Putting Your Blog to Work

To begin with, you must be clear about generating income from your blog. Many bloggers are not convinced enough that they can generate income and some may even feel that the money being generated is fair money because they seem to do so little for it. If you have any of such feelings, I would suggest you sort those out first and then work to monetize your blog.

You can in any case, derive other benefits too. For example, you could be looking for a reputation as a subject matter expert, you could be working to network and get to know the right people in the community. In such cases, positioning your blog where it attempts to earn revenue may go against your aims. So think about these issues too.

OK, so now we have a reasonably popular blog, visited by a number of people every day and you keep your content fresh and all that. How do you make it work for you?

Some Tested Ideas
Idea 1 No surprises here, tap the power of Ad networks. Notice, I used the plural. Dont confine yourself to Google Adsense alone; try Yahoo Publisher Network, Clicksor, AdSonar and the others too. No rule here that you are bound to work with a single ad network. In fact there are tools available that allow you to integrate and compare your revenue across several ad networks. It may be wise to use one of these later on as you grow.

Idea 2- Use traditional banner ads. This works better if your blog is so niche that there are very few ad network ads possible on it. You may even get some ads that are so obviously machine selected that they may even put the reader off. In all such cases, I recommend direct ads. Sure you have to work a lot more to get the ads, but then the ads work a lot more too and you get paid upfront. Remember though, that you need to have a lot of primary data about your site before you can convince an advertiser that he will find value on your site. Your first few ads could even be free ads or at very low cost just to convince other advertisers that you are in the business.

Idea 3 - Try affiliate links. These are links to companies which deal in stuff similar to what you are talking about. If you can generate sales or leads for them, they share a portion of the profits with you. This is an old but still very fruitful way to monetize your blog.

Its All About Value
Whatever method you choose, and there are many more of them, you must realize that unless your blog offers value, it is not likely to translate into cash. Be prepared to give solid value to your readers and you have a good chance of getting it back.

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