9 Untapped Ways To Make Money Blogging TODAY

Blogging is a very time-consuming activity; most of us, bloggers, will definitely and emphatically agree with that.

However, creating a business out of our blogs is something most of us are willing to put in long hours for, at the beginning anyway.

There are many “main stream” ways to make money blogging; most of us are aware of them, if not using them already.

My goal for this post was to dig up some of the lesser known money-generating methods.

Most of them are very easy to implement; however some require a fairly busy blog to succeed.

That’s precisely how I tried to organize these make money blogging strategies: from “any blog can do it” to “some blogs will qualify to do it”.

I did express some personal opinions about some of these ways as far as their worthiness to be placed on a blog, but of course that’s up to you to decide.

1. Pay Per Post Blogging

Pay per post blogging is a really simple way to make money online.

All you need to do is to write paid reviews for various advertisers and publish them to your blog.

To make things even simpler, there are many websites out there that are in business of matchmaking between bloggers and advertisers.

Here are some of the more reputable ones, although don’t take my word for it (I have not personal experience with any of them) and do your own research:

• SponsoredReviews.com
• BloggingAds.com
• PayPerPost.com
• Smorty.com
• Blogsvertise.com

Word of caution: in order to make decent money with this method, you have to do quite a few reviews per month. Make sure it’s worth loosing your readership over. Be smart about it, choose the products/services you would or did buy yourself.

2. Almost Free Products

This method came to me via Heather Stephens of CleverMarketer.com – please check out her blog after you finish this article!

Subscribers make targeted customers. Anyone willing to give up their email address in exchange for that valuable piece of information you give away for free is looking for solutions.

Why not redirect them to a special thank you page with a one-time unique offer for a low-priced product!

I would suggest for the product to be complimentary to what you are offering for free (since you already know that’s the type of information they are interested in) and in the price range of $7-$47 (nothing too outrageous here, this is still a courting period!).

What kind of product can you offer on your thank you page? Anything you want to.

How about:

• hard copy of the free product you just gave away
• service
• coaching session
• ebook you wrote
• affiliate product

A few more things to mention to make your offer more irresistible:

-Don’t send people to a long boring sales letter; write a short copy just for this occasion, put some personality into it, don’t talk about the features but the benefits of your product.

-Offer something special to sweeten the deal: bonuses, special discount, free trial to a membership site, etc.

3. Make Money Blogging for Other Blogs

You don’t even have to have your own blog to make money blogging – imagine that!

Since writing blog posts is a fairly consuming task, many bloggers will choose to hire someone to write for them. They’ll either pay a flat fee per a certain number of posts or some will even share the revenue from the advertisements placed in or around your posts.

Either way, it’s a fairly easy way to make some money without any strings attached.

4. Conduct Paid Surveys and Polls

There are many services out there that will pay you to run a poll or a survey on your blog.

All you need to do to make money this way is to sign up with one of these services, like Vizu Answers, and select the type of survey you are willing to run on your site. Most of these services operate as CPM.

5. Donations

This is a great way to earn some cash from your blog, especially if you have loyal readership that appreciates your hard work and content (wink, wink ).

The good (or bad, depending on how you look at it) thing about donations is that you never know when they might pop up or how generous one might be.

6. In-text Advertising Links

This method involves you allowing networks like Kontera and Vibrant Media to place sponsored links inside your post.

Any placed sponsored links will be double-underlined to set them apart from regular links. When a reader rolls the mouse over the link, the advertisement will pop up and if they choose to click on it, you’ll make some money.

This is a very simple and passive way to make money, yet could turn off some of your readers. I don’t see a whole lot of major blogs using this strategy to make money off their blogs.

7. Monetization Widgets

Yet another interesting way to make money blogging is to make use of various monetization widgets (see some examples below).

Some of them will work similarly to a PPC setup, others will utilizes affiliate programs, and yet others will appear like text link ads.

The great thing about these widgets is how easy they are to set up and operates on your site.

Here are some companies you can look into for monetization widgets:

• WidgetBucks
• ScratchBack
• SmartLinks

8. Provide Member-Only Content

If you are known to provide killer content that draws readers like bees to honey, this might be a great way for you to make some great residual income from your blog that will come in on a monthly basis.

You can give away part of your content free of charge and create a special membership area open to paid premium members only. You can offer things like tools, tutorials, video courses, and other exclusive content.

For an example of that check out SEOMoz.com where they offers information on all kinds of SEO topics. You can get a lot of good content for free, but if you want to become a member of their premium area, it’ll cost you $48/month (last time I checked).

9. Run Job Boards

This is another make money blogging way that will require a narrow niche and high traffic.

Once you set up the structure to run job boards (via specialized job board software), making money will become a breeze. This method is passive, hands-off, and will bring you up to $100 per listing.

For an example of a successful job board, check out Problogger.net and GuyKawasaki.com.

Make Money Blogging Marketing Takeaway

Making SOME money blogging is not a difficult task. The key ingredient to it is traffic and good content.

However, here’s something important to remember: most major bloggers DON’T make most of their online income blogging. That’s right!

If Darren Rowse or Sonya Simone decide to boost their income, they launch a product, speak at a seminar, etc.

If your idea of good income from your blog exceeds a few hundred dollars a month, you need to start think bigger – FAR bigger than any of the strategies described above.

Now go get them, tiger!

Love it or hate it? Comment to show me that you’ve alive!

PS For more no-nonsense traffic generation and conversion tips from Ana, fill out this short spam-free form:

If you like this post and think it would be valuable to your followers, share the ish out of it for me, would you?