All Bloggers Make Money From Blogs?

All Bloggers Make Money From Blogs? 

How do bloggers make money from blogs?

I’ve been reflecting this week on the amazing diversity of opportunities that are opening up for bloggers to make money from blogging. I’ve long advised that bloggers seeking to make money from blogging spread their interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all their eggs in one basket. 

•  ‘The wonderful thing is that this is becoming easier and easier to do 2008 has seen many options opening up. I thought: I’d take a look at some of the methods that bloggers are using to make money through blogs’. 

What can you do to Make Money Blogging?

Simply you make your blog from Blogger (free), you can copy anything you want from this blog but without you don't put your affiliate links, look at the next free programs and choose anyone, or all get from them the links and do money ...simple no?  

Advertising Programs Perhaps the most obvious changes in the past few months have been a variety of practical advertising options for bloggers looking to make money from their blogs. The most common way bloggers seem to earn money online is via the contextual ad program from “Google Adsense”. 

Targeted blog advertising with “PerformancingAds”, “BidVertiser”, “Linkrefferal”, “AlternateURL”, “Classifieds”, “Contact them”. There is more to come with MSN Adcenter and YPN both in beta testing and with a variety of other advertising systems now in development (YPN is only available to US publishers).

Lastly, there’s BlogAds - one of the first blog specific ad networks.

RSS Advertising

The past 12 months have seen some advances in RSS Advertising as well. I’m yet to hear of any bloggers making big money blogging through it to this point - but as improvements made to the ad programs exploring this, I’m sure we’ll start to see examples of it being profitable.

Affiliate marketing network portal

There are larger affiliate programs like “Amazon”, “Click2Sell”, “Clickbank”, “E-junkie” but also literally thousands of others from the large to the very small. A large network offering hundreds of programs: pay-per-sale, pay-per-lead, and pay-per-click programs. More than 2,000 merchants. Each of these merchants has a different type of product that they are selling, and each is ready to give you a commission on that sale if you bring a customer to them. It has a strong pro-affiliate attitude and despises parasites. Have lots of data feeds.

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate Programs also are known as associate programs, partnership programs or reseller programs, are generally pay-per-sale marketing programs. The programs are for selling products or services and based on the concept of revenue sharing.

Digital Assets 

Increasing numbers of bloggers have developed other digital assets to support and ad revenue streams to their blogs. By this, I mean that I’m increasingly seeing e-books, courses being run by bloggers. My recent foray into this with the first series of the six-figure blogging course that Andy and I ran a few weeks ago and have just released the study version of. This type of activity will only increase in future - in fact, this week I’ve seen many examples of bloggers running courses.

My advice is to sell products from Amazon because they generate for you one Store with which products choose you from them. But you can find any program you like.

Blog Network Opportunities

With the rising popularity of Blog Networks, bloggers are also being presented with more places to earn an income from their blogging, by writing for and with others. While it might be difficult to get a writing gig with one of the bigger networks, there are plenty who are always asking for new bloggers to join and who are willing to pay bloggers using a variety of payment models. While there are distinct advantages of blogging for yourself, blogging for an established network who will handle a lot of the setup/promotion/admin/SEO etc has its advantages as well. More and more bloggers are combining writing for themselves on their own blogs with taking on blog network blogs as more income streams.

Business Blog Writing Opportunities

As blogging has risen in its profile as a medium more and more businesses are starting blogs. Many of these companies have internal staff take on blogging duties - but an increasing number of them are hiring specialist bloggers to come on and run their blogs. I know of a number of bloggers who in the past month or two have approached for such paid work. Check out Bloggers for Hire if you’re looking for this type of work.

Non-Blogging Writing Opportunities

Also, becoming more common are bloggers being hired to write in non-blogging mediums. Manolo’s recent coup of a column in the Washington Post is just one example of this as bloggers are increasingly being approached to write for newspapers, magazines, and other non-blog websites. Alongside this is the rise of bloggers as published book authors, this is to the extent that one blogger I spoke with this week complained to me that they were one of the few bloggers that they knew who didn’t have a book deal!

Donations

Tip Jars and donation buttons have been a part of blogging for years now but this last year saw a number of bloggers go full-time after fundraising drives. Perhaps the most high-profile of these was Jason Kotoko who through generosity his readership was able to quit his job and become a full-time blogger. For taking a donation button you must have a PayPal account and you take it.

Flipping Blogs

Also, more common in 2005 was the practice of ‘Blog Flipping’, or selling of blogs. This has happened both on a personal blog level but also on a network level, the most obvious of these being the 8 figure sale of Weblogs Inc to AOL.

Merchandising

My recent attempt to sell T-shirts wasn’t a raging success, but it is an example of how an increasing number of bloggers are attempting to make a few extra dollars from their blogs by selling branded products through programs like “Cafepress”. While I didn’t have a lot of success with merchandising, quite a few larger blogs are seeing significant sales, especially blogs with a cult following.

Consulting and Speaking

While it has been popular for established consultants to add blogs to their businesses were also starting to see bloggers with no consulting background able to make money by charging readers for their time in consulting scenarios because of the profile that their blogs have built them. Blogging is the ability to prove people as experts on niche topics and we all know the value of being perceived as an expert. I spoke to one blogger last month who charges himself out at over $200 an hour for speaking and consulting work, his area of ability was something that he knew little about 18 months ago, but through his blog, he’s become a leader in his field and a minor celebrity in his industry.

You need traffic and auto-responders

• Auto-responders (www.aweber.com, www.cashspeeder.com, www.getresponse.com)

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Instagram

• Pinterest

As time rolls on there are more and more ways that bloggers make money from their blog opening up. Feel free to suggest your own ideas and experiences in comments below.