How do you make money from your blog?

Most people start a blog with the idea of sharing content. They don’t have any  monetization plan in mind. While  it’s always easier if you’re clear on how you will earn money from the beginning, this is a situation that can be easily corrected.

To give you some ideas, here are 10 straightforward ways you can earn money from you blog:

1. Affiliate Marketing: A common choice for many is to go the affiliate marketing route by earning commissions through recommending products. Many bloggers place ads in their side bars, at the bottom of posts and so forth, but the affiliates who make the most money make product recommendations directly to their audience. They write about products, recommend relevant products in their posts and so forth.

2. Product Sponsorship – Sponsorship is a similar concept to advertising, but in many cases, no money exchanges hands. Instead, bloggers are treated to free product in return for mentioning their product, running a giveaway and so forth. Many large and small companies are actively looking for the opportunity to reach their target audience through bloggers, so there is plenty of opportunity to enjoy a variety of perks.

3. Sell Advertising: Many bloggers capitalize on their traffic by selling advertising for their blog. This works well for high traffic blogs that can attract high paying advertisers. It is often the choice of bloggers who don’t want to do any selling on their blog and want to focus solely on content. Still, there is selling involved in attracting advertisers and there is plenty of work involved in serving advertising clients.

4. Sponsored Posts – Like successful bloggers, many companies understand that the most premium ad space on a blog is the blog post itself. Sure, you can put ad banners in your sidebar, but those are most likely to be ignored because people focus on your content. That’s why many companies are willing to pay for the opportunity to post on your blog. Sponsored posts are usually more commercial in nature, but as the blog owner, you ultimately decide which posts you will accept and which you won’t.

5. Bolster Your Product Sales – If you already have an existing online business where you sell your own products, a blog can be the perfect complement to this. Engaging your audience, building a more loyal relationship and educating them on your product is a win-win for everyone.

6. Ebooks and Info Products – If you’re into blogging, chances are you love writing. This is the perfect path to creating your own information products and ebooks. You can sell them on your website, through Kindle, Smashwords and more. If your blog readers love your content, they’ll love to get even more that they can add to their mobile device and take wherever they go.

7. Contextual Advertising – You’ve probably heard of Google Adsense and Chitika. These are advertising networks that display content on your pages. The ads displayed are related to the topics of your specific blog posts…thus, the term “contextual”. Working with an ad network means you don’t have to find your own advertisers and you don’t have to deal with client service either. It’s all taken care of by the ad network and you get a percentage of the profits. Or you can maximize your revenue by displaying contextual ads and accepting advertisers on your blog as well.

8. Blogging for Pay – One of the simplest ways to start earning money from blogging right away is to simply be a blogger for hire. It’s a guaranteed way to get paid for your work, but it doesn’t have the scalability that doing your own blogging does over time. After all, as a blogger for pay, you only get paid when you blog and most jobs don’t pay incredibly well. Still, it’s a great place to get started and start earning money almost right away.

9. Feeding Traffic to a Mailing List – You may have heard the term, “the money is in list” and it’s absolutely true. Growing your own email subscribers list ensures that you have a growing audience of people that you can keep in touch with over and over again. Many bloggers keep their focus on content on their blog and simply funnel people into the mailing list, so they can make offers and sell products via email. Email marketing is an important topic, so we’ll definitely be talking about it in a later post.

10. Speaking – While many bloggers prefer to communicate with their fingertips to the keyboard, many also have a very commanding presence and enjoy speaking to audiences. Speaking is definitely a good skill to cultivate as it can be very profitable. Whether you run your own webinars or speak at various live events, having an active blog following can help you bring more people to your speaking events and increase your income.

Certainly, this isn’t an exhaustive list of the possible ways to profit from a blog because every blogger and business is different, but it gives you plenty of ideas to get started. You might just use one idea to start with, but most successful bloggers use a combination of a few or more monetization opportunities. The key is to start exploring ideas, testing them out and further developing those methods that work for you.