How to Make Money Blogging

If you’ve ever wondered how to make money blogging, you’ve come to the right place. Listed below are the things you needed to make money from blogging

1. A blog. Clearly. Here’s how to start a blog if you don’t already have one. It’s the easy part.
2. Valuable content. Once you have a blog, write. Draw from your expertise & experience and write informative posts and articles about your chosen topic. Make your content excellent. In order to make money, you must have visitors, but in order to have visitors, you must have content worthwhile to visit.
3. Relationships. As you create valuable content, start building genuine and sincere relationships via social media, forums & groups, commenting on other blogs and the like. Consider starting a mastermind group. Reach out to people in your niche. Find people who could use the information you provide. Get to know them, interact, be friendly and helpful by offering no-strings-attached tidbits of your expertise. Word about you spreads best via people who know, like & trust you.
4. A strong platform. Keep growing in the knowledge of your craft so the content you produce gets increasingly great. Use your blog to get exposure, build authority, gain trust and be helpful.
5. Streams of income. These are the different ways you can make income as a blogger. 

Streams of income used by bloggers

Following is a list of income streams bloggers adopt, broken down into five main categories:

• Advertising
• Affiliate Marketing
• Digital Products
• Physical Products
• Services                                                                        

Display Ads

Display ads are graphics or images similar to billboards or ads in a magazine. Typically they are positioned on your site in the sidebar, header, footer or within your content. Sometimes they are referred to as banner ads. Ads on your site are meant to complement your blog’s content, making them attractive and relevant to visitors. Advertisers hope that your visitors will then click on those images to explore and purchase the products or services they offer. Display ads are often provided through ad networks. Ad networks are companies that connect advertisers with publishers (bloggers). Ad networks act as a middle man between advertisers and publishers, negotiating partnership details between the two. The ad network takes a cut from the partnership profit. Ad networks are attractive to many bloggers because they take the hassle out of display advertising.

Some ad networks, like Google AdSense, are relatively easy to get into and are easy to set up. Other ad networks though, are selective in who they accept. Examples of ad networks are Google AdSense, Blogads, BlogHer, Beacon Ads, Federated Media, Sovrn, (formerly Lijit), Media.net, Rivit and Sway. There are many more, so once you get involved in your niche’s community of bloggers, you’ll soon hear of others.

Can you really make money with Google AdSense?

This is a very popular question, and a good one. Google AdSense is probably the most popular ad network. No doubt you have seen Google AdSense ads as you have surfed the web.
Adsense ads come in various shapes and forms. Sometimes they are images and sometimes they are text. They show up in sidebars, headers, footers, within posts and anywhere else website owners choose to display them.
Adsense is a good place for beginning bloggers to start if they want to pursue display ads because it’s so easy to set up.
However, if you want to make really good money with Google AdSense, you either have to be in a unique niche in which advertisers will pay a lot of money for clicks on their ads (hard to find), or you have to have a lot of traffic (hard to get, especially for beginners).
For these reasons, I don’t recommend AdSense (or display advertising in general) as the main pursuit for new bloggers.
Tips:

• To apply for Google AdSense or other ad networks, contact the ad network via their website (choose one from above).
• If you want to get an idea of pricing and traffic for popular blogs, sites like Beacon Ads and Federated Media are places you can do that.
• If you’re using CPC/PPC ads (cost per click/pay per click), check out Google’s recommendations for best ad placement on your site. It’s important that your content doesn’t get drowned out by ads. Google has indicated sites with too many ads above the fold may be penalized in search. If you’re not sure what above the fold is on your site, use this tool.
• As always, experiment. Experiment with ad placement to get the right combination on your site.

Private Ads

Private ads are similar to display ads in that they also come in the form of buttons or graphics and usually appear in the sidebars of blogs. They are unique in that there is no middle man (ad network) to negotiate the partnership. Partnerships are arranged directly between a blogger and an individual, small business or company. Initial contact can be made by the blogger or by the advertiser. Be clear on what’s expected by both parties. Not sure what to charge? Look around to see what others in your niche charge. You can often find this information on a blog’s advertising page or media kit.
Don’t just throw up an advertising page and expect advertisers to come calling. Go to them. Not sure how to do that? Find other blogs like yours that are your size or slightly larger. See who is advertising on their site. Contact those companies and ask if they’d like to advertise on your site too. Create a pitch and make it a win-win. Check out iHeartOrganizing‘s advertising page as an example.
Tip for private ads on your blog: If you have ads in your sidebar, keep them full. Instead of displaying a blank box with “Advertise here” fill it with an affiliate graphic (see Affiliate Marketing below for more). Crystal Paine puts it well when she says, “[Blank ad spots] scream, ‘My advertising space isn’t valuable enough for people to want to buy so I instead have this big blank box!'”