Whether you want to earn a few dollars a week or work part time from home with the goal of giving up your full time job – Blogging can be very lucrative. Why not join the tens of thousands of bloggers who make money online blogging.

How to Make Money Blogging.

There are numerous ways to monetize a blog. I will cover these in detail in a few moments. Right now I want to share some of the basic methods on how to make money from your new blog for beginners:

• Affiliate Programs (Clickbank, CJ.com etc)
• Physical Products (books, DVD’s , merchandise)
• Virtual Products (ebooks, audio, video, webinars)
• Advertising (Ad networks, CPA, CPM, CPC, Newsletters)

All the above actually deserve an article to be written specifically on each. I will provide this at time passes as I do concur to this fact. However for now I am sure you can get a basic understanding of monetization.

Now let me start by sharing my own methods for making money online blogging using various profitable techniques. Before you read it all the way to the end, as it does get better – keep in mind that every blog is very unique in its money making methods. Many of the income streams will work well on some blogs and not so good on others. The key is to experiment and track results until you find what works best for your blog.

The following have helped me earn a great income over the last few years from blogging. I have more than one site, all are monetized using the methods I outline below. I have built these sites on the principle of “$10 per site per day and building”

As you can see if you have ten sites, you can easily generate $100 a day. You can do the rest of the math!

I hope you find the following useful.

1. Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs in general pay you a commission for selling someone else’s product, training course etc. I run a few on this blog, most of which bring in sales each month. This can quickly add up.

I recommend on this blog Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind & Aweber’s Autoresponder Service. The reason for these two in particular is simple. They are of such high quality service providers that they sell themselves. I actually get emails from members who thanked me for the recommendation!

2. AdSense

I do not use AdSense at The Entrepreneur Club, however I do use it on other sites

with mixed results. I personally only use text and images based adverts. I have tested different formats and found the above to be best suited to my websites.

3. eBook Sales

This is undoubtedly my best income source (should I have placed this in the number 1 spot?) I have released 2 ebooks in the last 12 months. Blogging Professional and Niche Super Sleuth. One sells for $37 and the other $17, both contribute well to my monthly income and certainly have been worth the time invested in each product. I will be adding more ebooks in the coming months, watch this space!

4. Continuity Programs

This is my latest category or page in my blog.  A continuity program is a site – generally a membership site -  where you earn a recurring income from people who subscribe to a service you offer.

For me this is a new venture that currently consistent of regular sign ups each day and building well. At the time of writing our first members newsletter has yet to be broadcast, so the potential looks good.

5. Ad Sales/Sponsorships

We frequently receive requests to advertise on our blogs. This is generally the result on one particular keyword search (You need to learn keyword research)

Currently we only accept 125 x 125 ads on the site. Revenue does vary greatly depending on the current economic climate. Advertising on the site has real concentrated focus from myself. If we get the request we consider it. I accept adverts as incidental income.

6. Amazon Associates

To date I have never made a significant income from Amazon, however I have colleagues who rave on about its potential. I am currently investigating this further. I have experimented with physical book delivery and sold at intervals.

Worth greater consideration. If you are experienced with Amazon I would love to hear your comments below.

7. Jobs Board

Again not on this blog however I do have a Jobs board on others and earn consistently from it. Posting job opportunities for employers looking to recruit your target market can be lucrative. Ensure the jobs are “on topic” and relevant to your readership.

Our jobs board is an exciting growing revenue stream. We are considering this blogs potential?

When writing a blog, it is important that you keep the interest of the reader alive throughout so that he is tempted to read on and on. A small percentage of readers actually make it past the first paragraph. Unless you write well, most of the viewers will be dozing off. Only a handful of writers can make reading a blog fun and make the reader ask for more. The problem is that most of the writers don’t want to shoulder the blame for visitors turning away from the blog and not making money. More than often, they blame the design of the blog, calling it unappealing. In fact, the design is the least important thing when it comes to the blog and hardly any blogs are present on the internet, which have ineffective designs.

The problem lies with what you write and not the design of the blog; and that is where most of the work needs to be done. Engaging content in a poor design can work, but poor content in a wonderful design won’t. Avoid the blame game. You may be Shakespeare but if you can’t get people to read your blog, then it is goodbye for you. Every writer considers himself to be the best, so how to know if what you are writing is readable or boring?

The best option for you is to use the many tools which have been supplied to you by the internet; most of them are free. Google has a program known as Google Analytics which has been designed to know if a blog is making the people stay on and read, or they are just passing through. You can see for yourself how many people are actually taking the time to read your blog and how many are just stopping for a glance before moving on to other websites.

