photo credit: Mr. T in DC

Many blog owners try to monetise their site from day 1. However, the longer you hold out to monetise your site the more opportunites will come your way.

In this post we look at some of the ways you can make money from your blog. Let’s start with:

First focus on community

As you build a community of regular visitors and get lots of comments on your blog you will start to see the following:

1. Enthusiastic Fans – re blogging, re tweeting or posting on Facebook your articles and posts
2. Free product offers from companies recognising your growing fan base
3. People who want to do business with you
4. Joint ventures, partnerships and friendships

At some point however, you’ll want to be thinking about earning money from your blog. The important thing to note though is blogs themselves do not generate any income. This may come as a surprise to some people. But much like a shop store does not generate any income (unless you’re a landlord), it’s selling the products and services which generate the sales, the same is true with blogs and websites.

Start earning money

Most people start to think of monetisation by hosting Google Adsense ads on their site. Whilst Adsense is quick to set up, and requires no maintenance, Even with a ton of traffic you are unlikely to return much of an income.

Johnny B Traunt has said after 9 months of hardwork he managed to get $111 – 9 months!

Advertising

Whilst Google adsense will never make you a fortune, you can earn respectable income from hosting ads. However here you will have to be your own advertising agency and sell ads directly to clients.

Business Deals

Contact other business who offer complimentary services to your self (maybe you’re a web developer and you team up with a designer), you could offer packaged deals to your readers including the combined services or recommend your business partner in a contextual sense on a pay per click basis. For example say you mention that you always do business with business xxxx, every time someone clicks the link you’ll earn some money.

Affiliates

Similar to getting paid for recommending a business parter for a product or service you love, you could consider joining a recognised affiliate program and sell the products or services of a merchant. Have a look at Clickbank and search on the products and services they show on there.

The good thing about clickbank is that you can actually see if the product or service you are interested in actually sells.

Amazon too has a great affiliate programme and there are many others too, just do a search on affiliates.

Online store

Whether it’s an ebook or physical product, you could sell it online through your own online store. In fact, this needn’t be difficult to set up. Sites such as e-junkie will host all of the back end and let you show shopping cart buttons on your site – all very classy. You can either buy products in and sell them this way or you could make your own such as the already mentioned ebook or podcast.

Consulting

As your number of readers increase you may be able to Market your services as an ‘expert’ and help others do whatever you did to build up your following. Maybe at first to build your brand you’ll want to do it for free in return for feedback, but over time there’s no reason this can’t bring you in an significant income.

So that’s my thoughts. How else could you monetise your blog?

Related posts:

1. You never know what a blog will lead to
2. How to Fund a baby or any other dream
3. Blog Giveaway: The 20 x 7 Rule – The Result
4. A time for reflection
5. How to Write your ebook part 5