5 New Ways People Are Earning Money with Blogs in 2011

Making money with blogs is becoming easier and easier as new ideas come out to help people to monetize their blogs. Here are five great ideas for earning money with blogs which you can implement today.

The Reality

Before we begin to discuss these ideas however, we need to offer a bit of a reality check. Unfortunately, as with virtually every other “get rich quick” scheme that anyone on Earth has ever tried to use to make money, blogging has been a huge flop for most people. Now that doesn’t mean that running a blog can’t be profitable. There are hundreds of millionaires who make their entire living monetizing their blogs and hundreds of thousands of people who make a living, even if not a multi million dollar living from blogging.

However, while it is definitely possible to make earn money with blogs, it is by no means a get rich quick scheme. It requires an incredibly large amount of work and a massive commitment of time and effort to monetize a blog to the point where it’s making good money. The fact is that most would be bloggers fail because they don’t realize this and think that by slapping something together over the weekend they can instantly make millions of dollars from their efforts.

Now, here’s how you can take the blogging concept and make it into something which really does earn money, by using some new ideas for making money for blogs in 2011:

Affiliate Marketing

One of the best ways to earn money with blogs is through the use of affiliate marketing. What this means is that you sell products owned by others in exchange for earning a commission from the sale of said products. The issue here is that there are an awful lot of affiliate marketers out there, so that means that it’s not enough to simply slap together a blog and sell some affiliate products. You need to build trust with your readership (and build up a readership).

The way that you do this is by creating a blog which will ultimately become known as an authority site. Mind you, that doesn’t mean that you have to spend the next ten years becoming an expert in a particular area, however it does mean that you need to dominate a particular niche or at the very least offer enough to make yourself seem unique.

You do this by posting consistently and providing as much detail as you can. Don’t be afraid to explain some of the flaws in a product you are promoting and to warn off certain people that the product is simply not worth their time. By doing so, you’ll build genuine trust with your readers and in turn, they’ll come back to you to buy products that they need.

Niche Marketing

Another related way to earn money with blogs in 2011 is to engage in what is known as niche marketing. The idea here is that you don’t choose to create an authority site necessarily, with hundreds of posts on a particular subject. Instead, you focus on an extremely narrow niche for which there are a steady number of searches and provide everything someone might need to know about that niche.

For example, you might create a blog which discusses everything that someone might need to know about sump pumps. These are the sort of things where people will find you through a web search on Google and look up the information they need. By providing them with all that information, you are also much more likely to be the place they make a purchase from. You don’t even have to be selling sump pumps since you can simply include affiliate marketing materials for these devices so that when people click your links, they will make a purchase and give you the commission for the money.

Membership Sites

Another area where people are able to earn money with blogs is through membership sites. The idea here is that you provide a website devoted to a particular subject which has a passionate following and for which people might pay money to join. The classic example is the make money online niche, where you provide people some basic information for free but save additional, more valuable information for those who agree to pay for the service. This way, you’re more likely to have a steady income stream from people because they pay every month that they are a member.

List Building

This is actually not such a new idea, but it’s one that many would be bloggers tend to ignore. List building is still, even today, the single most important way to monetize a blog and it’s a must for any would be blogger to learn how to do it. In essence, this involves getting people to sign up for an e-mail list when they visit your blog for the first time.

This takes advantage of Google searches as many people will drop by, look at the information you have to offer and then leave again. However, if you provide them with a simple way to stay in touch, they are likely to do so and are more likely to become a steady customer. Consider using a professional service such as Aweber or Imnica Mail to manage your mailing list so that you can make money from it effectively without having to worry about being reported as a spammer.

Video Marketing

This is more of a technique for selling products than an actual way to earn money with blogs, however it is rapidly entering the mainstream today. The idea is to provide professional quality videos which include advertising for products that you sell or have an affiliate link for. Then, when people visit your blog, they will be more likely to make a purchase of your product than of a competitor’s product. The key here is to provide truly useful videos which are actually interesting to watch so that you stand head and shoulders over the competition, who is also trying to use video marketing to earn money with blogs in 2011.