There are millions of yawn inducing blogs which can be an effective cure for insomnia! I tell you that unless you keep it simple and relevant, even the most avid readers will be cursing you in their hearts. Here are some tips to help you get the boredom out of your blog and make money.

Be Confident

You know yourself and no one else can do it better than you. You have to be confident in your ability to write before you actuallymake an effort to write out a blog. The requirements for writing a blog are different than writing an essay or a story; therefore, it is difficult to be an effective blog writer even for someone who is good at writing. The way you write has an effect on the reader, and confidence in your tone compels the reader to believe that you know what you are talking about.

Variety is the Spice of Blogs

Make sure that you don’t get stuck in a rut while writing your blogs. Some writers are confined to one writing style and end up using it in everything they write. Though it’s good to have your unique style of writing, but it should not be rigid. You should have some flexibility in your writing style so that you can adapt it to any topic or pattern and don’t have to face any problems if you are writing about something new. Having variety in your writing will attract more people to your blog and as a result, your readership will increase.

Take Some Risks

No, you don’t need to do anything life-threatening. Just break out of your comfort zone for once. Writers often get caught up in a routine where they keep using the same words over and over and instead of improving their vocabulary, use clichéd words which look very unappealing to the readers and reduce the impact of the written text. A good tactic is to tell a story than writing a bland block of text of 600 words, which no one is interested in and hardly anyone would bother to read. It would be a waste of both time and energy, and you stand to lose your readership.

Don’t Just Think, Do It

You may think that once you have read these tips your writing will improve automatically. That unfortunately is not the case! You have to drag your bottom off the couch and start applying what you have learnt to see an improvement. Once you start implementing these tips into your writing style, you yourself will see the difference in your blogs and they will be of the level which you wish them to be. It is the best way to remove dreary elements from your blogs once and for all.

Ghostwriters are hired guns that do the writing for you in a style you require and enjoy reading yourself.

Such a person (hired gun) should have the talent and time to write at least three blog posts for you per week. The writer should have the potential to communicate the right message with the audience, as clearly as possible. The goal is to grow the traffic and maintain the traffic on your website. The only way to do this is by providing them with something new and intriguing. The writer must be able to provide you with the kind of layout that suits your requirements. Therefore the best option in my experience for you to create a great blog without doing all the writing yourself is through Elance.

What is Elance?

Elance is an internet marketplace where freelancers or freelance organizations negotiate and work with other business organizations that hire professionals to provide internet content. This internet market is available at elance.com.

Elance.com allows these selected business organizations to manage people and projects online and charges them a fee for providing them with access to this facility. It is a rich source for creative writers, website programmers, sales writers, web designers, and other internet related activities. Therefore all you need to do to create a great blog is to access Elance and find the right business organizations which will help do it all with you. There are other benefits of using Elance and these include:

• Access to Skills: Through Elance.com people in need get help with whatever project they may be working on. They can as well help people looking for specific skills to produce the required work. Elance.com is an well oiled website which makes it easy for users to find and post what ever they need help with. All the person looking for a specific skill needs to do is to submit the proposed project or topic and people willing to work on it will get in touch.

• Security: Elance.com is a safe site and businesses and organizations enlisted on this website are genuine. You can easily carryout a background check on the buyers and providers of services. Once people work with each other the clients and providers rate one another. This provides information on how good the skills provided were and how well the deal worked. For future reference and new clients this serves as a guarantee for satisfaction. So clients looking for certain skill can select the best freelancer to deal with.

• Verification Credentials: Elance.com has verified credential programs where the freelancers can display recommendations made by previous clients for the work they had done. This helps by proving freelancers to be genuine and good performers. This also helps the employer of the freelancer because recommendations bring more clients.

• Classification: Elance.com groups the information bases on category. When searching for the freelancer, users of this site need to search for a specific category and they get all the data. Therefore information on these sites is organized and easy to use.

• The Escrow Program: Because Elance.com provides security and reliability for both the freelancer and the client. The freelancers have little risks of not getting paid for their work because the escrow program ensures that the transactions get through successfully.

How Elance Works?

There are three simple steps to working with elance:

1. Hire the right people: To begin with this you need to find the right people by posting your job. There will be reviews in response to your requirements. Go through them and select the best one that suits you.
2. Work with the people: You will need to explain what you need in your work, guide the people working on what your requirements are. It is more of a team work. Keep a constant track on the progress of the work through regular feedbacks and share new ideas with the team.
3. Payment: Once the work is completed you will need to review and approve it. Once you are satisfied you have to pay only for the time taken in doing the work. There is no extra paperwork required.

With elance, creating a great blog without doing all the writing yourself allows you to look at other areas of your blog business with the piece of mind that content is being professionally delivered, unique and frequent.