When I first started blogging almost 4-years ago, I had two goals…
1. Create another communication channel (besides email) where our readers could choose to pull information from us instead of having to endure an endless stream of emails.
2. Increase traffic using the search engine friendly aspects of blogs.
Both goals were realized very early on, and as time progressed, my posts grew past 1000, my main blog reached a very high rate of readership and I started a few more blogs – it happened almost by accident – I started to make money blogging!
At first, I was even afraid to admit it, after all, making money with your blog tended to really ruffle the feathers of die-hard blog publishers (who by the way usually were also indirectly making money from their blogs.)
As time wore on, I continued to build my blog – changed from Moveable Type to WordPress taking advantage of the many great plugins over at WordPress.
At the same time, I also had niche market information publishing businesses selling courses, ebooks, multimedia packages – which provided the key products and services I sold for profit online. We outline this system over at "Ultimate Information Product Success Package" – and to this day these infoproducts are our main source of income online.
Over time, we have increased the money we have made from our blogs as well…
Profit generated by combination of…
1. Promoting our information products by linking in relevant posts and posting ads strategically throughout the blog
2. Promoting affiliate products with a combination of relevant links, reviews and ads
3. Text link ads which pay to post ads based on popularity of your blog
4. Review Me (I don’t use this very much, maybe one review each month)
5. Adsense – not the main source of monetization, but adds to the overall total.
The key to making money with your blog is a) Delivery solid content often, b) Target your information to a market niche (so the ads and messages can be relevant) c) Develop an ecosystem of information products you can promote via your blog and d) Don’t be afraid to link back and market your products in context of the information you deliver on your blog.
Jeff
