Creating and operating profitable solo work-from-anywhere digital businesses

Over the short history of the Internet, there have been many creative and unusual strategies attempted by entrepreneurs to generate income, both as a means to make a living and also to simply add additional streams of income to the owner's business.

The popularity of the blogging craze has given some blog authors an additional stage or venue for their money-making tactics.  It was only a matter of time before smart folks realized that anywhere there's traffic on the Internet, there's the opportunity for monetization of those visits.

If you own and operate a blog, you have a number of avenues open to you to pull some income from your effort.  As is usually the case, the greater your exposure and traffic, the larger the opportunity will be to make substantial money from the blog.

I have seen a growing number of strategies used to "blog for dollars" that I'll explain, but I'm sure there are many others that I don't know about or that haven't become mainstream yet.  Here is a short preview of what I've seen:

1.  Dynamically generated advertisements placed strategically near relevant blog content.  The best example I know of is Google Adsense.  Webmasters or blog authors can get paid for referring visitors to these ads if those visitors click on the live Google-served ad link.  The blog content draws the traffic to the web then Google takes over and handles the matching of ads to content through both keyword matching and context analysis.

2.  Affiliate text links placed in blog content and also within small display ads placed around relevant content.  When a viewer clicks on one of the affiliate links, and subsequently makes a purchase through that link, the referring webmaster is paid a pre-arranged commission.  Since a single commission can be quite substantial, this strategy can become very powerful over time, especially if the blog traffic is heavy.

3.  Direct payment for blog posting.  Some authors are paid a "per post" amount for their work in creating content and drawing traffic to a site.  In such cases, the authors are much like free lance content writers.  They may or may not "own" the content depending upon the terms of the site owner's contract.  There are a growing number of "blog networks" that aggregate a few or many separate blogs with the intent of drawing advertising dollars from the property or Internet real estate that they've developed.

4.  Direct product promotion.  Some blogs are designed as a billboard for one or more products.  The blog draws an audience that reads content related to these products, either directly or indirectly.  Sometimes the blog is designed to talk about the specifications, use, or benefits of the product.  Some blogs attempt to create a community of interest around a product soliciting input and generating "buzz" with content and reader comments.

5.  Static banner or display ads on blog content pages.  Some blog owners simply "rent" out advertising space on their blog.  The advertisers pay for the right to have their product or web site links displayed in ads next to the relevant content posted by the blog writer.  These ads can even be brokered by third party companies and advertising networks.

6.  Private or "pay to view" blogs.  Much like the private community or subscription web site model, some blogs have been set up as a way to generate money by charging a recurring monthly fee and controlling access via user names and passwords.  There are some types of blog subjects that lend themselves to this strategy.  One successful site that I know of dispenses daily stock market "buy and sell alerts" to its members.  This model seems to be most useful to sites that post as news happens where speed and convenience of posting makes the blog model especially useful.

If you have seen or operate a blog that draws revenue in some other way, why not let us know about it by making a comment right now?

Post#174