Making Money From Blogs
As blogs gets more and more sophisticated, both in terms of the software used to create them and the uses to which they can be put, the potential to make money from them has proportionally increased. Anyone with a basic grasp of blogging technology, a penchant for hard work and a determination to succeed can make a a good income through blogging. But most bloggers don’t for two simple reasons.
a) They overestimate the number of potential viewers who will visit their site and the amount of revenue their blogs can generate. Such inflated predictions invariably lead to disappointment when they fail to achieve their hoped for targets and the blogger loses interest.
b) Most novice bloggers hear or read about the ease with which large sums of money can be earned through blogging and think that just setting up a blog and adding content to it at regular intervals is sufficient to accomplish the same goal. The key to making money from blogs is to formulate a detailed and cogent plan of action and nurture it to fruition.
Having a large readership is fundamental if you want to make a good living off blogging. The more viewers your blog attracts, the greater the chances are that quality sponsors will want to advertise on it. However, everyday finds more and more new blogs being posted, so standing out of the crowd through just superior writing skills or a unique idea or product can no longer be taken as a given. Far too many bloggers devote their time and energy to posting content or updating their blog in the hope of attracting a large following. But all the hard work will be in vain if no one knows about your blog. You need, instead, to promote your blog vigorously in order to make it known to the widest possible audience. Apart from the usual forms of advertising, you could trade links with other established bloggers and make contacts with the wider blogging community. Building a loyal base that grows exponentially takes time, but pays dividends that more than offsets the hard work and initial frustration.
Once you have set up your blog and have a steadily increasing number of readers, how do you go about maximizing its the earning potential? The three simplest ways for a beginner are:
i) Advertise on Your Blog
One of the easiest ways to make money with blogs is through Google Adsense. You can easily sign up as an affiliate and add the code to your blog site. Google will place ads that are consistent with your web content and every time a visitor clicks on an ad on your blog, you will get a part of the profits. There are a lot of other advertising programs available like BlogAds, Text Link Ads, CrispAds, to name a few. If you position your Ads in those areas of your blog that catch the eye of your reader and if they are relevant to the topic you are writing about, there is no reason why your readers should not click them, since they have come to your blog site searching for the type of information you are delivering.
ii) Sell Your Own Products and Services
Almost all successful Internet marketers have their website linked to their blog as it carries content that complements the products sold on their site. Blogs are an excellent source of website traffic as they can easily be pinged to directories. This means that once you make a single post, you can be instantly added to all the directories and social bookmarking sites. You can even have multiple blogs optimized around keywords in your website and linked back to it. All this helps increase your site’s Page Rank, thus driving more traffic to your site.
iii) Sell Affiliate Products
If you don’t have a web site, you can still make money from your blog. Decide the type of goods you want to market and research the Internet to find the best companies that sell the products you are interested in promoting. Many companies offer affiliateships that can generate an income of 50%-75% off each sale that occurs through your referral. Use your blog to review the products in detail and as you gain recognition and build trust among your readers, they will tend to buy products recommended by you.
Just because blogging is comparatively easy, it does not follow that effort, creativity and planning are not required. You may have a great idea or product, you may even be a marketing whiz, but that still does not guarantee overnight success. However, on the positive side is the fact that it is not very difficult to get readers visiting your blog. Once you have a sizeable number with whom you have built a relationship based on trust and respect, money should start flowing into your coffers.
Naresh Belliyappa
http://www.articlesbase.com/online-promotion-articles/making-money-from-blogs-103256.html
How does one make money from blogs? How does one go about it or start it?
Just how does one make money from blogs? How does one start it or go about it? Is there a specific way to do it? Just how does one make money from blogs in the first place? Where does one get started in this? Do you have to advertise and use your credit card? Are there any certain kinds of rules you have to follow? Do you have to set the blog up yourself or are there ones that help you set up it up? How do you get advertisers on your blog? Are people limited to the number of blogs online? How often do you get paid?
Thanks for the help!
First you have to get lots of traffic. Advertise, send e-mails, talk about your blog in other places, then once you get lots of traffice search out an advertiser that makes sense. If your blog is mostly about cooking then look for food/pampered chef/kitchenaid type advertisers. Call companies and ask for their marketing departments. You can also seek sponsors on your blog. Good luck, you will need to get several thousand hits a day to do well.
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just send me $50 and i will give you all the secrets!
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Advertising Programs – Perhaps the most obvious changes in the past few months have been with the addition of a variety of viable advertising options for bloggers. The most common way bloggers seem to earn money online is via the contextual ad program from Google – Adsense. Another two popular ones with many is BlogAds. A more recent addition that many are using successfully are Chitika’s eMiniMalls and CrispAds, Text Link Ads.
