Blogs can be a great way to earn revenue, but not without the effort of building site credibility, valuable content, and a readership.  This is why the majority of blogs fail!  Most people who manage blogs don’t have the patience or frankly the time to maintain a blog that continually produces great content and value to its target audience.

However this is not a blog about how build an audience and generate traffic.  It is meant to discuss the different types of blog monetization models.  Traffic, visibility, and brand awareness are what determines what you can charge an advertiser.

Advertising/Sponsorship

Having companies sponsor your blog can be a great way to build relationships, acquire new business and develop long-term revenue streams.  Partnering with a company that benefits both parties can be a great way for you to generate income and for your advertiser to gain relevant traffic.   Usually an advertiser can pay either on a flat monthly fee or a CPM (cost per mille).

Google Adsensenameadog2

Signing up for an adsense account allows Google to place relevant text or image ads on your blog.  In return you earn income for every time someone clicks one of your google adsense ads. The pay out per click varies based on the theme or topic of your blog. A downfall to Adsense is that if you clutter your blog with obtrusive ads, you can compromise the credibility of your site and lose readers.

Affiliate Programs

The concept of the affiliate model is to earn money by promoting other peoples products or services.  After signing up for affiliate programs, you will get a unique affiliate id that you will use to track any sales that occur in result of someone visiting your blog/site, clicking the ad, and purchasing. Revenue percentages vary depending on the affiliate program.

iStock_000002238111XSmallPaid Subscription

If you choose to have a paid subscription model it is important to have a good brand, offer premium content, and differentiate your site from other competitors.  You need to have a reason for paid users to want to keep coming back.  It may be that your members have access to premium tools, tutorials, articles, data, software, etc…

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPM