If you are considering starting a business, either as a sideline or as something you’d eventually like to grow into a full-time career, and you want an idea you can do with very little initial capital, you may have seen a lot of articles that suggest starting a blog. Running a blog can be interesting and a lot of fun, but from the outside, it can be hard to see how people with blogs are actually making any money out of doing it.
Monetized and Unmonetized Blogs
Naturally, not all of them are. Some blogs are run just out of personal interest as a hobby and are not implemented in a way that is designed to make any money at all. Others are used to support other money-making ventures, but the blogs themselves are not monetized. For instance, a writer or photographer may have a blog to showcase their work and help them win clients. However, other blogs do make money for their owners, although this is usually when this was the intention all along rather than something that happens as a fluke with no strategy in place.
So, how do blog owners earn money?
Advertising
The most obvious way that blogs can make money is by displaying paid ads. This is something that users can see, so it is not a particularly secret strategy! However, the amount a blog can make by showing paid ads varies depending on how well the blog ranks. Businesses interested in advertising on blogs usually target blogs in their niches that receive a certain level of traffic and have good SEO. This means you will usually have to build up the blog for quite a while before you can make much from advertising of this kind.
Publishing Guest Posts
A lot of blogs publish relevant articles that are written by or for businesses who want to get backlinks back to their websites for SEO purposes. This can be a great way for bloggers to make money because not only are they being paid for the articles they publish but they are also getting more content for their site in the bargain. Naturally, this strategy is only a good one when the things they publish are relevant to what their blog is about and well-written.
Reviewing And Affiliate Marketing
Another way blogs can make money is by joining affiliate marketing programs for products, which they can review or promote on their sites. The best-known program is, of course, Amazon’s because Amazon sells products in so many categories that almost any kind of blog can find a way to talk about something you can buy there.
Popular blogs always make the most money, so as well as a monetization strategy, a blog entrepreneur will look at how to get the best content to bring in visitors and keep people engaged. Take a look at sites like Chicks News, which incorporate news, fun posts, lifestyle and more but keep a tone that fits their target audience.
Sites that can do this well can receive good traffic and, therefore, become more attractive to guest posters and advertisers, and see more click-throughs if they have any affiliate links.
