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This blog post is proudly sponsored by: The Tech FAQ.

There are many different ways to monetize a blog. Personally, I don’t do a lot of these for this particular blog. To be completely blunt, I only do two of them and one of them has not made me a single dollar yet. However, what I can say is that there are many ways to monetize a blog and I intend on showing you as many of them as I can think of. There will be a few affiliate links (so if you do decide to sign up, please be kind and sign up under me. Thanks!). There will be some obvious ones and then there might be some ones that you still don’t understand. If you don’t understand, please leave a comment and I’ll either explain it a different way in the comments OR I’ll dedicate a post to your question. Now, to the methods!

• Adsense/YPN/Adcenter/Whatever: This is an obvious one. I don’t really know very many blogs that don’t have this on there. It’s real simple, anyone can do it and if you’re getting a load of traffic, you really could make some decent money from it. The only worry is that people make mistakes. I’ve made mistakes and accidentally clicked ads and you can get banned from it. (How I hope I don’t). YPN, I think is best, but I work with Adsense because there are more targeted links. YPN just pays more. When YPN becomes public, though, expect a lot of people to go there, advertisers and publishers.
• Affiliates: Sites like Azoogle, Commission Juncture, Click Bank and all of that really do offer quite a bit of money to be made. If someone is selling a product for $50.00 and they offer you $20.00 for every sale you make, they make $30.00. Now, why would someone pay that much? They want to get seen by more people. By offering it on all these different sites, people see it and they may get more sales. Everyone loves Amazon.com. But, not everyone goes there all the time. But, by seeing the ads while reading content, you might be interested to buy something and voila, the webmaster has made money.
• Sell Text Links: This is an obvious, I know. I do it, but in a different way. I also, though, try and sell text links through Text Link Ads because I really do think that it gives me a better chance to get found. The same reason why people sell their products on affiliate sites like that. If a lot of people go to Text Link Ads then there is the potential for there to be more money made for me. Isn’t that what we all want when we are working on our sites? The potential to make more money? Duh!
• Check your web host and see if they offer an affiliate program. People are always looking for great web hosting and if you have a great host, then it’s really a good idea to look into trying to sell people your hosting. I get $50.00 for every person that buys from host gator through me, but I have to add some information in to get paid still and I’ve neglected that. Going through host gator is a great move for people wanting to set up an affiliation with because they offer quite a bit of money if you can get tons of people to sign up for hosting. An example they use is if you send them 21 sign ups in one month, you could make $2625.00. That’s some pretty good money, huh? If you’re looking for good web hosting, check them out here.
• Selling blog post sponsorships. People like these because when it comes down to an individual post, there is really only one link. I came across someone that bought ten of them (thanks! Because of you, I was able to afford my vBulletin license for SciFreak) and that is some nice money. I only have a PR4 site. But imagine if my site was PR5 or PR6. I could sell them for $20.00 a link. If I posted 31 times a month, that’s $620.00 in a month. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s still not that bad. And $20.00 is even low. You could sell them for more!
• Sell banner space at the top of your site. People like to buy banners at the top because it is very obvious and if you’ve got a ‘cute’ banner, people will click which sends the customer traffic. By taking advantage of this ‘cute’ look, people can expect to get a lot of traffic from your blog. If it’s a success, they’ll come back again and again and again. This is a good way to make a solid block of money each week/month. I’m more for the per week purchase, but that’s only because I like to offer different people the chance to get a spot (if I offered it) and it’s also the best bet. After a month of seeing it, the regular readers might get bored and never click it.
• Write reviews of blogs. John Chow makes $250.00 a review. If he writes ten of those, he’s made two and a half thousand dollars. I write a post a day. If I could have made two and a half grand for writing those ten posts, I’d be so excited. He makes the money by reviewing other people and he makes quite a few. My only advice is that you don’t write too many of these. I’ve sort of stopped visiting John Chow as much (Sorry mate!) because of all the reviews. Granted, there are not as many anymore and I have returned slowly, but if you post too many, people get fed up. They want content, not to read reviews. I’d stick to maybe five at most per month, but in the end, you’re the boss.

These are just a couple of ways you can monetize a blog. Do what ever you want to make your blog earn. Want to throw adsense on there, sell text links, throw a banner at the top and sell blog post sponsors? Great! Do that! You will really see yourself making a pretty penny. The general rule is that you must not throw all your eggs in one basket. What if you drop that basket? All the eggs are broken then. Good luck everyone and if you can, PLEASE Digg this! Thanks!

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