So you’ve started a blog, and now you think you’re ready to earn some money. My first tip of caution is that you should never start a blog with the intention of making money. That’s where the first mistake is made. Blogging should be a passion, a hobby, or at least a past time. People can see right through to you if you’re intentionally trying to profit off of them, and they won’t allow it to happen. However, if you enjoy your blog outside of making money, you can stand to make a nice amount of dough, and it can truly be passive income. So how do you increase your advertising revenue and start earning some decent cash?

1. Blog consistently for at least 6 months: New blogs simply aren’t going to have the credibility or audience for advertisers to notice. You have to be around and heard by a few people first before companies are going to want to be seen on your blog. If you have an active blog for at least 6 months, trust me, advertisers are going to notice. 6 months is still relatively new, but it’s long enough for people to start talking about your site, coming to it, and wanting to be featured on it.
2. Join a blog network: While many veteran bloggers don’t think a blog network is worth it, it’s great for newbies. Blog networks are a way for you to connect to other bloggers, as well as advertisers. Big companies who are looking for web campaigns connect with these networks, ask them to find a few bloggers who write about specific topics, and they will offer you compensation for a post, a link, or a review. I’m part of 2 blog networks: Yakezie and Clever Girls. Both have been awesome in finding me a few advertising opportunities.
3. Become an authority: Advertisers aren’t just paying you because they want to. They want the relationship to be mutually beneficial. In exchange for compensating you, they want to get their branding in front of your audience, in hopes that your readers will become their customers. So you need to be an authority in a niche or category. Is your blog about food or fashion? Do you talk about parenting and marriage? Brands in these markets will look for blogs and websites in the same market so they have a better chance of finding customers. Decide what market your blog is focusing on, and work on being one of the best blogs in that field. A great resource for this is Technorati, as it has multiple verticals and thousands of blogs that are ranked in those verticals. See what the top 10 sites have that yours doesn’t, and work on becoming one of those top blogs.
4. Get your numbers together: Advertising is a numbers game. How many people does your blog reach? If you don’t already have it installed, you should install an analytics program like Google Analytics, to keep track of your readers. How many people visit your site per day, week, month, quarter? Where are they from? What browser do they use? How many pages do they read? How long do they stay? Advertisers are going to want to know this, and your numbers are going to have to be impressive. You won’t find advertising revenue if the only person who reads your blog is your mom. You need new people reading everyday.
5. Have a price in mind: Once advertisers do start reaching out to you, you’ll want to have prices in mind. I have an Advertising Manager who handles my requests for me. Crystal came up with a list of prices for different types of advertising based on my site’s statistics, and she sends it to the people requesting advertising opportunities. I usually don’t budge on my prices, as I know what my site is worth. Obviously, you’ll get some lowball offers, but they’re trying to be thrifty just like you. Don’t overprice yourself, especially if you’re new. Try a few different prices and see the response you get, or hire Crystal and she’ll help you out.

These are the first steps to getting more money from advertising on your blog. Be patient, and the advertisers will come to you.

Bloggers need to make money. Everyone needs to make money. Its just the reality of life. We all need a certain amount of money to survive.

I find it funny how readers of a blog will enjoy free content for years. This content will help them greatly in life. The blog will provide them with a frequent source of information. Then when the blogger tries to make some money everyone is quick to judge. Why?

There are different monetization strategies out there for your typical blog. A few of the common ones include:

Google Adsense.
Affiliates (any product that you promote).
Text links.
Sponsored posts.
Premium products.

I find that readers have become adjusted to Adsense just because it has been around for so long. The text links also go unnoticed most of the time.

Affiliates can go either way depending on what you try to promote. Bloggers walk a fine line when it comes to promoting a product/trying to push it on their readers. Some readers will appreciate you bringing a new product to their attention. Others will (myself included) will become frustrated if all you ever do is promote stuff to us.

Premium (paid) products and sponsored posts usually receive many complaints. The sponsored posts detract from the usual style of the blog. I understand why readers would not appreciate these. However, they allow the blogger to earn some extra revenue.

When it comes to premium products I just don’t understand the hate. These products usually take a lot of time to put together and can stretch you to the limit. If you don’t want to buy the item then simply don’t buy it. Don’t resent the blogger for trying to produce a quality product.

