If any one word can describe the internet fascination of the moment, blogging would be that word. A blog, quite simply, is web log. It is synonymous with a diary. That is the most basic definition. But, in practice, a blog can be about any subject under the sun. There are political blogs, sports blogs, food blogs, and personal blogs. But the question remains: Do bloggers make money?
The fact of the matter is that most bloggers do not make much money from their blogs. There are exceptions to this of course. Some bloggers make a great deal of money from their blogs and it is not uncommon to see claims of five figure monthly earners from the top bloggers. So, how do they do it?
Most bloggers who make a lot money write about commercial subjects. The choice of subject matter greatly effects a blogs potential for making money. For instance blogs about the stock market and making money online nearly always do better than blogs about sports or politics. The reasons for this are fairly obvious but a big reason is that commercial blogs can recommend products to their readers. If you have a blog about the Boston Red Sox there isn’t a whole lot of products you can sell your readers. But if your blog is about making money online there is no shortage of items that you can recommend.
And, by recommending products a blogger can earn a commission. Because, the fact of the matter is, advertising rarely generates a large income for bloggers. Even if a blogger gets hundreds, even thousands, of visitors a day, the prices that they can fetch from advertisers is fairly limited. But, if the blogger is willing to pitch products to their readers, the possibilities for income are nearly unlimited.
There are some blogs on the other hand that make very little income for the blogger. These blogs tend to be about subjects that do not lend themselves very easily to affiliate offers. For instance, there are a great many political blogs. But very few political blogs make their owners a lot of money. There are some exceptions to this rule, but for every exception there are one hundred cases where it is the case. Some examples of topics that tend not to be very lucrative include sports, politics (as mentioned), personal blogs, photo blogs and science blogs.
There are several tools that a blogger has at his or her disposal when it comes to making money. The first, as I’ve already touched on, is to develop an affiliate relationship with a company that sells a product that is appropriate for your readers. For instance if you blog about blogging, you might be able to refer your visitors to a blog hosting company for which you will be compensated. Another way that bloggers make money is by using a contextual advertising program such as Google adsense. This program will read their blog posts and display advertisements that are appropriate for the content of the post. For example if a blog post was about Las Vegas vacations then the ads displayed might be for Las Vegas resorts. Many people report making significant income with Google adsense and other contextual advertising programs.
Another opportunity to earn income from a blog comes from selling advertising space directly to advertisers. These advertisers will give you ads to display and they will pay you whether they make sales or not. Of course they will not remain your advertisers for long if none of your traffic converts into sales for them. In order to sell direct advertising a blog must have a certain minimal level of traffic, however for popular blogs selling direct advertising can bring in thousands of dollars a year.
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