogs in your niche area and leave meaningful comments on posts with your blog’s address. If it adds value to the conversation, other readers will click on your link to know more about what you are doing. Someone else may already have the audience, and you are doing nothing unethical or illegal in trying to attract them too.”

- Amit Agarwal, Professional Blogger at Digital Inspiration, a Technorati’s Top 100 blog

Easy Distribution
Will you travel 10 miles just to pick up a KitKat or settle for a Dairy Milk an arm’s length away? Ditto for blogs. If you don’t make it easy for your readers to access your content, they will just move to a competing blog. Here is what you can do to get them to stay with you:

One click sign-up: People read your posts mostly through emails and RSS. Make it easy for them to do so—sign up with free services such as FeedBlitz and FeedBurner to manage all your sign-ups and mailings automatically. And place the forms, chiclets, links and icons they provide on all your pages and even emails you send for your readers to subscribe with one click.
Maximize your storefronts: Nike and Starbucks generate volumes by ensuring a presence in all marketplaces to make for easy access; links to your blog are your storefronts. Make these present on as many websites, blogs, comments you leave and emails you send – never be too far from your customer, who is the reader in this case.

Some more marketing tips

Positioning: Why should someone want to visit your blog? The answer has to come in a single word or short phrase. This will be its unique positioning. A picture of what your blog is all about should form in the reader’s mind as soon as he or she thinks of your blog. If this does not happen, you know you are doing something wrong.

Presentation: Keep your layouts neat and easily readable. Let not the untidy, garish blogs be your inspiration. Try to write good copy, with catchy headlines and minimum language errors.

Passion: Be passionate about what you write – it is like a book writer who has to feel for the subject, to be with it for years while writing it.
Patience and Persistence: If you are on the quality path, it will be a long and lonely marathon. Do you have it in you to undertake it?

“I did not do any promotions though—over time, people just found me because of the work I was doing.

Why does someone visit a blog? Because they want to learn something. My audience is the thinking Indian. Quality causes stickiness. If I only wanted traffic, I would be doing very different things. If you are on the quality path, it will be a long and lonely marathon. Do you have it in you to undertake it?” – Kamla Bhatt, blogger for four years now and publisher of the highly popular KamlaBhattShow.com connecting Indian diaspora around the world

Yes, there is chaos out there. And a big clutter. How can you make money from a blog when most people don’t? There are ways for your blog to go beyond being a mere statistic and making a healthy contribution to your personal balance sheet. The following could help you get started:

DEFINE YOUR PRODUCT

Every suggestion in the book on monetizing your blog will come to nought if your product is not strong. For a blog, the product is mainly content. What is more important in a newspaper: the quality of production or what it offers to read? Same holds true for a blog.

Start by asking why you are writing a blog. This will bring clarity on who you are writing for, and this in turn will help you determine what you are writing. Readers will come to you only if you carry something impactful, informative or even humorous for them. Just because so many blogs have little more than incoherent ramblings of the publisher does not mean you have to subscribe to such low denominators.

And here’s more to make your product buyer friendly:
Quantity does not beat quality: While frequent postings may help you go up the search rankings, don’t do it for the sake of doing so. Ask yourself if anyone would care to read what you are writing. Post once or twice a week if need be but ensure it is quality writing. You don’t want to turn away readers or bury your good pieces under the debris of poorly written ones.
Is it unique? Unless the first blog Rip Van Winkle goes to after waking up is yours, your content is valuable only if it is unique. Search engines such as Google can now catch those who copy content from other sources. Spooky, but true. A combination of originality and quality works beautifully—it takes you higher up on the search engines.
Is your content ‘buzzworthy’? It can be if you offer scoops or write controversial stuff—but be careful and don’t go over the top. A positive buzz will get people talking about you and send links and traffic your way.
One Blog, One Subject: A blog is usually a success if it covers only one subject area, exceptions always being there. This gives the blog its own unique positioning proposition. Your audience knows what to expect. If you want to cover multiple subjects, have multiple blogs. A technology follower may have little interest in personal finance matters.

“Start by asking why you are writing a blog. This will bring clarity on who you are writing for, and this in turn will help you determine what you are writing. A combination of originality and quality works beautifully—it takes you higher up on the search engines.” – Rajesh Lalwani, Founder and CEO, Blogworks, India

You could be decide to blog about your personal habits, but no one would care about that unless you happen to be Paris Hilton. It would still be fine but we are here to help you make money. To achieve this objective, your blog should fall under one of the following categories:

1. Identify a gap in the market, and go for it

If you think everything there is to write on every possible subject is already being written, think again. Despite India not lagging behind in the blog roll calls, there is still a dearth of quality blogs with content being written consistently on them. A majority of blogs still focus on personal musings or public interest issues. Both these categories make for lesser subjects when it comes to making money. Just look around and you will be amazed at the number of topics you could cover: technology, automobiles, health, fitness, business, consumer goods, books, sports, marketing, travel, investing and fashion to name just a few. Even these can be further broken down to give you a niche. In technology, you could have separate blogs for mobiles, computers, social media, gadgets, software, programming etc.

Ideally, if you have some level of expertise or familiarity with the subject of your choice, its great. But don’t pursue a subject you know about just because that is the case. Assess its financial potential first. Yes, there are some topics you cannot write about till you have an inherent knowledge of the same. But expertise can often be acquired. How do you suppose journalists manage to cover so many different beats, including the ones they would not have known how to spell at one stage? Research, reading up and talking to people can make up for a lot of deficiencies. You can also make up for it by sourcing content from alternate sources as covered later.

