Creating your very first blog can be a fun and rewarding experience. Most everybody relishes the idea of providing their thoughts, insight and opinions to a world eager to listen. Whether you have a specific viewpoint to offer or a level of expertise on a particular subject, blogging can be a great way to enjoy yourself, meet new people and generate attention for a topic or cause. Unfortunately, many people run into a brick wall when it comes to blogging at one point or another: without revenue to justify the blog’s existence, only so much time can be devoted to it. Today, we’ll discuss how you can begin monetizing key elements of your blog in order to bring in some revenue, allowing you to spend more time doing what you love.

Try Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has long been a staple of websites and blogs seeking to make a bit of passive revenue in some form or another. In short, affiliate marketing can be used to drive traffic to a product or service’s website via pinging URLs and ads that are either integrated directly into content or displayed as stand-alone ads. Depending on the type of content and the type of advertisement, these links and ads can often be permanent and can help to generate income for years and years at a time. The way the process works is that whenever somebody clicks the link and makes a purchase (within a specific window of time), you are compensated with a percentage of the sale.

Create Reviews

Product reviews are another hit for those seeking to add a bit of revenue to their blog projects. How can product reviews earn you money? It’s simple. You start out by writing a review of a product or service. You go into detail about the pros and cons of the product or service, thereby giving readers more information about what to expect from the product. Throughout the review, you can utilize one form of affiliate marketing to link to the product on Amazon or elsewhere. This then works in the same way as affiliate marketing: if somebody reads your review, clicks on the link and then makes a purchase, then you are compensated. This method is a very popular one among bloggers and can be a relatively easy way to make money.

Google AdSense

Last but not least, another great, passive way in which to turn your blogging hobby into a profitable endeavor is Google AdSense. How does AdSense work? By placing unobtrusive, relevant advertisements on your website, Google pays you each time somebody clicks on an ad or follows through with an engagement. The ads displayed can range from product sales and services to simple clicks; it all depends on the niche you’re serving and who is the target audience. It is very easy and simple to get setup via AdSense. In just a few minutes, you can start pinging URLs of relevant advertisements to users on each blog post and make money passively while doing so.

While no individual revenue stream is likely to generate massive amounts of money instantly, you can combine multiple revenue components into one broader effort of monetizing your blog. There area many other ways you can consider monetizing your blog, including subscriptions and donations. What other ways have you tried or are considering when it comes to monetizing your blog? Let us know below in the comments.