Adgenta, Azoogle Ads, Intelli Txt, Peak Click, DoubleClickTribal Fusion, Adbrite, Clicksor, Industry Brains, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, AVN, Pheedo, Adknowledge, YesAdvertising, RevenuePilotTextAds, SearchFeed, Target Point, Bidvertiser, Fastclick Value Click and OneMonkey (to name just some of the options – I’m sure I’ve forgotten some) and there is a smorgasbord of options. Of course there is more to come with MSN Adcenter and YPN both in beta testing and with a variety of other advertising system currently in development (so I hear).
RSS Advertising – The past 12 months have seen some advances in RSS Advertising also. I’m yet to hear of any bloggers making big money through it to this point – but as improvements are made to the ad programs exploring this I’m sure we’ll start to see examples of it being profitable.
Sponsorship – In addition to the array of advertising programs that are available to join there is a growing awareness in the business of the value and opportunity that exists for them to advertise directly on blogs. I’m hearing more and more examples of this and have been fortunately to have a couple of ad campaigns of my own in the past month – one with Adobe a couple of weeks ago and another just completed with Ricoh for a new digicam over at my Digital Camera Blog. These are not isolated cases – as I say I know of many blogs exploring sponsorship with advertisers at present and suspect we’ll see more of it in the year ahead. Sponsorship is also happening on a post by post basis with some bloggers being paid to write on certain topics by companies – either in one off or a regular fashion – and they are able to make big money from their blogs doing so.
Affiliate Programs – There are larger affiliate programs like Amazon, Linkshare, Clickbank and Commission Junction but also literally thousands of others from the large to the very small.
Digital Assets – Increasing numbers of bloggers have been developing other digital assets to support and add revenue streams to their blogs. By this I mean that I’m increasingly seeing e-books, courses and tele-seminars being run by bloggers. My recent foray into this with the first series of the six figure blogging course that Andy and I ran a few weeks ago and have just released the study version of. This type of activity will only increase in future – in fact this week I’ve seen numerous examples of bloggers running courses.
Blog Network Opportunities – with the rise in popularity of Blog Networks – bloggers are also being presented with more places to earn an income from their blogging – by writing for and with others. While it might be difficult to get a writing gig with one of the bigger networks – there are plenty who are always asking for new bloggers to join and who are willing to pay bloggers using a variety of payment models. While there are distinct advantages of blogging for yourself – blogging for an established network who will handle a lot of the set up/promotion/admin/SEO etc has it’s advantages also. More and more bloggers are combining writing for themselves on their own blogs with taking on blog network blogs as additional income streams.
Business Blog Writing Opportunities – as blogging has risen in it’s profile as a medium more and more businesses are starting blogs. Many of these companies have internal staff take on blogging duties – but an increasing number of them are hiring specialist bloggers to come on and run their blogs. I know of a number of bloggers who in the past month or two have been approached for such paid work. Check out Bloggers for Hire if you’re looking for this type of work.
Non Blogging Writing Opportunities – Also becoming more common are bloggers being hired to write in non blogging mediums. Manolo’s recent coup of a column in the Washington Post is just one example of this as bloggers are increasingly being approached to write for newspapers, magazines and other non blog websites. Along side this is the rise of bloggers as published book authors – this is to the extent that one blogger I spoke with this week complained to me that they were one of the few bloggers than they knew who didn’t have a book deal!
Donations – Tip Jars and donation buttons have been a part of blogging for years now but this last year saw a number of bloggers go full time after fundraising drives. Perhaps the most high profile of these was Jason Kottke of kottke.org who through the generosity of his readership was able to quit his job and become a full time blogger.
Flipping Blogs – Also more common in 2005 was the practice of ‘Blog Flipping’ – or selling of blogs. This has happened both on an individual blog level (I can think of about 20 blogs that sold this year) but also on a network level (the most obvious of these being the 8 figure sale of Weblogs Inc to AOL).
Merchandising – My recent attempt to sell ProBlogger.net T-shirts wasn’t a raging success, but it is an example of how an increasing number of bloggers are attempting to make a few extra dollars from their blogs by selling branded products through programs like Cafepress (although I have to say they’ve lost one of my own orders and are being quite unresponsive to my requests to follow it up at present). While I didn’t have a lot of success with merchandising – quite a few larger blogs are seeing significant sales – especially blogs with a cult following. I’m not at liberty to discuss details – but I know of one largish blog which will see sales over $20,000 in merchandise for the calendar year of 2005.
Consulting and Speaking – While it has been popular for established consultants to add blogs to their businesses we’re also starting to see bloggers with no consulting background able to make money by charging readers for their time in consulting scenarios BECAUSE of the profile that their blogs have built them. Blogging has the ability to establish people as experts on niche topics and we all know the value of being perceived as an expert. I spoke to one blogger last month who charges himself out at over $200 an hour for speaking and consulting work – his area of expertise was something that he knew little about 18 months ago – but through his blog he’s become a leader in his field and a minor celebrity in his industry.
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problogger.net
You can’t make money from blogs…oh wait I just didn’t read your whole question haha–just like you do. You need to read peoples whole question before making judgements about them. Just a tip for the future
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you were rude in answering my question and have a negative attitude without knowing the facts