At the BlogHer conference that took place this summer in Chicago, my 16-year-old daughter Chloe gave her first-ever conference presentation. She was on a panel about “professional blogging,” based on success with her blog about the the popular virtual pets site Neopets.com. Her blog, “The Ultimate Neopets Cheats Site,” makes her about $35 per day (from Google AdSense), and she only puts a few hours per month into maintaining the site and blogging on it. Not a bad ROI on her time!

A search engine optimized blog is an ASSET. It makes money for you while you sleep. It drives traffic whether you’ve blogged that week or not. Ideally you want a blog that is frequently updated, but it’s not essential. Steve Spangler, founder and CEO of an educational toy retailer, has a blog that drives over 13% of his ecommerce site’s sales, yet he only posts 3 to 5 times per month.

Note that Steve is on the Advanced Search panel session along with me and Elaine Wu this week at the Shop.org Annual Summit. Do try to make the session if you can!

Also check out the video highlights of Chloe on her panel at BlogHer. I’m so proud!