What Is the Best Way to Monetize a Blog?

Monetizing a blog can be a difficult task and there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question "What is the best way to monetize a blog?". To have your blog bring revenue, you need to consider several factors: the subject of your blog, traffic to your blog, your target audience and relevancy of the products you promote to your audience. These are the main things you need to take into consideration. Nevertheless, there are revenue earning programmes that are suited to any blog regardless of the subject. Here they are:

1. Google AdSense

This is by far the most popular advertising network in the world. There are bloggers that earn a living solely through AdSense (and not a bad living either). AdSense is easy to join, easy to implement and has a very clear policy. All you need to do is install it on your blog and make sure you don't break any rules.

2. Infolinks

Infolinks is another advertising network that is worth checking out. It works similar to AdSense - you get revenue from users clicking on the ads on your blog. The key difference is that Infolinks places in-text ads that look like links, thus making advertising more discreet and promoting more clicks from users. Infolinks ads don't get blocked by popular adblocker add-ons, so that's another advantage of this method of monetizing your blog. Infolinks is easy to join and the scheme is very transparent.

3. Chitika

Chitika is an advertising network that is used by thousands of bloggers. Some people confuse it with AdSense, but Chitika works in a very different way. Basically, you can install both AdSense and Chitika together because Chitika displays non-contextual ads that don't look anything like AdSense units.

4. VigLink

VigLink is an absolute gem for those who want to do affiliate marketing with as many advertisers as possible. What VigLink does is simple, but brilliant. When you sign up and add VigLink to your blog (there is a WordPress plugin and other blogging platforms are supported), the system checks all you links against their database and looks for any available affiliate products. Moreover, it can check names of products and services mentioned by you and create affiliated links automatically. For example, you mention iPhones in your blog. VigLink will recognize the product name and create a link affiliating it through eBay. Pretty neat, isn't it? And if you link to, say, Mozy online backup, VigLink will affiliate that too using Mozy affiliate program. VigLink has hundreds of affiliate partners, so you can be sure most of your links will be affiliated. VigLink keeps 25% of the commission and the rest goes to you.

5. Amazon

If you have a blog that writes book reviews, music reviews, or focuses on products, the Amazon affiliate program can help you monetize your blog. You can place various widgets on your blog or simply insert text links to refer your readers to any product sold on Amazon. You will earn up to 15% commission from the sale. Amazon can be a good monetization method, but only if the subject of your blog is right.

6. Affiliate marketing networks

And last but not least, there are several affiliate marketing networks you can join. There is Clickbank, Commission Junction, Avangate and more. Generally speaking, using these networks will only work if you focus on specific products and if your audience is right.

These are the things you can try to monetize your blog. Just remember that everything depends on your content, visitors and traffic, and you'll be successful.