According to Yahoo, blogging is one of the best ways to make a living online. For any of those who have dreamed of making a living as a writer, or even merely working from home as an affiliate marketer (a blog is an essential piece of your success as well), it’s never been easier.
That said, many people don’t know how to get started, how to “monetize” or promote their blog, or use any of the various methods required to create success, if not a regular income.
The fact that blogs are used for so many different things only adds to the confusion, particularly for the beginner. To begin to sort these out, not to mention determine which approach works best – and it is a highly individualized process – here are the most common ways bloggers make money from their online postings.
Paid Content
Some nascent bloggers can get paid for their content through a subscription service. If this is an option, by all means consider going this route, as this is a direct, if not the quickest way to obtain payment for writing. As more and more news and traditional media outlets (like print magazines and newspapers) start to block off their content and charge for access online, going this route is the most similar to working as a traditional freelance writer and generating a direct, quantifiable income from one’s writing efforts. The plus side is linear compensation quickly (the blogger is paid for writing submitted). The downside is that this doesn’t allow one’s writing to be seen by the millions, if not billons of people online – the beauty of the Internet in the first place.
Advertising
There are several routes one can go to garner advertising revenue online from blog content. There are a range of options available these days. One option is utilizing some of the more traditional publications who are experimenting with making their content web friendly in exchange for generating additional advertising revenue (such as the UK’s Guardian news organization which has just added a new twist to its subscription service). Another is the tried and true use of Google’s Ad Sense or another in-text publisher (writers get paid for promoting other people’s ads on their blog, by using popular keywords to attract said advertising). In addition, there are also beginning to be new aggregated blog content sites that offer free blogs to writers in exchange for a split of the ad revenue generated from the blogger’s postings. For those who need a highly trafficked blog and don’t mind sharing anywhere from 30-60% of the revenue generated by advertising click-throughs for web hosting and blog setup, this might seem like a fair deal. Given the fact that for many, web traffic is a valuable commodity, this might be a good solution for those just starting out, even though such traffic is often easy to obtain even for relative newcomers to the medium. That said, most newcomers to blogging have enough on their plate without worrying about spending a great deal of time, at least upfront, in finding additional advertising sources or ways to generate traffic.
Affiliate Marketing
Many affiliate marketers use blogging as convenient way to promote the affiliate links of the products and services they are selling. This is one of the easiest and most direct ways to monetize a blog. Clickbank is by far the most widely used source for promotional products, but there are many more including Paydot.com, Linkshare and Commission Junction.
Blog promotion
There are also many different ways to promote blogs, which is the best way to make a good income from any of the monetization routes one chooses, whether a blogger pursues one or a combination of all of the above to monetize a blog. These activities range from posting links in social media site profile(s) and forums to obtain back links if not publicity, to using Safelists, Traffic and Ad Exchangers to promote both the blog’s URL and specific blog entries. Remember that there is no “best” way to promote content – only the one that works for each blog. Realize that there will be a significant trial and error period until finding the right niche.
However, despite all the how-to articles in the world, getting started or even staying organized is often confusing if not downright intimidating.
That is why it is often a good idea to sign up for a good work at home site that provides the training, tools and resources required all in one place. These are often hard to find, despite the hype and innumerable e-books written by a plethora of affiliate marketers.
But no matter how a nascent blogger decides to get started, much less receives compensation for these efforts, starting a blog is one of the easiest and most lucrative ways to begin earning money online if not generating a steady, recession resistant income.1