I‘ve been blogging seriously for just over 3 years now. Previous to that I had written personal and family blogs since 2002 or 2003, but never on a regular basis, and never did those ventures ever generate any money.

When I started my first personal finance site in January of 2008 I had an inkling that it might be possible to make money from blogging because I was reading posts from other bloggers talking about how they were making enough to pay their mortgage, or fund a vacation. I figured I would give it a shot as well.

At the time I didn’t have much of an idea about how people make money from blogs, except maybe that they were adding Google Adsense to their sites. So I figured I would start there, with Adsense.

My site’s first day I made a grand total of $0.00 from Adsense (see below). Day two I made $0.01.  It kept improving to the point where Adsense now does in fact pay my mortgage, and quite a bit more!   (See the graphic below for the gradual increase in income over time.)

So today I want to look at some of the best sources of revenue that I’ve found for a blog, beyond just the easy start of Adsense.

How To Make An Income With Your Blog

There are a ton of different ways to make money with a blog, you’re only really limited by your creativity.  But with that said, there are several main categories of income sources.  I’ll go over several of them. The first – pay per click ad networks.

PPC Ad Networks (Pay Per Click)

Pay per click ad networks are companies that pay you when people click on the ads on your site. The most prominent example of a PPC ad network is Google Adsense.  Some PPC networks pay better than others, and depending on what your topic is, the money you get per click could be anywhere from 1 penny to $14 or $15 dollars.

• Google Adsense:  By far my biggest income generator for my sites.   While Adsense doesn’t work great for all types of sites, it truly is one of the easiest and best ways to make income for a site right off the bat.  Even if you’re only making a few dollars every month, it is probably enough to pay for your hosting, domain name and other things.
• Bidvertiser
• Propeller Ads
• Revenu Hits

CPM Banner Advertising (Cost Per Thousand)

Another great way to make money based on your traffic alone is through CPM ad networks.   CPM networks are a lot like PPC networks, except in the fact that they don’t pay you for clicks, but instead pay you each time their ad is served. CPM stands for “cost per thousand” impressions and is the standard way that CPM networks figure out how much they will pay.

Most second tier CPM networks are going to pay in the range of a few pennies up to $1.50 or so per thousand ads served.  The goal, however, is to build your traffic to the point where you can sign on with a premium ad network in your niche that pays much more.  For example, I use one now that pays closer to $8-10 CPMs.

• Media.net
• Conversant
• Tribal Fusion
• Investing Channel (niche network)
  

Affiliate And Referral Networks (Pay Per Action Ads)

Companies are more than willing to pay you if you can get someone to purchase their product. They’ll either do a referral program through an affiliate network, or sometimes they’ll have their own in house referral program.  This is my third largest source of income.  Here are a few of my favorites.

• Commission Junction
• Flexoffers.com
• Linkshare.com
  
• Amazon Associates
• Share A Sale

Create Your Own Product

Creating your own product, like the ebook I sell on this site, is a great way to make extra income.    Here are some  ideas for things you can sell.

• Ebook
• Online course
  
• A service
  
• Membership sites
• Premium content
• Crafts or other homemade products

Referral And GPT Sites

You can also make money by referring people to different sites where people can make money by shopping, filling out surveys, signing up for trial offers and more.   Here are a few of the ones that have done the best for me.

• Cash Crate
• Ebates
• Swagbucks

Text Link Ads

I no longer sell text link ads on any of my sites because I know that Google doesn’t like them, and I don’t want to anger the big G.   After selling them I had one site drop from a page rank 5 to a page rank of 3,  and search traffic slowed as well.  At that point I stopped selling them on all my sites.  If you want to take the risk, however, there is some decent money to be made selling text links.  At my biggest point on that other site I was making about $1000/month from text links alone.  For many of these text links, once you reach a certain page rank, you’ll start getting emails from companies that are offering to buy the links.  My advice, don’t allow them to lowball you, your site’s link juice is worth more than you think. Be willing to turn the scammers down as well.

• Private Link Brokers: will contact you directly.

Conclusion

The list above of ways to make money is only the beginning. There are a plethora of other ways to make money with your blog, some of which work well for some blogs, but not for others.  In the end, you’re only limited by your creativity!  So get on out there and start making some extra income!

