Which of These 5 Business Models Will Help You Make Money Blogging?

Method 1: Make money through paid posts and reviews.

Bloggers make a direct exchange of time for money in the paid-posting model. A product review or related post is written and published by the blogger for a predetermined amount of money, then the blogger moves on to serve another advertiser; usually there are no long term business relationships. The advertiser is usually interested building product buzz, or backlinks for search engine optimization.

Because the advertiser is usually looking for broad coverage, unestablished blogs cannot command more than $5-$20 a post. This model becomes more lucrative if the blog has a large and established reading base. A blog like JohnChow.com charges $500 for a paid review, but serves over 23,000 RSS subscribers and more than 200,000 unique visits each month. There is usually no potential for long-term income from a paid post. If the blogger doesn’t find new advertisers and write more paid posts, the blogger doesn’t continue to make money.

Many in the blogosphere feel paid reviews are a means of selling a blogger’s reputation to the highest bidder. Paid post writers rarely purchase the products they are “reviewing” or may have only given it a cursory examination, so unpaid reviews are generally considered more trustworthy.

Method 2: Make money selling advertising space.

This is probably the most common first attempt bloggers make to monetize their sites. They may place a few Adsense blocks on a blog or possibly manage to sell a few banner ads linking to other websites. In the case of Adsense ads, it’s a process of exchanging readers for pennies since each offsite click pays very little.

Massive amounts of traffic must also be channeled through banner ads or advertisers will not renew each month and income cannot be sustained. In either case, pushing massive amounts of traffic through your site, without necessarily retaining any readers, is the key to this blogging business model.

This is an attractive option for publishers because the cost of entry is next to nothing and no special blog posts must be written. But blog readers have become almost completely blind to display advertisements, so these ads may not be cost effective for the advertiser. Also, unless a blog is popular, advertising space cannot command a high price. The low income per ad often encourages publishers to clutter their blogs with banners and links, which in turn further reduces an individual ad’s visibility and effectiveness.

Interesting enough, in spite of display advertising’s generally low performance, it remains a popular option both for publishers and advertisers. Lately, banner advertising has been taken under the wing of “branding” and advertisers do not necessarily expect a direct response to their ads. The idea is multiple exposure to an ad across a span of time and multiple blogs will eventually cause a reader to respond. While this idea is consistent with research which seems to indicate a number of exposures are required to convert a viewer into a customer, the actual performance of these ads is difficult to track.

Method 3: Make money selling affiliate products.

Many use their blogs as a platform to promote affiliate products, often using banner ads and article writing similar to the paid post and display ad models. It takes a little more effort than some of the other monetization models because the blogger researches and selects the affiliate products they wish to present. Many affiliate products supply bloggers with banners and pre-written reviews or articles for ready publication.

While to some extent this model is about trading clicks for cash, the financial reward is larger than the click-for-cash trade off of the Adsense model. Bloggers with a little more ambition will write their own posts about the products they represent. References to affiliate products can also be worked into a blog’s regular posts, making for a more seamless integration of content and monetization. Bloggers can use the affiliate product’s supplied banner ads in place of outside advertisers and experience success or failure in direct proportion to the traffic they can generate for their blogs.

Affiliate marketing is generally more accepted in the blogging community than pay per post, although the activites can be similar. But while a blogger stands to benefit by writing a positive review which might result in an affiliate sale, a pay-per-post reviewer gets paid whether a sale is made or not. In affiliate marketing, income is in a generally direct proportion to the promotional effort.

Method 4: Make money selling your own information products or services.

Many blogs are started by existing businesses looking for new ways to attract customers. This sort of blog could provide internal news about the business’ offerings, or it might seek to provide helpful tips and information as a service to current and potential customers. The latter model has proven an effective way to attract new customers.

In this case, a blog is used as a tool to build reputation and authority within a niche. However, the blog isn’t expected to make much money itself and advertising might be minimal or even nonexistent. The blog is part of a funnel system to convert readers into buyers.

This sort of blog often has a “backend” where the real profits are made, such as a catalog of products or an inquiry form for a service. The blog may also have been started for SEO purposes as a supplement to the “main site” intended to draw search engine traffic.

Method 5: Build connections to make money by your reputation.

Some blogs have no visible means of support. They appear to be nothing less than a pure public service; these blogs provide quality information and seek nothing in return. If there are ads they are few, and if a product is reviewed any affiliate links are carefully disclosed or the blog may even link directly to helpful products without an affiliate link.

These blogs are seen by their owners as networking tools. Such bloggers are more interested in who they meet along the way and what joint projects might result from the new associations. These bloggers are building their own “brands” and increasing their authority within a niche, but the blog is only a small portion of their income each month. The majority of their income results from partnerships made with the talented people met through the activity of blogging.