For many of the popular blogs online, they’re born out of a sheer passion for the niche the blog owners are involved in. For those with a passion for their interests, other people will begin to follow the blog, hook up with them on social media channels, and follow along with each post that’s published to the blog.

As they gain momentum, generating thousands of unique visitors, the costs involved can take a spike. Bloggers may need to increase their bandwidth with their hosting provider in order to keep the site accessible for their visitors.

To generate that sort of traffic though, takes a ton of time, so don’t expect to have a raving popular blog overnight.

To begin with, it will feel almost as though you’re blogging to yourself, so you need to take time to connect with others in your niche market, so that people can get to know your site exists, where to find it and how to connect with you.

To stay connected to your readers, you need a method of getting in touch with them to inform them of the latest happenings on your blog. You can do that by using an email auto responder, which you can use in 2 ways.

1) Preload it with a series of emails to automate when your emails are sent

2) Use the broadcast feature to stay in real time communication with your subscribers

The best way to use an email service is with the broadcast feature. Blogs aren’t static and that’s why people sign up to follow the latest announcements, to find out what new information is being published.

Some bloggers may even find themselves paying for a premium theme, to give their blog more functionality.

When you add the cost of the tools, you may require for developing a blog and generating a following, it can make you wonder….

Exactly how do people make money blogging?Exactly how do people make money blogging?

While blogs are mainly born out of sheer passion for a sort of outlet to share your thoughts with other like-minded people, it can become expensive to continue it once it picks up momentum.

That’s why bloggers need to find a way to monetize their site, which not only helps them keep up with the overheads, as with a large enough following, you can find a blog capable of pulling in thousands of dollars in revenue.

• AdSense

This is by far one of the largest programs run for advertising. It’s paid on a performance basis and run through the search provider – Google. Anyone with a blog can apply to become a publisher through Google, which will permit them to display advertisements on your blog, which will be of interest to your readers.

From AdSense you are paid on a per click basis, which means it can take quite some time to see a decent amount of money coming in from it.

The more popular you’re blog is, the more traffic it gets. The higher traffic coming through your blog, the more people you have that will be clicking through to advertisers websites. For each person who performs that action, you’ll be paid a percentage of what the company is paying Google.

• Contextual based ads

This form of advertising is done with the content already published on your blog. There’s no need for you to do anything else, after you sign up for a service. What will happen is when you publish your content, there’s going to be some of your words, and phrases, throughout your content, hyperlinked as an advertisement.

You don’t need to target any specific wording either, as contextual advertising software works with existing content and matches the wording on a blog, to the target phrases that advertisers are bidding on.

The ads that are served to your readers will be relevant to your content, so it can still be provide value to your readers, while adding an additional revenue source to make money from your blog.

• Sponsoring blog posts

This is only going to happen when your blog becomes popular. Larger blogs will take notice of you when they see the amount of comments appearing on your site, as well as hear about others in your niche referencing you as a source of material, establishing your credibility.

That makes your blog ideal for others who want to increase their website traffic. What happens when you have this level of popularity is that you can open up private advertising.

For bloggers to get in front of a wider audience, they’ll establish a working relationship with blogs similar to theirs. That can be done free, by offering a free blog post, in exchange for a link into your own blog.

When your own blog reaches that level, you can choose to open guest posting by other bloggers, and for those keen to get a wider exposure to their guest post, they may be willing to pay you for a featured slot on your blog.

• Banner ads and selling ad space on your blog

Other websites and blog owners could be willing to pay you for an advertising slot that will let your readers know about their blogs, websites, or services. Whichever it is a partner advertiser is doing.

Some site owners may contact you privately about this, but without knowing what you’re doing, it can be risky. You could be linking into bad sites, which will put your reputation on the line, and then you have the issue of not being guaranteed payment, unless you’re able to negotiate a 100% deposit.

If you’re interested in selling ad space on your blog, you’re best to use services such as buysellads[dot]com. These are the agents making the matches between advertisers and publishers.

• Affiliate promotions

One of the largest and most profitable ways of that people are able to make money from blogging is by recommending products, relevant to their readers.

Bloggers have access to a wide audience, well…the popular ones anyway. Due to bloggers getting to know their audience on a somewhat personal level, via blog comments they receive and social media interaction, they have an excellent understanding of the products that will interest their readers.

By hooking in with affiliate programs, bloggers are able to select products that will appeal to their readers, use the affiliate link from the merchant and be paid a commission per sale.

With a blog of a few thousand readers monthly and a correctly aligned product, there is a good deal of money to be made, by tying in affiliated product recommendations onto your blog.

The above monetization methods are how people make money blogging. Revenue can be generated by using only one of the methods and for some it’s done with a combination of different revenue generating methods. It may be worth trying them out one at a time to test the profitability, and then decide on the best way to monetize your blog from there.