Money from Blogs

How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs

How do bloggers make money from blogs?

I’ve been reflecting this week about 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 2005 has seen many options opening up. I thought I’d

take a look at some of the methods that bloggers are currently

using to make money through blogs.

Income Streams for Bloggers –

How to Make Money Blogging

Advertising Programs – Perhaps the most obvious changes

in the past few months have been with the addition of a variety

of viable 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.

A more recent addition that many are using successfully are

Chitika’s eMiniMalls and WidgetBucks, Text Link Ads.

Azoogle Ads, Intelli Txt, DoubleClick, Tribal Fusion,

Adbrite, Clicksor, AdHearUs,Kanoodle, Pheedo,

TextAds, Bidvertiser, Fastclick and Value Click

(to name just some of the options) and there is a smorgasbord

of options. Of course there is more to come withMSN Adcenter

and YPN both in beta testing and with a variety of other

advertising system currently 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 also. I’m yet to hear of any

bloggers making big money blogging through it to this

point – but as improvements are made to the ad programs

exploring this I’m sure we’ll start to see examples of it

being profitable.

Sponsorship – In addition to the array of advertising programs

that are available to join there is a growing awareness in

the business of the value and opportunity that exists for them

to advertise directly on blogs. I’m hearing more and more

examples of this and have been fortunately to have a couple

of ad campaigns of my own in the past month – one with Adobe

a couple of weeks ago and another just completed with Ricoh

for a new digicam over at my Digital Camera Blog.

These are not isolated cases – as I say I know of many blogs

exploring sponsorship with advertisers at present and suspect

we’ll see more of it in the year ahead. Sponsorship is also

happening on a post by post basis with some bloggers being

paid to write on certain topics by companies – either in one off

or a regular fashion – and they are able to make big money from

their blogs doing so.

Affiliate Programs – There are larger affiliate programs like

Amazon, Linkshare,Clickbank and Commission Junction but

also literally thousands of others from the large to the very small.

Digital Assets – Increasing numbers of bloggers have been

developing other digital assets to support and add revenue

streams to their blogs. By this I mean that I’m increasingly seeing

e-books, courses and tele-seminars 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 numerous examples of bloggers

running courses.

Blog Network Opportunities – with the rise in 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 set up/promotion/admin/SEO etc has it’s advantages

also. More and more bloggers are combining writing for

themselves on their own blogs with taking on blog network

blogs as additional income streams.