Can you earn enough from my work from home blogs to pay your mortgage? That’s certainly what I am trying to do. How can you make your blogs make you money? Can you make your blogs run themselves?

Can You Make Serious Money From Work From Home Blogs?

I know lots of people who are well on the way to giving up the day job because of their blogging income. It can be done.

How to Make Serious Money by Blogging

Turning a blog into an income takes time, at least two years, so you need to approach this as a long term project.

You need to set up one blog at a time, promote it, get into the routine of making a post most days, then to set up another  blog, promote it…

If you are obvious about trying to make money from your blogging you will fail. Your readers must feel that you are running your blog for their benefit rather than your own. Don’t even think about trying to monetize a blog until after you have established a group of subscribers who read your posts and trust what you say.

What avenues are open to you to make money from your blog subscribers?

1. Ads
2. Affiliate programs

1. Ads

Contextual Ads – There are contextual ads such as Google’s Adsense program, though there are many other companies running their own contextual ads. Google will not allow you to put their Adsense ads onto a web page with any other company’s contextual ads, so you have to choose one provider.

CPA Ads – Cost Per Action Ads. These are ads where you are paid when a visitor clicks an ad on your page and follows through to complete a set action. You will get clicks but only a small proportion of clickers ever follow through with the action required, so most clicks will earn you nothing. When someone does follow through then you can expect to earn between $5 and $75, depending on the ad campaign.

There are various CPA ad sites, including Commission Junction. Each site has hundreds of company campaigns that you can sign up for one at a time.

2. Affiliate Programs

Affiliate or Referral Programs are a good way to earn decent amounts of money, but there are problems.

People do not like to click on affiliate links, yet in the interests of honesty you should disclose all affiliate links.

You can get around the reluctance of your blog users to click and allow you to earn, but they have to know you, like you and trust you before they will do that. This is the Know, Like, Trust Law and is the Second Law of Blogging.

This is the reason most work from home bloggers never make a penny; their users do not trust them sufficiently to click on any affiliate links.

You need to build a relationship with your subscribers, to allow them to comment and to reply to those comments. Only after a lot of relationship building will subscribers knowingly click on a referral link. You need to convince them that you are honest and that you are recommending a service because it is excellent value, rather than because it is the one that allows you to earn the most money.

As a rule of thumb, you should only ever recommend products you have bought or service that you subscribe to. Your reputation depends on your subscribers liking and keeping the services you recommend, so make those recommendations with a lot of thought.

Read this article for an alternative view of work from home blogs. Not everyone thinks they can earn you a living