Blogs and forums are ideal "traffic magnets" for a website. Your website's visitors know that they are frequently updated, and that they are interactive, so they keep returning to "join the conversation."

Search engines know that they are frequently updated, so search engine spiders frequent return to re-index their content. Properly configured blogs will "ping" the search engines and directories each time that they are posted to, constantly calling the search engine spiders back.

Since blogs and forums even come pre-installed in C-panel on many hosting accounts, getting a website going can be as simple as registering a domain name, hosting it at a host that offers C-panel, and with just a few clicks of a button, selecting the blogging or forum platform that you want to use.

You can even customize the look and feel of that blog or forum later if you want to. That way, you can literally have a website up and running in UNDER an hour. All that you need to do is make the blog or forum your homepage, and your site is literally ready for the world!

The big question has always been, how do you then earn revenue from that blog or forum. Here are some options that I use and recommend:

1) Use your blog or forum to build a niche mailing list that you then market to via email. Simply post a subscription form right into the html code of the blog or forum that invites your visitors to join your mailing list. If they enjoy the content on your blog or forum, many visitors will subscribe. You'll build a mailing list fairly effortless over time.

If you're really lazy, that mailing list subscription can be to an "evergreen" newsletter. That is, you can write, or have written, a series of email messages that each new subscriber gets in sequence when they sign up. Put together 52 issues that are scheduled to go out once a week, or 24 issues that are set to go out every 2 weeks, and you have a newsletter that essentially "runs itself" for a year.

Each issue of your newsletter could contain: a simple article, an editorial, and a product recommendation. It doesn't have to be any more difficult than that.

I write each issue of my newsletter fresh, but do know people who use the "evergreen model." They simple set the autoresponder sequence to start over again when the last issue is reached, then they periodically add new issues to the series or revise outdated issues.

If you'd like to see how I've integrated a subscribe box right into my blog, you can check it out at: http://WillieCrawford.com/blog/

With a newsletter, the most often missed point is that you DO need to sell your subscribers on signing up. You do need to give them a compelling reason, assure them that you'll protect their data, and instruct them on exactly how to signup.

2) Use your blog or forum to sell affiliate products. This can be as simple as putting graphics and product recommendations right into your menu bar. I do that on my blog at the url above.

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