Blogging is among today’s most profitable ways to earn money, and a lot of people now turn to blogs as an alternative source of income. Whether you are fond of writing or simply want to have your own space over the internet where you can talk about your views about life, you can actually make big profits from it by setting up a blog. Here are five effective tips on how to earn more money by having even just one blog:
1. Affiliate Programs and Viral Marketing.
This is probably the easiest and most popular way to earn money from your blog is by joining affiliate programs. Promoting products, sites and services of another company on your blog can bring you sufficient sums of income via referrals and commissions. Nowadays bloggers now make use of certain plug-ins given to them by the affiliate programs they have subscribed to, and upload them on their blog for their visitors to check out. When visitors click on the plug-ins, the clicks are transformed into referral links, so that whenever they purchase a product or service on the site, the blogger gets a commission.
Along with affiliate programs is viral marketing. Viral marketing is a form of ethical bribe to attract more visitors to subscribe on a certain website by means of offering highly useful products. These items include software downloads and e-books, which visitors can make use of in their everyday lives.
2. Consultations
Another great way in earning money through your blog is by offering consultation and speaking services. A lot of bloggers nowadays reap big income from this money-making scheme without even having a background in motivational speaking. All you need is build a good profile and offer credible advice to your readers.
You can then provide advice and consultations and charge an hourly rate to your subscribers, but first you have to be an expert in your chose niche. Possessing adequate knowledge about your chosen subject matter, being friends with the right people and creating a good name in the industry you chose can actually put you in a great position to offer consultation services in your blog.
3. Merchandise
Meanwhile, to those who have the talent for selling, then the blog is the best place to promote the items that you have on sale. A lot of small-business entrepreneurs nowadays try to make it big by posting their products on their blog, have reviews written about them, and attract interested parties to purchase them. You can then accept online orders for your items and be your own Amazon or eBay store.
You can hence transform your blog into an online boutique, wherein you can upload photos of the clothes, shoes, and accessories you sell, their price details and customer reviews, if there are any.
4. Advertising Programs
If you don’t want to exert much effort but still want to earn relatively satisfying income out of your blog, then you can do the traditional way of posting advertising programs on your blog. You can subscribe to AdSense so ads can be placed on the different parts of your blog, or on other ad programs such as AdBrite, Azoogle Ads, WidgetBucks, TextLink Ads, and Tribal Fusion, to name a few.
You can also opt for sponsors to keep your blog rolling in with big bucks. There are companies searching for blogs in which they can exclusively promote their products. Income from sponsorships comes in a per-post basis, thus it’s like getting paid to do feature and review certain items on your blog.
5. Blog Network Opportunities
Do you have a big circle of friends linked to your blog? Then you can actually make money from your network thanks to increasing blog writing opportunities. This calls for your already existing money making schemes such as merchandise, advertising programs and affiliate programs to be put into action as well.
In blog network opportunities, you can then promote your blog and become a guest blogger to other sites and blogs wherein you get to discuss your own blog and what you have to offer. Or you can also join in other talks and podcasts involving your niche, and through that you can plug what visitors can find in your blog. There are blog owners who are willing to pay other bloggers for these promotional services since it increases the popularity of their own site as well.
November 15th, 2008 at 9:26 am
These are all very interesting strategies! Great article. Very informative. I plan on trying affiliate marketing soon.
November 15th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Thanks for the tips. I’ll consider this list and implement it on my blogs.
November 15th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Good post.Every blogger should get paid for their efforts.However, in most of the cases blogger over do it by placing way too much ads on their blogs.It gets crowded and people don´t like blogs that are there just to earn money for the editor.Sometimes less is more.A few well placed adsense ads and one or two highly targeted affiliate programs work even better.Besides, giving too many options to the reader results in that he/she wont click on anything or buy anything.
November 16th, 2008 at 12:45 am
I had a question, how much per hour do bloggers normally charge for Consultations? If I am in the web design business, should I charge the same amount I would charge a normal client? Thanks for the great article, I look forward to your response.
November 16th, 2008 at 12:58 am
I’m thinking of adding a review section for all the related Clickbank products. My adsense revenue is in the tank!
November 16th, 2008 at 2:05 am
Good article. You cover on many ways on how to monetize a blog without actually tinkering with the blog itself, which is where too much of the focus is placed upon in my opinion.
Consultation and merchandising are good ways to make extra dollars. Most information is free in the North American internet scene, but there are also other ways to monetize.
I’d like to add that consultations can also be done in a video. Not exactly a consultation… but I guess some sort of a session through ustream, video is quite a big thing nowadays.
November 16th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Another way is to establish relationships with readers and then release your own product for really good money.
November 17th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
This article is very impressive. I hope that the Chinese Bloggers can earn a lot via blogging as well.
November 18th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
You mentioned “AdBrite, Azoogle Ads, WidgetBucks, TextLink Ads, and Tribal Fusion” as alternatives to adsense. Which of thes ad networks generates the highest eCPM?
Thanks
Shane
November 22nd, 2008 at 6:52 am
I'm not sure if the Chinese search engines have set up systems and tools conducive to affiliate marketing. I know baidu is the main search engine, do they have something similar to adwords?
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:58 am
5 great tips, but to make it good need a lot of good strategies.
March 13th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
wow great tips i will definitely put these tips to use because they are truly helpful
September 16th, 2009 at 7:33 am
wow will try this soon and post the result , anyway posting a nice review of some good affiliate product also helps to boost income