Blogging For Dollars?

I have been blogging for years and have earned pretty solid income from my blog posts and have created some pretty successful income for my offline clients. Here are some tips for monetizing a blog. Please add to this thread with other ideas on making money with a blog.

Building and Quantifying Blog Traffic
The first step in monetizing any blog is quantifying the website's traffic to get an idea of what type of advertising would work best. Blogs that attract a large amount of traffic or a highly specific demographic may opt for different monetization methods than those that attract lower traffic numbers or more generic demographics. The two best programs to quantify and analyze your traffic are Google Analytics and Quantcast. Get your blog set up on both of these to track your results.

Google Analytics
Google Analytics is an industry-standard free analytics program that provides statistics like the number of page views, time spent on a given page and keywords that online visitors typed into search engines to reach your pages.

Quantcast
Quantcast is a free service designed to provide demographic information based on a user's location.

After these programs are up and running, the next step is to build traffic to the blog over time. The best way to do this is by writing strong content and optimizing that content to be easily accessible to search engines. You can also use Social Media such as Facebook and Twitter to drive traffic to read your blog.

Search Engine Optimization
SEO is the process of building a blog to enhance its visibility in search engines like Google and Yahoo!. Often, this is done by properly using HTML and identifying keywords with high traffic and little competition. Do some keyword research and then write your blog using the keywords you want to be ranked on, make sure the keywords are in the Title, Headline and 3 to 5 more times in blog post.

Google AdSense and PPC Programs
The most popular way to monetize a website that receives little to modest traffic (less than 200,000 visitors per month) is by using a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising program like Google AdSense. These programs pay website owners a variable amount of money each time a visitor clicks on an advertisement that's automatically generated based on the page's content. You can also use ClickBank, they offer high payouts than Google Adwords and you will be placing banners instead of text ads.

Selling Ad Space on your Blog Page
Many popular blogs attracting more than 100,000 visitors per month, or ones that target desirable demographics, may be better off directly selling ad space. Often, these ads are usually sold on a CPM basis, but some can choose a blend of CPM, PPC and CPA advertising methods. Ultimately, the blog owner should test and see what works best. Those looking to setup their own advertising systems can checkout programs like OpenX or inClick.

More on Monetization
The techniques listed above are certainly not the only ways to make money from home through monetizing a website. Blogs with highly desirable premium content may also want to consider a subscription-based model where readers pay a monthly fee to access certain content. This can be done with programs like MagicMembers or MemberMouse. Also, blog owners can attempt to sell products as affiliates and earn a commission if viewers click on the provided link and buy the products. There are many sites that allow affiliates to promote their products. ClickBank and Amazon are two popular ones, but there are many alternatives.

To Wrap Up
The best solution is usually to try different options and see what works. Google and others provide very easy ways to get started, while more complex systems can be implemented as the blog traffic grows larger. Unique ideas like subscriptions and affiliate marketing can often be hit-or-miss, depending on the visitor demographic being targeted. Enjoy and keep on Blogging !!

James Hickey