Having a blog is your opportunity throw your voice into the wind and have it travel around the world. Subjects that you can opine about are virtually unlimited. Describe your kid's first birthday or give away your grandma's secret cake recipe, but don't tell grandma. Your blog can be all about you and your interests or conversely some famous movie star or politician that you are zealously following online. Whatever it's about, after your blog is up, chances are that you are paying ISP and or hosting fees for throwing your powerful voice into the wind. So how about making it pay for its own weight?
Writing diaries and journals has been a popular activity since paper and pen were readily available. So when the internet rolled around, it only made sense that writers put their words on the computer. These diaries or journals weren't called blogs until Joran Barger phrased the term "weblog." It was through a simple joke from a blogger, Peter Merholz that cut weblog into we blog. Other bloggers began picking up the word blog and soon it spread like wildfire.
Bloggers were largely ignored as a force to be reckoned with until a specific televised event had critics up in arms. Some remarks made by 2002 Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, not shown by the media, were heavily criticized by bloggers. In fact bloggers made such a terrific din online about issues that the mainstream media had missed, that it raised a controversy at a national level which wound up with a very wounded and chastised Senator Lott stepping down unhappily from his lofty position.
A famous news anchor, Dan Rather was also fired after bloggers proved that documents used during the reporting were in fact forged. Yeah, in case you didn't know, that's what happened to dear Dan. This brought blogging into a whole new light and forced the media to deal with this new reckoning force. Now, blogging is well within the reach of any individual even many of those who possess only a cell phone.
One way to make money without actually going through the trouble of writing a blog is to buy and sell the domain names of blogs. Blogs that aren't generating a lot of visitors or revenue can usually be bought for a very cheap price. Bloggers sometimes get bored of their blogs and put them up for sell. Refurbishing then reselling these at higher price to the right buyer for a quick profit can be a lucrative pastime.
The goal of many advertisers is to get customers to buy their products. To do this, they spend millions on advertising. You can profit from those advertising dollars by allowing those advertisers to place ads in your blog. Ad revenue sites such as Google Adsense, and Adbright can help you start earning ad dollars very quickly. Some think that the trick is to pick ads that fit the blog content, however in reality Google scans your blog and knows what kind of content ads to place there already.
The great thing about ads is that you don't need to constantly monitor your blog to get them. Visitors click whenever they want. Once the ads are in place, the residual income is yours to enjoy. There is no need to rotate them because the ad-services do this chore for you.
Affiliate marketing is another revenue generator. You sell the products from your blog for a percentage of the profits. Your blog can be a platform for this potential gold mine. Use your blog to emphasize why the customer should buy this product. It helps a great deal if you are familiar with it.
Check out places like Clickbank, Commission Junction, and LinkShare for finding the right related products to put on your blog. There are literally thousands of products that you can earn a commission on. More sales mean more money for you.
The biggest mistake that bloggers sometimes make is to overload the blog with too many products. The content should reflect what you are selling. Consider selling like items in one blog and starting another one for different types of products. Diversify to give yourself the most chance at making money.
Getting more people to visit your blog is important to generating sales or getting more ad revenue. The more people who visit your site, the more potential for income that you have. Traffic can be directed toward your blog by commenting in other topic related blogs and leaving your own blog address in those. Consider putting your blog address in your signature as your comment in forums and don't be shy to put your blog url/address in your Facebook, Hi5, Orkut, Linkln or Myspace accounts for more curiousity seeking traffic.
Yahoo and MSN search engines prioritize blogs. To keep your blog on top, keep adding new content. Alert your readers to new content by submitting your blog to many of the ping services available. New content will automatically send a ping/alert to the 100-200 search engines particularly if you have added more ping services than the default rpc.pingomatic.com that is set up in your blog writing options area. This will re-prioritize your blog to higher levels in the search engines.
Making money from your blog is a realistic and achievable goal. It does take some work and elbow grease type investment to figure out the combination that works best for you. When it does succeed, its often a pleasant surprise to see small checks coming in continuously.Many of the ideas mentioned above are general commonsense ideas. Some of you may have known about them, and for some there may be just a little new information here. Understand however, that while these are all great ideas, implementing them in exactly the right way to make a ton of money is typically a trial and error process that many of you can relate to. Suppose however that there was a way to cut through the wasted trials and use an existing formula that simply works? Read a review of 5 of the web's best known blog authors, whom all make 7 to 8 figure salaries from their blogs.
Many of us have exciting blogs or would like one. Very few of us, however have blogs earning us more than $50 a month. 5 of the big boys earning 8 figure incomes spill their guts in this free report. See what they have to say.Earning Revenue from your Blog.
Does this article infringe on a copyright?
If you believe this article has been plagiarized or infringes on a copyright, please contact us immediately via our support desk and provide us with the Title, URL and proof of infringement. Any member found to be in violation of our terms of service will be terminated.
Articles are provided for informational or entertainment purposes only. We do not endorse any of the views or products mentioned within an article, nor is there any financial compensation for said articles. We may, however, be financially compensated by other means. Please read our fullEarnings Disclaimer for details.