Beyond Blogging Into a Highly Profitable Internet Business

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Blogging has come a long way since the first blogs were started at the late 1990s when the first weblogs were started. More blogs are started each year than before, and more bloggers are making a living through blogging. And the most successful of them, have gone beyond blogging, into building highly profitable businesses. To understand how some bloggers are doing this, let’s take a step back and study how blogging has evolved during the years and how bloggers are making money through their blogs.

The first blogs were web diaries, logs that people used to share what they were doing. This is how the name came about; Web + Log = Weblog. Soon, blogging started to drive the “web 2.0″, the social web. It was possible to leave a comment to a weblog, unlike the static web sites, which had no interaction elements built-in. Quickly, blogs started evolving into something more and blogs became a medium to share information, not just personal stories.

The importance of blogs as a source of information kept increasing. And blogs started gaining the attention of the masses as blogs started appearing in the search engine results when people were seeking information. Blog posts started being shared over the Internet, through email, through links from the “traditional” web sites. With the new found traffic, blogs started monetizing. Advertising started appearing on the blogs and bloggers were able to make some money now. Next, bloggers started promoting products and services they used, as affiliates, earning commissions from the seller if someone bought a product or joined a service after clicking through a link on their blog.

This is the level where many bloggers remained, and still remain, but still some are making a living through blogging like this, getting paid for advertising and via affiliate sales they make. In a sense this kind of blogging is exchanging traffic to money through advertising. With brand new blogs, the traffic might not be enough to make significant income, but through great content and relentless marketing, blogs can grow huge.

The advertisers pay the bloggers either directly, or through contextual advertising services for the traffic the blogger sends them. The payments can base on the amount of clicks or the amount of page views the ads get. A monthly fee can also be used and the rates set by the blogger are based on the amount of traffic the blog gets and what advertisers are willing to pay. With affiliate marketing, the blogger does the hard work, getting the traffic to the blog and then sends the traffic towards the seller. If a visitor makes a purchase via affiliate link, the blogger gets a commission on the sale.

As mentioned, there are people who make a living doing only this. But for the bigger income, one has to sell products they have created. Nowadays, more and more bloggers are doing this, creating eBooks or other products, and then promoting those products through their blog.

The next step in the blogging evolution is the continuation programs. These Programs require a monthly, or annual, payment to continue using a service or staying in the coaching or the membership program. This kind of membership sites are excellent way to monetize a blog, because they often generated residual income, with the payments coming every month. The amount of money one can make from a continuation program depends on the membership fee, the amount of people signing into the program and the amount of people staying on the program. At some point the paying member might leave, but if you keep getting more people to sign up to the program every month, the income will keep climbing. With the continuation on the membership site, the compounding effect of the monthly payments can quickly increase the income blogger makes.

Combining the different ways to earn money through blogging is the way most bloggers go today. They have some advertising and affiliate offers on their blogs, while they are developing and publishing their own products like eBooks and eventually more advanced products like membership sites. With the multiple streams of income, the income is more stable and increases the security as money is coming in, even if some stream dries down. For example, a blogger might experience a dip in the advertising revenue, but compensate that with more aggressive affiliate promotions or re-launching a membership program.

Any kind of income will not come easy, but with hard work and by building multiple income streams it can be done. And in addition to the possible income a blogger can make, creating valuable information will not go unnoticed in the Internet. Bloggers have gone to get book deals and speaking engagements based on the information available on their blogs and in the products they release. Starting simple, building relationships and authority over time, bloggers have been able to turn their blogging into highly profitable businesses. One person blogs have turned into multimillion companies over time.

It is possible to make a living through blogging, but you have to think beyond personal diary kind of blog and beyond writing a blog post after blog post without a longer-term goal. The most successful bloggers think of their blogging as a business, which has enabled them to turn their passions into a way to make their living. These bloggers have evolved beyond blogging.

Antti Kokkonen is helping others to unleash the power of online media through better blogging and clever use of social media. Find how you can start to grow your Internet business and go beyond blogging now.

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