8 Ways to Make Money Blogging

As the internet continues to evolve and more people get online, there are more and more new ways to make money from your blog. To date, I am aware of 8 ways you can make money blogging (and that includes adding ads - which I felt compelled to include for the sake of making this hub as complete as I am able). Each of these methods have varying success rates in income generation depending on your blog topic, flow of traffic and blog ranking.


1. Sponsored Posts

Writing sponsored posts on your blog is by far the easiest and more reliable way to generate some extra cash from your blog. How much you can earn depends on the popularity of your blog and your blog ranking. In general, the higher your blog's rank and the more traffic your blog receives, the more sponsored post offers you will receive and the better the rate you will be offered for each sponsored post you write.

There are several sites that can calculate your blog's PR (or page rank), but the one that really count's is Google's PR. Google gives your blog a page rank out of 10. To check your blog's Google PR, you use this link. Sponsored posts usually start from $5 per post and upwards.

The great thing about writing sponsored posts is that you can still earn an income even if your blog is new, with a relatively low traffic count. Most other blog income methods are dependent on traffic flow to your blog.

To get sponsored posts offers, you will need to sign up for a blogger's account at any of the following sites (there may be more, but these are the ones I am currently aware of):

* Smorty
* SponsoredReviews
* Linkworth
* Payperpost
* Blogsvertise
* Blogitive
* Loudlaunch
* ReviewMe
* Payu2blog
* Bloggerwave

I have not seen any rule that says you can't sign up for all of them and generally, the more you register for, the more offers you will get. Each site has its own rules and regulations which you will need to read up on and make sure you meet. For instance, you may be required to have a blog that is at least 3 months old with at least twenty posts; you must not have more than 50% sponsored posts in your blog; your posts must have at least 50 words; etc.

Once you have registered your blog (most allow you to register more than one blog), you will have to wait for them to approve your blog before you will be able to take on any sponsored post assignments.

2. Text Links

There are several text-link brokers that will sell text-links to advertisers on your behalf. All you need to do is submit your blog to them and wait to be approved. Once approved, the text-link broker will look for advertisers who want to purchase text-links on your blog. You will then be paid on a monthly basis for as long as the text-link is hosted on your blog.

The difference between text-links and sponsored posts is that text-links are purchased from content you have already written on your blog. Sponsored posts require you to write new posts based around the text-links they request. Here are a couple of text-link brokers you can try:

* Text-Link Ads
* Linkworth

3. Blogging Networks

Part of the problem of generating an income from your own blog can be due to the low traffic levels you may be receiving. With more and more people starting their own blog, creating a blog with a good flow of traffic is becoming more and more challenging even if you can write great blog posts. To circumvent this problem, you can sign up to write on blogging networks. Due to their large membership of bloggers and content, they usually have better PR and traffic flow so if you choose to write for them, your blog posts have a better chance of receiving more attention.

Blogging networks usually monetise their sites with ad agencies like Adsense, Amazon, and eBay and you will generate an income based on the traffic that visit the articles you write. As I mentioned above, the main advantage for writing on these sites is that they have many writers who are all constantly submitting new articles. The search engines love websites that are constantly being updated so they get good rankings and lots of traffic. Lots of traffic means more click throughs which generate more revenue for the website and you.

Here are some blogging networks you can look up:

* Hubpages - make money from Amazon, Google Adsense and eBay writing articles about topics you enjoy
* Senserely
* Helium
* Creamaid
* B5Media
* Blog4cash
* Blogcharm
* Blogger Party
* Blogit
* Weblogs Inc

4. Affiliate Marketing

If you have a blog that has high traffic, then affiliate marketing is something you really should consider. An affiliate marketing program is simply a referral program that pays you a commission for recommending someone else's products. All you have to do is either place banners, text-links or write about the affiliate product you are recommending. If your visitors click through and purchase that product, you will receive a commission for the sale of that product.

The key to affiliate marketing is choosing products that are related to your blog's topic. For instance, there is no point promoting health supplements if your blog is on scrapbooking.

There are many affiliate programs available on the internet. Some companies offer affiliate programs directly from their website, while others may advertise their affiliate program on an affiliate marketing network. Here are a few affiliate marketing networks you can join for free:

* Clickbank
* Amazon
* ClixGalore
* Implix
* Leisure Audio Books


5. Contextual Ads

If you have a blog or website, you can place contextual ads on them. Contextual ads are basically clever ads that search the content of your webpages and displays ads that are relevant to your content. For instance, if you write a blog post about early childhood development, your contextual ads might display educational DVDs and books for toddlers. A few sites that offer contextual ad codes are listed below:

* Bidvertiser
* Kontera (they have a requirement of accepting only websites that have a minimum of 50,000 page views, however, if you visit John Chow's Blog and sign up for Kontera via his sign up link, you can get your site accepted as long as they find your content suitable because John has a special arrangement with Kontera)
* Google Adsense


6. Shopping Widgets

You can also place shopping widgets on your blog and get paid whenever one of your visitors clicks on an ad displayed on your widget. Unlike contextual ads, these aren't based on your blog content, however it makes better sense to your site if you choose categories that are related to your blog content in some way. My only gripe about these widgets is that they slow down the loading time for your blog. Here are a couple of sites that offer shopping widgets that you can easily add to you blog:

* Widget Bucks
* Shopping Ads

Click here to see an example of what a shopping widget looks like at the bottom of a blog post.

7. Paid Blogger

You can also get a job as a blogger. With the increasing popularity of blogs, more and more companies are adding blogs to their websites to help increase their website's ranking in the search engines. The only problem with a blog is that it needs to be mantained and updated on a regular basis, so these companies are also hiring freelance writers to produce the content on their blogs. You can look for blogging jobs at:

* Problogger Job Board
* Indeed (just search for blogging jobs)

8. Sponsored Ads

If you have a popular blog or if your blog topic happens to cover a niche topic, you can invite sponsors to place ads on your blog for a price. You can include a page on your blog about advertising on your blog and list down the various ad spots available and how much they cost. Anyone who views your blog can then contact you if they want to purchase an ad space.

Alternatively, you can choose to be more pro-active and approach companies that sell products related to your blog topic and offer them an advertising package with your blog.