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How Bloggers Really Make Money

Joe Hauckes — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:22:35 +0000

This is a Guest Post by Audrey Porterman of Doctoral Programs. If you would like to Guest Post for WAHI, please visit the Guest Posting page.

Blogging is one of the best ways to make money online. When you’re just starting out, it may be unclear exactly how it is that you make money from blogging. You might understand that advertising is involved somehow, and you might know that getting a lot of traffic to your site is important, but how it all comes together may be a bit confusing.

There are a few different ways that you can make money through blogging. Here are the basics:

Advertising

There are many different ways to sell advertising on your blog. You can sell advertising directly, setting your own rates and terms. Unless you have a really popular blog in a popular niche, you aren’t likely to be attractive enough to advertisers for them to pay for space on your blog.

The form of advertising that most bloggers use is pay-per-click or pay-per-impression advertising. They sign up through a program such as Google AdSense (the most popular advertising program with bloggers) and place the ads on their blogs. Whenever a reader clicks on that ad, the blogger gets money — usually a few pennies. The more popular the blog, the more traffic it gets and the more likely that more people will click on the ads, creating more revenue. The less popular the blog, the more likely that revenue will be very small (maybe only a few dollars a month or none at all).

Other ads include pay-per-impression (whenever a user views the ad, measured by traffic) and text links (which pay per click or impression and are tied to hyperlinks in the blog content).

Affiliate Marketing

Another form of advertising, affiliate marketing pays the blogger a commission on any sales generated through those ads. For example, if you display an ad from Amazon for a new TV, and a reader clicks on that ad and buys that TV, you get a commission. Affiliate marketing tracks sales through specially coded links tied to your ads. Commissions can be fixed or based on a percentage.

When you choose affiliate marketing, it is best to choose products to promote that you actually endorse and that are tied to the content of your blog. You’ll be able to promote the products better, and your readers will be more likely to buy them because they tie in to their interests.

Sponsored Reviews

More companies are recognizing the power of blogs to promote their products — or to hurt their reputations. It only takes the recommendation of a popular blog to increase sales or the bad review of a popular blog to create a negative reputation.

Many companies will pay bloggers to review their products in the hopes of getting a good review. If you write a paid review, you have to disclose the payment on your blog (the fact that you have been paid, not how much you were paid). You don’t have to say you love the product just because you were paid for the post.

Selling Your Own Products and Services

The best way that bloggers make money is to sell their own products and services. Do you want to write a craft blog? You can sell your own creations, an e-book explaining your techniques, or an online course showing others how to make your creations. Do you want to write about small businesses? You can sell your consulting services or an e-book outlining your expert recommendations.

No matter what type of blog you write, you can sell your own products. Consulting, e-books, or products you have created are among the most popular items to sell.

Whatever method you choose for making money with your blog, getting a lot of targeted traffic will be the key to your success. The more people in your target audience who are visiting your blog, the more people you have to potentially click on your ads, buys your affiliate products, or buy your own products or services. You won’t necessarily get rich from any one of these methods individually (though you could), but you have a very good chance of success if you diversity and you use all of them well.

About the Author: Audrey Porterman is the main researcher and writer for doctoralprograms.org. Her most recent accomplishment includes graduating from Ohio State, with a degree in business management. Her current focus for the site involves business doctoral programs and psychology phd programs.

This Weeks Helpful Reads… Week 166

Joe Hauckes — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 11:37:07 +0000

Mark Twain

This is an ongoing series of interesting and helpful reads that I have come across on the Internet. I try to include the most helpful articles and links each week to provide the widest range of information for the home business entrepreneur.

8 Common & Critical Small Business Website Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make by Dawud Miracle… Dawud not only gives a list of common mistakes that a lot of online businesses make, but gives you ways to avoid them in the first place.

Strategic Blogging and Some Tactics to Nail It by Chris Brogan… After you read Dawud’s post you may wonder what comes next for your business blog. Luckily, Chris has some ways to set goals and strategies for your consideration that could be boon to your business.

I hope you find some of these articles informational and helpful. I think they will be enjoyable reading nonetheless.

Blog vs Website eBook Officially Launches Today!

