Display Advertisements
Display Advertisements is the most oldest form of making money used by print media, like newspapers and magazines, the owners sell space on their newspapers and magazines. Same goes with websites, where advertisers can pay content creators/publishers for displaying ads on their sites.
There are different ways to decide how the money should be paid, these are CPM (Cost Per 1000 Impressions), CPC (Cost Per Click) and CPA (Cost Per Action) and then there would be many other variants that come and go, but the basic funda is to decide how you are going to change the advertisers. CPM: Advertisers pay a fix amount for every 1000 impressions that ad banners make on the site.
So, if you decide to charge $1 CPM and your site gets 100k Pageviews per month, you will get paid $100. CPC: Advertisers pay for every click generated on their ads. If doesn’t matter how many impressions does the ad get. CPA: Advertisers pay for every completed action done by the visitor of the website. Like downloading and installing a software, signing up a form etc. Surely tracking of ads and counting how many impressions or clicks has the ad generated is quite a tough job, there are services that handle all this and take a cut. Listing few of the services below.
Google Adsense
A publisher service by Google, it is the most popular program to make money online. You just need to put their code on your site/blog, and ads will show according to your sites/blog’s content. It’s probably the most effective method to make money online if your site /blog have a great amount of traffic.
Chitika
Chitika is an ad network that can be used if you still have ad spots left after using 3 Google Adsense Ad slots on your site. Chitika has a good number of advertisers plus is also shows ads from Yahoo Publisher Network, which makes sure that you get paid for every pageviews on your blog. Read our review of Chitika.
Bidvertiser
Another great program for bloggers and webmasters. The best thing I like about it is, It has the lowest payout of $10. Unlike Google Adsense, Bidvertiser pays you in PayPal, which means no waiting for checks, (Google still  pays via checks in many countries). This program could be used even If you are using any other ad network.
It’s a very nice CPA program. The Approval system is little tough but you get to make a lot of money if your site/blog has a lot of traffic. Please remember that All the Pay Per Click Programs will go great if your site/blog has a great amount of traffic. So try getting more visitors to your site/blog.
Write Paid Reviews
Writing paid reviews works well for many websites/ blog. If you create interesting content on a particular topic, you might find few products in that niche. The owners of those products would be willing to remunerate you for reviewing their products on your site. As you already have an audience who likes that particular topic, the product will get exposed to more potential customers.
Managing all this is not as hectic as managing the advertising, so, easily create an ‘advertise page’ on your site and talking about your audience reach and benefits to buy a review on your site. There are services that handle all this for big companies and might reach your after looking at your ‘advertise page’.
You can also find different products in your niche and contact the companies directly asking them if they would like to buy a review.
Promote Products as an Affiliate
Promoting affiliates means promoting the same products in your niche, but not for a fixed amount of money and not for a paid review either. You promote these products and take a percentage of every sale generated through your site.
The products could be digital or physical, you will find almost every product has an affiliate program which you can join and promote the product as an affiliate. You can find and go to the website of products and look for affiliate page, which is usually found in the footer area of the website.
The other way to earn commission from product sales is by becoming an affiliate, for the eCommerce sites where the products are being sold. Amazon.com is one such site which sales products in almost every category, ranging from electronics to apparels to diapers to uranium (yes uranium). Amazing commissions usually range between 1% to 4%.
Sell Your Own Products
It’s same life affiliate marketing where you will be promoting products on your blog, the difference is, the products here will be your own. Selling your own products is the most profitable model for a blog.
In selling 1 $100 affiliated product you get just $1 to $4 dollar as your commission, but if the product is your own, you get all of the $100. Building your own product surely cost some money, thousand of dollars in some cases, but you have to decide whether there is a need of a product in your niche that can be created and people will buy it.
The digital products are way easy to create and deliver, with the help of technology, whereas physical products require huge investment in building, storing and delivering it to the customers.
So, if your site is about electronics, you may want to stick to affiliate model, if it’s a crafts blog, you may create your own crafts and give an option to your readers to buy them. If your niche is health or food or anything where people would actually pay for learning something, you can create an eBook and sell it on your blog.
Indirect Methods
Apart from the four methods I have mentioned above, there are many other ways to make money from your blog where you use your blog as a medium to find audience, and promote your other business/ art.
Public Speaking
People really love to listen to people who know what they talk about and are open to share their knowledge with others, you will find public speaking events on any topic, if you think your niche has an audience who would want to you share your knowledge, you can do public speaking and get paid for it.
Just create a page where you offer public speaking and give people an option to contact you for the same, mention your charges whoever contacts you, but make sure you take the effort of reaching out the event organizers to offer public speaking.
Workshops/Conferences
This is same as public speaking, you can create your own workshops or organize conferences and charge a small fee from people who would join it. Though, this requires a lot of credibility in the market, and it would be better if you can find few more people who would be interested in joining you as a speaker so that you can design your conferences in a nice format.
You can also record your workshops or conferences and sell them on your site as a product or give it away for free to make a list of people who would be your potential attendees for the next event.
Offer Services
You can use your blog as a promotional tool to offer your services like one on one consultation, work closely with small businesses to achieve a goal. Offer design, SEO or writing services. Just what kind of service can be offered to your readers.