Do you have any ways of making money that you’d like to share with other readers?  Tell us about it in the comments!

When starting a blog one of the first things most people are going to start thinking about is how they can make money with their sites. While you might be better served by doing other things like building content and backlinks to build up your traffic first, having a monetization strategy is definitely an important piece of the puzzle if you plan on making money with your blog to start you need content and an idea or even a product, you can get a loan and visit this site to find how and all the pros and cons of a loaning system.

When I first started blogging seriously in 2008 I didn’t really know what revenue sources were available to me as a blogger. About the only things I knew about were Adsense and CPM (cost per thousand) ad banner types. What I didn’t realize is that there are a plethora of other ways to make money with a blog.

10 Ways To Make Money With A Blog

After about 6 months of blogging, and a lot of research I realized that there are a ton of ways you can make money with a blog, and it wasn’t just Adsense.

1. Pay Per Click (PPC) Ad Networks:  You can make money with pay per click ad networks along the lines of Adsense and Chitika.  These types of companies will pay you anywhere from pennies to dollars every time someone clicks on one of their ads on your site.  Google Adsense is by far my biggest money maker currently – and can be a good source of income even for newer bloggers.
2. Private Ad Sales & Sponsorships:  Selling your own advertising space can be a very lucrative monetization method, mainly because it allows you to cut out the middle man (third party ad networks) and keep 100% of all the money you make instead of just getting a commission from a network.  Of course you have to do the hard work of selling the ads too!
3. CPM Ad Networks: Another great way to make money based on your site traffic is through CPM ad networks.  CPM networks are a lot like PPC networks, except in the fact that they don’t pay you for
   clicks, but instead pay you each time their ad is served.  So if they pay you a $1 CPM, you’ll receive $1 for every thousand ads served.  Finding a premium network for your niche that pays a high CPM is key to making good money with this.
4. Affiliate And Referral Networks: Companies and individuals are more than willing to pay you if you can get someone to purchase their product or sign up for their service.   It usually works best when you promote products  you actually use and believe in.  Usually a company will pay you a  percentage of a sale or a flat fee.  It can be quite lucrative if you do it right.  Promoting these affiliate type offers does the best via reviews or via an opt-in email list.
5. Referral and GPT Networks (Get Paid To Websites):  There are quite a few sites out there that will pay you to fill out surveys, sign up for trial offers, buy products and refer new users to the programs.  I’ve signed up for several of them, and found that the real money is to be made in referring new users.  One example that has worked the best for me is  Cash Crate.
6. Creating Your Own Product To Sell: A lot of bloggers will diversify their income by creating their own products that they can sell on their site. Things like creating their own e-book (like the one I’m selling!), online classes, selling a service and membership websites have all become very popular.
7. Text Link Ads:  Some newer bloggers find that once their site gets a page rank above zero, they’ll start getting offers from other sites and individuals who want to buy a text link ad on their site. While you can make some good  money doing this, I have chosen not to partake in text link ads because Google has stated that they don’t like them, and it’s possible at some point sites that sell them could be docked in the search engines.   And you NEED search engine traffic to be successful.   So seller beware.
8. Sponsored Reviews:  Some companies will pay you to review their products or to do a sponsored post.  Just make double sure to post a notice that these posts are sponsored as required by the FTC.
9. Paid Writing Positions: Once you’ve built up some content on your own site, sometimes higher profile sites will offer to pay you to write for their sites as well. Your blog can stand as a resume of sorts for those looking to hire writers.
10. Selling A Service: Some people will use their site promote a service that they’re offering.  For example, you may offer consulting services via your blog, or maybe you offer design services.
11. Bonus Idea – Sell Your Blog:  I know some folks who enjoy the process of building a blog, but don’t want to continue doing it long term. Instead they build the site up to a decent amount of traffic and content, and then sell the site itself!

So those are a few of the ways I’ve found to make money with my site – although there are other things I’ve done as well.

What it really comes down to is that your options for making money with your site are only really limited by your creativity.  The key is to diversify, and create multiple streams of income via your site(s).  That way, if one source of income dries up, you’ll still have others that you can fall back on.

Do you have other ideas for making money with a blog?  What strategies do you use for monetizing?  Tell us in the comments!