6 Awesome Ways to Make Money by Blogging

There are three main reasons why one starts blogging. One, the passion that flows inside his blood, making him brutally hit the keys again and again, until the typed characters unite together resulting in a sweet piece of article.

Second, the boring lonely workless afternoons. You’re done with your lunch. You’re done watching porn. done talking to bae. Thus, lying the face down on desk table, you start raping Google. Sometimes with a failed attempt to locate yourself in the search results. Sometimes trying to learn how to hack facebook with a single click. And when the level of boringness hits an ultra-high limit, all of a sudden you run into a super-cool stuff called blogging. You get mesmerized by the success stories of some blogging legends. You start dreaming yourself in their position and then my friend, your blogging journey begins.

The third reason why most of the people starts blogging is money. I may sound materialistic but, money runs the world. Which is totally wrong though, a truth is truth after all. No matter how you came to know about the blogging thing, you can’t deny that you were fascinated by the bucks Darren Rowse or Neil Patel was making out of it.

However, irrespective of why you stepped into blogging, it can undoubtedly make you rich. Though, not everyone blogging for years are making millions today, but at least, it can buy you a cup of coffee everyday. And if you’re still having a war inside you, whether to start blogging or not, always remember –

So how to actually make money blogging?

Some say it is easy to make money blogging, some say it’s not. But in reality it depends on how you move your rear end. You work hard, the road is smooth. You go lazy, you have thorns waiting for you.

This post is all about the 6 ways to make money blogging. It’s time to take revenge of all the insults you’ve tolerated silently. It’s time to show the world, that you my friend, are one of a kind. Let’s rock the block.

Brace yourselves. Presenting the six super-clear ways to make money blogging.

1. Advertising Networks:

Most of the bloggers out there make good amount of money from various advertising networks. Advertisement networks place ads in your site and you get paid when the ad is viewed or clicked. Basically it works something like this:

1. You join an ad network as a publisher.
2. If they have any minimum requirements, they review your blog.
3. After your blog is approved they provide you some ad codes (mostly JavaScript). You get to choose what type and size of ad that appears in your site (banners/textual ads).
4. You grab those codes and paste in your website.
5. Ad appears in your site.
6. When people view or click those ads you get paid on basis of the ad network’s CPC or CPM.
7. You can then withdraw your money as soon as it reaches a minimum payment threshold.

You might wonder, how do the ad networks earn? Actually what happens is, some third party advertiser pays them an amount of money for each click or impression. They keep a percentage of money, the rest goes to you, the publisher.

There are plenty of advertising networks around the web. AdSense by Google, however, is the best paying ad network among those. Other than AdSense there are Media.net by Yahoo, Chitika, Infolinks etc.

So if you’re planning to start monetizing your blog, you should join an ad network right away.

2. Direct Advertisements:

Direct or Private Advertisements are one of the well known ways to make money blogging. Instead of going to an ad network, you can directly sell an ad space in your blog. To do that, simply create a page named Advertise Here where you can share your blog’s stats (data about page views, unique visitors, Alexa rank, blah blah). Also provide your contact information, preferably your email address or Skype Id. So that someone interested in advertising on your blog can reach you easily.

You can then directly interact with an advertiser and make a deal. You can ask payment on basis of number of impression or clicks (quick tip: use bit.ly service to track the clicks and good analytics to tract ad views).

On the other hand, you can put the whole process on autopilot using BuySellAds. You can enlist your blog in their marketplace. If your stats match an advertiser’s requirements, he or she might buy your ad place directly from BuySellAds. Obviously you get to choose whether to approve that ad or not. Right after your approval you’ll see that ad live in your blog.

3. Affiliate Programs:

Affiliate advertisements are one of the best ways to earn passive income from a blog. In affiliate programs, you’re get paid by a company or website when you bring them new customers. Sites like Amazon, Apple iTunes, GoDaddy, BlueHost perform affiliate marketing to increase their sales.

After signing up for an affiliate program, you’ll be given a special link (affiliate link). You put that link on your website in form of banner or as text link in articles. You’re get paid when someone enter your affiliate partner’s site, through your affiliate link and buys some stuff (i.e. they make a sale).

Many of pro bloggers choose to monetize their blogs through affiliate programs instead of ad networks like AdSense. Because when a visitor clicks on an ad banner, they in max can make 1 or 2 dollars from it. But in case of affiliate advertisements, when a visitor purchases something through your reference link you in most cases make more than 5 dollars.

Affiliate advertisements are for you if you have a hell lot of traffic or you review stuffs in your blog. As a matter of fact you can run both affiliate programs and ad network adverts side by side in one blog.

4. Sponsored reviews:

If you run a review based blog where you post reviews about various products, be that latest gadgets or pinky lipsticks, you can make heavy pounds from your blog. And that without any advertisements at all. All you need is a good amount of steady visitors. Heavy traffic on a review based blog indicates one thing – people trust you. Hence many companies would love to get their product reviewed on your blog. And the most amazing part is, they pay you good for that. So sponsoring reviews is a brilliant method to make money blogging.

Interestingly, there are some sites where you can easily find sponsors for your blog. Instances include, Pay Per Post, Sponsored Reviews, ReviewMe etc. Just join these sites, complete your profile, bid for posts or wait till some advertiser finds you.

But merely for a few bucks you should never risk your readers’ trust. Always try to put honest reviews in your blog.

5. Professional Services:

If you blog about something like, say, Blogging, Photoshop or WordPress etcetera, you can provide some professional services (related to those categories) for an amount of charge. Take me as example. I write articles for 5 bucks, I fix SEO for 7 bucks, I set up WordPress for 10 bucks – you name it. If you write Photoshop tutorials, you can provide photo retouching or background removal services for a small fee. The tougher the job, the higher you charge.

Basically this is freelancing, but with a different approach. You don’t find clients, clients find you. Your blog is your living portfolio. In sites like Freelancer.com or Elance, there are millions of freelancers like you, waiting for a task. But here, in your blog, there’s only one goddamn freelancer. That is you.

6. EBooks:

You might wonder what’s an eBook doing up here in the list. Well, though it sounds strange, you can make a lot of money with the explosive combination of an eBook and a blog. With Rise of the Planet of the Kindles, eBooks are selling like hot tacos in the neighborhood. You can just juice up your creative skills, write a great piece of eBook and sell it directly on sites like Amazon, Smashwords or Payhip. So easy so far. The tough job is to convince people to buy it. Aka promotion. There are millions or authors out there selling their eBooks. Why should they buy yours?

Blogging to the rescue. Write some cool articles on a targeted niche. Build an email list. Grow your readership. Now craft your eBook. Publish it on Amazon or anywhere you like. Then start sending out emails (to your subscribers) about your new eBook. Place a banner in your blog’s sidebar about the eBook. Write articles related to the eBook and recommend your book as reference.

Wrapping it up.

These were the top six ways to make money blogging. No doubt there are thousand other ways to generate revenue through your blog. Just never back down to experiment with your blog.

Monetizing your blog can be tough sometimes. Road won’t be smooth all the way. Failure will come. You’ll be frustrated, you’ll feel like quitting. But don’t quit.