This topic was chosen for me by Lynn Terry when she tagged me with the “5 ways you can…” meme. Frankly, I think she must have been reading my mind because I just started a blog series dubbed The Earning Curve. In any event, here’s my contribution.

1. Sell yourself.
Selling yourself isn’t just about providing a service. Consider for a moment that you run a knitting blog; chances are you knit a lot. While you could commission yourself out for custom jobs, it may be easier to set up a small Etsy store to sell your doilies or sweaters or other cool knitware. If you fancy yourself an artiste, share the joy by selling each of your paintings, or comics, or whatever your artistic craft may be. (And let’s not forget about CafePress which would allow you to sell just about anything from t-shirts to mouse pads to mugs.)

2. Display banners.
Something that was “oh, so 90’s” is making a come-back in a big way and it’s banner advertising. You don’t need to sell those gawd awful blinking banners that cause seizures or anything like that — you could even sell small 125×125 square banners. The better news is that you don’t even need to manage it yourself, you could sign up for a service like AdBrite. Both of these services, by the way, have a contextual ad component to them.

3. Contextual advertising.
It’s about more than just AdSense. Contextual advertising is made up by any type of text ad ranging from selling text links to paid reviews from services like sponsoredreviews.com

Contextual advertising doesn’t need to stop there either. You can move to the next level with affiliate marketing (AM). AM is great for a review or comparison blog because you can link out to your products using your affiliate links. (Chances are, you may already be dabbling with affiliate marketing if you have an Amazon account.)

4. Sell your content.
If you have a well established blog in your niche, then it’s possible to compile your blog into a book and sell it. Or, consider setting up a private membership blog.

This concept isn’t entirely new; bloggers have been converting their blogs into books for the mainstream for as long as blogs existed. A couple more well known blooks are My War: Killing Time in Iraq by Colby Buzzell, Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day by Gina Trapani, and the ladies behind Go Fug Yourself are currently penning their own paperback.

5. Sell the blog.
I know this one caught you off guard, didn’t it? I firmly believe that a blog should be started with an exit strategy in mind, even if that exit strategy is just to mothball the site. However, another viable option is to sell it when the time comes.

The blog has served you well, possibly for years, and you no longer have the time or energy to maintain it, but you know it could continue doing well in the right hands — do your duty and put it there. There are a number of places to sell a blog, such as the Digital Point, SitePoint, and 5 Star Affiliate forums. Or, you can hire a private broker.

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