Image by: Hillary
By: Giovanni Fields

It can be tough breaking past the novice barrier that all budding entrepreneurs have to face. You’ve got no money, invested all your cash into your amazing vision and have little to no support from those around you. Those can be stressful times, but if you’re utilizing all the tools at your disposal, like social networks–blogs, twitter, ect.–then it’s no reason why you shouldn’t join the ranks of the pros with dedication, consistency and persistence.

Building a business isn’t a get rich quick scheme, and can take months, or even years to see any positive returns. I’m not trying to burst your bubble, just touching upon reality and emphasizing that to pull off a six figure annual income, lots of blood and sweat and tears must come into play. But don’t get too down, there are many ways your content can not only help you promote your business or product, but to also bring you a nice flow of cash.

So if you’ve been considering cracking open a WordPress account, this article may be of assistance to you.

#1) Ebooks

How flexible are you when it comes to executing a multitude of tasks that could bring you exposure? Would you be willing to go the extra mile and author a book demonstrating some of the content that lingers within your mind? Of course you wouldn’t be able to sell previously published works which may have made an appearance on your blog, but if you’re willing to build a cohesive network of essays you may be able to run your own bookstore right on your very blog.

Not only will you be making revenue from potential customers who would purchase you’ve ebook, but you will also be connecting with your customers from a rather ambiguous angle. By diversifying yourself as an entrepreneur, you will both better your chances of attracting a wider audience, and raking in the extra cash.

#2) AdSense

Google’s Adsense is the top pick for many bloggers when it comes to putting advertisements on your site to generate income. Reason being is because it’s extremely simple to use and doesn’t require you to be a technological genius. To equip your blog with an AdSense ad, all you pretty much have to do is right click and copy and paste the code. Sounds simple enough, right? And the best part is its one of the biggest advertising networks available, so you would be presented with a wide range of advertisers to work with.

This especially works well if your blog falls into an extremely obscure niche.

#3) Sponsors

As you input the aforementioned blood, sweat and tears into your amazing site, your blog will become more established–and after that happens you can display your flexibility by finding different ways to make more money through various private sales and sponsorships.

But unlike AdSense ads, you have to venture a little out of your comfort zone and go out and find them. That may mean approaching various companies and convincing them that your blog has a sufficient amount of traffic–enough to be lucrative for them, and also show the company that your blogs niche is a great match the product they have to offer. It can be quite time consuming to utilize this method, but with the myriad of different brands that could relate to your product, the hours will be well spent.

#4) Affiliate Programs

Some more exciting ways to make money online once you’re an established blogger can be reaching out to small companies who’s products you can identify with and use to see if they’d be interested in setting up an affiliate marketing program with you. The way it works is: you would post a link leading directly to their product on your blog and if a consumer were to order it–through your blog, of course–then you would get a small portion of the sale.

Although small, if you have a high amount of volume on your blog, the accumulated money over a span of a couple weeks may even be able to serve as your monthly rent.

You’d be able to participate in any number of marketing programs depending on the topic of your blog and the amount of traffic you get, which means this method of income would only be an option to bloggers who are well established. Doesn’t hurt to aspire to it, though…

#5) Amazon

Like affiliate programs, the Amazon associates program would allow you to garner a portion of a sale when people click through your blog to Amazon to purchase a product. The amount you would get varies based on what consumers order and how many different people and items are purchased through your handy dandy link. And you can only make revenue when a consumer is purchasing something from the site after clicking on your link.

Although similar to affiliate programs, Amazon is much bigger and popular by blog users due to the sheer number of products and items the site offers.

There are literally hundreds of different ways in which your content can bring in the dough. Have you touched upon a method that I failed to include? If so, share the wealth and we’ll thank you for it later!