A good way of keeping your blog online is to let it earn its keep my monetizing it. That way, you have enough to cover annual domain name registration and monthly web hosting fees. The following are 5 ways you can earn money through your blog:
- Affiliate Advertising
This is definitely not easy, but can be the most rewarding if done well. It’s best if you have a lot of visitors and can guarantee exposure to the ads by targeted visitors. Basically, you advertise a company’s product or service and if you earn them a customer, you earn yourself a percentage of their profit. If you are really good at marketing their products or services through your blog, you can potentially earn quite a bit and definitely enough to cover your costs. This should not be underestimated though, it’s tough. - Google Adsense
Many successful affiliate advertising -earners believe that Google Adsense is just hopeless. It’s because if you have a new blog, you will earn absolute peanuts with Google Adsense. But to each his own I suppose. Some people have been incredibly successful with Adsense, e.g. owner of Whateverlife.com during the Myspace theme fad. You just have to know what people are looking for, blog about that, place your ads in calculated positions, and keep you fingers crossed that you’ve got that right. Adwords publishers spend lots of money to publish their ads and you get a percentage of Google’s earnings by being an advertiser. - Links
Some bloggers offer link spaces on their blogs to website owners who are looking for some extra exposure. So if you are receiving enough page views or if you’ve got a high pagerank (PR), you can always charge someone to keep their link on your blogroll. The price is up to you, and how much your “friend” is willing to spend. - Blog Post (Sponsors)
A common way to earn a quick buck is by featuring a sponsored service, product or website. Either you have to compose an entry that reviews whatever they want you to write about or they will simply get you to copy & paste their own text. The advantage is that if it’s unique content it could benefit you in terms of internal SEO. But the disadvantage is that if you do this too often then your blog might lose credibility because it will look as though it’s just full of spammy-ish entries. - Donate Button
If you have an awesome blog full of useful information, and everything’s free for all to read or use then you can always paste a donate button somewhere for your generous visitors. This definitely works if the readers feel you deserve it. Donate buttons don’t always have to be for non-profit websites or organizations. Anyone who feel they might deserve a bit of a donation can have one on their blog!
Here you have it, 5 ways to monetize your blog. Feel free to share if you can think up of more great ways to cover the costs! 
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WYSIWYG! I'm a simple person trying to live the simplest life possible - it seems to be the most difficult thing to achieve! I'm an internet enthusiast and I've been a webmaster since early 2007. I like: blogging, developing sites using open source software, social media, computer games, '80s music, comedy & horror, animals, crunching on M&Ms peanut and Smarties!
