Please frogive me if this totally sound crazy. Is there a way to make a profit from your blog besides the potential client that may look there? I always thought that blogging was a way to distribute information about an idea, opinion or product.

Hi Dionne!

There are lots of ways to make money by blogging. Most bloggers sell ad space to make money. And the ones who do this well generally make a nice chunk of change! You generally can't sell much ad space unless your blog gets a lot of traffic. Here's an article about that.

You can also sell an eBook via your blog, using a Wordpress shopping cart plugin to do so.

Here's an article about general blog money-making!

I hope others have some tips as I've never personally tried to monetize a blog. Good luck!

__________________
Brianna Young, VA and Graphic Artist
www.virtualsolutionsadmin.com
"It's not the piano that makes beautiful music. It's the person sitting AT the piano!"

Brianna listed some great resources for you, and I agree with her that the only real way to make money with a blog via selling advertising is to build up your traffic/readership. Advertisers are looking for high-traffic sites to put their graphics and links on.

You can also do pay per post type programs (there's Smorty and Pay Per Post....), but be careful, these types of blog content can distract immensely from a business blog (especially if the're not done in a way that meshes the information into your blog as if it was a spontaneous post of your own volition) and PPPs are death in the search engines for a blog if Google catches on that any of your posts are paid.

You could set up a Google ad system but in my personal opinion these cheapen a blog, especially a business blog. And again, any income is generated by clicks, which means you need good traffic.

The blogs that are really making good money on a regular basis have been online for a while and have taken the time to build up a healthy following of readers as well as decent search rank for their preferred search terms.

__________________

Like the others said, there are a few ways to make money from your blog, but I agree with Tess that some can cheapen the blog and I'd go so far as to say that a business blog full of advertisements for someone else's stuff would make me question doing business with them. Particularly blogs loaded with google ads. They seem a bit desperate to me and you'll likely only make a dollar or two a month, if that, unless you get hundreds of visitors a day.

On my blog I have my Entrecard drop (which even that I am a bit leery about but I've seen an increase in traffic and RSS subscribers so I'll leave it for a while) and my blogcatalogue widget and some other tags that are required for the various blog listing services. I doubt I'll ever put any other advertisements on that blog and definitely not above the fold.

__________________
Amanda Moore
Virtual Assistant
VagabondetteVA Blog

Great advice here ladies! I too am an avid blogger and recently decided to revamp a current blog to reflect a more focused topic and hopefully attract a good following. I am looking into the pay per post resources out there to earn a little bit of $ for my efforts. Thanks so much for revealing the "other" side of this approach so I wont waste my time with trying to put too much emphasis on that.

I use pay per post for my personal blog. I don't have a business blog but since I joined Merchant Circle and you can add a blog for free I've been blogging for business. But I don't expect to make any money besides potential clients reading. I use google adwords, some affiliate marketing and am looking into widget bucks for my personal blog. So far I'm not going to quit my day job but I am making enough to cover my blogging expenses (with hosting and my own site). So it works for me.

__________________
Janice Correa-Elite Business Services
"My Business is Your Business!"
www.elitebusinessonline.com

I agree that google ads for the most part "cheapen" blogs and websites but I have seen them done very tastefully. Just a small bar off to the side and nothing more. Of course, those ads won't generate any income unless people go to your blog...

I've also seen some bloggers accept donations to keep going. Oh, to have such devoted readers!

I make a small (very tiny) amount of money on my blogs. I'm an affiliate through commission junction and post recommendations of websites etc. that I PERSONALLY use and like and make a small commission off that occasionally. I am also an Amazon affiliate and when I recommend a book I'll put that link in there. I'm also a direct affiliate with some other companies (mostly e-books). I don't make a lot of money through these affiliates but a couple bucks a month or so (I think I got a $30+ payment this month that had a few months worth of purchases). I also click through all of them when I'm doing my own purchases (for example, if I'm buying something on amazon I'll click through one of my recommendations and I make 2% or something off my own purchase).

I don't want to "cheapen" my blog by putting a lot of ads on there but when I recommend something it's nice to be compensated by the company I'm recommending. I NEVER recommend a company that I don't personally use and like (which is why I don't have any google ads on my site).

__________________
Lanel Taylor, CVA ~ Virtual Bookkeeper
Taylored Office Solutions
Custom fit solutions for all your office needs.