Five Ways to Earn Money From Your Website or Blog

The primary goal of any webmaster or blogger is to earn money from his/her website or blog. E commerce websites earn money from e commerce activities. In the case of informational websites or blogs, the main source of revenue is advertising. The following are the different ways to earn money from your website or blog:--

(a) PPC advertising -- PPC or 'Pay Per Click' advertising is the most popular source of revenue for informational websites or blogs. 'Google Adsense' and 'Yahoo Search Marketing' are two major networks under this category. After you sign up with these networks, you will be served with some contextual ads, relevant to the subject of your site/blog. When visitors click on these ads, certain amount of money is earned. The amount of money earned depends upon the level of traffic and the niche of your website or blog. Examples of some profitable niches are mortgages, loans, insurance, college education etc.

(b) CPM advertising -- This is more or less similar to PPC advertising. Here, you get paid according to the page views or impressions that the ad displayed on your site will generate. CPM stands for 'Cost per Mille' which refers to cost per thousand impressions. For example, if your website generates 50,000 page views per month and the CPM is $1, the monthly earning will be $50. The CPM rates vary with the network. The rate may be as low as $0.10 and as high as $10 for one thousand impressions. Some popular CPM networks are: Casale Media, Value Click, Tribal Fusion, Advertising.com etc.

(c) Direct advertising -- If you have got a large website with a very big audience, you can sell your own advertising space. This is very lucrative as it enables you to cut out the middleman commissions. You can also set your own rates.

(d) Affiliate marketing -- Affiliate marketing is also a very popular way to earn money from your website or blog. It involves selling other people's products for a commission. As an affiliate, you are required to send potential customers to the merchant website. If they purchase something from there, you will get a commission. The commission may vary and may go up to 80% of the price (for digital products). Some reputed affiliate marketing networks are Clickbank, Commission Junction, Link Share etc.

(e) Sponsored Reviews -- If you have a blog, you can write sponsored posts on different topics. This is also known as 'Paid Blogging'. Some 'Paid Blogging' networks are PayPerPost, Sponsored Reviews, ReviewMe, BlogVertise, Smorty etc.

In addition to the above, there are many other ways to earn money from a website or blog. Some of these are -- private forums, job boards, market places, pop-up and pop-under ads, audio ads, donations etc.