All of my friends and family know I am a blogger. The funny thing is their reaction when I mention making money. They look at me with this dumbfounded look every time and say “How do you make money from a blog?”. I feel like it is some hidden secret that only bloggers know about. The secret is bloggers do write because they enjoy it, but we can also make money doing it.
So… How DO you make money from a blog?
The first thing your need to know, is you can’t make money from a blog if no one knows about it. Before you even start thinking about making money blogging, you need to have a blog, a community, fans, readers, etc. If you have no one coming to your site, how do you expect to make money?
You don’t need a ton of website traffic, but you do need to have steady traffic. Once you have accomplished that, you can start to monetize that traffic. There are more options to monetize a blog that you could ever need. The trick is to use a mixture of different kinds of methods depending on what kind of topic you are talking about. We will talk about some of the most common.
How Do You Make Money From a Blog?
- Cost Per Click (CPC)
- Cost Per Mile (CPM)
- Affiliate Networks
- Direct Advertising
- Membership Sites
Cost Per Click
Cost Per Click, or CPC, is a method of advertising that pays you when your reader actually clicks on the ad. CPC advertising networks are great for very niche specific topics. This is because CPC is a contextual advertising method. The content on your page is crawled by the advertising robots and they match up keywords found in your writing to keywords that advertisers have bid on. You simply add a few lines of code to enable ads on your blog. The keywords found in your blog will determine how much you make from each click. It could be as little as $0.01 or over $50.00. It all depends on what kind of niche you are writing about.
CPC Networks
- Google Adsense
- Media Net
- Bidvertiser
- Chitika
- Infolinks
Read More: Top 13 Best Paying CPC/PPC Ad Networks.
Cost Per Mile
Cost Per Mile, or CPM, is a method of advertising that pays you a set amount for every 1000 views, or impressions, your blog gets. CPM advertising is great for blogs that get a ton of traffic. These blogs are typically informational versus the sales kind of blogs. If you are just writing because you love it, you have loyal followers, but no real niche to your writing; CPM may be the best thing for you.
CPM Networks
- Tribal Fusion
- Casale Media
- CPX Interactive
- Adtegrity
- AdPepper
Read More: 15 Best Cost Per Impression (CPM) Ads Networks.
Affiliate Networks
Affiliate Marketing works by advertisers paying you a commission on every sale you generate. You do not get paid for readers simply viewing or clicking on the link/ad. You get paid only when a reader buys something after clicking on the link or advertisement. Affiliate networks use tracking cookies and referral links to give you credit for these sales. So, if someone clicks my link that goes to Amazon and they buy something within 30 days, I get credit for that sale.
Affiliate advertising usually is most beneficial on reviews, top ten lists, or anything else that mentions a product. Usually potential customers go online before making a final buying decision. Affiliate marketing helps you make money by helping the customer make a decision on what they want.
Affiliate Marketing Networks
- LinkShare
- Commission Junction
- Amazon
- ClickBank
- ShareASale
Read More: TOP 20 Affiliate (CPS) Networks 2013.
Direct Advertising
Direct advertising is usually the most profitable but a little harder to acquire. The blogger or site owner has to seek out this kind of advertising on their own. You would contact a company that would provide some kind of value for your readers. This company could then choose to advertise with you for a set amount per click, per 1000 impressions, or typically a set amount per month.
Membership Sites
Most of the big name blogs and websites have some form of a membership site. Membership sites work by charging a fee for monthly access to some kind of premium content. This can be a forum, more in depth blog posts, a tutorial area, a study guide, etc. Anything above an beyond what is available on the normal site.
Membership sites usually have a decent amount of free content that serves as a teaser. This content is great and extremely helpful. It is what drives you to the website in the first place. Once you are on the website or blog, there is a link to even more information or a tool, that you are really interested in. But, the only way you can get to it is to become a paying member.
Final Word: How do You Make Money From a Blog?
- Create a Blog.
- Write Amazing Content.
- Get Some Readers.
- Add Some of the Methods Above.
- Write More Content.
- Get More Readers.
- Make More Money!