Tell me. Whats the first thing that comes to your mind whenever you hear the word blog?

Web logs, or blogs as they have fondly been referred to in recent years, were originally meant as online journals where users can talk about the events of their days, their thoughts about political issues and current events, their reviews on certain products or services, and the likes. Blogs have served a social purpose, one that allows the user to connect to the whole world through the things he will share in writing.

This has led to the meteoric rise of blogs as one of the most popular internet tools for the new generation.

But blogs have evolved from merely being social outlets in cyberspace into profitable channels which could provide for the user several income streams to supplement his current earnings, or perhaps even surpass the same.

Indeed, blogs have become viable marketing weapons that could rake in some outstanding profits if you know how to use them.

There are three ways by which you could monetize your blog.

Using Blogs As Digital Stores

Believe it or not, you could sell products through your blog. Whether these be digital products or tangible good, yours or others, you could promote them in your blog entries and earn for yourself some amazing income in the process.

If you wish to sell your own products, digital or otherwise, you could simply write some favorable reviews in your blog entries so that the items may be presented to your readers in a positive light.

But not every blogger has the capabilities to sell his or her own products. The best way to go is to sign up with affiliate programs. Affiliate programs are arrangements whereby an affiliate, namely the blogger, would pre-sell an affiliate merchants products. The affiliate would earn a commission per successful sale he or she will manage to refer to the affiliate merchant. This commission can range from as low as 20% to as high as 95%.

If you want to sell digital products, sign up with any or all of the following programs:

www.clickbank.com
www.cj.com
www.paydotcom.com

If you wish to sell tangible goods, on the other hand, consider the following programs instead:

www.amazon.com
www.chitika.com
www.buy.com

Regardless of the program you will join, youd be given an affiliate link to promote. Whenever a visitor of yours would click on the said link, theyd be taken to the affiliate merchants sales page. The affiliate merchant would take care of things from there. Your job is already done, and all that is left to do is to pray that the said visitor would actually purchase the affiliate merchants products so that youd earn your commission.

Going The AdSense Route

Yet another way to make your blog a venerable cash cow is to enroll with the AdSense program. AdSense is Googles Pay Per Click (PPC) system, so named because the system would send out contextually relevant advertisements to your blog, and whenever a visitor of yours would click yes, just click on the said ads, youd earn a specified amount, per click.

The fact that AdSense would send out contextually relevant ads means that only ads which are related to the subject of your website would be displayed. If your blog is devoted to discussing dogs, for example, AdSense would send out ads about dog grooming products and services, dog care eBooks, dog clothes, and the likes.

What does this mean?

Since your ads would be connected to the general subject of your blog, there is a higher chance that your visitors would click on the same. This would only increase your online earnings via the PPC program.

Visit the AdSense site at www.google.com/adsense.

Your Blog As A Back Link Builder

80% of the traffic that can be generated from any website would come from the search engines. And an integral part of being successful with search engines lies in securing a high page rank for your website. A high page rank would make your website appear in the first few pages of search engine results. This means that people who are looking for the information your website can offer would be able to find you through the said search engines.

Having a high page rank is important for websites that sell some products. The more visitors theyd have, the more sales theyll be able to generate for their online business.

Central in securing a high page rank is garnering a lot of back links. Back links are the number of pages linking to your website.

And this is where blogs enter the picture.

Since blogs are very easy to create, you could make several of them, with each blog linking to your main website. The result? An instant increase in the number of your back links, an instant boost to your page rank, and consequently, a higher position in search engine results.