Some Knowledge

So, you have a blog and some people are reading it.  You decide you want to find some way to make money off your writing efforts.  What do you do?

Basically, the way to monetize a blog is to sell advertising.  Any search engine can lead you to thousands of programs that sell advertising on blogs and websites.  Google Adsense is perhaps the most famous of these advertising operations.  What you have to do is to get accepted for the program you want to run.  Then you need to put a bit of html code on your page that will display the advertisements.  Television has advertisements.  Radio has advertisements.  Newspapers and magazines all make money from advertising.  So why not your blog?

In the first place, to make money from advertising, you will need a lot of viewers.  The payout for an ad is small on a per customer basis.  You make money on volume.  It is called mass media for a reason, massive numbers of people consume it.  If you have ten or twenty or a hundred viewers a day for your site, you will not make a lot of money from advertising.  You will need thousands of people to not only look at your site, but who will click on ads.  It’s a numbers game, and bigger numbers mean bigger rewards.

Well, maybe you don’t want to pollute your blog with all kinds of advertisements that have nothing to do with what you are trying to say.  Another way you can make money is to put a donation button on your blog.  Maybe you have some medical condition that needs attention and you want to appeal to the kindness of strangers to help with your problems.  Maybe you just want to ask people for money.  If you do that in the street, you might get arrested.  But this is the Internet, and cyber-panhandling is a recognized way to get money from your website.  Politicians raise money from donations all the time.  Churches all rely on contributions to fund their operations.  There’s no reason a person can’t ask another person for some of their cash.  Some people have even used cyber-begging to pay off their overdrawn credit cards.  Who’s to say what will or will not work in generating an income.

Well, maybe you are too proud to beg.  Maybe you want to sell actual products.  Maybe an affiliate marketing business is what you are looking to set up.  Sales works the same way the world over.  Businesses will pay a commission on  a sale you make on your blog.  You direct people to the site where an object or service is being peddled and they cut you in for a piece of the action.  It’s as simple as posting a link with your referral ID.  You can really help people out who are looking for that perfect gift.  Your reader might not even know that they need that new lamp if they hadn’t seen it on your blog.

Alright, you don’t want to sell advertisements, you don’t want to beg, you don’t want to sell other people’s products.  Maybe you want to sell your own product.  Maybe you want to sell your paintings.  Maybe you want to sell custom tea cozy’s that you make in your spare time.  Take a picture and post it on your blog and start taking bids on your products.  Set up your own factory to make paper picture frames.  Sell all the old books you inherited from your Aunt Alice.  You will have to add shipping charges to the price of your items.  You may have to fill out customs forms to ship your stuff overseas.  You will be selling actual things you obtain for a low price for a higher price and will be making a profit.  Be sure to keep accurate records.

If you don’t want to sell something, you will not be able to make money on your blog.  You might sell the very words you type into your blog.  You might hook up with Pay Per Post and sell reviews of different products.  If you want money you will have to sell something, even if it is just your time.  Monetizing a blog is not something that is hard to understand.  All you need is a product and a customer to pay you for that product.  There are even software widgets you can get that will help you salt down your blog with all kinds of advertisements.  If you want to turn your blog into a job there are plenty of opportunities available.  All it takes is a little time and effort and you too can become a wealthy capitalist.