Earn More Money by Treating Your Blog as a Business

One of the most frequent questions bloggers ask: How can I make more money from my blog? Every day bloggers pore countless hours of effort into their blogs, but most don't make much money. Some think it's just the nature of the beast. Blogs are abundant, and so not every blogger can make money. But that's a losing attitude. There are many ways to make money with a blog if you look at it the right way.

Your Blog Is a Business

The biggest problem bloggers have with making money is that they don't view their blogs as traditional businesses. Because they're online, they're somehow special. This is the incorrect way to view the situation. If you want to make money from your blog, you have to view it as you would any other business venture. Yes, this means that a successful, profitable blog involves more than writing and publishing articles every day. It means putting your nose to the grindstone and working every day on making it a more effective business.

Monetization Strategies

Part of the reason many bloggers think they can't make money is the idea that advertising is the only way to go. Ad networks such as AdSense don't pay much to bloggers, barely covering hosting bills for many of them. If bloggers can't make money with display ads, how can they make money?

Businesses need to evolve. As such, blogs need to move on from the notion that they are similar to traditional publications, such as newspapers and magazines, that operate mostly on ad revenue. There are new opportunities for bloggers to earn money, and they need to take advantage. Chandeep wrote an article on 5 ways to make money blogging. Bloggers should take note.

Minding the Bottom Line

Once the money starts rolling in, bloggers need ways to manager it. After all, there are many expenses to account for, such as hosting and marketing costs. Until bloggers balance these expenses with income earned, they're not operating as true businesses.

Thankfully, there are many simple ways to keep track of finances and ensure that your blog earns a profit. Software for accounting such as Quickbooks can make finance easy even for someone who has no experience. After all, it just has to be simple. The only thing you're worried about is creating a profit, not some complex financial model.

Always Optimizing

Finding new monetization methods and balancing the books might be a good start for any blogger, but these tasks are by no means the end goal. The end goal is to always be growing, always reaching more people and helping them. In order to expand its reach, a blog must always be finding new readers. They can accomplish this in a number of ways.

1. Through optimal SEO strategies to stay on top of organic search results.
2. Through pay-per-click campaigns, which attract more focused traffic than organic search.
3. Through social media marketing.
4. Through word of mouth.

Bloggers must always be working on spreading their message through these channels if they are going to reach larger and larger audiences.

The key to remember is that your blog is a business. It is not a publication, nor is it a set of help files. It is a business that can earn or lose money. The choice is yours alone.

Joe Pawlikowski has been blogging since 2005, when he launched a free blog on the Blogspot domain. He now writes and edits for several blogs, earning his living through blogging and consulting. He keeps a personal blog at JoePawl.com.