For the new bloggers out there I’ve compiled a list of links for you to read about how bloggers make money with their blogs.
In rummaging through the blogoshere looking for articles on making money with your blog, you run into the word “Monetize” or “Monetization” a lot. Monetize simply means doing something with your blog to make money with it or from it, and there are many ways.
Recently, Daniel over at DailyBlogTips wrote about 28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website. In turn, Yaro Starak of Entrepreneurs-Journey dissected Daniel’s article in a kind of a cut-to-the-chase, what works best when monetizing your blog. I love these kinds of blog posts because you get a huge list from a pro blogger of how folks are making money with their blogs and then another experienced pro blogger validates and paves a path for newbies to focus on when and how to consider monetization techniques. Some of the monetization methods Yaro talks about that work better are:
- Banner Advertising – You can sell space on your blog for banners using your own pricing structure – monthly, annually, etc.
- Text Link Ads – Although Google implemented guidelines rgarding TLAs, some folks still use them and are making money.
- Affiliate Marketing – Sell something for someone else on your blog and you get a percentage of the sale.
- Premium Content and Membership/Mentoring Sites – A good example of this is the course Teaching Sells by Brian Clark at Copy Blogger. You pay a monthly or quarterly, etc. fee for premium stuff – information, services, technology, etc.
- Selling your own website or blog
Other ways to make money from your blog is by offering your knowledge and skills as services. Chris Garrett at ChrisG.com has a nice page explaining what services he offers. Michael Martine of Remarkablogger does this as described on his blog consulting page.
Show Me The Money
I think it’s great when bloggers share how they’re making money with their blogs and how much. Here’s a list of bloggers who do that:
- John Chow’s January 2008 Income – John has a ton of great marketing information at his blog.
- Caroline Middlebrook’s Stats & Analysis for January 2008 – Caroline is the up and coming blogger we all love to watch and read because she’s new, honest and authentic, and the poularity of her blog has grown fast. Her excellent guides she’s written have helped her tremendously – The Big Juicy Twitter Guide and How to Develop Money-Making Niche Sites with WordPress.
- Ben Cook at BloggingExperiment also has his blogging income report published on his blog – January’s Blog Income Report.
- Yaro Starak talks about his income for 2007 in these 3 articles:
- Darren Rowse of Problogger has a couple nice articles, well more than a couple, but here are two about how he makes money at his blog:
Build Traffic (Easier said than done)
One key to making money with your blog is through the traffic that makes its way to your blog. Without traffic, it might be difficult to make money with your blog. Here are a couple key articles that stand the test of time on how to build traffic to your blog.
Steve Pavlina’s How To Build A High Traffic Website (or Blog)
Yaro Starak’s 10 Blog Traffic Tips
Great list of resources – I’ll definitely be forwarding this one on to a couple of friends I know who are just getting started in blogging.
Piper’s last blog post..Wheel?of?Fortune – Of Cheese?
Thanks for stopping by. Nice sites by the way.
Thanks kindly for the mention. For what it’s worth, I’d like to say that I don’t think of it as making money from my blog. I make money from my business, which is blog consulting. I sell services. When you make money second-hand because of the content you write, that’s making money from your blog, or having a monetized blog.
There are many ways to play this game, and your article has a lot of great resources. Almost none of these strategies will make you a dime until you have built up an audience by writing great content. Resist the temptation to monetize too early. No audience = no money.
Michael Martines last blog post..How I Used Gateway Blogging Techniques and Landed a Client with a Single Blog Post
@Michael Martine – Yes, nice clarification on the relationships between business, money and blogging. Thanks.
When I first started blogging (a few months now) I had learned from other pro bloggers to decide on monetization in the context of “make the decision to show your readers now or later that you’re monetizing. If you build an audience and start monetizing later on, some of that audience will get turned off and bail from reading your blog.”
I do agree on the “write great…”
@Bill – Well, I guess you can count on me to not go with the conventional wisdom. 😉 When you’re out to build an audience, a lack of ads and monetization shows a lack of greed and builds trust.
Your primary concern in the beginning is building an audience with great content and strategies to spread your name. Once an audience has been built, they already trust you.
Correct monetization efforts will not damage that trust. If you continue to provide great content with no signs of selling out, you’ll do great.
There is no right or wrong way, of course, but trust and audience-building are paramount to me.
Michael Martines last blog post..What Conversion Is, Why it Matters, and How to Improve It
@Michael – “Well, I guess you can count on me to not go with the conventional wisdom.” – And that’s why I keep reading your blog.
“…but trust and audience-building are paramount to me.” Yes, I think you’ve made that clear at your blog and it shows.
I’m not trying to suck-up here, but I do like the way you think.