Most people want to make money from their blogs. With WordPress, it is easy to monetize (turn into money) your blog!

Here are 11 tried and true methods to monetize your blog, according to research and personal experience.

Some bloggers have had success with selling links on their blogs - however, be aware the the Great Google does not condone selling links that pass PageRank.

Top sites for getting listed and selling your links or linking to products for sale include:

1. Kontera ContentLink
2. Text Link Ads
3. BlogAds
4. Ad Brite
5. ReviewMe (offers an option to buy or sell reviews of websites with link text of your choice)
   
6. Bidvertise
7. AuctionAds

There are quite a few plugins that can help you with direct ad sales and sponsorships - but again, you want to be sure that you do not pass PageRank. Some of my favorite plugins include OIOpublisher Direct and AdRotator. You could also sign up for Google Adsense, which has a variety of methods for ad publishing on your site - and they are customizable, too! There are also quite a few Adsense related WordPress Plugins available - check out some of them at the WordPress Plugins website.

The benefit in using a plugin versus manually selling ads is that clients can order and pay for the service without contacting you - and you can even have the code set up to automatically update images and links - so you have more time to write and enjoy life!

My most successful method of making money online is Affiliate Sales. This is a very passive method of making money. However, it is not dependable, stable income. Unless you have a lot of traffic and tons of people who want to buy the product or service you are offering, you will not be making $1000/month just from affiliate sales. But, it can be good extra income to spend on a night out, a day trip or pay extra on a bill!

And last, but definitely not least, think about monetizing your RSS feed! Some of your readers only read via RSS, so adding ads from the FeedBurner Ad Network and Text Link Ads can be a great way to add affiliate links or sell text links. Also consider using a WordPress plugin such as RSS Footer, which allows you to add a line (or more) of HTML or plain text content to the end of your RSS feed articles.

Do you have any methods of monetization that haven’t been mentioned here? If so, let’s hear it in the comments!

This post covers steps 71-81of 101 Steps to Becoming a Better Blogger.

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