Blogging is one of the best ways to share information, get
publicity, market something and even elicit calls to action. But perhaps the best part about blogging
is that it can actually make you money.
By Cassy van Eeden
Despite the obvious profit that could be made by marketing
and selling a product, there are several ways to earn money just by owning and
running a blog.
What do I need to
know?
As Darren
Rowse, author and writer for ProBlogger.net,
says, while there are many options when it comes to making money through
blogging, each blog is unique. This means that “[some] income streams will work
on some blogs better than others – the key is to experiment with as many as
possible to see what works best for you”.
What are my choices?
The list of money-making options for bloggers is endless.
However, Rowse explains
that the most popular – and the most likely to suit your blog – methods include
Google AdSense, Chitika and Amazon Associates.
“I continue to use AdSense with amazing effect on my blogs,”
says Rowse. “It is a quick and easy way for bloggers of all sizes to display
ads that are relevant to their content.”
“Chitika continues to be a great performer for me on my
blogs,” says Rowse. He recommends that product-related blogs make use of
Chitika as it specifically geared towards this kind of content. “They’ve now
earned me over a quarter of a million dollars – as a result I can’t recommend
them enough,” he adds.
The Amazon
Associates programme gives bloggers the opportunity to choose from over
a million products to advertise to their readers. The programme has simple
linking tools to meet a blogger’s specific needs when monetizing their blog.
These are just three of the many platforms that allow
bloggers to monetize their content. But how do they work?
How does it work?
There are three main types of blog advertising
opportunities: pay-per-click, pay-per-impression and pay-per-action.
Blogging expert Susan Gunelius explains that pay-per-click means that “the
advertiser pays the blogger each time someone clicks on the advertisers’ ad”.
Pay-per-impression, as Gunelius writes, is when “the
advertiser pays the blogger each time the ad appears on the blog”.
Finally, pay-per-action refers to the advertiser paying the
blogger each time someone clicks on the ad and performs an action such as making
a purchase, adds Gunelius.
What else is there?
Two further ways of monetising a blog is through affiliate
marketing or paid content or products.
Affiliate marketing, as writer and founder of Startup
College Mike Fishbein, explains, affiliate marketing is marketing someone else’s
products and being paid on a commission basis. “As an affiliate marketing, you
will receive a unique URK to the product. If someone buys the product after
clicking through your link, you receive a commission,” he says.
Using paid content or products often trumps affiliate
marketing “because it’s your product and not someone else’s, you keep 100% of
the revenue”, says Fishbein.
Some paidproducts and services include writing and charging for an ebook;
creating premium content that is only available to paying subscribers; offering
a video course on the topic of the blog and offering consulting or coaching
services for a fee.
Have you monetised your blog? Are there any other ways to make
money out of blogging that you want to share with others? Let us know in the
comments below.