Monday, December 19, 2011

How to Make a Living From Blogging

There are several business models that entrepreneurs can use to make a living from blogging. The first and most common way to turn make a blog profitable is to sell advertising or use affiliate programs. A second way to make money from a blog is to help a single brand improve its image by creating positive associations between the blog and the product in the mind of consumers. Both kinds of blogs can be very profitable, especially if the creator has a keen mind for marketing.

If you are going to blog with the goal of selling advertising, there are a couple of ways you can go about recruiting sponsors who want to put advertising on your site; you can let someone else do the legwork, or you can do the work yourself and keep all of the revenue. Within the first group, many people make an income from blogging by selling space through various advertising programs. These programs have some advantages since it doesn't take much time to get started. However, many people are a little disappointed with this source of revenue as it usually fails to live up to their expectations.

Selling advertising directly to companies who want to put banner ads or sponsored links on your blog can take quite a bit of time, but it can be fairly lucrative. If you have a lot of contacts in industries that are related to the topic of your blog, you may want to try to try this strategy. People who have a strong background in sales and are experienced at pitching proposals can make a lot of money by renting blog space to interested companies. The most serious problem with this model is that you often have to build quite a sizable readership before you can attract advertisers, which can translate into several months of work before you begin to make an income from blogging.

As blogging becomes a more and more lucrative business, a lot of established companies are thinking about how they can benefit from blogging. One way that companies are capitalizing on the blog movement is by having blogs that provide a kind of friendly face for their corporation. Often, a company will employ an established blogger to create a blog designed specifically to appeal to that company's customers. Many writers who never even dreamed that he could make an income from blogging has been approached by a company and offered a profitable opportunity.