It’s been a little over a year since I started blogging and it has been one heck of a ride! When I first started out, I really had no idea what I was doing. When I heard buzz words like “social media, “carnivals” and “page rank,” I had no idea what people were talking about.
To give you some background, I initially started Free Money Wisdom as a place to share Christian centered financial wisdom with others. After having co-worker after co-worker come to me for financial advice, I knew this was my calling. Since I started, the fire to help people around has only grown stronger. I must get an email a week from a loyal reader thanking me for something I wrote. It’s so cool to see the Lord use my abilities and make an impact on other people’s lives.
Since I’ve started blogging, I have made a significant amount of money. For privacy reasons I will keep the figure confidential. How much I’ve made is not the purpose of this article. I wanted to write an “evergreen” piece where I share with you some ways I leverage the internet to make me money.
So, everyone has the goal of making money with a blog. I don’t know how many people enjoy spending countless hours working on something and never see a dime for it. Heck, maybe those people do exist, but it’s definitely not me!
So how in the world do I make money? There are hundreds of ways to make money from your blog but I’m going to share with you a couple that contribute to the majority of my online income. I will start with the lowest earners and work my way up. Here we go!
Contextual Advertising
This is the most common way of advertising online. Anyone with a blog can place a couple contextual ads on their site. When I say contextual I mean ad services like Adsense, AdBrite, or Media.net. These are examples of contextual ad networks. They’re very simple to implement and take little to no effort to make money from them. Any time someone comes to one of my blogs (Yes I own more than just Free Money Wisdom) and clicks on any of my advertising blocks, I get paid anywhere from .01 cents to a couple bucks. While the money may not seem like a lot, across my networks of blogs reaching tens of thousands of readers a month, it can add up quite quickly.
Infolinks
You know those annoying double underlines that have popup boxes? Well, I use them on some of my blogs. Are they freaking annoying? Heck yes. It’s actually a reason why you won’t them on Free Money Wisdom. However, on niche sites and pure Google traffic blogs, it makes sense to place these advertisements across my articles. Someone searches for “Chase credit cards,” lands on my blog and clicks a couple Infolinks and moves on. Yes they may not become a loyal reader, but that’s not my goal with the majority of my sites. On a site with around 500 views a day, Infolinks brings in close to $5 a day. Again, this may not seem like big dollars, but multiple that out across multiple sites and you’ll begin to realize the earnings potential!
Affiliate Sales
This is my next money maker in terms of revenue. An affiliate sale is when someone clicks though an ad on your blog and either makes a purchase or signs up for a service. Examples of this include banners on this blog for things like PerkStreet and article reviews of brokers like Options House. I try to limit myself to recommending services or products that I personally use. And sometimes, when I test out a service but don’t necessarily use it on a regular basis, I’ll still write a review for it.
The money for affiliate advertising ranges dramatically. I recommend some services and/or products that make me $3 a sale and others where I make upwards of $200 per sale. This is not a big money maker for me YET but I have plans to focus on this type of advertising for the remainder of 2012 and beyond.
Private Ads
If you have a high traffic blog, advertisers will want to place banners of even text links on your site. This has been an extremely lucrative money maker for me. You’ll see some banners on my sidebar. They have chosen to pay me a set fee on a monthly basis to have their banner on my blog. Private advertising is probably the most passive income I’ve run into. All it takes is a quick email and you can see new money in your bank account in a matter of hours. Some people like to automate this process even more and use a plugin to manage their ads. That’s fine and dandy but I enjoy building relationships with my advertisers. In terms of revenue, private advertising brings in anywhere from $1,000 to $4,000 a month. Having multiple blogs really helps this number.
Are you getting excited or what?
So there you have it. Now you know all the major ways I make money with my blogs. Blogging is quite possibly one of the coolest ways to make extra money. If you really put your mind to it and put in enough work, you can even replace your day job income with revenue from blogging. I will say that it did take patience though. Between my initial investment and recurring monthly costs, I was in the red my first 6 months of blogging. I always tell people that if you can make it past six months, it’s all gravy after that.
To end this article, I want to encourage you to follow your passion! Business icons and leaders around the world have said it time and time again. If you follow your passion, the money will follow.
For the readers: do you have questions about blogging? If so, comment below and I’ll do my best to answer them and help you achieve your financial dreams!
And if you’re interested in even more reading material, here are some epic resources for newbie bloggers:
Thanks for taking the time to discuss this I feel strongly about it and love learning more on this topic. If possible as you gain expertise would you mind updating your blog with more information? as it is extremely helpful for me.
vintage clothing websites
Glad you enjoyed it! Feel free to email me with questions.
Thanks for sharing so much useful blogging information. You mentioned a plug-in for managing private ads. Do you know of a good one? What does the plug in do?
OIO Publisher rocks.
Very nice Jon. Good insight into some of the elements you use. Would be interesting to hear your perspective on how you gained/increased traffic for your network of blogs. I bet there are some really good nuggets there as well.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Hi Jon , nice article but how do you start a blog and how do you get those links or advertisers ? I am very interested to do this becaUSE IT WILL SURELY GENERATE AN INCOME TO HELP ME WITH MY RETIREMENT , THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR HELP!
Starting a blog is as easy as finding a domain name and getting a WordPress account! Good luck!
It does however take quite some time, and you should not be in it just for money.
It takes a TON of time! I was in the hole for 6 months!
Well written explanation on how you are able to use your blogs to earn money. Although, I think only another fellow blogger would totally understand what you wrote.
We are a bunch of volunteers and opening a brand new
scheme in our community. Your website offered
us with helpful info to work on. You have performed an impressive process and our entire neighborhood will likely be thankful to you.