Making Money With Blogs
Is it possible to make money from blogs? Quick answer is “yes”. Long answer is “it depends”.
There comes a time when a blog stops being a blog and starts to become a website. I am not here to make that distinction, but let’s just assume that all blogs should be considered websites and not part of a separate genre of the web.
Google Adsense
This is what started the whole avalanche of people attempting to make money from their blogs. Google made life so much easier for everyone by allowing the integration of ads on one’s site so simple.
However, not every site is made for Adsense and those that do have an uphill climb to becoming a huge success. However, if you are just looking to pay your hosting bills you should accomplish that fairly easily over time if you follow these Google Adsense Tips.
Amazon Associates
One of the more popular choices in the blogging community since someone is always reviewing a CD, book or movie. Anyone with a website can join and you have the option of selecting a specific product or using a datafeed to create whole stores.
Checkout my writeup of Amazon Associates.
MarketBanker
Receive ads similar to Adsense, but take control of how much you charge for those ads being on your site. They collect a 25% commision for every ad they sell on your site, but also take the work out of having to deal with payments and ad rotations.
Checkout my review of MarketBanker.
BlogAds
Similar to MarketBanker in almost every sense of the word. You usually see people using graphical ads instead of pure text ads when using BlogAds. An example of site that does really well with this system is Instapundit.
Sponsored Entries
If your blog becomes popular enough you may find yourself in the position of having companies contact you to review their products/services and write entries about them.
ClickBank
ClickBank is a site that sells many different products usually geared towards entreprenuers, but the selection is varied. If you can find some products that fit in the subject of your site then it wouldn’t hurt to put them up. Signup is free.
Affiliate Sensor
You have to first signup for ClickBank before you can get started with this one.
Affiliate Sensor gives you many different ad options from full graphical type ads to Adsense lookalikes. They use products from the ClickBank mall as advertisements so when someone clicks on the ad you don’t get paid unless they purchase the product as well.
It is free to signup, but they display ads with their user id 5% and the person’s id that you signed up under 5% of the time. This is still a great option for anyone as your id is up 90% of time. If you are looking for something to replace your Google Adsense PSA ads then this is a good option.
Photography
Many people like to post pictures on their websites. Andy Budd and Adam Polselli are just a small sample of bloggers that post beautiful images on their sites. I always wondered why they don’t put a small “buy now” button under those.
They don’t have to try and make it a business, but letting people know that they have the option to buy the images wouldn’t hurt either. They could give users the option to either license the photos or buy them outright (for a larger fee of course). I think this has huge potential for supplemental income and would not be hard to implement.
Think about it. You continue to do what you have been doing for some time, yet you have the potential to make some money from it without even trying. Sounds like a plan to me.
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POSTED IN: Online Money
3 opinions for Making Money With Blogs
bryan
Aug 17, 2004 at 8:31 am
Well obviously these tips wouldn’t work for every blog. You can’t just stick some ClickBank ads up there and hope that people buy those products if your blog is just a personal diary type thing. However, I do think with some creative thinking there are ways to make money from any blog that is targetted towards a specific audience.
Scrivs
Aug 17, 2004 at 8:33 am
You are right bryan in that not every single blog out there should have the intention of making money. Indeed only the highly focused ones can even hope to get off the ground when it comes to money.
Problem is when you create a blog and your first intention is money you are already in trouble. Money is a nice goal to have with blogs, but not to be cliche, there is more to them than that.
Chris
Aug 17, 2004 at 8:54 am
I would be surprised to see anyone making a living from a blog. I think only the very, very top bloggers can even hope to achieve a decent income from blogging and the majority of those are political blogs. Unfortunately, the market is too hard to break into right now to make a sole living just from a blog.
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