If you’re not making money from your blog, you need to get up off your duff and make it happen. There is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be taking advantage of this opportunity. Sure, some of you purists may by calming yourself with such logic as “I don’t want to take advantage of my friends” or “Not everything is about money”. That’s all fine and dandy, but…really? I mean…really?

If these so called friends or people you don’t want to ‘take advantage of’ don’t ever spend any money on anything (food, dwelling, transportation, entertainment, etc) then I completely excuse you from advertising to them. Otherwise…get off your duff and make it happen. Besides, it’s not like you’re taking them for everything they’re worth. It’s often a mere dollar or two that you may earn from them. And not even that is guaranteed.

Ways to make money from, aka monetize, your blog are such things as adsense, affiliate marketing, and list building. With adsense you create an account with Google and have targeted ads display on your page when your readers view it. They can click or not click. It’s their call. Depending on your adsense account, you’ll have cost per click or cost per impression. Unless you have thousands reading your blog, you’ll want to stick with cost per click, as that will provide you with more money.

Affiliate marketing is simply an ad for a company with which you have a sales agreement. Let’s say you called Sony and said you wanted to sell playstations for them. They would give you an affiliate link to post on your blog. That way, you’d post a picture of a Sony Playstation on your blog, and sony would pay you a certain amount for every person who clicked on that link and purchased the unit. And in some cases, depending on the affiliate, you could even earn commission just for that person clicking the link…even if they don’t buy. Those are the exception though, and not the rule.

All the successful internet and Real Estate consultants will tell you the same thing. Entrepreneurs really should be monetizing their blogs, and other websites. It’s all about the upsell. PMI education faculty, who specialize in helping people do more with their business, will have you set this up as one of the first items of business. It’s a great start into the ecommerce world and the world of entrepreneurship.

Convinced? Trust me, there are many ways to monetize your blog without it looking like you’ve sold out. That’s part of the art. You don’t want your blog to turn away readers because you’re hitting them so hard with ads. And like I said in the beginning, if you’re not yet making money from your blog…get off your duff!