3.8 Making Money From Your Blog

Is making money from your blog a fantasy that Internet marketers promote to induce spending-or is actually a reality for the average person? Those who haven't yet had success with a blog might be inclined to say the former, but the truth is probably somewhere in between: making money from your blog isn't quite as easy as most marketers would like you to believe, but if you have realistic expections and maintain steady time inputs, you will reap some sort of consistent profit.

What are some of the more popular ways for making money from your blog?

One of the most popular ways of making money from your blog is to sell an information product. You can hire someone else to create an information product for you; and then you can compile it, and then sell it on your blog through Paypal or Clickbank. For instance, you could use a campus professor directory to contact a psychologist or biologist-and then pay them to ghostwrite a product for you. You can then setup a payment button through Paypal that will redirect them to the product download page after they pay.

Another popular way of making money from your blog is through affiliate programs. If, for instance, you own a blog about real estate, you can go to Clickbank.com and find a number of different information products for real estate-most of which will pay 50-75% commissions on each sale. If your earnings are above a certain threshold, Clickbank will send you a check bi-weekly for your commissions.

The last and easiest way of making money from your blog is with contextual advertising. You can do this by opening a Google Adsense account and generating code for a block that will match your blog's layout. You can then insert that code into your blog in a "hot spot"--which visitors are likely to click. As visitors click on your ads, you will accumulate earnings, which are paid out on a monthly basis.