Webupon

Note: This is part 3 of a planned 4 part series.

You can find links to the other parts on my user page.

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So by now you should have a good blog that you update regularly. Following the advice in Part 2, you have probably listed the blog on search engines, promoted it on social networks, and possibly even made an RSS feed. You have a decent stream of visitors every day, but you still haven’t made one single cent off of your blog. How can we monetize your creative talents? Find out here!

Visitors = Money

The more visitors you have, the more money you will make. While results may vary, this equation will always be true in the long run. The key is to find the value your visitors have and capitalize on it. While there are massive lists of ideas online, such as this (This is a really great read by the way), there are three that I am familiar enough with to explain them in more detail. One handy observation is that to make money in ANYTHING you need to either sell your own product or help someone else sell his.

• Ad Placement
  

With all of these eyeballs coming to rest on your blog everyday, it can quickly become a lucrative market for advertisers. With these deals, you get paid by an advertising company to put ads on your page. These range from big banners to small text ads or even just a link.

There are many, many more advertising services than I could count (or even want to try). You are not going to be able to sign up for them all, so pick a couple (or even one) and focus on it.

• Affiliate Marketing
  

Affiliate marketing has been made much of all over the internet. You may have seen the term come across in some of those “instant millionaire” scams and dismissed the concept immediately. Please don’t!

Affiliate Marketing has been around long, long before the internet. The basic idea is that the affiliate serves as a conduit between buyer and seller. After the deal is done, the seller pays the affiliate a sales fee for the referral.

What does this mean for your blog? Suppose you land an affiliate marketing deal with VISA. You put a link on your blog encouraging your readers to sign up for a platinum credit card. When VISA receives a new customer, they will pay you a commission for your role in the business transaction.

These commissions can be quite large. A reasonable payout for each referral for a credit card deal may be as much as $50!

• Selling your own product or service
  

It can’t get much more straightforward that this. Your readers have money, and you have something to offer them. This works great if you blog about say, creative writing, and you offer writing services for clients.

Or perhaps you blog about music and use your blog as a storefront for used instruments your band doesn’t need anymore.

As I mentioned, there are other methods as well. And you don’t have to pick one! You can use all of them at once — but be careful not to turn your blog into a walking advertisement.

Managing the business side of the blog

Above all, keep blogging! But if you expect to make money, there are other issues that you need to get accustomed to dealing with as well.

You need some sort of vehicle to collect the money you do get. PayPal is the most widely accepted and quite easy to use. PayPal works as a virtual “wallet”. Others can pay you on PayPal, and in turn you can pay others on the internet with it.

For doing significant business transactions, you are probably going to need a bank account as well to verify your PayPal account. This is essentially a process where PayPal makes certain that your account is linked to an actual checking or savings account. Once your account is verified, your earnings from blogging can be direct deposited in your bank account, and there is no limit to how much you can earn! Unverified accounts have an earnings cap as to how much they can earn in a year and it is tricky to send money with them, so verifying is highly recommended.

All of the nuances of running and using these methods would (sadly) be too long for this article. There are entire websites devoted to affiliate marketing, entrepreneurship, PayPal, and ad services.

Google is your friend here, but check multiple sources and avoid scams.

There is however one undisputed king of blog money-making. Google’s AdSense has been running the internet for what seems like decades, and Part 4 will be entirely devoted to Making Money with Adsense.

Again, check my User Profile to see the other parts of this series.

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