One thing that I want to mention is that I really hope you guys understand that bloggers need to make money. The more money a blogger earns from their blog, the more time and effort they can put back into the blog. This is just the reality of it. It’s tough to spend all of your time on something that doesn’t make you any money when you have bills to pay.

Writing “quality content” has become a must for anyone that wants to grow their new blog. This leads to the super-important question, how do you consistently write quality content? I feel that you need to switch up the content that you write. Instead of writing in the same fashion, you could try writing a different type of a post. One of the types of articles that you could write is a case study.

Why a case study?

Because it’s not a theoretical or “what if” post. A case study is a concrete example of how one person achieved success. People also love to hear from people that have “been there and done that.” A case study is a chance to show case an interesting tale.

A case study is also an excellent opportunity to learn from someone else. You have the chance to sit down and pick the brain of someone that has reached a specific goal before you. You’re essentially killing two birds with one stone. You get to learn from a successful individual and you get a quality blog post out of it.

A case study on who?

On someone in your field. Someone that has accomplished something you would like to one day. An individual that has made a huge impact on a specific industry– or you could do a case study on someone on their way up. Either way a case study should outline the trials and tribulations that someone you admire has gone through.

My favorite case study was when I wrote about a friend that works as a tutor and makes decent money at it. Instead of writing about something that I don’t know anything about, I reached out to my social circle for help. My friend was more than willing to help me out and share tips with me on how one could be a profitable tutor. We actually went so deep into details that my friend shared with me on how he earned $2,100 from tutoring.

Will I apply my own advice? Yes I plan on conducting a few case studies here in the near future. Stay tuned guys.

Blogging for money is clearly a core aspect of earning an active/passive income online. I’m not in any position to be running a blog on how-to blog, but I feel that I’ve read enough and spoken with some of the most successful bloggers, that I could at least pass along some of the knowledge that they shared with me with you guys.

You write great stuff. You update your blog daily. Still at the end of the day nobody seems to come to your site. Of course your family and friends pop in for a visit.  Why is your overall traffic so low? The underlying issue is most likely the search engine optimization within the articles on your blog. Is search engine optimization really that important on a blog? I would have to argue yes. Please allow me to try to prove my point.

Organic search engine optimization is time consuming

By the time you start to see results from organic SEO you will have snapped at the lack of traffic. I tried starting a blog before straight from the bottom without placing any emphasis on SEO. After about a year my traffic was stagnant. I was at the point where I maxed out at 300 views a day. Not exactly a great amount of traffic if you plan to live off your blog income. SEO will allow you to write great articles that will bring in traffic from Google and other search engine users that are researching specific topics.

Organic keywords and organic search optimization do come with time but they take much longer to expand your daily traffic. Sure there are the blog success stories of a small blog that grew from 60 subscribers to 60,000 in less than a year or so (Zen Habits), but with the advent of so many new excellent blogs this is becoming increasingly difficult. Every day a new blog emerges (this blog for example) and it starts to cut into your traffic. The sad reality is that generally the more SEO articles will make it to the top of Google’s search engine.

Traffic generated from links is often not suffice

Your personal finance blog may get a link from Get Rich Slowly, The Simple Dollar, or The Consumerist, and the link will generated lots of traffic. You will likely get at least a couple of hundred click throughs and a few new subscribers. Great! The problem is- how many of these high quality links will you get? You can’t solely rely on links from A list bloggers as your bread and butter for blog traffic. Your articles need to be optimized for search engines so that you have a steady influx of traffic. Quick traffic bursts are a pleasant surprise but steady growth is the key to long term traffic success (in my opinion).

Regular readers will not visit your blog.

What a stupid statement- regular readers will not visit my blog. How does that make sense? The people that truly love your blog will subscribe via email or RSS feed and chances are they will stop actually visiting your blog.

My most loyal readers never actually go on the site because they have articles delivered straight to their email inbox. So you can technically have 1000 subscribers and 200 daily blog views because your loyal readers are simply not accessing your site. So if regular readers are not viewing your blog then that means you need to find new readers. The best way to do this would be to perform some SEO on your articles so that more eye balls are on them.

Those are just my thoughts on the importance of search engine optimization on a blog.

