Are you a hip-hop artist, producer, entrepreneur or fan who wants to make money in the rap industry? Have you ever thought of starting a hip hop blog? Believe it or not, hip-hop blogs are becoming more and more popular, and there are plenty of opportunities for hip-hop bloggers to make money online. If the idea of ​​getting paid to share your thoughts and opinions on rap is music to your ears, here’s how to get started.

Step 1 – Choose a domain name and web host

A domain name is the website address that people will use to visit your blog. In general, you’ll want to choose a domain name that’s easy to remember and gives people an idea of ​​the type of content they’ll find on your site. Examples of things you may want to use as a domain name are:

• Your artistic name (if you are an artist)
• Your company name (if you are an entertainment company or independent record label)
• the name of your blog
• Catching phrases or descriptive names

Chances are your first choice for a domain name is already taken, so be prepared with alternatives.

Once you find an available domain that you like, you’ll need to quickly register it to prevent someone else from using it. There is a small domain registration fee, but many web hosting services will not charge the domain registration fee when you sign up for hosting.

Step 2 – Install WordPress

WordPress is blogging software that has been used to power over 200 million websites. There are several reasons why WordPress is so popular:

• Affordability – WordPress is 100% free
• Ease of use: no computer or programming knowledge is required to install or use it.
• Highly customizable – thousands of free themes and plugins are available for download
• Supported – WordPress has one of the largest development communities of any open source software, making it easy to find free technical support online.

WordPress can usually be installed in less than five minutes through your web host’s control panel. Once installed, you can customize your blog by downloading the hip-hop theme of your choice and installing any plugins you want to use through your blog dashboard.

Step 3 – Start Posting Hip-Hop Related Content

Once you set up your blog, you’re ready to start posting content. In general, you’ll want to post content of interest to hip-hop fans. This could include:

• hip hop related news
• Music, videos and images with rappers
• Reviews of the new rap music.
• Information on upcoming hip hop events
• Links to other hip-hop blogs

If you’re a rapper or a producer, you should have no problem creating content based on your own music. Likewise, if you’re starting your own independent hip-hop entertainment company or record label, you can blog about the artists you’re working with. If you’re not in the music business, you can spend a couple of hours each day reading other hip-hop blogs and write one post each day on the hottest topics in hip-hop. The key is to create as many great hip-hop related posts as you can each week.

The posts you post on your blog will eventually be “crawled” and “indexed” by the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.). Once indexed, your blog will start showing up in search results for hip-hop related content. The more posts you publish and the better the quality of those posts, the more chances you have of people discovering your blog through search engines.

Step 4 – Monetize your blog

There are many ways to make money as a hip-hop blogger. Here are some of the easiest ways:

• Join an ad network and earn money every time someone clicks an ad on your site
• Join an affiliate program and earn commission by recommending products and services you use to your readers
• Install a free e-commerce plugin and sell your own CDs, digital downloads and hip-hop related products
• Sell ​​advertising space directly to artists and record labels who want to promote their music through your site
• Turn your blog into a membership site and charge people a fee to access exclusive content
• Charge a small fee for each CD you review on your blog
• Charge people to post their rap videos on your blog

These are just some of the easy ways to make money as a hip-hop blogger. Experiment with each of these methods and see which ones earn you the most money. Or be creative and come up with something completely new. As long as you keep creating content and getting traffic, the money will come.

Step 5 – Promote your blog

Now that you have your hip-hop blog up and running, you need to start promoting it. The more targeted web traffic you get, the more money you are likely to make. Therefore, it is important that your blog is seen by as many hip-hop fans as possible. Here are some free ways to promote your hip-hop blog:

• Add your website to as many hip-hop friendly website directories as you can
• Become an active participant in hip-hop forums and conversations on other hip-hop blogs (be sure to include a link to your blog in your “signature”)
• Set up pages on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, and link to your blog.
• Talk to other bloggers about reviewing your site, exchanging links, and possibly writing guest posts.
• Write hip-hop related articles and submit them to article directories (like this one)

By following these quick and easy steps, you can start your own hip-hop blog and be on your way to rap profits in a matter of hours.