Monetized. The moment when your webpage, blog, or article has the opportunity to make money. It's one of the major stepping stones when moving from hobbyist to professional writer, blogger, web content producer.

Two of the most common ways to monetize content is listed on the Writer's Resource page. Google Adsense and Amazon.com affiliate programs are two of the most popular ways to get started. By adding these links to a page the page owner gets compensated a modest sum for each time a page visitor clicks an ad link. For Amazon.com there is the ability to get a small percentage of profits from sales that result from visitors to your page clicking through and purchasing something from Amazon.com.

These are not ways to get rich, however they can offset some of the costs for paying for maintaining a domain. I was able to purchase my domain name with a little extra birthday money I got from relatives. (Thanks Aunt Mary!) It is important to make investments and treat your writing as a business if the goal is to move from hobby writer to professional.

Having ads is only the beginning however. The more challenging part is the marketing. In order to make dollars instead of cents on a site there must be traffic. That is the magic X-factor that everyone searches for. What do people want to read? What will bring them to my site? What will make them come back? That is the holy grail of information that every content creator, no matter which medium they create with would love to know.

Being able to add ads to this site is merely the next step in the journey.

I am finding in the development of my writing style that a lot of my style is dependent upon creating  a space and a mood. I don't like to get lost in too many details because I feel there is a balance between creating a creative space for the reader's mind to visit allowing them to mentally walk around and experience it and to project themselves into it and see what comes back to them. 

I learned about this many years ago in chat rooms. Virtual conversations in an MSN community I hosted long ago called The Metaphysical Mixer. It was a place where people of all types of spiritual backgrounds would come together to meet and mingle. Speaking of many topics and of metaphysical experience. It was a fun time. 

In the chat rooms we would create a mood, a setting, we were around a campfire, or in a lavish chamber in India, we could be anywhere, passing around virtual food doing virtual activities. 

It is there during these collective meditations that I discovered something about what would grow to be my writing style. I like to go on a journey and take you with me. I like to watch the reaction of the reader and see what their personal experience adds to the scene. I love to get feedback about what they saw while in this mental holographic chamber.  Creating a space and a  mood is so important in successful writing.  

Take a moment to create a virtual space in your mind. Use all five sense to feel it, see it, smell it, touch it, and taste it.  After this space has been fully developed in your mind share it with us. I'd love to know what your virtual space is like.