The answer is, of course, yes. You can make money setting up your own blog, writing about topics close to your heart, and earning through Text Link Ads, Google Adsense, or similar blog monetization techniques. You’ll have to work on publicizing your blog, though- and if you want to really earn money, you’ll need a healthy dose of good marketing techniques.

What’s easier? Blogging for someone else. Many of the big blog networks are always on the lookout for new bloggers, and they’ll usually take care of the marketing side of things. Here’s where to find the best blogging jobs:

Blogger Jobs .biz
A lot of listings here. I recommend subscribing to their RSS feed until you find something that interests you.

SimplyHired Blogging Jobs
This is an aggregator- which means that they pull job listings from different job sites.

Weblog Labs’ Jobamatic
Thanks to Jobamatic, we have our very own job boards featuring blogging jobs from a variety of sites.

One of my favorite ones, ProBlogger Job Board, isn’t working for me right now. But I’m listing it here anyway, because it’s such a great resource.

Resolution 1: Redesign… but not too often.
I know that WeblogLabs has just been redesigned, but now that I’ve been using it, I’ve realized what changes I need to make to it. I’ve already started on a new WordPress theme that promises to be bigger and better and easier to read- and should be launching it very soon. I love putting fresh faces on my blogs, but I’ll try not to do it too often- giving myself more time for…

Resolution 2: Blog smarter, blog meaningfully, blog with love.
No more namby-pamby posts. I will strive to write useful, meaningful posts, so that nobody’s time is a-wasted. And speaking of wasting time…

Resolution 3: Prune my RSS feeds.
I’m subscribed to about 300 feeds right now. Can you imagine how much time I spend reading them? I’ll try to get them down to about 100.

Resolution 4: Get to know my readers and visitors better.
You, you, dear reader, are the lifeblood of this blog. I’m so grateful whenever any of you comes to visit, drops an entrecard, or subscribes to my feed or newsletter. I will make better use of entrecard, blogcatalog, mybloglog, blogrush- all the lovely blogging tools I have at my disposal- and try to meet more of you in the coming year!

Resolution 5: Kiss my husband more often.
Okay, he made me put this one! But seriously, I need to remember to just stop blogging sometimes, and get up and give my husband a kiss.

What are your blogging resolutions this year?

“An autoresponder is a computer program that automatically answers e-mail sent to it. They can be very simple or quite complex.” – Wikipedia

I used to think autoresponders were something I didn’t need. You know those automated, “I’ll be out of the office until Monday…” emails you get when someone goes on vacation? Since I hardly ever stop checking my email- even on vacation- I didn’t think I had much use for them.

Since I started blogging professionally, however, I’ve learned just how powerful autoresponders can be. Here’s an example:

A few days before Thanksgiving, we released our very first (free) Stylish Shopping Guide at our shopping blog Something Stylish. Featuring hot deals and tips for maximizing your dollar during the Black Friday / Cyber Monday craziness, we generated a lot of buzz among our visitors. The emails poured in, and each email signup required us to reply with details on how to download the guide for free. Now, because we had an autoresponder, we were able to do the following automatically:

• Send an immediate response to each person, thanking them by name, and providing details on where and how to download the guide.
• Add them to our mailing list, so they immediately receive alerts when our future shopping guides become available, and
• Be able to see who clicked on what on the emails we sent out.

What struck me about all this was how automatic and immediate everything was- and all thanks to our autoresponder.

But how can a blogger make use of autoresponders? AWeber, the autoresponder we use (and love!) features a tool to send out “blog broadcasts”:

You can send out the most recent- or the last 5 or 10, whatever- post on your blog, and prettify it with HTML, AND track who’s clicking through and when. AWeber will do this automatically from your RSS feed. And, of course, you’ll be building a mailing list of your own. Our Build a Better Blog newsletter (scroll down to subscribe!) is powered by AWeber, and we couldn’t be happier.

No, autoresponders aren’t the sexiest of blog tools- but they’ve made my life so much easier.

Also, so many of us bloggers suffer from blank screen syndrome. SEOBook has some tips on coming up with unique content for your blog.

“Dot Com Mogul” John Chow features the RSS Feed Footer WordPress Plugin- which, if you’re a blogger on WordPress, you should really be using. I’ll be installing it here in a few minutes as well.

Hope you’re having a great Sunday!

CashBulges’ Traffic is the Backbone of a Successful Website is written “for starters”, and is an excellent quick read for new bloggers who are looking to monetize their sites. We all know that that sooner you start working smarter, the quicker you’ll see benefits.

Now that we’ve established that traffic is key, go read Blogging Tips’ How to develop stickyness to your blog in case you haven’t yet. I read this a few weeks ago, but have reread it several times since then. Yes, you want your blog to be sticky, especially if you’re looking to make money from it.

Sites of the photo gallery type, of course, are out. But I’m pleased to see that most of our blogs hold up quite nicely on their own. Even some of our forums are working well.

Just something to keep in mind the next time we’re coding.

And so I’m here. In honesty, I’ve been planning to change my domain name anyway- our domains with .be extensions are just a pain to make any changes to- and Weblog Labs, concerned with “The Care and Feeding of Weblogs” is just perfect for me.

It will take a few days for me to get everything set up and pretty again here… but please do check back, and change your bookmark! In any case, once my GoodBlogger.be domain comes back online, I’ll be forwarding it here.