People dream of making money online through blogs because they have heard few success stories. However, they often miss the most important part of the story – dedication.

An Average American Blogger, says Technorati, earns around $6000 every year through blogging. However, around $200,000 is earned by the top 1% probably due to the same reason, they are dedicated.

But dedication isn’t enough; you must have the right approach and must be able to choose the right path. So, how do you get started with the right approach? By being practical.

If you enter areas like celebrity gossip, politics, gadgets, and photography, you will face very stiff competition. Instead, it’s better to choose a niche area; something that you are good at.

Another thing that you must take care of is the vocabulary. Remember you are writing for a huge population. Hence, you cannot afford to make minor spelling or grammatical errors. Nor can you use very tough language. Be simple but perfect.

Once you get the basics right – and selected a niche area – next step is to know how money is earned through blogs. If you don’t master at any or all of these five methods, you cannot earn money.

Advertising

Simple. Everyone knows that advertising is easiest method to make money online. However, to make a large income, ads on your blogs needs to be clicked innumerable times. You get few cents per click or few dollars per thousand clicks, or whatever the method is; but money is definitely difficult to earn through advertising till your blog becomes quite popular.

Providers like Google Adsense, BidVertiser, AdGenta, and AdBrite will provide ads irrespective of the number of readers on your blog. You can also approach advertisers directly, but they will entertain you only if your blog’s readership is high.

Affiliate Marketing

This program is quite similar to advertising. You place links or banners on your blog to earn money. However, in most cases, you wouldn’t get paid if a reader clicks on the link. He should purchase the item. Hence, earning money through affiliate marketing becomes more difficult. However, the each sale can earn you as much as 10-30% of the sale price. So, the potential is high but conversion ratio is low. Have a look at websites like ClickBank, Commission Junction, or LinkShare to check the list of affiliate products.

Pay Per Post

This is another cool method of earning money online. Many companies will pay you to post articles bout their services or products. The pay rate, however, depends on your blog’s readership.

Hence, if you have started your blog today, you wouldn’t get an opportunity earn through ‘Pay Per Post’ for at least a month or two. And you must gain readership till then.

If you are a good writer, you can earn as much as $1000 per article. However, don’t expect more than $10-$20 initially. If you have it in you, you will gradually reach the peak. To start with it, visit SponsoredReviews, Blogvertise, or PayPerPost.

Employment

Due to increased dependency of readers on social media and other internet tools, employers are exploiting all possible options to reach the customers.

Many companies have started hiring bloggers to send out their voice. If you are a good blogger, you too can join a company as a part of their marketing or advertising strategy. However, your grammar and accuracy needs to be impeccable.

And if you have made a good name on the web, promote yourself, and companies will find you.

Sponsorship

Few companies offer sponsorship to bloggers. This is much like an advertising program, wherein your blog will contain and promote company’s brand. However, you cannot mention the products and services everywhere on the blog. It is just a blog sponsored by a corporate. Content, in most cases, remains unaffected.

These are usual ways of making money online or specifically though blogging. Methods adopted by all the bloggers may vary. However, they have one thing in common, dedication because any of the above methods require enormous time and effort to become a successful one. Everything is available online. How you use it is what makes the difference.

Text link ads, according to me, are one of the hottest streams of income in the world of blogging. In case the name doesn’t give a clear message, we will tell you, that you get money for putting text link ads on your Website.

How to do it? Just go to the Text Link Ads site and sign in to be a publisher. It takes some time for you site to get approved so you need to be patient. Once you get the approval, you can configure the advertisements according to your preference. You can choose the amount of ads that will appear on the display, whether they will show up on the entire site or single page. You need to be careful while choosing the advertisements. For example you can choose five ads to appear or ten. But if you choose the latter, there will be reduced revenue for each ad. The potential will be high but every link will give you less income.

After you choose the ads, you can opt for the colors to go with your Website. I recommend you to select colors which blend well with the site. You might think of using contrasting colors in order to catch attention easily but if the colors don’t go well with the site, it will create an eyesore. For WordPress users, there is a plugin available which is simple to install. For blogs which use Movable Type, be wary of the script, I faced some problems there. You also get to approve each link personally but you won’t be bothered by this much because you probably check your site everyday. If there is something wrong there, you will notice it immediately.

So that’s it. Once the script gets installed, your site will get listed on Text Link Ads website. Every time a link gets sold you will receive an email also the money will be deposited in your PayPal account.

If you are still skeptical about this, check out the Link Worth Calculator on the Text Link Ads Website. It will give you an idea about how much is the worth of a link on your site. Link placement matters too! So you will have to make sure you put them in the right place to make plenty of money.

I think that Text Link Ads is the greatest revolutions ever in SEO space because you get combination of both – exposure through links that are put on strategic Websites that relate to your field and you get link value. When you are looking to get some links in front of search engines so that they can find you and learn a bit about your Website, Text Link Ads gives you the ability to do that and you can also drive traffic to your Website through it.

Finally, I thought the Text Link Ads has a good customer service. They take good care of you, if you want to move your links. Text Link Ads is great from customer service point of view. If you are looking for text links, this is the place for you.

Try to think just beyond the normal and you will encounter an ocean of ideas to attract traffic on your blog; some heard, some unheard, but definitely not common ones. If you apply this in your daily life, say to save money or improve relations, I am sure you will do much better than the others. However, let’s not make this post a ‘how to be creative’ one and stick to blogging.

