My Best Source of Revenue…

A lot of people who are interested in starting blogging have asked me this question. “How do you make a living. What is your secret sauce?” The truth is, people are interested to know what works to emulate the process. There is really no single source that can make you $$$, and even if there were, you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket.

A lot of people have used Adsense to make decent money. I know a few folks who pay their rent with Adsense. Obviously, I haven’t met anyone who only focuses on Adsense to make a living. Having said that, having a site with a lot of traffic in a profitable adsense niche can give you a good cushion. When I started blogging professionally a few years ago, my goal was to never have to work a 9-6 job ever again. I put 5 or so more hours into my business everyday, so the problem really wasn’t the long hours. It’s the freedom that you get when you call the shots. Even if you are working for the best company, you are limited to what you can do, so my goal was to make enough money to be able to pay my rent, my loans, and …

I tried everything at first. I tried Adsense, Adbrite, paid review, and all other methods that webmasters currently use to make a living. But none has brought me more revenue than affiliate marketing. It’s not very risky to be able to rely on someone else to make the product, store the product (if it’s physical), and all you have to do is execute a marketing plan for it – a marketing plan that you create yourself and can execute at your own pace. Of course, if your plan is a no-plan approach, then you will fail miserably with this method.

Thankfully, there are so many products available to affiliats that almost any market has a product for affiliates to promote. Affiliate networks such as LinkShare act as the intermediary between you and the merchants, and they make sure that you get paid on time. The best affiliate programs that I have worked with are eBay and Amazon. These two companies simply have the brand recognition and quality landing pages that convert. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to drive people to a merchant’s site just for them to bounce off due to the poor quality of the landing page. But I have never had that problem with eBay or Amazon.

Will Amazon and eBay work for you? It really depends on your niche. For instance, if your niche is in the financial industry, you may have to look at CJ or other sources. In some niches, you may have more success with sponsorships. It is often useful to know what other guys are doing in other markets, but the challenge is to pull that off in your own. If you are just starting a blog, and you have no idea what to do, I would recommend looking at what your competitors are doing. Piggybacking is always the best way to get your feet wet. After that, it’s all about testing different and new things.

So what’s your main source of revenue? Have you made enough money with Adsense to quit your daily job? Please share your comments below.