How I Make Money from Blogs and Websites

I started with my online adventure as a freelance professional with my personal site - DigitalFilipino.com. The site will turn 8 years old this September 2007 and interesting to look back on its evolution. I often get asked how do I earn and sustain myself online. I freely share that information during talks but decided to make a post about it to inspire more bloggers, especially women, who are just beginning to blog or doing their online business.

Here's a ranking of my income sources. Note that this does not include my software process improvement related trainings, speaking engagements, consulting, website content management services, books, online workshops, reports, and research projects.

1. Club membership. My website, club blog, job blog, and podcast focuses on getting readers/listeners to join the DigitalFilipino.com Club. It is an online community where members can download research reports, e-books, presentation materials, and participate in offline networking and training activities. For SME and corporate members, it also includes hands-on workshops, news dissemination, job postings, and free advertisement in DigitalFilipino.com. We currently have 108 members (as of end of April) where 31% are corporate and SME members. I'm gradually building a family of blogs as well for CMMI Philippines and Bead Club Philippines.
2. Direct advertisement. We rolled this out on the last week of January. We started with 5 campaigns and gradually increasing. This gets place to some of our blogs and members of the ad network.
3. Google AdSense. This gets place to blogs where there is no direct advertisement placed and was able to provide a regular income stream.
4. Affiliate programs. No one has stand out so far but I am happy with ReviewMe and Implix (especially during Christmas season). Still experimenting with several others and will post them in the future.

For expenses, major ones include:

• Research reports and upcoming blogging book for members.
• Offline networking and training activities for the club membership.
• Advocacies such as the Philippine Schools Cyberfair, One Internet Day, E-Commerce Training for Educators, and DigitalFilipino.com Web Awards
• Payout to members of the ad network.

To get more inspiration, check out this compilation of blogger earnings.

I believe that the key to online sustainability is our willingness to challenge our ways of doing business and evolve in pursuit of market acceptance. This is especially true to those of us who develop new products and services that is not common in the market today in terms of packaging and approach.