Friday, November 21, 2008

Method2 in Money Making

Affiliate Programs

I love this so much as it is too simple and it is free. All you need to do just get people to register and you get paid for it, registration is FREE. You register for Free and get someone to register for Free and every
one starts to make money .. just awesome. I do advice you to create your own landing page just for this program, this is what I have done when I register with Affiliate Junktion.




Leads Per Day Earnings Per Day Earnings Per Month
25 $50 $1,520
75 $150 $4,562
150 $300 $9,126
300 $600 $18,250

Leads are number of people register to your Affiliate Junktion (AJ) .. AJ pays $2 per lead with the amount of only 25 new registration per day .. well you are on your way of making $1,520 on the 1st month. To have a website .. well as you register with AJ, it will offer you a hosting company as host to your website .. if you not fimiliar with the jargon hosting is where you need to park your website as it can't just be floating.

This is what you need to do after you have register with AJ:
  1. Register a domain (your website name/address) .. it is good to have it name something fimiliar and relating to your content .. example: easymoneyaffiliate.com, affiliate4you.com .. well you have the idea. It makes your website easier to find by web surfers.
  2. As AJ guarantee $150 daily income for you but you need to read the terms and comdition on how to achieve this .. well basically you need to do everything that AJ advice.
  3. You be given a step by step guideline; follow it but I still will go through it here in my own understanding .. hehehehe .. hope you could understand em.
  4. Setting up your website; choose the template that you wanna from AJ web builder, download the index.html. Most are basic designs but enough to capture audience, once you are fimiliar with the web builder software that being provided by your hosting account, you may do some upgrading to it. A video tutorial on how to install that template can be found at AJ's Getting Started page.
  5. Once your website is up and running .. need to get people to start viewing your landing page. The more people view your webpage .. the more chances of someone to signup.
  6. Two basic ways of getting your traffic .. Adwords and Miva .. well both you be getting free credits. I do recommend do the Adwords 1st as you be getting free $75 credits. You need to go a bit of research on the keywords that relevant to your domain address and is a big hit among surfers. Start with the Starter Package as it is easier and register for the Google Analytical as well as you need to see how successful is your keywords. This book is highly recommended by most successful affiliaters;


You are now on the way of making that money rolling into your account .. just keep track on Adwords as you may need to try with different advertisements.



Other Affiliates Program that you may wanna to have are:

affiliate_link
When someone uses Ipower as a host .. you be paid for it



...to be continue .. I will add few more links that worth looking at ..

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Method1 in Making Money

Direct Income - Advertising

The very basic of making money is by posting advertisements on your blogspot. Most are free and paying you as people start to purchase stuff. What kinda advert that you wanna post on your blogspot? For sure it has to be relating with what ever you been bla bla about .. If you talk about food and you may wanna to advertise about restaurants or recipes. Where can you get this kinda advertisement? ClickBank is the first that I wanna touch.


Advertising with ClickBank is fairly easy, just register, once your account is up go to the marketplace and look for what you are interested, and create a hoplink. That will be your links that you wanna others to click on and if sales are made from that link .. well ClickBank will pay you. Sound easy .. ya it is easy. You can try and advertise every single thing that you can think of but if too much advertisement well that will just make people stop reading your blog.


Google Adsense another free advertisement, but you are not to choose the content .. Google will determine what kinda advert to be posted on your blogspot based on what you been bla bla. As you are not incontrol what being advertise on your blogspot, sometimes it kinda irritating to have it on your page, then again how would you know what kinda advert people wanna see. We came across this once a while, while walking in the shopping mall looking for dress suddenly you feel like eating. Mmmm .. so why not having Adsense on your page.

Get Chitika Premium

Chitika eminimall just like Adsense but you have a better control on what you wanna to advertise on your blog. You have a better sense to targeted audience and giving them choices that you deem related to your blog.

Payment is on a ‘per click’ basis (referred to as CPC or ‘cost per click’ ads). Contextual ads suit blogs that have a particular niche topic, especially if it has some sort of commercial angle (ie it has products and services associated with it). They are not so good with ‘general’ type blogs (ie many topics) and/or political/spiritual blogs which argue just one side of a case. The amount of cash you can get from this varies .. as certain product will give you a different profit sharing, look at the offers closely as you do not wanna to advertise something which do not give much return.

