There is a multitude of ways to make money online, and most bloggers know about only a few of them.  In order of greatest popularity (at least from what I’ve seen), there are Google AdSense ads, banner ads, PPC ads, and paid reviews… you’ll notice that all of these have something in common: they’re all ads.

Ads are a great way to monetize your blog and they’re probably the easiest option for you. Some people can probably make a good amount off of ads alone.  But there are plenty of other ways to make money as well.  Here are a few of them:

Create a premium content section

Have users sign up and pay a fee to see a particular section of your site.  The best way to do this would be to have a good portion of your site that’s free.  This will help visitors get a feeling for the kind of content that you provide.   Consider it like an appetizer.  Entice them to see your premium section by showing off your expertise in the free section.

Of course, you will have to make sure you deliver.  Your premium section should enhance the content that you provide for free.  It should be “better” in some way than what you do offer for free.  Perhaps in the free section you offer basics and fundamentals, while your premium section provides more advanced knowledge.

Write a book

You can compile your posts and publish a book.  You can write something new, related to your blog topic that those readers would want, that they’ve never seen before.  You could do a mix of both.  Whatever you do, you can write a book – and you should probably make it an eBook as well – and then promote and sell it from your website.

Provide a product

You can provide your users with anything… a knitting blog can sell scarves, sweaters, hats, and cooking blog can sell customized oven mitts, a recipe book, or maybe a box of chocolates.  Don’t confuse this with an affiliate or giveaway program, although you can try those as well.  What I mean is that you can actually create something yourself and sell it.

In some ways this could be harder for you then just selling ad space, but for other people it might be a more ideal business model.  The point is that there are other ways of making money online instead of relying on ads… so brainstorm and think outside the box!