As many of you know, I have come out openly before telling people that they shouldn’t start blogs that teach people how to make money online. The main reason for that is that I believe there are a lot of other topics that are easier to make money with.

That said, lately for some reason I’ve been thinking a lot about all of the advantages of having one. I obviously have profited a ton by having one and would like to share a few insights. I still don’t think that an MMO blog should be your only site, but it seems to me that it can be a healthy addition to your online portfolio.

1. You can get most tools and services for free. I honestly don’t pay for much these days and the few products and services that I do pay for and like are easily paid for with affiliate commissions. I would never continue to pay for a product or service that I don’t like and use and if I use it, I pass it on to other people that are probably already looking for something like it and/or have use for it. I don’t promote hardly anything because I don’t use most of the products I try out. The secret to selling a lot of affiliate product is not promoting stuff that doesn’t work.
2. Having a record of what you have learned. I sometimes go through the archives of Court’s Internet Marketing School just to make sure that there isn’t something important that I’ve forgotten about. Every once in a while I forget about a useful plugin or practice that worked well and I’m glad I have a journal that I can go back to.
3. You can build up a lot of influenceEven if you never become a popular ‘make money online’ blogger, you can build a lot of influence – especially local influence. I turn down local SEO and SEO consulting gigs all the time because I simply don’t have the time. If you know how to get traffic and make money at all you’re better off than 99.9% of the people in the world. If you ever plan on capitalizing on that you probably want to start your site now so that by the time your skills are ready you already have something.

I think that most people who start ‘make money online’ blogs think that it will be their primary earner and this is the wrong mindset, in my opinion. If you use your MMO blog to pay for your internet marketing type products, to record what you have learned, and to build long-term influence, it’s definitely worth having one. If you use a Host Gator hosting account with unlimited domains, you will only have to pay for the domain you use, and that will cost less than $10 and at that price there’s no reason to put a bunch of pressure on yourself. You don’t need to turn the world upside down for it to be worth it.