Blogging is a long and winding road. Credit Anthony Stanley.
It’s easy to make money blogging right? Bloggers just play on the Internet all day while sipping their grande lattes at Starbucks and watch the money roll in.
It’s not as easy as some make it out to be, Making money with your blog takes an investment of time and energy. Yes, it can be done, but it’s hard–trust me!
I am starting to see a trickle of income from various sources, but only after having written 200+ articles. It takes time, work, friends, patience, and of course an audience–thats you!
Blogging is about helping others and forming a community; the money is visible proof you’re doing a good job.
How Do Professional Bloggers Make Money?
This is a complex question whole websites are dedicated towards. I’ll only touch on a few subjects and share resources that have helped myself and others make money blogging.
Content Really is King
Without words on a page and a compelling message to share it’s highly unlikely you’ll make money blogging. Find a topic, a cause, a community, a niche and start educating and helping others master your subject of expertise.
Resources for Writing and Content:
- Copyblogger - Awesome writing resources. Dig into the archives.
- Jeff Goins - learn how to fall back in love with writing. His books include: You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One), The Writer’s Manifesto, and Wrecked: When a Broken World Slams into your Comfortable Life.
- Check these other 20 blogs about writing if you still need help.
Affiliate Programs: The Trickle of Gold
Affiliate programs pay a certain amount if you refer clients or leads to their website or help them sell a product. Almost all companies have an affiliate program of some sort. This can be very lucrative for niche sites with a large interactive audience.
Affiliate programs I use:
- Amazon Associates- You’ll make commission off sales from books, clothing, to almost any product sold. A must to have in your toolkit.
- Google Affiliate Network – This is a newer affiliate program, but many major companies like Target have joined. With Google’s muscles they’ll only grow with time.
- Commission Junction- Start here since it is one of the oldest and largest affiliate programs around.
- Flex Offers- They represent a a wide array of advertisers not carried by Commission Junction.
- 48 Days.Net - Affiliate Program for Dan Miller.
- E-Junkie.com- Affiliate program I participate in for @8bit products like my Premium WordPress Theme (Standard Theme).
Sell Ads, Banner ads, and Evil Pop-ups
These are the billboards of the interwebs. Some blink, others play movies, others pop up before you can even click on the site–evil indeed.
Ads assist the content to keep flowing and the advertisers to sell their products and ideas. Beware of overdoing the ads and distracting the reader from doing their main job(s)–reading and connecting.
The above affiliate programs will also have banner ads to add to the sidebar or to the header or footer of your site.
Platforms to sell ads on your blog:
Google Adsense- This is the most common system to implement. You’ll be able to ad ads to individual articles and anywhere on your site.
Beacon Ads- Advertising network for church and Christian websites.
BuySellAds Large platform to sell ad space.
This is just the tip of the iceberg as many platforms exists for various niche sites.
Create Products and Coaching Services
If you have a platform and an audience. This is a great opportunity to create a product or a service to meet the needs of your readers. This is where many bloggers make money since they’ve established themselves as experts in their field.
- E-books
- Online Courses or Teleconferences.
- Workshops
- Personalized Coaching
- Speaking Events
Text Links and Sponsored Posts: Beware
The practice of being paid for text links isn’t as popular as it used to be since Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, which penalize suspected paid text links. Blog more than 5 minutes and you’ll receive emails wanting to place ads and text links on your site.
This is a controversial subject on which there are many warnings to discontinue this once lucrative practice.
- Why Did Our Page Rank Go Down- from THE authority Matt Cutts
- UnNatural Link Warnings and Blog Networks- SEO Moz.
- The Death of Paid Link Networks - Site Pro News
Books to Understand Blogging and Monetize Your Site
- Darren Rowse (Problogger) has built a nice little empire online. His book (ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income) helped me understand blogging and monitizing my site emensly. I still re-read sections from time to time.
- John Saddington (Tentblogger) has several books worth reading. You can find most of the content on his site for free, but these e-books put them in readable form.
More Articles for Making Money Blogging
- How to Make Money with a Blog- Christian PF
- How do Bloggers make Money?- Good article by a great resource Blogging Your Passion.
- How I Replaced my Wife’s Day Job Income with This Blog- By Peter from Bible Money Matters
- Smart Passive Income- Pat Flynn’s site for building successful niche sites.
- How to Monetize Your Blog Without Selling Your Soul- by one the most read bloggers Michael Hyatt
Do you have experience making money online? What resources helped you along the way?
The above may contain affiliate links in which I am compensated. See my Disclosure Policy for more info.