Joe Hauckes — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 05:56:56 +0000

The Official Launch of the Blog vs Website eBook is Here!

It’s a short and sweet introduction to doing business on the internet for anyone who has questions about which is the better option- Blog or Website -for their online endeavours.

You can get a copy of the eBook and/or MP3 (with e-mail request for Audio) for the low price of $4.95 just by clicking the picture above or going to your Scribd account and looking for Blog vs Website in the search section.

If you would like to grab the link for the eBook to offer your readers on your site, feel free, but I can’t offer an affiliate program quite yet. Sorry.

Thanks for your support!

The Blog vs Website Writing Project Starts Now

Joe Hauckes — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 11:20:53 +0000

It’s Official…

Today is the start of the Blog vs Website Writing Project

Concept…

The idea is simple, to help Business people determine the Advantages or Disadvantages of using a Blog or a Website (or a combination of both) to enhance their businesses on the Internet. It can be about your experiences, successes and/or failures using either type of web presence, or even your opinion on the good vs evil of each as a way to reach potential or existing customers.

It’s pretty open, whatever has worked for you, you think could work for others, barriers you have encountered. Whatever, as long as it involves Business and a Blog v Website theme.

Rules…

The rules are pretty simple as well.

The post Must be Original. Written by you or someone involved with your business.

The article must have been written no earlier than the pre-announcement (6/25).

Submission links must be submitted through my contact form subject:contest.

No purely self-promotional posts, please. This is to try to help others in their Home Business endeavours.

Linkbacks/trackbacks are optional.

The Prize…

Liz Strauss’ New eBook

The Secret to Writing a Successful and Outstanding Blog

An Insider’s Guide to the Conversation that’s Changing How Business Works

by Liz Strauss

Duration…

You can submit posts anytime between now and Monday (July 7th) and the Winner will be announced Wednesday (9th). That’s it a little over week and it will be over.

Submissions…

All submissions will be accepted through my Contact Form subject:contest. Please write your article and submit a link to it. Please don’t submit the full article through the form unless you don’t have a Blog, Webpage or some other way of publishing your own article. If that is the case, please explain the reason and I will be happy to publish your submission here and give you full credit.

Judges…

Dawud Miracle builds static websites and blogs and also help small business owners understand how to use the full internet to expand their own businesses. He also does a great job at business coaching and consulting.

Chris Garrett is a professional blogger, Internet Marketing Consultant, new media industry commentator, writer, coach, speaker, trainer and web geek. He was also a founding member of Performancing.

Me You should know me by now I hope.

Depending on the number of articles submitted, I will post updates with links to the Original Articles daily or every two days, with a Final list being published on the last day of the project.

—

Believe me, I have read Liz’s Blog forever and met her personally at Both SBOCon events (actually that’s how I met Dawud & Chris too), you can bet there is a lot of great information in her New eBook -

The Secret to Writing a Successful and Outstanding Blog

(An Insider’s Guide to the Conversation that’s Changing How Business Works).

Attention: Another Great Prize has been added, check out the introductory post.

Coming Soon to a Blog Near You… The Blog Vs Website Contest

Joe Hauckes — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:13:12 +0000

It’s been a little over a year since I had a contest here at Working at Home on the Internet. I know, it seems like only a year, but it’s been 13 Months!

The reason I bring this up is that we’re going to have another, even more challenging contest. You see, I was going over my stats and found something really interesting. My most popular post is actually the Blog vs Website series. My Second most popular post is the Contest for Lorelle’s book, Blogging Tips, What bloggers won’t tell you about blogging.

I’ve been contemplating for a while having some kind of contest again, but could never decide what subject would work best. I thought, since these were both at the top of the list, I should do something about it to help people searching for an answer to this question. Being that this is not the formal announcement, I can only give you a hint (which you may have already guessed).

It will be about the differences between using a Website(page) or a Blog for promoting, selling, product exposure or business presence in general on the Internet. Oh, and there is a really cool prize going to be offered by Liz Strauss, her new eBook on how to build a community for your business online.

So, put your thinking caps on and ponder which you think is better for an online business; Blog or Website (maybe a combination?). Details to be announced Saturday (6/28), Contest begins Monday (6/30).