Many bloggers are not just hobbyists sharing their ideas on the internet. They're business owners making money online. It takes time to build up a blog to the point where you have enough readers to monetize it. Once you have a steady stream of unique visitors and high page views, you can make money the following ways.
Advertisement
Bloggers who make a good living from blogging have done so thanks to selling ad space. The key is to build up your readership so that you're getting at least 500 unique visitors per day. Then, you can approach companies that want to reach your readers and ask them to advertise on your blog. You can earn anywhere from $500 a month to several thousands of dollars per month. Realistically though, you may not begin to start thinking about selling advertising until at least six months of posting. It takes a lot of consistency and diligence to get to where you can convince an advertiser to spend their dollars on your blog. You can expect to post at least twice daily for six months straight, writing quality content that keeps your readers coming back and wanting more.
Affiliate Commission
Although you may not be able to sell ads yet, you can recommend products and earn an affiliate commission. You can build a blog around a particular topic and pitch related products, or you can build a blog that reaches a particular audience and pitch products that could benefit them. For example, you can blog about motherhood and recommend products that moms can use to help improve their lives. You would search the product's website to see if they have an affiliate program, or join Commission Junction or Clickbank to find products there to promote. You can earn anywhere from 4% to 50% of the gross sales depending on the product or service you recommend when your readers make a purchase. Even if they don't make an immediate purchase by clicking on the link you provide, you can still make money from this. If they do finally return to buy the product, you'll get credit the sale, because they bookmarked the site or it's saved in their browser.
Adsense and Sponsored Links
The way you can potentially make money from day one (although it's highly unlikely) is by running Google Adsense or Yahoo! Sponsored Link on your blog just after you build it. If a reader clicks on an ad that is fed on your site, you'll receive a small portion of the revenue that Google and Yahoo! earn per ad back. This usually amounts to pennies per click, but it can build up over time. Don't plan to make big bucks from this method of monetizing your blog. You may not earn more than $25 for a whole year. This should only supplement the other ways to monetize your blog.
Selling Services and Products
Another way that bloggers make money from day one is the offer your services on your blog. You can consult, teach, tutor, write or perform other services. Readers can pay you using Paypal, or you can set up a cart system on your blog. Some software developers have developed shopping cart plugins for WordPress that you can use for free. You can also sell products you've created, or become a reseller of products. You still need to generate traffic to your blog to get buyers, and the more you get, the more sales you'll generate.
People are making money from blogging, but it takes a long time and a lot of effort. Unfortunately, some have promised riches to would-be bloggers, which has resulted in much frustration and disappointment. Make sure to plan other ways to make money online or offline in addition to blogging.
