There’s been a flurry in the blogosphere about how various bloggers make money. It started when Raj Dash posted how big name bloggers use their blogs to earn money. The diagram below lists various sources of income including consulting, speaking gigs, workshops, books/ebooks and web advertising. He notes that only a few of the most popular bloggers use just one of these methods.
Darren Rowse chimed in with a link to one of his previous posts about how to earn money indirectly (that is, because of the blog rather than directly from it) from blogging. His list had some overlapping sources but also included employment opportunities, offline writing gigs, selling e-resources and business partnerships.
Since then, a few others have joined the conversation as to how to make money with your blogs. Chad Randall of b5 Media wrote about the 7 Levels of Revenue for your Blog which include:
- Level 1: Bottom Level = Google AdSense
- Level 2: Affiliate programs
- Level 3: Ad Networks.
- Level 4: Automated Text link Ads
- Level 5: Fixed Text link Ads
- Level 6: Graphical Banner Ads
- Level 7: Fixed Monthly Sponsors
Yaro Starak also pointed out his My Top 7 Blog Monetization Methods which include
- Recursive Affiliate Income
- Direct Ad Sales
- Text-Link-Ads.com Brokering Service
- One Time Affiliate Income
- Paid Reviews
- Google AdSense
- Miscellaneous Programs like Chitika, BlogAds, AdBrite, AdVolcano and Blogkits
From my own experience, I found that which makes the most money really depends on the subject matter. In virtually all cases, Google Adsense seems to pull better results than the few affiliate programs I’ve tried, but then I haven’t tried promoting the big ticket items that Yaro recommends. I also haven’t experimented much with selling advertising space directly on my site, but that’s one thing I’d like to start doing soon.
One current project I’ve been working on is producing unique products such as ebooks, audio mp3s and perhaps even physical products to sell directly through my websites.
What have been your experiences? How has blogging paid off for you?
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