There are two ways of making money blogging, one more profitable than the other. First of all, small business owners find a great advantage in the use of blogs that provide rich informational content and the opportunity for great marketing promotions. But let's take a look at how you can turn blogging into a profitable activity. There are two possibilities: you either get paid for allowing other business owners to advertise on your site or you can include the blog in one of the many affiliate programs that enjoy such a popularity on the Internet nowadays.
In case you choose to exploit the advertising potential of your blog, the best program to work with is Google AdSense; you'll get paid every time an ad on your site gets clicked, regardless of whether this action converts into profit or not. The logical question that may rise here is: how can you get more clicks for the ads on the blog? Don't think about clicking your own ads to make some more money; fraud clicks are a very hot subject in the business, and Google teams are very efficient at identifying them. Such dishonest practice could cost you dearly if you dare to use it.
You can increase the profitability of the ads on your blog by taking advertising into consideration when you design the site. For instance, the fonts and colors used for the ads should be only slightly different from the rest of the page, without standing out. Why? Because the more visible you make them, the more likely it is that they'll annoy the user, and the entire purpose of your blog is to get people to spend quality time on the page. AdSense is a program that displays only those ads that are related to the domain the blog tackles with, so that you cannot complain about too large a number of irrelevant visitors.
Last, but not least, you can use the blog as part of an affiliate program, which involves promoting the products or services of a specific business. For instance if you've got a blog dealing with diving, you can very well turn into an affiliate for a company that sells diving equipment. The amount of money you are supposed to get is usually part of the individual agreement you sign with the other party, and it usually depends on how well you manage to use the blog to actually convince people to purchase one of the products. Friendly links, special discounts, promotions and e-news letters are all part of an affiliate campaign that could turn a simple blog into a great revenue generator.