Google Adsense in Blogs

Google Adsense is the fastest and easiest way to monetize your blogs. Google Adsense is described in detail in Google Adsense section of this course.

Pay per Post

You have been writing about products and services in your blog, but you don't get paid for your post. If you have a good following, you are able to direct traffic to the product or service that you wrote about.  With Pay per Post, you do the same thing. But this time, you are writing for a companies that want bloggers to write about their products and services.  You get your post approved and you get paid.

Blogads in your site

Blogads.com is a network of influential bloggers who collaborate to promote and sell blog advertising. Advertisers order, manage and renew fixed-period ads or sponsorships on your blog. Only ads you approve run.  Blogads is now invitation only. To participate in Blogads, you need to be sponsored by a blogger in the network. If you don't know a sponsor, write sellers@blogads.com and  they will notify you when a sponsor appears in your niche.

Pay-per-click ads

Aside from Google, there are other programs that provide sites and bloggers income from placing contextual ads. Some of these sites are Crispads, Kanoodle, ValueClick, Search Feed, Target Point. There are, of course, others, that is not included in my list; this is just to give you an idea of how it works.

E-book Publishing

Some savvy bloggers eventually graduate to being e-publishers. Once you have proven your mettle and your blog consistently draw traffic, you can sonsider writing an e-book on the topic you are blogging about. Because you have a following, your blog becomes the natural starting point for selling your e-book.  For more on e-book publishing, click here.

Affiliate Programs 

You can likewise join affiliate programs related to your blogs and start promoting them on your site.  Affiliate programs are discussed in detail in the Affiliate Programs section of this course. Once you have established yourself as an expert, you can write product reviews and earn affiliate commissions from these reviews that results in a sale.

Promote your products and services

This is employed by marketers who have main product and service sites. In this method, you write articles about your product, (how your product solves a particular problem) with the goal of driving the visitors to visit your website. This is an effective method as webistes do not change as dynamically as blogs.

Sell advertising space

This can only apply to blogs that have built a certain following.  You can start offering advertising space for your blogs once you can show consistent heavy traffic.

Blog flipping

This refers to creating blogs for the purpose of selling it. Blogs that have very good traffic can attract some investors and with some good ol capital rolling in, make the blog a successful marketing vehicle.  There is not much of these in the news but it is happening. The most prominent being the purchase of Weblogs Inc by AOL.

Consulting

Some bloggers who have attained a certain level of "guru" status earn a decent income by becoming "blogging consultants" for companies who would like to use blogging as a long-term business strategy.  Blogging consulting entails a lot of skills such as online copyrighting and search engine optimization.

1.  Use RSS technology

RSS technology is discussed in How to find and develop content for your site, Part 3. 

2. Submit your blogs to directories and search engines.

With the growing popularity of blogs, there is also a growing number of directories and search engines.  To start you off, refer to the list given above.

3. Promote your blog in your site.

If you have a main site, make sure you invite people to visit your blog.

4. Link to other blogs

You can have both outbound and inbound links in your blog. For outbound links, ensure that those links are sites that your audience will find useful and that they are not "bad neighborhoods". For inbound links, you may request sites that are related to yours for links. Alternatively, you can subscribe to Blogrolling.  BlogRolling is a one-stop linklist manager for your blog or journal, helping you manage your ever-evolving linklist with ease.

5.  Blog and Ping

"Pinging" is a way to automatically alert the directories and search engines that you have updated your site. Search engine optimization experts swear by the effectiveness of pinging in having your blog indexed almost automatically if you use the "ping" method.  People who use the blogs and directories will see that your blog has been updated.  Most blog providers automatically ping WebLogs and Technocrati but you may also ping other directories and search engines.  You may go to the following sites to "ping".

BlogExplosion, Ping-o-Matic, Pingoat.  

Some Internet gurus disapprove of "pinging" as some people have abused the system.  Some quarters claim that there has been a rise of "spam" blogs or blogs that really have no meaningful content, or blogs that are just stuffed with keywords that are being "pinged" to the search engines. This results in the pollution of the blogosphere. 

6.  Use Tag and Ping

Tagging is a relatively new way to classify information on the Internet. The interesting thing with "tagging" is that the tags are assigned by humans. A tag is simply a word that describes the content of your page.  Let's say I tag this page "tag and ping", this page will appear in the directories that I "pinged" when people search for "tag and ping". Users of tag and ping swear by its effectivity in driving traffic to the site.

Tag and ping is one of the latest buzzwords in the Internet and there are experts offering their take on this latest craze. You can check out these sites.

	Blogging Resources   Blogging for Dollars -  This is the definitive guide for those who intend to make real money from blogging.   Blogging to the Bank - This is a practical guidebook on how to atttact huge traffic to your site with advanced but simple to implement SEO techniques.   Tagging Secrets - This ebook offers some valuable tips on how to drive qualified traffic on demand by tagging.   Tag Automator - Access to the Tag Automator Software suite that lets you create an unlimited number of accounts at social bookmarking sites and lets you tag and ping on autopilot. Users claim instant increased earnings after using this software. Trial copy available.

For other business models, click here.