Many more direct advertising that are available ..

LinkShare  Referral  Prg





Sunday, November 16, 2008

Why Blog For Money

Let start making money .. 1stly you need to ask yourself these questions:
  1. Should I Blog for Money?
  2. What Stream Of Income Available
  3. How Much Can I Make
  4. How can Maximise Em
This was taken from Problogger:

Does it Fit with Your Blog’s Goals and Objectives - For me a lot of the advice that I’ve given in this series of blogging for beginners comes down to working out some goals, strategy and vision for your blog (I’ve written extensively on strategic blogging here so won’t unpack this now). There are many reasons why people blog and the motivation of money is just one of them. Here’s some of the responses I had when I asked why people blog:

  • ‘I blog for recreational purposes - to help me relax’
  • ‘I blog as part of my plan for world domination’
  • ‘I blog to help me promote my book/business’
  • ‘I blog to keep a record of the life and times of me’
  • ‘I blog because I want to help others’
  • ‘I blog to because I’m lonely and want to connect with others’
  • ‘I blog to pick up cute girls/guys’
  • ‘I blog because it’s fun’
  • ‘I blog because I want to build profile - I want to be known’
  • ‘I blog to make a living’

Now there is nothing wrong with blogging for more than one reason - but bloggers considering adding income streams to their blogs need to consider the possibility that there are implications of going in that direction that MIGHT impact their other goals.

Let me share some scenarios of real cases that I’ve come across (no names given) where putting ads on a blog wasn’t a good idea. If I were a betting man I’d say that they represent the story of many bloggers and that others could add more scenarios:

Scenario 1: Business Blogs - I remember one blogger who added contextual advertising to their Business Blogs (blogs which had primary goals of promoting a business’s services) only to find that the ads that were served to their blogs were for other businesses in their field who they were competing with. While they could block some of the ads they found that more ads replaced them. In the end they felt it was better to remove the ads and keep the focus on themselves.


Scenario 2: Reader Uproar - Another blogger who I have been talking with recently told me the story of the day she added impression based ads to her blog and created a mutiny among her readers who were angry that she’d gone that route. While on some blogs reader ownership are not very high, there are other blogs where for one reason or another that readers take great offense to bloggers changing the rules midstream - especially when it comes to ads. Depending upon the community levels and the way you introduce the ads you can end up losing readership and you need to consider whether the benefits of the income will outweigh the costs of fewer readers.

Scenario 3: Money Obsession - Perhaps one of the saddest examples that comes to mind is of a blogger who had been running a really interesting and reasonably successful blog (I wouldn’t call him an A-lister but he had a small loyal following) who got bitten by the ‘money from blogging’ bug so badly that it ended up killing his blog. Ultimately he ended up deleting a lot of his archives (the ones that had no income earning potential) and slapping so many ads onto his blog that it was hard to find any content. He ended up only ever writing on topics that he thought were ‘earners’. In doing so he lost the vast majority of his readership and ended up with a pretty poor blog. Greed took over.

Scenario 4: Poor Conversion and Clutter - A number of bloggers come to mind who have announced that they are fed up with ads on their blogs largely because the payoff has not been worth giving the space over to the ads. Ads do add another element of clutter to your blog and if the conversion isn’t sufficient they can seem quite pointless. This varies from blogger to blogger and sometimes comes down to the type of ad chosen and the topic that they are writing about - but it’s one of the main reasons I see bloggers taken ads off their blogs.

Scenario 5: Reputation - My last example is of a blogger who was blogging to build his own reputation in an industry. He’d been blogging for a number of months and was slowly become better known (although had a way to go). His problem started when he started promoting affiliate products that he’d had no knowledge of and which (he later found out) were actually ripping people off. In doing so he ended up doing the exact opposite to what he’d set out to do - he destroyed his own reputation.

I’m aware that this post has a somewhat negative tone to it and don’t want to disillusion readers too much. On the flip side of these stories of bloggers who found that blogging for money is not the answer for everyone are many more stories of bloggers who have found ways to supplement their income via blogging (and even a few stories of bloggers who now blog full time).

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Choosing The Right Name

“Probably the best place to start thinking about what your blog should be about is to consider what YOU are about.”

