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Living the dream, blogging on the beach…
Blogs come in two forms, as do most activities: profit and non-profit. However, these days, most bloggers blog for the express purpose of making money. It is also true that a blogger can make a decent return on blogging. There are several factors at play with regard to success. If you want to blog about a common subject, like, say, cars, you will need either a great slant, insider information or and great writing skills. On the other hand, if you blog about a tiny niche market, like say, ‘The Red Frog Population of South Wales’, your readers will probably be more tolerant of your writing skills.
In fact, you will probably be highly in demand!
In any case, whether your focus is revenue or not, there are common ways of earning money from blogging, and this is what we will be looking at below.
Money From Blogging
Very few people get paid just for voicing their opinion, but there are quite a few opportunities of earning money fro letting people speak on your soap-box. These guest-bloggers will pay to have you host an article on your site, Some pay a one-off fee of, say, $25 p.a, while others will pay $25 p.m. It mostly depends on how many visitors your blog gets and how relevant they are to the guest-blogger. You need to search online for something like ‘paying guest bloggers’.
A more straightforward way to earn money from blogging, is to place adverts on your site. These are often called affiliate ads. The two basic strategies here are:
1] using Google Adsense (the best, but it’s difficult to qualify for these days), or one of the others, like Bing’s or
2] signing up with a specialist site that provides such ads, like Commission Junction. There are several.
Most people mix both types of ads, since Google pays more, but CJ can provide more targeted ads.
However, affiliate advertising might not only be about a product like trainers. It could also be about a service, say, a school, or a hotel.
In general, new blogs will go the affiliate route, while waiting for Google to accept their application, which can take years.
Another popular method of funding your time blogging is to ask for donations. There are many ways of doing this including using crowd-funding and or a PayPal donate button.
If all this sounds too much, search WordPress for the terms I have used instead of the broader Internet. This will reveal plugs-in, which will do the bulk of the programming (site organisation) work for you.
Read the book Blogging by Owen Jones