Ways to Monetize Your Blog

So, your blog is up and running. You post regularly. You have some traffic. People must like you, because they come back. Now, you want to find some ways to monetize your blog.

The first step in monetizing your blog is to give some thought to what your goals are. How much money do you want to make with your blog? Do you want to get paid to write reviews and post them to your blog? Do you want to promote affiliate products? Or do you want to make money blogging by continuing to blog about whatever you regularly blog about and make some extra cash through pay-per-click advertising links?

The answers will likely depend on two factors: your personality and your blog's current theme/audience. If you are an internet marketer whose audience is internet marketers, you probably won't mind promoting internet marketing products through an affiliate program. However, if you run a blog for single moms that offers tips for shopping on a budget, you probably won't want to opt for promoting luxury cruise tickets. Instead, you might opt to join an affiliate network like shareasale.com, cj.com, or linkshare.com that have merchants who offer affiliates links to special deals for parents, coupons for grocery shopping, or discount clothes outlets.

Affiliate programs offer a relatively easy and efficient way to make money blogging. Affiliate networks offer bloggers the ability to choose which ads they place on their blogs. Affiliates get paid a percentage of each sale or on a per-lead basis. This means, if you post a link to a pet food affiliate, you can get paid a percentage of each sale every time one of your blog visitors clicks on the pet store ad and makes a purchase. Or, if you post a link for a credit repair affiliate, you can get paid each time someone clicks on the link and requests more information from the credit company.