Make Money Blogging: 5 tips

Blogs can be a business themselves bringing in money from advertising and product sales and more. Blogs whose primary purpose is supporting an existing business or venture can similarly earn some extra cash.

Some ideas for making money from blogs follow, but first realize that you need a "good blog." There are plenty of resources on blogging well and we won't cover that here.

Secondly realize that although there are plenty of people earning a great supplemental income from blogging, few quit their day job.

Here are 5 different ways you can make money blogging:

1) Pay Per Click Advertisements

You can try "pay per click" advertisements, which pay you anywhere between a few pennies to a few dollars every time someone clicks on an ad.

There are several choices including the extremely popular Google AdSense, Kanoodle BrightAds, Chitika and the Yahoo! Publisher Network. These ads are easy to signup for and you can run them on most blogs, but check their terms of service well.

They perform very well for some blogs but not well on others -- you need to experiment.

It's important to "tune" the ads -- experiment to see what works well. In general, you want the ads "above the fold," i.e. visible without scrolling, and colors choosen to blend in with your blog (or Web site). For AdSense this specifically means getting rid of the borders!

2) Sell advertising space

I know the word "sell" scares a lot of people, including me, but blog advertisers will often approach you if you have an established blog, and you can also use advertising networks to do the selling for you such as CrispAds.com, PerformancingAds.com and AdBrite.com.

You can add an "advertise with us" link prominently displayed or perhaps simply display some ads for free to make it clear you accept advertising. It's simple to get "free" advertisors; I tapped some consulting clients who were quite happy.

Ads could be graphical, simple text links, or just about anything.

3) Create and sell information products

Even if the same content is spread amongst six or twelve months of blog posts, many people will happily pay for an updated and organized copy, perhaps packaged as a book, e-book, course or audio product. You can use reader's comments, questions and the popularity of posts to help determine what direction to go. You can even survey readers about what products they would like, which is a great idea.

One simple idea is to do a teleseminar, perhaps even for free, and then sell the recording.

4) Sell other people's products and services via affiliate programs

This means you get paid a commission when you sell.

There are lots of places to look for appropriate affiliate products and services you might sell including companies like LinkShare, Commission Junction and ClickBank, which represent multiple merchants including some really major ones like eBay, Sony, and Dell.

Plenty of people make six figures promoting affiliate programs. I make a few bucks promoting the Web services I personally use. See the sidebar for details!

Make sure you only sell things you personally like and approve of.

5) Blog professionally for someone else, maybe a blog network or some other organization

There are many different payment models including payment per post and payment per percentage of advertising revenue. A great place to look for paid blogging positions is at the Problogger job board at jobs.problogger.net. Essentially you’re being paid to be a writer.

You probably won’t get rich blogging for someone else, but as one blogger for a blogging network said to me, "It pays my mortgage."


So there are some quick ideas on how to make money from your blog.

Remember that there is no one match fits all solution; you need to experiment and find what works for you. And don't expect to start making money immediately! If you need quick cash, blogging isn't the way to go. Maybe you should empty out your basement and garage on eBay instead.

And for over 100 tips on successful blogging, I invite you to grab your free copy of my ebook Secrets of Successful Blogging, just Click Here or go to http://www.secretsofsuccessfulblogging.com