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So you’ve managed to get some good-quality, original content on your blog and you have even attracted a some traffic by doing so. However, money is not going to appear out of thin air just because you have traffic. You have to turn your traffic into money.

There are several ways to generate profits from the visitors of your blog, and Google’s Adsense programme is probably the easiest.

Visit their website at using the widget on the side for adsense and you’ll find out more about their advertising programme there, but there are some extra bits I’d like to tell you.

First, Google’s Adsense programme is a really useful way to monetize your blog because when users finish reading your newest post, chances are they want to leave your blog because they have nothing else to do there. If your Adsense advertisement block is visible on your blog, they may see advertisements relevant to them and click on them to exit your blog.  You’ve just made your first virtual cents!

It’s true your profits will only be cents if you don’t “do it right”. Placing your Google ads in the right places and ensuring they blend in to your site so that they appear more like links rather than advertisements to your visitors will get you more clicks. Consult the page https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html to see the “heat map” of your blog. The “hotter” a certain area, the greater the chances are that someone will notice an ad on your blog.

Once you get a Google Adsense account, you can change the colour of your advertisement text and links. You will want them to match the colours on your blog. If your blog’s text is black and the links are red, do the same for the ad blocks too! It’s really simple. With the new widgets  tab for wordpress themes, it’s easy to add a text block in your sidebar and add adsense html code to it.

Another way to earn profits from your blog is to recommend products to your readers. When your visitors buy from the merchants you recommend, you get to keep a little commission too. This is known as affiliate marketing and it is very easy to start because you don’t have to create your own products or services.

Anyway, let’s refer back to our technological gadgets blog example. Let’s say you discover this Gadget X on a merchant’s website, and they offer an affilliate programme. What you would do is to create a post in your blog and do a mini-review on this Gadget X. Rip it apart and point out its benefits and bad points, if any, and include a link (which is given by the merchant) for the visitor to purchase the Gadget X online.

If your visitor clicks and purchases the gadget, the merchant will track from the link that the purchase is referred by you, so they will send you your share of the profits. Imagine if 1 out of every 100 visitors you get purchases this product, and you earn $27.00 commission from each purchase! If you get 10,000 visitors in a month that would be a $2,700.00 paycheque for you just for writing about ONE product.

Now, affiliate programmes are very nice ways to generate profit, but how do you find affiliate programmes that are related to your blog’s theme? Easy, just go to Google and search for <your niche> +”affiliate programmes”. Another slightly better way is to go to http://www.associateprograms.com/search to look for affiliate programmes in your niche.

The two ways mentioned above are basic ways to generate some profits from your blog. You don’t have to make a career out of this kind thing but it will maybe cover your costs so you can blog about what you want and a little income will pay your hosting. Or you can study how to get a lot of traffic and concentrate on making money with reviews for affiliate products. There are many excellent ebooks available to help you learn how to do this.

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Filed under: How To On Blogging

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