Before we look at how to make money from your blog it is worth mentioning that many of the strategies you’ll employ for bringing in the cash will negatively affect your readership. Generally speaking people are turned off by advertising and the more pervasive the advertising is the less likely they will stick around to read your content. This is especially true of social website traffic from places like StumbleUpon or Reddit. These savvy surfers will often turn away from websites which carry too much advertising. You also need to consider how much money you will make from adding adverts. If you were to implement Google Adsense for example, which is the most popular system, then depending on your traffic and keyword focus you could find, even with several thousand visitors a day, that you only make a few dollars. In return for that money you might be putting off readers.
There is much debate on the topic but I would suggest building up a good readership before you attempt to monetize your blog is a good idea. A strong visual design and focus on great content will draw in visitors and it will also encourage more external links. Build these assets up before you attempt to make money. When you do decide to monetize your blog you can expect some negative feedback from some of your loyal readers, just explain the situation politely and stick to your guns. If you have made the decision to try and earn some money from your hard work blogging then you should commit, a half-hearted approach is unlikely to get results.
There are a couple of ways you can turn your blog into cash without scaring off readers so lets take a look at those first.
