Making Money With Your Blog

Making money on your blog…why would there be any other reason to have one, right?

When I started Budget Smart Girl (and also my writing blog), making money was actually the last thing on my mind. I wanted to share my knowledge, offer advice and yes, hopefully entertain my audience too.

However, there comes a point when work takes up lots of your time and you wonder if you want to put in another hour or two that translates into volunteer work.

Last year, that’s how I started to feel about blogging. It’s one of the reasons I gave up blogging here at BSG. I was paying for a site and writing content that didn’t yield me one cent in revenue.

Late last year, I decided that had to change. I had the online real estate and I was going to figure out how to make some extra income in exchange for my time.

That’s what you’re seeing right now. My attempt to revive the blog but this time around make it worth the effort. So far, I’m still at the zero income point but I’ve told myself, things take time. I’d like you to come along for this journey so you can learn from my mistakes, my ups and downs, and together we’ll figure out what works and what doesn’t in the land of blogging.

First up, let’s go through the ways you can make money on blogs and which ones I’m planning to use-

Placing Ads On Your Site

I visit lots of sites that have ads scattered just about everywhere. They’re hard to navigate through, they make it hard to read the information you visited the blog for in the first place…well, for me the bottom line is they’re downright obnoxious. One or two might be okay, but I’m talking about the ones that have more ads than valuable content. I don’t think that’s the route I want to take. But how about you, how do you feel about these sorts of sites and ads? Are they ‘the’ way to make money?

Sponsored Posts

A company pays you to write about their product or service. It’s definitely something that I feel would work and as I have a background in freelance writing and once write lots of interview and profile type stories, I think this would be the perfect match.

Selling Products From Your Site

I’m already doing this and plan to continue to do it. So far, no sales, but this is the one that excites me the most.

Affiliate Marketing

We’ll be diving into this topic more deeply later this week. For now let’s just say you sign up to be an affiliate and use and use the link they give you and place it on your site or in a post and if someone clicks on it and purchases something, you get some commission. As you know, I’m already doing that and my only rule is it has to be something or someone I trust and who has a product or service I’ve tried and loved. I know lots of people use affiliate marketing to earn a good chunk of their income so this is another revenue source that interests me the most.

Now it’s over to you, what is most appealing to you on blogs? If you have a blog, what do you find to be the most reliable way to make money?

Share you comments or e-mail me at budgetsmartqueries@gmail.com

Talk again soon and remember to live the life you love.