Niche is a requirement to have a successful blog as you wanna it to be different, special, just simply awesome as these attracts audience. Two things that you need to consider in finding that niche;

Firstly if you want to grow a popular and well respected blog it can take considerable time and you’ll be needing to take a long term approach to building it up. As a result it’s well worth asking yourself ‘can I see myself still writing on this topic in 12 months time?’ If you can’t I’d suggest finding another topic.

The second reason is that you readers will quickly discern if you are passionate about your topic or not. Blogs that are dry and passionless don’t tend to grow - it makes sense really as no one wants to read something that the author doesn’t really believe in.

It does a great impact if that niche are a topic that is popular, the law of Supply and Demand is what most business students are taught in their first semester of studying economics and it comes into play here also. You might be interested in your topic but unless others are also you’ll always have an uphill battle in building a highly read blog.

Of course keep in mind that you are writing in a medium with a global audience of many millions and as a result you don’t need a topic that everyone is searching, just one that some people are searching for because even it’s something that even a small percentage of people have an active interest in it can be a lucrative area.

Your topic if it is something new yet a topic that lots of people are talking about then the chances for it to grow is way better to compare with something that is already been talked about for the last 50years which is a dying trend and it the geographical location of your targeted audience do plays a significant role. Eg: Topic like "English Made Easy" may be a popular in a growing third world country but nobody might not even bother to look at your blog especially if they are English living in England.


One of the key features of successful blogs is that have the ability to continue to come up with fresh content on their topic for long periods of time. Conversely, one of the things that kills many blogs is that their authors run out of things to say. Answering the question regarding whether there is enough content can be done on two levels:

  1. Do YOU have enough content within YOU as an author? This really comes back to the question we asked above about your passion, interests and energy for the topic (so I’ll leave it at that).
  2. Do you have access to enough other sources of content and inspiration? There are many web based tools around these days that can help you in coming up with content.
If you are interested in earning an income from blogging you will need to also factor in some investigation of whether the topic that you’ve chosen has any obvious potential income streams.

Have an idea what is your blog gonna be all about? Choose a name for it, something that it simple, attractive, meaningful, as you want to build credibility and a sense of professionalism around your blog. Keep this in mind when choosing that name :
  1. Goals and Objectives - I constantly come back to this point in most of my tips posts on a variety of aspects of blogging - but it’s so important to be thinking of the long term vision that you have for a blog when you’re making decisions.
  2. Thinking of the Future - another factor to consider that is related to my first point of goals and objectives is to consider what your blog might look like in the future. I’ve seen a number of bloggers start up blogs with domains that fit with the topic of the blog initially but which outgrow the domain down the track. In one instance the problem was that the blog started on a fairly narrow topic (a sub-niche) and on a domain that reflected this but that in time it expanded it’s topic as the industry changed.
  3. Name Length - there are a range of opinions on what the ideal length of a domain name is. Technically you can have one with up to 67 characters in it but it is generally accepted that short ones are better for a number of reasons including that they are easier to remember, that they leave less room for making mistakes when typing them in, they are good for word of mouth (online or offline) marketing, that they are more visually pleasing (eg on your business card) etc.
  4. Keeping it Legal - it is highly recommendable to think seriously about the legal implications of the words you use in your domain name. Avoid trademarked names especially. I know of a couple of instances where bloggers were forced into making changes months into new blogs because of legal threats. Whether these laws vary from country to country I’m unsure - but it’s worth considering if you’re picking a domain that might clash in this way.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Let's Begin

Is a Blog the Right type of Web Site for you?

While Blogs are great (in my experience) they are not the ultimate type of website. They do not have all of the answers and they do not suit every application or situation.

It may be that after analysing your needs, personality, hopes, experiences and style that you find blogging does fit well for your purposes - but it may also be other web applications fit better with where you’re at. Don’t just rush into blogging and expect the world.

There are probably other people who are much better at selling you some of the other types of web applications out there (look into wikis, static websites, forums etc) so I’ll leave you to do your own research - but here is a list of 23 questions (written in no particular order except that it is the order they came out of my head in) that you might want to ponder before leaping into blogging. I’ve put a few brief comments next to each to get you going.