I want to make sure that I do not kill my credibility before the blog even gets off the ground. I want to state that  blogging is NOT a significant source of passive income. Everyone (well except for full time bloggers) seems to think that blogging is a great source for passive income. The sad reality is that blogging is a full time commitment that has very few passive traits to it. In fact I started this blog to outline to others that blogging is 100% NOT the route you should take when pursuing passive income online.

Why is blogging not a solid source of passive income?

Because in order to earn enough money to actually not live in poverty, blogging requires a full time commitment in terms of time and effort. Seriously, do you think full time personal finance bloggers like Trent of The Simple Dollar or JD of Get Rich Slowly became full time over night? It took many months of hard work and trying to juggle two careers. The worst part is that these days it takes more time with the rise of so many great personal finance blogs and blogs in general.

The bloggers that are full time are obviously not slackers. Just reading about Trent’s schedule shows that he treats his blog like a full time job. I will go as far as to say that blogging can potentially be more work than your current job. Before I go off on a tangent on blogging compared to a “real job” I will stop myself.

There is the occasional “online marketing guru” that claims to earn thousands of dollars passively from their website. The thing is that these are usually websites that are setup for affiliate marketing or to sell some scheme of getting rich quick. Half of the time these people are lying and they could only dream of actually earning that much money.

Can blogging ever be a source of passive income?

I strongly feel that blogging will never be a significant source of passive income. You can make a few dollars each month off Adsense, text links, and affiliates long after you stop posting on your blog. The problem is that if you stop posting on your blog then people will stop reading your blog. Search engine users will still find your blog but that traffic will wane off slowly as you try to turn blogging into a source of passive income.

At the end of the day, yes you can make money off your blog. Blogging will never be smart passive income. You have to work for your money in the blogging world.

Want to make money from blogging without actually running a blog? Some people would like to make money from a blog or from the art of blogging but they simply do not want to run their own blog. Some internet entrepreneurs simply do not want to deal with the hassles that come along with running a blog. No problem.

Today I will share a few tips for those that are wondering how to make money from your blog.

Become a virtual assistant

Bloggers are always looking for someone to help them out with their blog. Some bloggers don’t feel like submitting their content to carnivals. Other bloggers don’t feel like dealing with social media optimization. Other bloggers need help with replying to emails due to time constraints. Simply put, there are bloggers out there looking for virtual assistants to help them out with a variety of tasks. This is a perfect way to make money online from blogging without starting your own blog.

Create logos for blogs

If you have any graphic skills then you could use them to make banners/logos for blogs. You can easily charge at least $20 for a logo. Every decent blog out there has a nice looking design and logo. If you are really good at what you do then the word of mouth could spread to the point that many bloggers come to you for their logo needs. Another excellent source of online revenue.

Write freelance articles for blogs

Some of the more popular/high traffic blogs often search for freelance writers to post articles for them. A good place to begin your search for work as a freelance writer for blogs is the ProBlogger job board. Since I already shared that tip yesterday I will add a little more to it. If you see that a blog that you read has a variety of writers then there is a good chance that the blog owner hires freelance writers to write articles for his site. You can take a few minutes of your time to contact the blog owner and offer them you services. You may be asked to show a sample of your work, so have some high quality writing handy.

Most bloggers pay anywhere from $15-50 per article. Some bloggers will also set certain keyword expectations. This might require a few minutes of keyword research on your behalf. After a little bit of research you could put together an article highly optimized for search engines. You will make some money from blogging and so will the blog owner. A win-win situation

Help bloggers out with WordPress

I hate dealing with the technical stuff on my blog. Most bloggers in general would rather spend their time on writing articles as opposed to dealing with technical issues. If you don’t mind using WordPress and consider yourself an “expert” then you could earn some decent money online fast by helping out with WordPress. You could upgrade plugins or just deal with the technical aspects of a blog. Either way you could earn money online from blogging without actually running your own blog.

Write articles for eHow.com

This is just like blogging for money because you write articles where your income comes from ad clicks. You write a bunch of articles and after a few months these articles could generate a steady source of passive income for you. You won’t make a fortune online with this method but you could have a steady flow of a $100 passive income every month.

There you have it, a few ways to make money online fast. You could earn a steady income from blogging without actually blogging.