12 Easy Ideas For Making Money Online Through Blogging

Making money online has become increasingly easy as more opportunities and innovations arise. Before launching out on the internet I spent lots of hours and days reading and analyzing the many products, schemes and techniques that people seem to be using to make money from just a few bucks to hundreds of thousands of dollars and even millions. Honestly, I’ve been burnt a few times from trying some get rich quick stuff.
However, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are some very simple, popular and legitimate techniques for making money online with very high success rates when done properly. So, I’m going to be sharing 12 money making ideas and I’m sure there are a couple here that will fit your blog’s niche or business model.

I’ll start with some basic techniques that can be implemented into every blog:

1. Make Money Through Google Adsense

This is by far the easiest method to start earning from your blog. Google’s adsense gives you access to their huge network of advertisers through which you can display advertisements that are relevant to your blog’s audience. You earn whenever someone views and clicks your ads. More visitors to your blog will mean high earnings and clickthrough rates. Ensure that you setup adsense ads for your feeds as well, google provides this option once you sign-in to your dashboard.
Click here to sign up for Google’e Adsense
Several Alternatives – Here are some alternatives to adsense that offer the same types of services. Chitika, Text Link Ads, AdBrite

2. Selling Private Advertising Space

This is another method for earning from your blog where you reserve certain spaces on your site for advertisers to place their banner or text ads. This way you specify your rates which are usually paid on a monthly basis. The cost of these ads will depend on your site’s popularity.
You can have as many as 8 advertising spots on your site without it being too intrusive for your readers. Each could bring you and average of $12 per month which means about $96 per month. You can find advertisers through the Buy Sell Ads network.

3. Paid Job Board

Setting up a job board to complement your blog is fairly simple. Through this you can offer free and paid job listings for visitors who may be interested in job opportunities. To earn from this, simply offer premium listings that will get more exposure than the average posting. Charge anywhere from $10 to $100 per month for listings. The price, of course, depends on the amount of traffic your blog receives.
Here are some up and running job boards to help you get the idea: Sam’s Job Board, ProBlogger Jobs and BloggerJobs.Biz

4. Accept Donations Through This Awesome Widget

Depending on what your blog focuses on you can accept monetary contributions paid directly to your paypal account through the ChipIn Widget. This is a flash based web service that simplifies the process of collecting money using a neat little widget to catch your visitors’ attention as seen in the setup example below.

Now for some more advanced techniques for monetizing your blog:

5. Writing & Selling E-Books

If you are an expert in the niche you are blogging about you can write unique e-books that provide a vast amount of useful content for your readers. Your first e-book can be sold anywhere from $7 to $30 depending on the quality and uniqueness of the content. If you’re serious, your e-book can be completed within a couple of months and provides a solid long-term income. Imagine selling an e-book for $12 with 1,000 copies being sold. That’s $12,000 in sales and is a lot of money even if its earned over a 12 month period.

6. Create & Sell WordPress Themes & Plugins

If you have great web development skills or have a few friends who do, you could design and develop a few WordPress themes and plugins and sell them for a minimal price of around $30. Think about it, there are over 100,000 blogs being launched daily. These bloggers are looking for themes for their new ventures; many of them are willing to pay for premium themes to get their journey started.
In addition to promoting your work on your own blog, you can sell your themes through the Themeforest marketplace. They’ve sold over 47,000 different themes on behalf of designers and developers and their site is one of most trusted and visited on the internet.

7. Theme Reviews Using Affiliate Links

You could also write in depth reviews of new themes that may be launched by other developers and themes builders that offer commissions for their affiliates. Sign up for an affiliate account with these websites and start writing the reviews. Visitors who read the reviews may be interested and click your affiliate links to purchase the theme. These visitors will be counted as your referrals and earn you commissions. Some sites that offer these types of affiliate earnings are: Woo Themes and Elegant Themes

8. Write For Other Paying Blogs

There are lots of opportunities for bloggers who are willing to write for blogging networks or other individuals and businesses who may need your help. These sites pay from $5 per blog post up to even $100 per post depending on the popularity of the blog and quality of content you will be required to produce. You can find freelance blogging jobs at BloggerJobs.Biz or my job board at Sam’s Job Board.

9. Creating & Selling Blogs

I always say that owning a website or blog is like owning a piece of virtual real estate and in the same way that you can buy and sell homes and other properties, you can use the same techniques for selling websites. The value of websites appreciate depending on many factors like, domain age, content, actual earnings, traffic, etc. and these factors affect how much your site can be sold for. You can buy some interesting domains, build up some blogs that focus on specific niches and once it has a steady flow of traffic you simply sell. Flippa.com is an excellent marketplace for buying and selling websites.

10. Write Sponsored Reviews

SponsoredReviews.com allows you to earn cash by writing and posting honest reviews on your blog about their advertisers’ products and services. Advertisers will benefit from your reviews since it increases backlinks, popularity and search engine rankings for their product sites and that’s what they’re paying for. Depending on your readership and the quality of your blog, you can earn from $5 to $1,000 per post.

11. Become A Consultant Through Your Blog

If you are a specialist in your field, offer consultation services that are charged at an hourly or daily rate. You can also charge for speaking engagements at conferences and other types of offline forums. Ensure that you market these services effectively through your blog to ensure that visitors can readily see that you are available.

12. Private Forums, Memberships or E-Courses

Your regular blog’s content is one thing but you can go a step further by offering premium content on a paid membership basis. This especially works if you offer a specialty in your niche and already have a decent readership that enjoys your regular content. Create membership areas of your site that requires your readers to pay a small subscription fee to login. A small fee of $5 per month can easily accumulate to thousands of dollars per month if your are truly dedicated to providing superb content for your members.
There are quite a few plugins on the market that can create password protected areas of your existing blog and integrates a platform for accepting payments.
Other facts to keep in mind
To maximize your earnings through your blog, you really need to ensure that you are aiming for high quality in all aspects. Factors such as a user friendly blog design, easy to find and read information and your character as a blogger can affect the ultimate earning potential of your blog.
Also, ensure that you have:
An Advertising profile – This provides basic information of your site such as your readers’ demographics, your alexa rank, monthly visitors, banner ad prices, your google pagerank, number of feed subscribers and any other useful information for potential advertisers
A Serious Focus On Your Niche – Most advertisers only advertise within their niche. Its easier to attract advertisers when they see that you are focused
Build a Mailing List – Use AWeber or Mail Chimp to build your e-mail list or at least ensure that you have feedburner setup so that your readers can keep updated on your new content. This is the easiest method for contacting your dedicated readers when you are promoting a new affiliate product or service. You should have already built some trust with your subscribers and thus it will be easier for them to make a purchase from you.

Conclusion

Its pretty easy to start monetizing your blogging efforts; and the ideas above are guaranteed to give you a kick start in the right direction. Check out this list of the 30 Highest Earning Blogs on The Internet to get an idea of the potential of blogging and the simple techniques that are used to make a killing online.
What money making techniques have worked best for your blog? Which ideas are you excited to start trying. Please share with us in the comments, we would love to hear from you.