Depending on where you live, an ideal blog that you can create and monetize is a travel blog - or I suppose destination blog would be a more appropriate title - about your city.
Obviously if you live in a one-horse town of 500-1,000 people, you might not find much to write about. Unless it's a ghost town which still draws tourists who want to imagine it as it once was, perhaps.
But if it's a good-sized town or city that does get a lot of tourist traffic, set yourself up as an expert.
Create a blog (and you can download a free, fully illustrated guide on how to set up a blog at blogger.com by going to our website at FreelanceWriterMagazine.com) and start writing, in a systematic way - everything about what there is to see and do in the city and in surrounding areas.
Are there yearly activities that you can give tips about?
For example, I live in Cheyenne, Wyoming and every year we have Cheyenne Frontier Days which is our big tourist draw - more tourists come here for this two week time period then for the rest of the year combined!
Where are the best places for people to stay when they come here? Where are the hotels, motels and campgrounds in relation to the nearest laundromats, restaurants, museums and so on?
Make sure you take lots of photos, and identify each of these photos with ALT text so they can be properly indexed by Google and other Search Engines.
How can you monetize your blog? Well, again, use Google AdSense - you earn a few cents each time someone clicks on one of your ads - and the ads are related to your topics, by the way - and join Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble as an affiliate.
Suggested topics you can write about on your Destination blog.
From whatever highway a traveler might be using - going north, south, east or west, where is the nearest pharmacy, Walmart and Target, and so on. Give directions of how to get to each, as well as an address.
Give directions to each museum or sports stadium in the city, coming from east, west, north or south. Yes, many folks have GPS, but for those who don't... they'll enjoy this.
Drive around and document any confusing street signs or roadworks - either by day or at night. (For example, here in Cheyenne, we have a Central Avenue that goes from two broad lanes to three narrower lanes. If you're not aware of it, you 'll keep driving straight and end up straddling two lanes instead of getting into the correct lane.)
I'm sure other ideas will come to you if you think about it for a while!
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