HOW TO MAKE MONEY FROM BLOGGING - HERE IN NIGERIA AND ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD

If you would want to start making money blogging on the Internet - you are not alone, there are several people out there like you who would also like to start making money from blogging just like you. There are thousands of bloggers currently making money blogging in Nigeria and I guess you too can join this fast growing industry.

Truth be told, blogging isn’t a quick money-making business model, but it is an easy way for you to start making money. And like every other business model, it involves smart work and commitment for it to thrive.

In this article, I want to share some information with you that should help you start making money from blogging, here in Nigeria and in any other corner of the world! But before you read on, put it at the back of your mind that every blog has its unique features and how money can be made from it. In other words, some income generating methods will work better on some blogs than others. So I would recommend that you experiment with as many blog income making strategies as possible to know which works best for you.

If you are interested in how to make money blogging here in Nigeria or any other country, here are some strategies that can turn your blog into a money making machine:

• Selling Advertising (Google Adsense)
This is the most common way of using a blog to make money. This is how it works; if your blog is popular and you have lots of people visiting it from time to time, you can sell advertising space on it. Ad programs, like Google’s Adsense, let you select a number of adverts that are similar to the content on your blog and pay you based on the number of times readers click on those ads for more details on the products or services being advertised. Thus, the more valid clicks made by your visitors or impressions on the ads, the more money you make.

However, you need regular traffic (visitors) on your blog for you to succeed with Google Adsense and other programs like it. You won’t start making loads of money immediately; for a start, it will come in cents and pennies but when your blog starts ranking well for your niche, the real cash should start flowing in. Imagine making a minimum of $10 from ads daily, that’s about $300 (N48, 000) per month, at the prevailing exchange rate of N160 to $1. Now imagine making more every day, say for example a minimum of $25 every day, that should be about $750 ($120, 000) a month. Better yet, you can start making money from Google Adsense on almost zero start-up cost, the Google Adsense program is 100% free to join and the only thing you will invest is your time and energy.

• Affiliate Programs
Joining affiliate programs (affiliate marketing) can also connect you to some cash. Affiliate marketing is a business model that allows you to receive a commission for generating a transaction, such as a sale or lead, for a merchant that you are promoting. The merchant site provides its ads or affiliate links to you and assigns a commission for each task it wants to accomplish. As an affiliate you place these links or ads on your blog. Whenever a visitor uses any of these links to generate an action on the merchant’s site, the transaction is tracked online and you get paid a commission for that transaction if the visitor carries out the desired action.

Affiliate programs make it possible for your blog to serve as a connecting point between readers and online websites who offer various products and services. If a visitor buys the product, you will get a percentage of the amount paid. Amazon and Commission Junction have great affiliate programs you can join or sign up with. If you want to start making money from blogging here in Nigeria, I think you should also consider affiliate marketing.

• Short Reports and e-books Sales
Writing short special reports and e-books, and selling them on your blog should also connect you to some real income. If you don’t have the whole time in the world to write your own short reports or e-books, you can sell other people’s reports and e-books (with their permission). You can easily buy resell rights to other people’s reports and e-books and sell them on your blog. If you prefer writing your own reports and e-books, you can write on just about any subject you are conversant with but make sure you determine what your blog visitors want. It can be a solution to a particular problem or just any particular information they would crave for, which may be somewhat hard-to-find. Do a little research - online, offline or both - for the solution to the problem. Search engines like google.com and bing.com; article directories like ezinearticles.com, and offline magazines and books would be of help to you. Offer the short reports or e-books to them for a low price and smile to the bank. The lower the price the more sales you would make.

You can use Google to conduct a search for the “top resell rights and PLR websites” from where you can buy resell rights e-books and reports. PLR means Private Label Rights, you can alter and edit PLR e-books and reports before reselling them.

• Private Ad Sales
Another great way you can make money from blogging in Nigeria is by advertising directly on your blog with an “advertise here” page letting the visitors know how to pay you for the ads. Bloggers like Linda Ikeji, owner of http://lindaikeji.blogspot.com, are already making loads of cash by advertising businesses, products and events. But of course your blog has to have lots of people visiting it regularly for you to be able to make money from private ad sales.

• Promoting Your Services
You can also make money from your blog by promoting the services you can render to people on it. If your blog is centred on a particular niche, say for example affiliate marketing, you can blog about how people can make money from affiliate marketing and professionally offer coaching services in affiliate marketing on the blog. People who are interested in affiliate marketing may also want to learn other related things or contact you for further training or self-training materials like e-books, videos, manuals, CDs, etc.

The Strategies of Making Money from Your Blog in Brief

You can easily set up a free blog on top blog hosting sites like blogger.com, wordpress.com, squidoo.com or hubpages.com. Then you can deploy any of the strategies below to start making money from your blog:

• Placing ads
You can create an income stream from your blog by placing contextual, text, and impression ads on the blog. The websites below will pay you to display ads:
• Google AdSense - https://www.google.com/adsense
• Bidvertiser – http://www.bidvertiser.com
• Chitika – http://www.chitika.com
• Kontera – http://www.kontera.com
• Media.net – http://www.media.net
• Infolinks – http://www.infolinks.com
• Technorati Media – http://www.technoratimedia.com/publishers/
• Adgenta/Q-Ads – http://www.adgenta.com
• Text Link Ads – http://www.text-link-ads.com/
• Text Link Brokers – http://www.textlinkbrokers.com/
• Tribal Fusion – http://www.tribalfusion.com
• Value Click – http://www.valueclick.com

• Joining an affiliate program
You can earn real income by using your blog to sign up with affiliate programs, such as the ones in the list below, and then promote products and services to earn commissions:
• Amazon Associates – https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/join
• LinkShare – http://www.linkshare.com
• Commission Junction – http://www.cj.com
• eBay Partner Network – https://www.ebaypartnernetwork.com/files/hub/en-US/index.html
• Associate Programs – http://www.associateprograms.com
• The Affiliate Program Directory – http://www.affiliatesdirectory.com
• PayDotCom – http://www.paydotcom.com
• ShareASale – http://www.shareasale.com
• Google Affiliate Network – http://www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork

• Posting for pay
Another great way to create an income stream from your blog is to try paid posting. The following sites can help you set up your blog for paid posting:
• PayPerPost – http://www.payperpost.com
• PayU2Blog – http://www.payu2blog.com
• ReviewMe – http://www.reviewme.com
• SocialSpark – http://www.socialspark.com
• SponsoredReviews – http://www.sponsoredreviews.com
• LinkWorth – http://www.linkworth.com
• Shvoong – http://www.shvoong.com
• Squidoo – http://www.squidoo.com
• HubPages – http://hubpages.com/help/landing_paidtoblog

• Offering goods
There are websites that pay you to offer merchandise or links to mini malls. Some of these sites include:
• CafePress – http://www.cafepress.com
• Chitika’s eMiniMalls – http://www.chitika.com
• Printfection – http://www.printfection.com
• Zazzle – http://www.zazzle.com

You can adopt one of the aforementioned income generating strategies or a combination of the strategies to create an income stream from your blog, but the bottom line is that you need to build a large audience by writing informative and engaging articles on your blog. The more visitors visit your blog the higher your chances of creating an income stream from your blog.