10 Ways You Can Make Money as a Blogger

Blogging provides an opportunity to write or offer information about a subject that you are passionate about, and also an opportunity to supplement your income. You can monetize your blog and set it up to generate revenue for you in many ways, such as building up an email marketing list, doing affiliate marketing and developing joint ventures with other bloggers or Internet marketers.

Adding Advertisements

One of the easiest ways to begin to monetize a blog is to utilize readily available online advertising programs to populate your blog site with relevant ads. You can then earn money each time a blog reader clicks on your site's ads. Google Adsense is one of the most popularly used ad sources, but there are a number of others, such as Blogads, BlogHer and Beacon Ads. Adsense and other programs can automatically place relevant ads throughout your blog site. These ads offer products that should be of potential interest to your readers based on the subjects you write about on your blog.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing takes advertising a step further, and it potentially generates significantly more revenue than pay-per-click ad programs. As an affiliate marketer, you offer other people's products by advertising them on your site, and you earn a commission on each sale. Two of the most commonly used affiliate marketing programs are Amazon Affiliates and ClickBank. Amazon Affiliates provides the opportunity to place ads for any product sold on Amazon.com and earn a small commission on sales. ClickBank affiliates can earn substantially larger commissions, as much as 50 to 70%, by placing ads on their blogs to sell products offered by a large variety of Internet marketers. You select ads for products you believe are relevant for your blog readers, and ClickBank provides the information you need to post your affiliate ads in text, display or banner advertising form.

Building a Mailing List

By requiring or encouraging visitors to your blog to register using their email addresses, you can gradually build up a mailing list. Your mailing list opens up more ways to make money. One way is to email your list offers selling your own products, such as an e-book that you've written. Once you have a fairly sizable list of 1,000+ subscribers, it's also possible to rent out your mailing list to other Internet email marketers.

Joint Ventures With Other Internet Marketers

Building up a mailing list of blog subscribers or regular readers opens the door for conducting joint ventures with other bloggers or Internet marketers. Create these joint ventures by connecting with other bloggers or online marketing firms that sell products that may be of interest to your readers. Send a proposal to that blogger/marketer, presenting the opportunity to obtain exposure for her products to your blog readers by offering to send an email ad for her product to your mailing list. In return, you ask her to send an ad for your products to her mailing list. Both parties earn an agreed-upon percentage of sales from each email marketing effort.

Write and Sell an E-Book

Another way to generate money from a blog site is to write an e-book on the subject that you blog about. Some bloggers simply compile material from their blog posts to create an e-book, while others write a book of original material. Once the book is created, you can then sell it on your own site and through other sites, such as Amazon.com.

Teach a Class

Blogging provides you the opportunity to become a recognized expert in your field. Your blog serves as a credential of your expertise. Once you have established the blog and have a good-sized following, parlay that expertise credential into, for example, teaching a course at a local community college. If you get 15 students to pay $100 each for an eight-week course, you can generate an extra $1,500 in just a couple of months.

Paid Public Speaking Opportunities

Paid public speaking gigs are another opportunity that your blog can provide by establishing you as an expert. Market your speaking services directly by contacting companies, professional associations or organizations, or sign up with a public speakers bureau that essentially acts as your agent to arrange public speaking appearances in return for part of your speaking fee.

Consulting

Once you have established yourself through your blog as an expert in your field, offer consulting services to corporations or individuals. For example, if your blog is about selling financial products, offer investment consulting or sales consulting services to an insurance company or to individual insurance agents.

Freelance Writing

Generate additional income from your blog by using your blog writing as sample material to obtain paid freelance writing work for other websites or publishing venues. There are a number of sites, such as Upwork.com and PeoplePerHour.com, where employers looking for freelance writers post invitations to apply for work. Look for opportunities to write about the same general subject that you blog about, or branch out into writing about other subjects.

Using Your Blog to Promote Your Business

If you have a primary business outside of your blog, then your blog can serve as an easy way to promote that business, obtain new customers and generate additional revenue. For example, if you own a health food store and your blog is about health issues, use your blog posts to encourage people to visit your store to obtain health products and further information.

Source: 10 Ways You Can Make Money as a Blogger