Please note that these questions are in essence a list of qualities of successful bloggers that I’ve come across over the last few years. If you don’t have some of these qualities it’s not the end of your blogging dreams. The list is idealistic and the questions are there to help potential bloggers enter into blogging with open eyes and making good decisions about whether a blog is right for them. It also might help potential bloggers to think about what type of blog they might start and what type of skills they might need to develop:

Without further ado - here’s my 23 questions:

  1. Do you enjoy writing? - Blogs are predominantly a written medium. If you do not enjoy writing then the chances are you might not enjoy blogging.
  2. What’s your Message? - While there are many applications for blogging, underlying most (if not all) of them is the aim of communicating some sort of message. Do you need/want to communicate something? Do you have a message? Starting a blog just because you want one might be fun, but it might also be a waste of time.
  3. Are you a good communicator? - I don’t believe that only good communicators should have blogs - (they can be a tool for people learning communication skills to improve) but it can be an advantage to have some basic communication skills.
  4. Are you better at writing or speaking? - Most communicators have a preference (or at least have better skills in one form or another). If speaking is more your thing you might want to consider Podcasting or even a Video based web site.
  5. Do you want to be the central voice on your website? - While blogs are good at building community - they generally feature one person (or a smaller group of people) as the central voices in a conversation. Other people have to respond to the voice of others. If you’re after something where anyone can start a conversation then a Forum might be a better medium.
  6. Are you a self starter? - Starting a blog takes a little initiative. While blog software these days makes it simple to start them, they don’t run themselves and take a motivated person to both getting them off the ground.
  7. Are you disciplined? - Similarly blogs require regular attention over time. While daily posting is not essential, it’s probably a good level to aim for. Will you be able to motivate yourself to write something new every day?
  8. Do you have time? - Linked to the need for regular updates is the fact that this takes time. Do you have enough time in your schedule to write daily? Not only that do you have time to moderate comments, respond to reader questions, read other bloggers posts, network with other bloggers etc?
  9. Are you thick skinned? - If you start a blog, the chances are that it will be found and that others will write about you or some aspect of what you’re doing. This is great when the comments of others are positive and in agreement with you - but it’s not much fun when you’re critiqued (sometimes fairly and sometimes not). Do you have the ability to take criticism well?
  10. Are you willing to be in the public spotlight? - Blogging is a public act. Every day you put yourself into the gaze of others. People will analyze your words and lifestyle. Some will want to know more about you and some might even recognize you in public (it’s happened to me a few times). While few bloggers (if any) are ‘celebrities’ - putting yourself ‘out there’ every day is a strange thing to live with and can have it’s consequences. Keep in mind that once you write something online it is very difficult to get it removed.
  11. Do you have any technical ability? - If this were a requirement of blogging I’d have never gotten far, but it is an advantage to have the ability to learn and work on a technical level. You’ll be working on a computer with web based software and at times you’ll need to ‘tweak’ your blog. Knowing how to do it yourself can be very handy. If you’re not this type of person, you might want to make friends with someone who is.
  12. Do you take yourself too Seriously? - One of the characteristic I think bloggers should have is a sense of humor - particularly when it comes to looking at themselves. While there are plenty of examples of bloggers who do take themselves too seriously, most successful bloggers seem to have the ability to laugh at themselves also.
  13. Do you have a blend of humility and Ego? - Coupled with a sense of humor should be humility. While bigheadedness abounds in the blogosphere it’s often the humble blogger who ends up on top. Having said this having a healthy ego and view of your own worth as a person is also a good characteristic to have as there is an element of ’self promotion’ that comes into blogging at times. Getting this balance right is not always easy - but it’s worth working on.
  14. Are you willing to learn? - I like to look at blogging as a journey where everyone knows something but nobody knows everything. This is the case on any topic you want to blog about and the best bloggers are willing to share what they know but seek out and promote what others know also. In this way everyone learns - even the ‘experts’.
  15. Do you enjoy reading? - Being good at writing is very helpful - but so is the ability to read what others are writing. If I were to video tape myself over a day of blogging I suspect I’d find that I spend more time reading each day than writing. For every post I write I would read at least three.
  16. Are you an organized person? - While I’m sure many bloggers are completely chaotic and unorganized - there comes a point in most serious blogger’s lives when they have to get at least a little organized. With incoming emails, following lots of feeds, writing perhaps on multiple topics/blogs and moderating comments all going on at once (plus more) it’s pretty easy for time to slip away without getting much done.
  17. Are you a Social person? - There are many styles of blogging but when it comes down to it most bloggers have some sort of a desire to connect with readers. Some bloggers keep readers at an arms length (they might switch off comments and rarely respond to emails) but it’s probably an advantage to actually engage your readers in someway. If you don’t like people then this might be challenging. Another related question might be ‘are you an approachable person?’
  18. Do you enjoy ‘virtual relationships?’ - Some of the most social people I know are terrible when it comes to online interactions. They just don’t ‘get’ it and are much better face to face than via email, instant messaging or in a forum or comments thread. Being comfortable with speaking to and working with people you’ve never met before is an advantage if you’re a blogger. Connected to this - it’s also important to be what I call ‘virtually intuitive’. One of the dangers of relating to people online is that all can not be as it seems. Developing the ability to work out whether others are who they say they are and of good character is probably a skill to develop.
  19. Are you a creative person? - Once again this is not a ‘must’ - just an advantage. The web is a cluttered place and being able to develop content and community that stands out from the rest and that surprises readers is a big plus.
  20. Do you have Stick-ability? - While some blogs are overnight successes, most are not. In fact many (most) blogs are never as successful as their owners would like. A long term approach is one of the basic pieces of advice that I’d give most bloggers.
  21. Are you Consistent? - One of the common reasons that I see bloggers getting into trouble with their readers or other bloggers is that they change the way they approach their blogging midstream. Bloggers that are constantly changing the topic of their blogs, or who increase their expectations on readers suddenly, or who change the ‘voice’ that their blog is written in can end up losing the respect of their readers. While no one likes a boring blog - people do like to know what to expect to some extent.
  22. Are you honest and transparent? - If you answer no to this one then you can expect to eventually be found out. While in real life it can be reasonably easy to keep secrets or be two faced - the blogosphere has a culture of people keeping an eye upon each other and digging where you don’t want them to dig. While you’ll want to develop boundaries around what you do and don’t blog about, you will need to be willing to disclose conflicts of interest and be willing to be held accountable for the things that you say.
  23. Are you willing to work hard? - The level that you need to work on a blog will be dependant upon your goals and objectives for it - but if you have goals of being the next big thing then you’ll be guaranteed of a lot of hard work. Of course this is the case with any thing in life and not just blogs.


