Monetize Your Blog: Turn Your Passions Into Profits

You’ve just returned home from a date that couldn’t have gone any worse. High hopes were dashed to ashes of disappointment. So, you do what comes natural — go online and vent. Just think, though, you can actually get paid for this.

Now, no one wants to hear a whiney slobberpuss vent about how much of a (insert bad word here) your date was, but there are plenty of online readers looking for advice to avoid what you just experienced and who want to know how to overcome that tragedy should it happen to them.

But really, blogging for money can be anything from how to handle a horrible date, to reviewing products or movies, to giving out ideas on how to handle mid-life crises.

Pinpoint your persona, and don’t let your English teacher down

When you start out blogging, assuming you have a good broadband or DSL.com Internet connection, be sure to understand who you are as a blogger first. Homestead states that bloggers need to clearly understand who they are blogging for. If it’s for yourself, stick to the good old-fashioned “Dear Diary.” But if you’re blogging for money, you need to aim your focus on who you’re trying to reach.

Writing well and proofing your blogs before they are sent out to the abyss known as the Internet is highly important, as well. How many times have you read a blog or a newspaper article and saw grammatical mistakes in it, or it goes off on one tangent after another, and you realize you’ve lost interest quickly? This is a killer as far as blogs go.

Perhaps you have a great series of stories about buffalo meat and how great it is to eat. But the one time you spell “buffalo” wrong or, worse yet, somehow lead into an entirely different story about the one time your grandmother lost her teeth in your birthday cake, well, you’re likely to lose any kind of solid fan base and, ultimately, advertisement support.

Be an expert

One helpful trick is to appeal to a niche group. You can attract a dedicated group of readers who want to know more about your obsessions, be they kayaking trips, drinking craft beers or your love for vinyl records. It will sell better than blogging about your rants and raves of the day. Anyone can rant and rave. It’s what they can learn from you that is the key to selling your blog.

Having an inside edge, expert opinion or an obsession of some kind can draw in advertisement. If you have a passion for licking shoes, well, that might not be what many advertisers will go for. Now, if you’re talking about having your own bank account to cover your Nike obsession, now we’re talking.

Nike has a fan base that is addicted to the variety of shoes the company makes. If you have a passion for Nike shoes and can give readers an inside take on the upcoming debut of retro Air Tech Challenge Huaraches, then more than likely there are advertisers who will be happy to support your blog.

The revenue model, according to Ask Men, is based on cost per thousand (CPM) which is the dollar amount that advertisers pay for every 1,000 impressions from your blog. The pay-out is even bigger with the attraction of unique visitors per month. Sell your blog site directly to companies (cutting out the middle man formula) and you’re looking at a bigger profit. Having friends in marketing doesn’t hurt, either.

Google’s Adsense is a popular site for bloggers looking to generate some advertising dollars, mostly because it’s an easy cut-and-paste-a-code method. And, of course, it’s Google, so, the opportunity to cash in is big. Doubleclick points out that Google Adsense isn’t just a keyword-matching program. It goes a step further, and analyzes your webpage so it can match it with the best ads possible.

These are just some steps in becoming a money-making blogger. It’s up to you to be creative and persistent — and, of course, consistent.