Are You Trying to Make Money on Your Blog Without Ads?
July 12, 2008 – 2:30 pmHere’s a question I’ve had for a while. How do you make money off of your blog if you are unwilling to use advertising? Can it ever be profitable?
I’ve thought of a few options but I’m hesitant to pull the trigger on any of them because they don’t seem viable:
- Pay site
- Whenever I come across a pay site I just think to myself “I’ll just find it somewhere else”
- Donate button
- If you don’t have a lot of passionate readers this won’t work
- Sell a product
- Of course the big trend these days is to write a book. That’s cool but what else?
- Schwag
- This mostly means selling branded t-shirts. Again we have an issue about passionate readers
I’m stumped. Suggestions?
5 Responses to “Are You Trying to Make Money on Your Blog Without Ads?”
Nice writing style. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Chris Moran
By Chris Moran on Jul 12, 2008
For me there are any number of ways including some you mention - but I’d probably say that ’sell a product’ is the best of those you’ve mentioned. If you blog and your profile on a topic and then have some sort of product that relates to that topic you have a decent possibility of being able to sell something that goes deeper.
There are other ways including:
- selling your services as a consultant
- affiliate programs - recommending products and making a commission
Just two of a few that come to mind. The key with them all is to build readership around a particular topic of expertise.
By Darren on Jul 12, 2008
Thanks for the reply Darren. I agree, it seems like selling a product is the way to go. I’ll be experimenting with this over on dBlogIt
By Dustin Boston on Jul 13, 2008
You could draw a lot of readers and sell the blog, or provide some type of service (selling something, consulting, affiliate programs, tools).
By Susan on Jul 13, 2008
I hadn’t thought about selling the blog Susan, that’s a great idea. That makes me wonder. How do you gauge the price of a blog when there are no benchmarks for its profitability (at least in terms of advertising). I guess I’d better head back over to ProBlogger and do some searching
By Dustin Boston on Jul 13, 2008