Photo Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/some_bo
Is your blog generating an income for you? It doesn’t have to be complicated to add multiple streams of income to your blog.
Here are four ways you can make money from your blog.
1. Google AdSense & similar ad networks
Let’s start with the most common option. Many blogs have Google AdSense or other ad networks setup to display pay per click ads on their website. When a visitor clicks, you get a small payment.
This is one of the easiest ways to begin monetizing your blog. It’s simple to sign up for an account and the ad network will give you cut and paste code you can put in a widget or your sidebar to begin displaying the ads. Be sure that you read the terms for any ad network you join.
Some don’t allow you to show ads from other networks on your blog or restrict the topics that you can blog about if you want to be part of their network.
Depending on your blog’s target audience, adsense may or may not be a good fit.
2. Offer banner ad spots for sale
Once you’ve got a steady stream of traffic to your site, you can offer banner ads for sale. Make it easier to manage your ad sales with a WordPress plugin like WP125, Text Link Ads, Adrotate, Advertising Manager, or others.
3. Promote affiliate products
What products or services are your readers interested in? Find the great options out there and share them. As an affiliate you can earn a commission of anywhere from 5% to 50% or more when someone purchases an item through your affiliate link. Rates and terms vary based on the program.
Some good places to put your affiliate links could be on a resources page where you share what services or products you recommend, or in your sidebar in a widget if you have a banner to promote with.
Another smart promotion idea is to look at what posts or pages on your blog are getting the most traffic and find a product or service you can promote that’s a good fit with that post or page, then add your affiliate text and link at the bottom.
Always be sure to disclose when a link contains an affiliate tracking code.
Tip: GoCodes is a great plugin to install to easily manage your affiliate links.
4. Sell your own products or services
There are many shopping carts out there that allow you to easily sell your products or services online. What can you sell?
Services: Do you offer a service like blog design, consulting, coaching, or tutoring? You can use PayPal to easily collect payments and sell your services.
Products: Got physical products you want to offer for sale through your website? Look at the ecommerce plugins available for WordPress including WordPress E-Commerce, eShop, Shopp, Yakk, QuickShop, StorePress, ShopperPress, and others. Or, check out e-Junkie. Figure out what features you need and pick the one that will work best for you.
Information or Other Digital Downloads: For ebooks, patterns, audio mp3, and other downloadable items, e-Junkie is a low cost and easy way to sell them securely. It will store your files and deliver them for you when someone makes a purchase.
Now, there’s four ideas. Go monetize your blog!
Are you monetizing your blog already? Share your tips and strategies in the comments – I’d love to hear what’s working for you.
I’m trying to figure all this stuff out. Right now my blog has an AdSense spot and an Amazon spot.I’m thinking of changing themes to get more stuff into my blog without being overwhelming.
Steady as she goes!
An alternative resource is Linknami.com where website owners and bloggers can make money publishing static text links on websites and internal pages as well as contextual links within content like articles and blog posts on their sites. Also earning money by publishing sponsored articles and writing reviews about websites, products and services is possible.
Michelle, great summary, here’s more for your readers:
* Printed goods with your branding – i.e t-shirt, migs, etc. You can get them from places like Zazzle.
* Another idea is “release your blog as a book” Just get your best articles, format them nicely and sell as a printed short book with glossy hardcover :) (blurb, cafepress, etc)
* There’s another idea that I was thinking of – paid area of blog. You publish part of your blog for free, but another part is (though cheap, maybe 10$/year), but for subscribers only. Let people know that those money are kid of like “donation”, that you will thank with great posts for them only. :)
Another (probably not working) – give paid users ability to turn off ads on your blog. Again – it’s pretty much a “donation”, but at least people get something in return :) Probably this idea would fail, but I won’t discard it too soon.
Helpful blog, bookmarked the website with hopes to read more!