How to Begin Blogging for Profit

If you have decided that you'd like to begin using your blog to make a little or a lot of extra cash, you should know that there are a lot of different scenarios when it comes to blogging for profit, and it's important to understand just what it is you're trying to accomplish, and the best ways to go about this. This only requires a little forethought and planning to get you on the right track toward blog profitability! Let's take a look at some of the things you'll want to consider.
The first thing to look at is to determine the basic way you intend to monetize your blogging efforts. There are a few choices here. You could go the easy way, and opt for a program like Google Adsense, which displays ads on your blog that your visitors click on, and you are compensated for each click, anywhere from a few pennies to a few dollars, depending on the popularity of the term being advertised. The pros of this type of monetization are that it is very easy to set up, and you don't have to do anything else. The cons would be that it's not that easy to make a good amount of money from Adsense without scaling it up significantly, and it's not what you would call consistent.
You could also sell something from your blog, either your product or one you have acquired the rights to sell (resell rights), and put banners or text ads extolling the virtues of these products. You can also start building a mailing list of visitors and customers that you can use for future promotion, something that is difficult to do when you are using other methods of monetization. The advantage of this type of model is that you can make a great deal more money, as you get to keep all of it.
A middle ground between these two would be affiliate marketing. This is where you attempt to sell or pre-sell products from your blog that you are an affiliate of, through the use of banners, text links or other ads, in order to garner a commission when the visitor clicks through your link to the affiliate vendor's site and makes a purchase. You then receive the commission, which can range anywhere from 1-75%, depending on the product. Digital products that can be downloaded offer the highest payouts, whereas physical products that require shipping and handling are perhaps the most likely the least profitable for you.
If you think you'd like to use your blog to make a bit of extra cash, then make sure to blog frequently and use other methods of search engine optimization to help keep your blog growing and increasingly popular in your chosen niche or market. Slapping a blog up into the blogosphere with a bevy of ads and little content and then never touching it again is a sure recipe for failure. Don't let that happen to your blog!