7 Ways to Make Money from a Blog

Blogs aren’t just mainstream any more; they’re ubiquitous. In Why Should My Business Have a Blog? I talk about how a blog can be a valuable adjunct to your existing business. But what about the flipside? What if you have a blog and want to turn it into a business, using your blog to make a profit?

Making money from a blog is possible and isn’t even particularly difficult any more. You don’t have to be famous or even have huge traffic (although how much money you make from your blog will depend on both of these factors to some extent). The seven ideas below will get you started. To make money from your blog you can:

Use advertising programs.

 These are more advertising program options for bloggers than ever before.Here are just five of the ever-expanding possibilities for making money from your blog by putting ads on your pages:
1.Google’s Adsense
2.BlogAds
3.Chitika eMiniMalls
4.Text Link Ads
5.AdGenta


Use affiliate programs.

With affiliate marketing, a company agrees to pay you a commission for helping to sell their products. Visitors see the company’s ad on your Web pages and, if they click through to the company’s Web site and do a particular thing, you’ll get paid. The particular thing the visitor has to do varies; some affiliate programs pay per click while others pay per lead or even per sale. These are four of the biggest (and most established) affiliate programs on the 'Net:

1.Amazon
2.Linkshare
3.ClickBank
4.Commisison Junction


Get sponsored by a company.

Get hired by a company.


Sign on to be a blogger.

Hubs or networks of blogs appear to be springing up all over the ‘Net, some of which are looking for people to write blogs and are willing to pay for it. Payment models vary. At Creative Weblogging, for instance, bloggers have the option of choosing either a fixed monthly payment in exchange for 10 posts a week, or a percentage share of the ad revenues. Two more examples of blog networks looking for bloggers at the time of writing are:

1.Weblogs.Inc.
2.AllBusiness.com’s Business Blogs


Create a blog to advertise a specific product/service.

Sell other intellectual property, such as ebooks, telecourses or consulting services, through your blog.


So the answer is, yes, you can make money from your blog. And with blogging becoming increasingly popular, there will be even more opportunities for making money from your blog coming – ideas that haven’t even been thought of yet. For the moment, for maximum income, you will need to focus on multiple income streams and perhaps even multiple blogs.