Starting a blog is a great way to share your thoughts and opinions with a larger audience. No matter what your interests are, the odds are good that others will want to hear what you have to say. You might write about the issues of working from home and raising kids at the same time, the healthy recipes and cooking ideas that your family loves or all the new tech gadgets and video games arriving in stores. When you know how to make money from your blog, you can turn your hobby into an actual career.
Affiliate Marketing
One of the top ways to make money from blogging is with affiliate ads. An affiliate ad is an ad that runs on your site from a specific company. When one of your readers clicks the ad, it registers that click as coming from your blog. If that reader buys anything from the site the link goes to, you will get a percentage of the total amount spent. Some online shopping sites let you download widgets that you can use on your blog. These widgets let you select the products that you want to sell on your blog. You can search for products relating to your posts.
Sign Up for Adsense
Adsense is a program offered by Google that allows you to make money via both clicks and views. You will need a bank account to sign up for this program, but Google will deposit the money that you earn into your account when you hit a certain amount. Google tries to find ads that relate to your posts, but you’ll need to use the right keywords to get the best ads that will make you money.
Offer Ads
Once you have a group of loyal readers and a number of unique page views coming in each month, you can offer ads for sale on your site and let companies and other websites come to you. You’ll generally want to place an ad on the top or side of the page that states you have ad space available and information on how those looking to buy ads can contact you. The more popular your blog is, the more money you can make. Most blog owners charge different amounts based on the size of the ad, the location of the ad on the page and how long it runs.
Give Readers Something
If you have readers who come back to your blog often, you can make money with things that you sell to those readers. Many blog owners sell e-books through their sites. You can self-publish through an online platform that will advertise for you and pay you a set amount for each book that you sell, but you can also package and sell that book on your own. This lets you set the price for the book and get a larger amount each time that you sell a copy. Depending on the focus of your blog, you might offer training sessions, online networking events and other things that are available for a small fee.
Do Paid Reviews
A smart way to make money off your blog is with paid reviews. This is best for blog owners who already write reviews. You can contact companies and ask about products or let those companies come to you. Each review that you write should include a comment at the beginning or end that the company paid you to write the review. This is a great way to try out new products and share your thoughts. Some companies may send you free products but not pay you for the review. Once you finish trying out the product, you can sell it to make a little extra cash.
Several sites now offer blogging platforms that you can use for free. You can even customize the platform to change the layout of the page, the colors used and the widgets that give readers more information. Some of the top ways to make money off a blog include doing paid reviews, affiliate marking and giving readers something unique.
