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**If you know a "Smart Woman" or if you think you have an interesting Smart Woman topic, you can contact Candice at cmadsen@ksl.com.**Candice Madsen Reporting
Chances are someone you know blogs on the Internet. In fact, there are more than 100 million blogs out there.
Most people blog for fun. A lot of families use them to keep in touch. But some people are making a profit off their sites.
A blog is an online diary that gives people a forum in cyberspace to write about whatever they want. But in order to generate revenue, the site has to generate traffic.
Several women in Utah have Web sites that are getting a lot of hits, and advertisers have noticed.
Ali Anderson Smith is a blogger for www.yourheartout.com She says, "I started to blog basically because I'm a journaler, and I like to write."
She blogs about dining, shopping, and playing your heart out in Salt Lake City. She says, "We wanted to showcase all the things in Salt Lake that we think are great."
She realized her posts were becoming more valuable when businesses started asking how they could get on the blog. Anderson Smith says, "In fact, one woman's whose boutique we wrote about down in Provo e-mailed me afterwards and said, 'thank you so much. I've advertised everywhere, in every publication, and this is the best advertising we've gotten."'
And advertisers want to take advantage. Dion Jones is the director of online marketing for Richter 7. He expects advertising on blogs to surge. "Blogging is allowing you to reach them where they're at in a nonthreatening, non-sales manner, giving them great content with established trust and also builds a following of loyalty," says Jones.
Salt Lake blogger Heather Armstrong has a huge following. In 2001, she started blogging about co-workers. She lost her job but became a hero among bloggers. The blog about her daily life is now one of the most popular in the country, and Armstrong makes enough money from ads to support her family.
Jones says, "You can advertise on a blog, but one thing that's really important, that you have to remember for the advertisement to even work, to even be considered, is that the blog itself must be perceived as high value content."
Most hobby bloggers won't see a profit; but put in some serious time and energy, and you just might find yourself with a cyber cash cow.
Google has made it easy to sell advertising on blogs through its AdSense program.
There are several other sites that will walk you through it, for more information, go to the related links.
