How To Make Money From Blog

How Do Blogs Make Money?

Let’s look at how blogs make money. Whenever I’m asked that question I answer with the following three methods –

1. Advertising
2. Affiliate marketing
3. Selling products and services

You can make money with your blog by placing advertisements on it, by selling products as an affiliate where you earn a commission for each sale you refer, or by selling products and services of your own. There are many derivatives of these three methods, but at the top level, this pretty much covers it.
To break that down into more practical ideas, here are some of the ways bloggers currently make a living online.

• You can place Google Adsense advertisements on your blog
• Allow sponsors to pay you money for placing banners on your blog
• Go to a site like Clickbank and find a product you can write about and promote as an affiliate
• Create an ebook, set of audio or video CDs or DVDs, or home study course you sell them from your blog
• Launch a membership site and promote it via your blog
• Conduct a series of live webinars that you charge people money to attend
• Host your own seminar or workshop and sell tickets to it on your blog (and record it to make a DVD product you can sell)
• Add a shopping cart to your blog and source physical goods at wholesale you can sell at retail
• Provide consulting or coaching services and charge by the hour for your time

Other options to earn a return from your blog that doesn’t directly result in money in your pocket, but can eventually, and are definitely a benefit, include…

• Generating a well known brand, creating mass exposure for your name or what you do – and possibly become famous
• Invitations to speak at conferences and seminars
• An opportunity to publish a print book or several
• Consulting to large companies resulting possibly in employment opportunities or large retainer fees
• Free products to sample and review on your blog
• VIP or press access to industry only events and parties

Now you know how blogs make money in terms of concepts and some practical ideas to implement the concepts, next let’s take a look at some case studies of bloggers I’ve personally met or interviewed and how they have made money from their blogs.