Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Making Your Blog Pay, in Dollars and Sense

Spending a lot of time thinking about and planning a content strategy for your blog is not only necessary but also makes sense. Having lots of quality content leads to lots of visitors, which leads to the potential for earning lots of money. The most outrageous but authentic example we can offer of a rags-to-riches story is that of the Huffington Post. In 2005, Arianna Huffington cofounded the site on a shoestring budget. She convinced many well-known (and lesser known) writers to blog for the news and current event site. What developed was essentially a giant blog! And the Huffington Post eventually became known as a controversial but well-trafficked media site filled with hundreds and hundreds of blog posts. Just five years after launching the monster blog site, it was sold to AOL for $315 million!

It may not be realistic to expect that level of return on your investment, but it does show that anything is possible. Many professional bloggers and netrepreneurs are earning a steady (and respectable) income from their blogs. So, how do you get started down this path? Step one is building lots of quality content, as we've just shared. Step two is identifying and implementing money-generating opportunities for your blog.

Earning money with Google AdSense

One of the most popular revenue streams for blogs comes from Google and its ad-based moneymaker, AdSense. This program makes it relatively simple to display advertising throughout the pages ...