There are millions of blogs on the Internet and, perhaps, this form of communication is one of the most popular ever. Some bloggers are purists who believe that the purpose of a blog is only to convey information about the blogger’s thoughts and feelings. These bloggers choose not to monetize their blogs because it would seem inappropriate and inconsistent with their purpose.

There are other bloggers, and I am one of them, who believe there is no harm in designing your blog so that it can earn some income for you. After all, you will spend some money developing your website, and even if it is not very expensive to start a blog, you will need to spend some time doing it ( perhaps a lot of time, depending on how elaborate the blog is.) Why shouldn’t a pleasant past time be used to generate income? It seems a sensible and practical thing to do.

Those of you who have read a number of my posts are aware of the steps a blogger needs to take in order to set up his or her blog to make money. Although there are some requirements for monetizing a blog, there are not very many and it is really quite simple.

To monetize a blog so it can generate income for you, you obviously need 1) a website. 2) You need to place some advertising on your site and 3) you need to optimize the site to get more and more visitors. 3 things. That’s all you need. I don’t want to oversimplify: each of these steps requires some time and effort and sometimes money to accomplish but there are only a few things you need to do.

I want to comment more specifically on each of the above steps or requirements. You can set up a website for your blog in as little as two or three days. More realistically, however, if it is your first website, it may take longer, perhaps two or three weeks or more before your blog is up and running. You will, of course, need to work through the process of setting up the website as discussed in my post: “How to Set Up Your Blog“

Secondly, you will need to place advertising on your website. You will need to make decisions about what products you want to advertise, where you want to place them and whether your products are going to be digital downloads ( information or ebooks that can be instantly downloaded) or physical products that must be sent to the customer.

There is good money to be made (as in a “substantial” amount) with affiliate advertising, in which you place ads on your site to advertise products of others who then pay you a commission whenever a sale is made from your site. You can place these ads on each page or devote a special page just for these products. You can write a positive review of a product to promote it so that visitors to your site will want to investigate further. Once they click on a product, they will be taken to a carefully designed landing page provided by the supplier of the product, that more fully promotes the product and its benefits. You don’t need to do anything. The company supplies the product and takes care of the details of order-filling, shipping and payment. Your commission is sent to you by check (cheque) or by electronic transfer (or wire) to your preferred bank account, details of which, you provide to the company when you register as their affiliate.

Physical products are a different matter. Unless you have a warehouse or other storage facility and lot’s of time, I advise you to choose products that are warehoused by the supplier who will also be responsible for filling the order, shipping and collecting payment. There are many companies which will do this. You will need to search online for these. Your only responsibility, in this case, is to advertise the product, perhaps write a nice review and then, when a sale is made, you receive your commission as described in the previous paragraph. Here are some top Affiliate Networks with which you can register as an affiliate:

Clickbank, Commission Junction, Befree, Linkshare, Websponsors, Sharesale,

Performics, Clixxchange, Clixgalore, Fastclick, Affiliatefuel, Darkblue, Fineclicks etc.

The third requirement is “traffic.” If you have done everything else right and have the most spectacular website on the Internet, nothing will happen for you unless you have traffic. Unless there is a steady and growing stream of visitors to your blog, well, it is like having a new computer still in its box. Unless it is hooked up, plugged-in and connected to the Internet, nothing will happen. That’s why the techniques of SEO (search engine optimization) are so important. Building traffic may take some time, but you should regularly monitor the volume of traffic/visitors you are getting and consistently work to increase this volume.

Suppose after 6 months or a year you are still not earning any money from your site? You then need to do some troubleshooting and objectively evaluate your blog and everything you have added to your website. Are your posts interesting, relevant, informative and frequent enough to engage the viewing public? Do you have enough products of the right kind that appeal to potential customers? Perhaps you need more and different products. Have you spent enough time making sure that your website is organized and “search engine friendly?” Do you have a few pages of useful material that will show the search engine spiders that your site has depth and relevance? Do you have some back-links from ezinearticles you have written as well as to other interesting websites that have a significant volume of traffic? If you are not yet making any money, the reason is probably going to be found in your answers to the above questions.

All this sounds like a lot of work and I don’t want to minimize this by telling you it is really easy, however, it is not very difficult either. It takes some time, perhaps some money(not very much,) some attention and the most basic ingredient to any successful enterprise:

The desire to make it work.

Good Luck, and let me know how you are doing.

Take Care–Wil