How to earn money from blogging?

Many people start a blog in their free time.  Many start blogging because they want to share their knowledge.  Many people blog to showcase their talent.  And many people start a blog with the goal of making money.  I received a question from a reader few days back:
hey hi nisha,
i have heard that u earn while u blog...how does that go... i mean practically... please explain me how...
There are three ways to earn money from blogging -

1) Advertisements: The ads that you see on any website or blog, whether a still picture or an animated banner - they are either Google AdSense, or some other ad service providers, or some sponsored ones.

a) Google AdSense: the ads displayed are random, you cannot choose, you can only provide space nd location on your blog for the ad to appear in vertical or horizontal banner, small or big box, text or image, etc., and they display the ads based on keywords of the blog posts, or the cookies installed in your computer.  That's why sometimes you see an ad on a website for the flight tickets that you were searching for a while ago.

b) Other ad service providers: There are sites such as foodieblogroll.com (India) and blogher.com (USA) that I am aware of.  You register with them, add their code to your blog where you want the ad to appear. And then it's the same as above.

c) Sponsorship: A small or big company, even if its a restaurant or jewelry or any other company, that wants to advertise its product, service, brand, logo, or anything on your blog/website pays you to showcase their ad, based on how many months you want to publish it on your site and based on the value your blog/website will bring.

2) Product Reviews: You can choose to review products received for free from companies that want good reviews so that more people will buy it and the company/product can get more exposure.  If you read some blogs where they promote a certain product, the blogger might write a disclaimer under the blog post that he/she was compensated for this but the opinions are their own.  The compensation depends on your agreement with the company's representative who contacts you.

3) Writing Articles:  I have heard of makemytrip.com but there may be many other websites paying bloggers for writing articles on a particular topic, or some company might pay the blogger for creating recipes for a certain food company or for inventing recipes using a particular ingredient, so on and so forth.



EARNINGS
The money you earn from your blog/website per month depends on various factors.

For Google AdSense and other ad providers, the money you get from the ad is based on the number of visitors to your blog and the number of visitors that clicked on the ads of your blog.  It could be as little as just 1 cent per day.  If your blog has few visitors, you will hardly make any money per month even to buy a cup of coffee.  If you make friends and family click on ads purposely just so you can make money, Google AdSense tracks it and will close your account.  If you click on your own ads, account is automatically shut.

The amount you charge a company to advertise their brand on your blog is the only way to make proper money and you can charge them whatever you want (sensibly, of course).  But no brand or company will spend even 50 bucks to advertise on a blog that does not have enough readers or visitors.

As for product reviews or writing articles - remember that a company will send you free products, or pay you to write a review - only if the company will get a lot of exposure, which will not be possible if you don't have a popular blog or website that gets a lot of attention.

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Basically, having a large audience and a good reader base is the key.  How can you get that?  By having a useful blog.  How can you do that?  By writing and sharing useful things.  How would you do that?  By having a passion for what you do.

Some bloggers become so obsessed about making money from their blog, they start blogging for just that goal, and they don't care what their readers actually want.  They end up promoting their blog/website address everywhere just go get more visitors and additional clicks.  Some bloggers will be ready for reviewing and selling and advertising instead of having any quality information on their blog.  This way, if they lose readers, they automatically lose all the above.  Not worth the 5 dollars you plan to earn per day.

Nobody becomes a millionaire through blogging.  Neither is it an easy task to earn while blogging; requires more effort than you'd imagine. Which is why I would advise everyone - if you ever want to start a blog or continue blogging, do it for the LOVE of blogging and sharing, and never for the goal of making money. 

Because when you do the former, the latter gradually starts to find its way to you.
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