-- Source of this information from Probloggers --

Only Want To Write

If you are into writing blogs and do not bother to do anything that I will encourage you to do further on, but you still wanna get money from you blogs .. then this is for you Blogswipe. It is known as blog flipping as I mentioned on my 1st post. If you blog is good and someone like it, they buy it from you and make a book out of it -- that is blog flipping. Then again not many people can write a blog which is good enough to be documented, well Blogswipe will guide you through the whole process from start until getting you check for the blog you written.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

How I Started

You have probably heard of the new money making opportunity called Affiliate Junktion. They promise that with their program you will make $150/day within the first 30 days. So far, nothing else then all the other hyped money making machines you find online I thought. But now comes the amazing part : they even guarantee that you will make this $150/day.

How do they guarantee $150/day ?
If you follow their step by step guidance and if you still not make $150/day within 30 days, they will pay you this $150/day for the next 90 days.

Since I was very sceptical about such an incredible offer I even read all the fine print on their site (which you can read if you subscribe for free to have more information about the program), and indeed their guarantee is clearly stated in the Terms & Conditions.

All they ask is a fair effort to promote their program, and they even provide you with all the tools to do so.



Since everything is free I decided to have a go at it.
And guess what … after I set up my website (which took a bit longer than expected, but this had nothing to do with them) and launched my very first Google Ad campaign ever (with the free voucher you receive when you subscribe to their free program) I had already made $18 in the first few hours and only spent $3,58 in clicks. Together with the $75 welcome bonus, I’m already at $93 in a few hours … and this for my very first affiliate program ever. I think I like it :-)

If you want to give it a try yourself you can read even more about it at their website or you skip that part and subscribe directly for free and receive all the necessary information (and support me a little bit :-)).

Hope this was useful for you.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Affiliate Junktion

ABOUT AFFILIATE JUNKTION
Let's start with the facts.


1)AFFILIATE JUNKTION is a pay per lead program. You make people sign up, and [spam word detected] for every sign-ups made from your affiliate website or from your affiliate link. The payments start with $2 per lead, but increases graduately as you start to make more leads until it reaches the maximum payment of $5 per lead.