So, I tried to think beyond the uninteresting, usual ideas and stepped into the ocean. I came up with 3 unusual ways to attract people to visit your blog. These aren’t very thoughtful ones because you see them daily. However, you don’t use it as a source of promotion of your blog.

Alright. Enough of mysterious talks, let’s discuss the three ways. Okay wait! Remember, I said DISCUSS, and not just listen. I will come back to this point during conclusion.

1. Misspell some words

   Do it purposely. After writing the content of your post, select few words that are commonly misspelled and misspell them. You are getting it, right? Okay. So, do it and watch how the traffic pours into your blog. You will also find numerous comments under your post correcting you. Okay, I know it’s quite unethical to do such stuff just to attract traffic. I am not asking you to do it often. Do it once and for god’s sake, don’t do it if it’s your first article.

   Maybe you will be surprised noticing the traffic directed toward the misspelled blog post. And you will feel like writing another misspelled article. Don’t do it. If this happens a number of times, people will doubt your vocabulary and would never re-visit your site.

2. Video Blogging

   This is an easy one. All you need is a video editing software, a web cam, and a Youtube account. You don’t need anything else, that is, after assuming you have good imagination. A tinge of humor, beautiful looks, pleasant quotes, or unmatched sound would be an added advantage.

   What do you do with this webcam? Switch it on and start talking. The echelon of simplicity or complexity would depend on the niche and obviously you. You can opt to show the demo of a product or a service, if you are a reviewer. Or you could simply talk. Do something that people really want to see. Warning: Don’t start stripping, you may be banned.

   This is far more effective than simply writing text. Such blogs has the potential to reach millions and millions of people through web.

3. Reply to comments, regularly

   If your article is genuinely good, the first-time visitor might or might not revisit your site. However, if he comments, he will definitely revisit the blog to check your reply. If you haven’t posted any reply, chances are rare that he ever want to come again. But if you reply, he will be obliged to return.

   Replying to comments makes the environment quite friendlier and pleases the commenter. Personally, I reply to each and every comment I receive for my posts except the ones with just “great post.” However, I don’t totally avoid them. An occasional ‘thank you’ is the best option.

   Not answering to their questions is possibly the worst thing you could do to your blog. Never do this. Whenever some visitor asks a question, answer them. Even if it means saying, “I am not aware about it. Let me do a research and get back to you.”

Okay. Now this wasn’t a well researched post. I just thought about it for a couple of minutes and started writing. I do believe that these three are effective, in fact very effective ways to attract traffic. Avoid using the first point repeatedly.

Before initiating with these unusual ways, I said let’s DISCUSS. I am sure you might have encountered many such unusual ways that could really pull people to your blog. Let’s DISCUSS them.

These days, more and more emphasis is being put on beautifying the graphic user interface (GUI). One of the easiest ways to attract the attention is to put some eye candy there. It should hold the attention and make a viewer dig deeper in to the your application. If the Website or application has drab looks, it will give a bad first impression.

While surfing through the jungles of internet, I came across icons-land.com, a website that provides icons for your applications or Websites. Provided your software is useable, these icons will give you value addition to the products. There is a wide collection of icons for toolbars, places, sports, emoticons, transports, multimedia devices, and modern hardware. The icons are designed in Windows Vista style, so this will give you an idea about how cool the icons look. They will be a treat for your eyes in the Windows Vista Aero interface.

Icons-land has cheap high-quality icons in stock. You can visit the Website and get the ones that you like. If you don’t like what you see, then custom design service is also available out there.

There is a set of icons for variety of purposes like Points of Interest (POI), GPS, basic software, weather, etc. A set will cost you around $50-$120 depending on what you are buying and you can also purchase a single icon for $5.

These icons are a good option for developers who are looking for icons for their applications or Websites. I have seen a lot of iPhone apps using icons made by Icons-Land and was pleased with them.

The quality is top notch, it adds to the beauty of the user interface. The icons looked fresh, clear and they use vibrant colors.

Other highlights of this service are:

• Icon formats, which depend on the icon set. You can check the package details that you will be ordering. Mostly, the icons are given in .ico and .png format. The former is for Windows applications whereas the latter is for Websites, Linux applications, mobile phone apps, toolbars and Windows apps.
• Icons are given in Alpha channel+TrueColor. Maximum size of the icons is 256×256. You might need icons in different sizes like 128×128, 96×96, 80×80, 72×72, 64×64, 48×48, 32×32, 24×24, 16×16. You will get icons converted in your preferred size for free!
• Icons, once purchased can be used for unlimited websites and software applications. You buy them, you own them! You can also modify these icons according to your needs. However, you cannot distribute them to any other party for their use.
• The service uses eSellerate for payments. All major credit cards like JCB, American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa are accepted. You can also use PayPal while placing your order.
• Accepted currencies for payments are Swiss Franc, Sweden Krona, South African Rand, Singapore Dollar, Norwegian Krone, New Zealand Dollar, Japanese Yen, Hong Kong Dollar, Danish Krone, Canadian Dollar, British Pound, Australian Dollar, Euro and US Dollar.

I will be asking all my developer friends to have a look at Icon-land.com for icons on their applications.