Make Money Blogging: 5 tips

Blogs can be a business themselves bringing in money from advertising and product sales and more. Blogs whose primary purpose is supporting an existing business or venture can similarly earn some extra cash. 

Some ideas for making money from blogs follow, but first realize that you need a "good blog." There are plenty of resources on blogging well and we won't cover that here.

Secondly realize that although there are plenty of people earning a great supplemental income from blogging, few quit their day job.

Here are 5 different ways you can make money blogging:

1) Pay Per Click Advertisements

You can try "pay per click" advertisements, which pay you anywhere between a few pennies to a few dollars every time someone clicks on an ad.

There are several choices including the extremely popular Google AdSense, Kanoodle BrightAds, Chitika and the Yahoo! Publisher Network. These ads are easy to signup for and you can run them on most blogs, but check their terms of service well.

They perform very well for some blogs but not well on others -- you need to experiment.

It's important to "tune" the ads -- experiment to see what works well. In general, you want the ads "above the fold," i.e. visible without scrolling, and colors choosen to blend in with your blog (or Web site). For AdSense this specifically means getting rid of the borders!

2) Sell advertising space

I know the word "sell" scares a lot of people, including me, but blog advertisers will often approach you if you have an established blog, and you can also use advertising networks to do the selling for you such as CrispAds.com, PerformancingAds.com and AdBrite.com.

You can add an "advertise with us" link prominently displayed or perhaps simply display some ads for free to make it clear you accept advertising. It's simple to get "free" advertisors; I tapped some consulting clients who were quite happy.

Ads could be graphical, simple text links, or just about anything.

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