You can be assured of attracting traffic at a rate faster than usual if you write about what is either not being covered or is being done so in a limited way. When someone searches for what you have written, chances of your blog coming high up in the results are pretty good. Remember, when we Google for something, all of us tend to click on what appears on the first few pages only. If you make it to these, you are in business. Of course, you have to be writing about something you know lots of people will be searching for.

Once you have traffic coming your way, you can tap into one of the many ways of generating income from your blog including advertising and affiliate sales as covered under a separate head later. Eyeballs matter.

2. A blog to enhance your professional income

Are you a programmer and extremely good at what you do? How does one know that if they have not worked with you? A CV can never say much, and it is easy to mislead in one. Let a blog be the proof of your pudding.

Whatever your domain expertise, start a blog about it. Share your knowledge, experiences and tips through a series of posts. Create an online portfolio of sorts where you talk about your achievements, awards, projects undertaken, assignments completed, testimonials and more. In a manner that your true worth comes across to your target audience.

How will it all help? Here are just some ways it can:

Clients will flock to you: Whether you are an independent professional or working for someone, clients may identify you as the key person they would rather trust their portfolio or assignment with. If someone wants an e-commerce portal developed, reading your blog may convince them on you being the right project leader to handle the work. Remember, it is people who finally do the work no matter how large or successful an organization is.
You charge higher rates: Once you know you are the preferred choice for a client, you may just get away by charging a slight premium on regular rates. If it is your own work, it all comes to your pocket. If you work for someone else, you can be sure of a fatter bonus or raise if you have a fair employer.
An employee in demand: As word gets out about quality clients being happier working with you than others, it will certainly enhance your reputation in the job market. And have companies reaching out to you to work with them. This could be the time to choose to go to not just the company you always desired working for but also at a remuneration package higher and more satisfying than what you would currently be drawing.
Time to strike out on your own: If you are in a sector where your skills matter to the output more than office infrastructure, plant and machinery then it may be time to strike out on your own. Many a professional, especially in fields like programming and consulting, has been able to do so knowing clients they were handling would send business their way from the day they set up shop. Likewise, if you have a million dollar idea of starting your own venture in, say, the dotcom space, VCs are more likely to back you up with money by understanding your capabilities and track record through your blog. For investors, it is the team behind a venture that matters more than the idea itself. Implementation is key to the success of even the best laid out plans, and this can easily go wrong if the people behind it are not suited for it.

3. Businesses need to blog – whether they are your own or you work for one
Do you run your own business? Especially a small or medium sized one? Then blogging about it makes very good sense for many reasons including:

Talk about your product or service: It is amazing how few businesses talk about what they have to offer to customers. Beyond the user manuals and sales promotion material, the only other source of information are salespersons – and we all know how inadequate they usually are. A blog can not only tell you the basic information of the product or service, but can cover its many aspects in more detail and highlights its benefits. This can help the customer make more informed decisions.
Beat the competition: The legendary adman David Ogilvy once advised an airline client to advertise their first class features. When the client said that these are similar to what their competitors offer, Ogilvy replied, “Yes, but who is talking about it?” The client took his advice and went to have one of the more successful campaigns in advertising history. Your blog gives you a similar advantage. In a market where competitive differences can often be miniscule, your talking about what you offer may just send more customers your way. Away from the competition.
Putting customers at ease by conversing: Your willingness to engage with your customers on a blog puts them at ease and positions yours as a business to trust. No one is perfect, and customers would rather be with someone who is willing to have honest and transparent conversations than with someone who would rather not.
Makes your business discoverable: A regularly updated blog means it features higher on search engine rankings than one that is not or just a company website. Translated it means attracting customers you never knew existed till they discovered you on their own.
Improve the search engine rankings of your site: Your website may be a static one with few updates, and not lend itself to going high up on the search engine rankings. But a blog on the subfolder of the main domain, something like www.mycompany.com/blog, is more dynamic with regular updates. This helps the cause of the main site when it comes to search engine rankings.
But you don’t have a business? So how does this benefit you? You can volunteer to blog about the company you work for. If you are in sales, the results will add a glow to your team’s performance directly. Even otherwise, once the company starts to enjoy the benefits of the blog, guess who will be the apple of the management’s eyes? You, who else. Thus ensuring you move up the corporate ladder faster than usual. Even carving out some special strategic position for yourself in the company.

If you add two additional ‘Ws’ to ‘www’ it could well stand for the Wonderful Wealthy World Wide Web. With the possibilities it offers to make money from home, you just have to think and act a little smart to laugh all the way to the proverbial bank

You could be pursuing this pot of gold, or silver, either full time or part time to supplement your current income. You could even start moonlighting, and gradually reach a stage where it becomes lucrative enough to consume all your working time. If you fear being laid-off in these recessionary times, or are facing pay cuts, or have already been given the pink slip, the web may just offer you suitable employment. Who knows, you may just end up on a path that is your true calling. With you being your own boss, and earning enough to enjoy the new found status, your cubicle could be your study or even a coffee shop.

Of course, like everything else in life, there is no magic wand to make things happen. We all have to work for it. And pray for a bit of luck to give wind to our efforts. There will be no short-cuts to the happiness you pursue, but it would be just a matter of time before you are sailing smoothly. You will need to be determined and disciplined and not throw in the towel; these qualities can come easily if you have the swords of mortgages and bills hanging on your head.

While there are many direct ways to earn these additional remuneration cheques, there are many more indirect ones we usually end up missing. Here are some ideas to get you going, or catalyse some additional thinking.