2) You can join for free and start making money instantly. You get your own free affiliate website and some free promoting tools that make it easier to get started. What you get is about $155 in advertising credits with Google and Yahoo.

3) You don't need to pay for joining, although you have to pay about $70 for the hosting plan with Ipower, but you get it all back when you sign up with Affiliate Junktion. They will give you $75 only for signing up.

4) Together with the website package you also get a training program that you have to work with. It is not very heavy stuff, although there are a lot of pages. It is important to work through the whole material before you start, in fact, it pays. You also get your own personal guide, the affiliate manager Michael is very helpful and answers all your questions.

5) With this training program it is in fact possible not only to make $150 a day within 30 days. Many affiliates make more than that. To make $150 a day, you only need to make 75 signups from your website, and with the advertising tools you get, it is not so difficult, but of course, you need to work for it. But when the payment increases to $5 per lead, 75 signups will give you $375 a day. Affiliate Junktion has several affiliates that make more than $500 a day.

AFFILIATE JUNKTION is a New Zealand company, and all payments are in NZ dollars. The NZ dollar is about 20% less value than USD.

Then the myths.

1) It is impossible to make money with this program. The advertising is so expensive that you only make money for the Affiliate Junktion and not for yourself. This is a very common myth, and of course it is not true. If this had been the truth, nobody would work for Affiliate Junktion, not me either. If you use enough targeted keywords, you get more results from your advertising. I use very low bids and usually pay not more than $0.12-0.15 per click and my results are not bad. I started very carefully and used very low daily budget. But when I saw that the conversion rate was ok, I started to increase my budget. That brings me to myth no 2.

2) The conversion rate is horrific.

The Affiliate Junktion promises very high conversion rate, between 50 and 65 percent. Some say that the conversion rate is lower than 20%. It is very important to work with the material in the training guide about landing pages. If the conversion rate is low you have to check the coherence between your ads and your landing page. I had a low conversion in the start. Today is never lower than 50% and I have had days with conversion higher than 70%.

3) The Affiliate Junktion doesn't pay their affiliates. This is clearly a myth and nobody, as far as I have seen has given proof for this. In fact, all affiliates I have talked to have got their payment. There have however been some problems the last months about payments through Paypal. The Paypal option is available now but you have to have stayed in the program for at least 45 days to qualify for your first payment.

In fact, there are several good reasons to join the Affiliate Junktion program. I tried several programs before I joined this one, with very small or little success. But when I joined the Affiliate Junktion program, I made my first money within 24 hours after I got the website package.


Thursday, November 6, 2008

Blogging For Dollars

My Personal Income Streams

There are many ways to start making money without any knowldge How I make Money Blogging which highlights one the most profitable ways that I use blogs to generate income and another on how bloggers make money in Blogging to the bank. The best affiliate program that you should look into is Affiliate Junktion as it is too easy to start earning money, registration is free and lots of freebies waiting for you.

How do bloggers make money from blogs?

How-Bloggers-Make-MoneyI’ve been reflecting this week about the amazing diversity of opportunities that are opening up for bloggers to make money from blogging.

I’ve long advised that bloggers seeking to make money from blogging spread their interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all their eggs in one basket.

The wonderful thing is that this is becoming easier and easier to do 2005 has seen many options opening up. I thought I’d take a look at some of the methods that bloggers are currently using to make money through blogs.

Income Streams for Bloggers - How to Make Money Blogging

Advertising Programs - Perhaps the most obvious changes in the past few months have been with the addition of a variety of viable advertising options for bloggers looking to make money from their blogs. The most common way bloggers seem to earn money online is via the contextual ad program from Google - Adsense. A more recent addition that many are using successfully are Chitika’s eMiniMalls and WidgetBucks, Text Link Ads.

ClickBank, Intelli Txt, DoubleClick, Tribal Fusion, Adbrite, Clicksor, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, Pheedo, TextAds, Bidvertiser, Fastclick and Value Click (to name just some of the options) and there is a smorgasbord of options. Of course there is more to come with MSN Adcenter and YPN both in beta testing and with a variety of other advertising system currently in development (YPN is only available to US publishers).

Lastly there’s BlogAds - one of the first blog specific ad networks.

RSS Advertising - The past 12 months have seen some advances in RSS Advertising also. I’m yet to hear of any bloggers making big money blogging through it to this point - but as improvements are made to the ad programs exploring this I’m sure we’ll start to see examples of it being profitable.

