Semi-Pro Blogger

I’ve been running a few blogs for the past few years mostly looking for quick ways to make some easy money.  In some cases people are able to quit their full-time jobs and blogging instead.  The first thing to realize is that your not going to be able to start making thousands of dollars and be in a position to quit your job over night.  Its a process that can sometimes happen in a few months, or in some cases never at all.  The thing that I’ve realized is that you can’t have a successful blog if your only doing it for the money.  Believe me, I’ve tried and it never works.

When I first started blogging, it was a personal blog where I talked about random things that I was doing.  I quickly realized that no one wants to read this type of stuff except for friends and family.  There’s not much room for growth there, and certainly wont make you much cash.  After I realized that I like my friends, but they weren’t the people I want to write my blog towards, I thought that I should go directly for content thats going to trigger ads that will pay me the most money for the traffic that I do get.  Big mistake.  The types of ads that I found usually pay the most are for content like Mesothelioma, Medication, Insurance, Lawyers….boring.  I challenge anyone to make a successful blog out of any of these subjects.  One, there is way to much competition, and two, its mind numbingly boring to try and write original content on any of these things on a regular basis.

The thing I’ve finally learned is that if your blogging just to make money your not doing it for the right reasons and that you are doomed to fail…everytime. The way to make money with your blog is to write about something you are genuinely interested in, write regularly,  and embrace the community you eventually will develop. Llet the money be a side effect of your efforts, not a primary goal.  I’ve read this on many other successful blogs, and never believed it.  I had to learn it for myself.

So, once you have a goal of creating a successful blog based on traffic, community, user interaction, and not specifically money, you can start to make some money :).  Below are a few of the main methods of creating streams of revenue from your blog.  I will be going into more detail and strategies for each of these items in my upcoming posts.  I encourage you to look into each of these methods on your own in the meantime.

Ways to Make Money with your Blog:

• Contextual Advertising - Ads that are created dynamically based on the content of the page they exist on.  Examples include Google Adsense, Yahoo Publishers Network. and Chitika.
• Affiliate Links - Links to products on other websites where you recieve a percentage of any sales that originate from your links.  Examples include Commision Junction and Amazon.com.
• Sponsors - Sponsor ads are usually a graphical image on your website that links back to a website of the sponsor.  The sponsor pays you a monthly or annual fee for the link to remain on your site.

These are just 3 of the ways you can make money online with your blog or website, and are the ones that I use most often.  An important thing to keep in mind is that you may see the most success using just 1 of these methods or a combination of a few different ones.  It’s unique for each individual site.

In my next post I will be going into more detail on some best practices for using Contextual Advertising on your website.