Can I Really Make Money with my Blog?

There are many ways a blogger can make money through his or her blog.

Advertising programs - One way to make money through a blog is through an advertising program. Many of these ads are contextual ads placed by Google, such as Adsense.com.  This is only one of the several hundreds of specific ads that bloggers can use to help make money with their blogs. BlogAds.com is one of the first blog specific ad networks to help bloggers make money.

Sponsorship - in addition to the array of advertising programs that are available for a blogger to join, there is a growing awareness in the business of value and opportunity that exists for them to advertise in a specific blog.  Say you have blogged about cell phones then you could get a sponsorship, a special advertisement from a certain cell phone provider and not only the cell phone provider but from the service provider for the cell phone networks.  Whatever you blog about, look for certain sponsorships that tie in with your blog so you have a specific advertisements to go along with your blog, people are more likely to purchase something you’ve blogged about than some random item.

RSS advertising - there have been some remarkable advances in RSS advertising and many bloggers are making large sums of money through this type of advertising so it’s worth checking out.

Affiliate programs - there are some large affiliate programs like Amazon.com, Linkshare.com, Commission Junction.com and ClickBank.com. And there are literally thousands of affiliate programs to choose from some are small and some are large it just depends on what you’re looking for and how much work you want to put into it.

Blog network opportunities - bloggers are now being presented with more and more places to earn money with their blogs - by writing for and with others.  While it might be difficult to get a writing job with one of the bigger bloggers, there are plenty of smaller bloggers who would love to team up with you to write a blog.  And they are willing to pay by a variety of payment options. Of course there are advantages to blogging for yourself; however there are many more advantages to having someone else do the administrative, set up, promotions and SEO etc.

Business blog opportunities - as blogging has risen as a medium for communication, more and more businesses have begun blogging.  Some of these businesses have on staff bloggers but many of them hire outside, specialist bloggers to come on board and help with their business blogs. You can check out bloggersforhire.com if you want to work for businesses writing blogs.

Merchandising - if your blog has a clever name, you might want to put it on a T-shirt or coffee mug and sell it as merchandise to make extra money.  You can tell this merchandise from your website or alongside your blog.