I am happy to have lived to see such great development in Jamaica with more individuals appreciating the power of the internet and are making significant steps to start profiting. We see developers building useful apps such as Marc Gayle’s recent Leads River and a growing community of developers who have started developing for the purpose of profit. Local companies are realizing the power of social media and online advertising and have assigned larger budgets towards extending their reach online.

Our bloggers in particular have a unique opportunity where it is now possible, with very little start-up cash, to build a reputation and business online by simply promoting one’s unique “voice.” When I say voice, I mean your opinions and commentary expressed through blogging. All you have to do is be genuine about what you’re writing and be interesting, which is not always easy, but there is an audience for whatever you choose to do. Its important, however, that you know your specific audience, study them and provide content that appeals to their emotions and needs.

Money Making Blogging Ideas

The model for making money through blogging is pretty basic: you create content, use your contacts and social media to make it go viral increasing traffic overtime. As your traffic increases, so does the value of your website giving you greater negotiating power for advertisers. Advertisers pay you for displaying their ads. This is the most popular model for making money online as a content creator and it works. Your website is like real estate but the market may not quite be as volatile and your aim is to increase its perceived value.

However, lets get a bit more creative and think about the possibility of multiple sources of income.

Aggregate Your Content For A Fee

If you have really unique content, identify news or other types of websites that could potentially benefit your from commentary or expertise in a particularly area. The big sell for them is that it will be creating additional useful content for their readers without the need for them to leave their website. Your content would basically be fed automatically to their website. You would negotiate a fee of course because it is your work and you should maintain ownership.

Integrating the feed on their website can be a bit technical depending on your skill set. A developer can help.

Review Products / Services

Many companies will pay popular bloggers to write about their products in the form of sponsored reviews. The benefit to them of course is that they are reaching an additional specific audience and they would be getting some search engine juice because there would be valid links back to their website.

Exploit YouTube or Become a YouTube Partner

Unfortunately, the YouTube partner program is not yet available in Jamaica but our bloggers overseas can take advantage.

Youtube partners earn about US $2 up per 1,000 video views. If you have a video camera think about taping yourself in the form of a Video Blog or Vlog. YouTube is a huge audience and as long as you have that appeal or just original and interesting content you will attract subscribers and viewers. YouTube is also awesome for reaching the international audience.

An additional benefit of youTube is that since Google owns it, they give popular, fresh videos priority in their search engine. So ensure that your YouTube channel is linked and promoted on your blog and vice versa.

Before becoming a YouTube partner though, you will need to be attracting a high number of viewers. So, start working on it.

For our local bloggers, although the partnership program is not at present available in Jamaica, you can still embed advertisements into your videos. If you have video editing skills or have access to someone who does, then you can easily sell ad space within your videos. The important thing to note here is that you need to ensure that ads are relevant to your audience or it might be a turn-off.

Just remember that you can do anything with your content and the power is in your hands when it is viral.

Partner program links:

- FAQ
- Sign-Up Page

Receive Guest Articles

There are many writers who will pay to post guest articles on your site. Many of them are marketing reps for companies that need to reach markets online. The format of these articles are usually useful guides or commentary on an industry with a couple backlinks to the company’s site. The key here is to ensure that the content they submit is of high quality, is not used elsewhere and is not spammy.

Offer a Consultation Service to Big Brands

If you have successfully captured a massive audience for yourself then more than likely you can help someone else do it too. Market yourself as a consultant, specializing in building your clients’ online reputation, managing and growing their online content assets and simply helping their products or services to go viral. This is a reason it is very important to have a professional mindset when blogging while bearing in mind that you are in fact building a business. Document your work and the techniques you have used so that you can identify and use your personal formula for future projects.

More companies are understanding the value of this and will pay you to help get the job done.

A Tip

Ensure that the content you are distributing you own, otherwise get the appropriate permissions for use. Copyright infringement is real and the consequences can make your efforts online invalid. Be careful.

Go Forth & Blog!!

Bloggers have a unique advantage over the corporate type press release since they already have a deep sense of trust among their peers and if not as yet can easily develop that locally and beyond as this is the opportunity to be as real as can be removing the veil of corporate stature, which is oftentimes viewed as doing everything with the sole aim of making money. Sure we all want to make money but if that is your primary goal then you need to rethink what you’re doing.

Once you’ve developed that voice there is no limit to what you can achieve.

Share with us in the comments section below some of your online marketing success stories or if you would discuss more about blogging.

For more online money making ideas check our previous article: 6 Simple Profitable Ideas For Jamaicans To Make Money Online