Does anyone make any money from their blog?

[landofmakebelieve]

I've been blogging for nearly a year now, and I've never made any money from it, I started it purely because I love to write and I wanted somewhere I could do so.
Now though, I'm looking for a job and was wondering if it would be feasible to make a living from my blog, and if so, how the heck do I do it?!
Does anyone make any money from their blog, and if so what kind of things do you do and how do you go about doing them?!

[LondonGirly]

I am right at the start of this, in terms of starting a blog, but here are some thoughts on how you could make money.

1. Affiliated marketing, so promoting other people's products through something like Amazon associates or click bank.com
   

1. Advertising, I think Google has a service you can sign up to where you get a certain amount per number of click throughs
   

Without adverts, I don't know how else you would generate revenue.

Will be interested to see what other suggestions people have.

[JimmyMacWhenAreYouComingBack]

No, I am keeping ads, sponsored links etc from my site.

[MaryAnnes]

its is nice to keep it free from pop ups and all that i think from the user experience

[Bex66]

yes, I make money from my blog but its very early days - I only started my weight loss blog on 8th June but have put up ads via Google Adsense and have made a bit of money - very small beer though at the moment, but I am already on the first page of Google for a number of keywords! I am also an Amazon Affiliate. If you are serious about making money from your blog, then you really need to spend some time on search engine optimisation (SEO) and keyword research - its all about driving traffic to the site in question - no point in monetising your site unless you have 60 visitors a day going to it - I have a second small blog called "money by blogging" which I set up to track my journey in this sphere if you want to have a look at that - it shows you what I did in the first couple of weeks. I don't think i'm allowed to put a link to it in here, but its a .co.uk domain !

[Bex66]

Hit my target for this first month in terms of earnings yesterday, with one day to go. Really chuffed! Up to 70 visitors/day as well. If you haven't worked out how to get stats on your blog, do it now!

[emsyj]

I make a bit - not loads, but maybe £200 a month. I have advertisers (not google or amazon, just individual small businesses that are related to my blog topic) and also get requests from bigger companies for sponsored posts.

I'm thinking of setting up another blog about something different and hoping I can get more free stuff rather than ad revenue!

I currently have around 42,000 unique visitors a month, so reasonably high traffic.

[landofmakebelieve]

Ooh, earning £200 a month sounds good - I've been writing for fun so far, just because I like writing and wanted somewhere to write, but now earning something would be good!
So (sorry if stupid question) but if I did try making some money out of it or getting free stuff, would I need to register it for tax, and when would I need to do it? Should I do it BEFORE I even make anything, or after I get the first bit of money in?!
Tax scares me, I'm completely clueless

[Bex66]

wow, emsyj, 42,000 visitors a month - i can only dream of those numbers - that is great - am very impressed - when did you set your blog up? If i were you i would add Adsense and with 42,000 visitors you will see your earnings skyrocket! You don't have to plaster Adsense everywhere, you can do it discreetly as well - say only have 1 per page. I have two blogs, first one (on here) is story of my weight loss journey last year with loads of weight loss tips, second is about being a newbie in affiliate marketing and is more my journal of how I progress - it poses the question - can you make money by blogging and if so, how much?

[Bex66]

landof - haven't registered mine for tax yet - don't worry, you won't be making enough in the first month for this to be of concern anyway! It works like your own income anyway (unless you register it as a company) so as long as you declare the income from it on an end of year tax return (that is here in the UK, which i presume you are) should be ok. Don't forget to keep any receipts though as you can offset that against income. For instance, I own my own domains www.howilostweight.co.uk and www.moneybyblogging.co.uk and I am going to offset my first month's income against the purchase price of the domains, so shouldn't have to pay any tax on that one!

[emsyj]

I think you need to be earning more than the tax free amount to register - then you contact HMRC. I do a tax return in any event as I have a separate business so my accountant does it.

I took over the blog in February, but the person who originally set it up had been doing it for 2 or 3 years I think. I will ask DH about adsense, he works in internet advertising but has never mentioned it!