The Ultimate Guide to Properly Monetizing Your Blog - How to make money online

A huge proportion of businesses is now run entirely online. The internet can make setting up a company easier, cheaper and quicker than it ever was before. While some business owners use a website to advertise their products or services, for others their website is their product. Many online entrepreneurs start off running a blog or website for fun and monetize it later on, when they begin attracting enough page views. Although for some, running a monetized website is just a hobby that brings in a bit of extra cash on the side, for others it’s a living. You can use your website to make enough money to live on, and then some, if you go about it the right way. If you like the idea of making a living from running a website, read this guide to monetizing a blog or website to get you started.

Google AdSense is a way of placing adverts on your website that pay you on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis. Google pays you a percentage of the revenue that they generate from the advert based on getting people to click on the link. How much you are paid can depend greatly on what ads show up on your blog and how often visitors to your site actually click on them. It can also depend on which adverts you are allowing to display on your site. It is usually only a few cents per click, but that can really add up if you are able to attract enough traffic to your blog.

The AdSense ads will be generated automatically by Google to match the content on your site.  So if you have your own blog about pets, Google will display adverts about pet related products.  If you blog about travel, Google will display ads related to holidays and travel.  You can however get in a bit of a mix up if you blog on a wide variety of subjects though, which is why it’s so important to pick a targeted niche and stick to it.

It can also be a bad idea to have lots of AdSense ads on your website if you are also trying to sell a your own products. You are basically advertising your competitors right next to your own product! Now, this doesn’t stop you from endorsing or positively reviewing a specific products on your blog, but it may be wise to remain somewhat neutral in order to get more clicks. Focus mainly on good, original content and stick to the facts.

Blogger usually promote their own affiliate products by placing banners or links on advertising space available on their blog. But if you are having extra advertising space or don’t have your own affiliation with any product, I would recommend to sell that advertising space directly. Many advertisers might be willing to pay you for advertising space available on your blog. Though this method is not so common due to fear of violating Google Policy on Selling Links . So make sure you don’t violate any terms and conditions. And once sure, you can give it a go by setting up your own CPM rates. OIO Publisher plugin can be very useful in selling advertising space directly, if you are WordPress user.

However, there are some of market places like BuySellAds, which makes your work easier by communicating with advertisers and managing everything else. Though they might take a small percentage as commission for example, BuySellAds takes 25% as commission. But that is justified as its better to have any banner placed continuously rather than spending any day with any advertiser.

You can develop and sell a product of your own.  I know, it’s a difficult process, but it doesn’t have to be.  By building a blog, you’re building an audience.  You can test that audience and determine a product they want.  You can create and sell that product and rake in the cash as they buy what you know they want.

Selling your own products – particularly if they’re software or content, like music or an ebook – allows you to make money forever, so long as that item is up for sale and not outdated.  You also make the jump from blogger to entrepreneur.  You can always develop a new product, too, to keep the whole thing going. On the other hand, research and development takes a lot of time and money.  If you can’t produce the product easily, like you could with an ebook, you’re going to have a hard time.

Affiliate marketing is not a bad word, no matter what others may lead you to believe. There is nothing wrong in recommending products you use to others and earn a commission if someone decides to buy these products based on their recommendation. It can be an affiliate for almost anything that is sold online. Chances are, no matter what your niche, you can find at least one product to be an affiliate. Am I not sure where to start? Try looking at the things that have paid for the use of their website and then see if those things have an affiliate program. These things are the following plus some popular choices for each affiliate.

There is no such thing as free lunch. I wonder who said that. Well, I think there is. There is a difference between begging and asking for a donation. If you blog hard and provide quality content regularly, your audience will definitely want to support your ongoing success. First of all, it doesn’t hurt to set up a donation button on your blog. I have seen a lot of people doing that. “buy me a beer”, “donate”, “keep it alive” are few tabs I have seen around in the blogosphere. Want to implement a donation button on your blog? Use paypal as they allow you to place a donation button with ease. Always remember, if you don’t ask, you don’t get!

Membership sites are touted as incredibly profitable routes for bloggers but that doesn’t come without its share of work.  Unlike normal blogs and online publications, any form of membership would require more than normal adherence to quality of content and an almost insane level of commitment to publish content continuously. You’d obviously need a niche that has the potential to call for that kind of content continuously, of course.