Sponsorship - In addition to the array of advertising programs that are available to join there is a growing awareness in the business of the value and opportunity that exists for them to advertise directly on blogs. I’m hearing more and more examples of this and have been fortunately to have a couple of ad campaigns of my own in the past month - one with Adobe a couple of weeks ago and another just completed with Ricoh for a new digicam over at my Digital Camera Blog. These are not isolated cases - as I say I know of many blogs exploring sponsorship with advertisers at present and suspect we’ll see more of it in the year ahead. Sponsorship is also happening on a post by post basis with some bloggers being paid to write on certain topics by companies - either in one off or a regular fashion - and they are able to make big money from their blogs doing so.

Affiliate Programs - There are larger affiliate programs like Affiliate Junktion, Clickbank and Commission Junction but also literally thousands of others from the large to the very small.

Digital Assets - Increasing numbers of bloggers have been developing other digital assets to support and add revenue streams to their blogs. By this I mean that I’m increasingly seeing e-books, courses and tele-seminars being run by bloggers. My recent foray into this with the first series of the six figure blogging course that Andy and I ran a few weeks ago and have just released the study version of. This type of activity will only increase in future - in fact this week I’ve seen numerous examples of bloggers running courses.

Blog Network Opportunities - with the rise in popularity of Blog Networks - bloggers are also being presented with more places to earn an income from their blogging - by writing for and with others. While it might be difficult to get a writing gig with one of the bigger networks - there are plenty who are always asking for new bloggers to join and who are willing to pay bloggers using a variety of payment models. While there are distinct advantages of blogging for yourself - blogging for an established network who will handle a lot of the set up/promotion/admin/SEO etc has it’s advantages also. More and more bloggers are combining writing for themselves on their own blogs with taking on blog network blogs as additional income streams.

Business Blog Writing Opportunities - as blogging has risen in it’s profile as a medium more and more businesses are starting blogs. Many of these companies have internal staff take on blogging duties - but an increasing number of them are hiring specialist bloggers to come on and run their blogs. I know of a number of bloggers who in the past month or two have been approached for such paid work. Check out Bloggers for Hire if you’re looking for this type of work.

Non Blogging Writing Opportunities - Also becoming more common are bloggers being hired to write in non blogging mediums. Manolo’s recent coup of a column in the Washington Post is just one example of this as bloggers are increasingly being approached to write for newspapers, magazines and other non blog websites. Along side this is the rise of bloggers as published book authors - this is to the extent that one blogger I spoke with this week complained to me that they were one of the few bloggers than they knew who didn’t have a book deal!

Donations - Tip Jars and donation buttons have been a part of blogging for years now but this last year saw a number of bloggers go full time after fund raising drives. Perhaps the most high profile of these was Jason Kottke of kottke.org who through the generosity of his readership was able to quit his job and become a full time blogger.

Flipping Blogs - Also more common in 2005 was the practice of ‘Blog Flipping’ - or selling of blogs. This has happened both on an individual blog level (I can think of about 20 blogs that sold this year) but also on a network level (the most obvious of these being the 8 figure sale of Weblogs Inc to AOL).

Merchandising - My recent attempt to sell ProBlogger.net T-shirts wasn’t a raging success, but it is an example of how an increasing number of bloggers are attempting to make a few extra dollars from their blogs by selling branded products through programs like Cafepress. While I didn’t have a lot of success with merchandising - quite a few larger blogs are seeing significant sales - especially blogs with a cult following. I’m not at liberty to discuss details - but I know of one largish blog which will see sales over $20,000 in merchandise for the calendar year of 2005.

Consulting and Speaking - While it has been popular for established consultants to add blogs to their businesses we’re also starting to see bloggers with no consulting background able to make money by charging readers for their time in consulting scenarios BECAUSE of the profile that their blogs have built them. Blogging has the ability to establish people as experts on niche topics and we all know the value of being perceived as an expert. I spoke to one blogger last month who charges himself out at over $200 an hour for speaking and consulting work - his area of expertise was something that he knew little about 18 months ago - but through his blog he’s become a leader in his field and a minor celebrity in his industry.

As time rolls on there are more and more ways that bloggers make money from their blogs opening up. Feel free to suggest your own ideas and experiences in comments below.