A great example is if you have a blog about golf clubs, you may want to put an affiliate ad for golf instructional videos. This is a perfect match since your market is not competing with theirs. When someone clicks on your affiliate link, they are sent to the product site for golf videos. Your visitor then has the chance to purchase something from that site. When they buy something, you get a commission immediately. The beauty of this system is that it is automatic. You don’t have to fill out any paperwork, you don’t fiddle around with a support desk, and you aren’t responsible to deliver the product.

A number of you may have heard of the Google advertising program called “Adsense.” This involves siging up with Google Adsense and then placing a code on your blog. When the code is inserted, a section of the blog will show up text ads that are related to the keywords and keyword phrases that best match what is on your blog.  Although, not an exact science, the flaw here is that more times than not, the text ads are not related to the product or services or content you write about. What’s worse, is that text ads that pop up may be products or services that are in direct competition with your own product or service. So currently, this is not my favorite way to monetize a blog, but many of my students wanted to hear my “take” on it.

Another great way to monetize your blog is through “CPA” or click per action. This is where you set yourself up as an advertiser with a CPA network that provides products for you to click on and insert into your CPA offers on your blog. When a visitor clicks on the hyperlink, you get paid from the click-through. The visitor does not have to purchase anything! You get paid from the lead you sent to the CPA network company! How cool is that?

That last and final way I see to effectively monetize your blog is through selling your own product. The most common way to do this is through ebooks or “how to” courses that cover your industry or market. People are constantly looking for solutions and will gladly pay for it through your own blog site because they already trust you and will be open to what you have to offer as original conteint.

Too many business bloggers feel it is only necessary to post valuable content in order to entice the visitor to visit their physical location. As you know, the premise of this blog is to build your online presence via a business blog and give people the incentive to visit your location.

It is very helpful that your blog have enough information on it to make the visitor’s trip to your location worth it to them. Remember the customer does not care about you. They only care about themselves and the product or service you have that can benefit them.

There are three immediate ways you can profit from your blog itself.

1. Sell affiliate products
2. Sell your own digital product
3. Hold online seminars

Each one of the above is very effective in making you money even if the web visitor never went to your “brick and mortar” location.

In the next post, we will go into detail on the above captioned ways to profit directly from your blog.

With the internet we tend to read more online now. So, the information we used to read in the morning newspaper, or the magazines we read off the newstand are now found online as well. For example, take the Wall Street Journal. You can purchase the newspaper at your local grocery store. But you can also go online to www.wsj.com and read it online. The benefits of the online version is that the latest news releases are going to be up to date versus the paper version could be outdated by the time it is distributed at the newstand.

Since we love to read, especially if it is very important and informative to us, personally, we are willing to buy this information for money. A great example is forex trading, where you want to know the “secrets” of the the expert traders so you can use their techniques to get a head start on making profits sooner than later.

Information products have never been more popular than today. So dig deep in your own business and find a way to write an ebook about your product or service. You will find that if you combine selling an ebook on your blog along with the products and services you sell in your brick and mortar business, you will easily double your profits!

One of the main reasons why blogs exist in the first places is the power it has to present content. As you recall, content can be in the form of text, audio, pictures and video. Now the real action is in the blog owner to promote and sell original information products. It is a natural extension of a blog.

For instance, a blog that talks about boats is a perfect candidate to promote a safe boating guide. A blog that is about photography could publish and promote a book on step by step photography for beginners. There is no limit to how a blog owner can publish and promote their own information product.

Don’t forget that your blog is a platform for covering everything that is about your niche, your business, and your products and services. Don’t waste any opportunity to monetize your blog!