Blogs are a wonderful piece of software to use as a home base for several kinds of web site projects. For example, Chris Pearson^[141] used a WordPress blog to build his DIYthemes site.^[142] There, he's selling a beautiful theme called Thesis.^[143] That's one way to create business from a blog: a simple sales platform.

Another way is through affiliate marketing. For example, go back and hover your mouse over the URL for the two links to Chris's latest project. You should see this: http://diythemes.com?a_aid=t4ag3. That part after the ? is an affiliate code. Some sites don't really divulge that they're doing affiliate marketing. Others make disclosure very vital. Now that you know what to look for, you might check other blogs you read and see when they're slipping you an affiliate tag here and there. (In my case, I fully disclose all such relationships on my About page of my blog—see http://chrisbrogan.com/about.)

Want to learn more about affiliate marketing? I've been reading ReveNews,^[144] a blog about the space, and I attend the Affiliate Summit^[145] to learn more from the leaders in the game.

Blogs are a great way to establish thought leadership and, further, to encourage lead generation. For instance, much of my blog is about sharing with the world at large what I know about social media and how it might apply to your business. My primary goal is to share with you as much information as I possibly can, so that you can likely run off and solve most things on your own.

My secondary goal is to encourage you to contact me if you have business needs. I work with CrossTech Partners to help me fulfill larger projects (building market relationship management platforms, etc.). This blog often starts conversations with people who need next-step help. And that's great. It's another value, another way to create business from a blog.

A great person who gives abundantly with her blog is Liz Strauss.^[146] She derives some amount of leads from her thoughtful and meaningful efforts, too.

He could tell you this every day, but Brian Clark^[147] has been praising the value of content marketing since 2006. This is basically how the Financial Aid Podcast^[148] brought millions in revenue to Christopher S. Penn's Student Loan Network.^[149] There's nothing shady about it. Chris creates great podcasts and blog posts and uses the trust earned through information sharing and helping others as one way to drive sales of his primary product: student loans. He's the only student loan guy I know who is profiled by BusinessWeek, the Wall Street Journal, and all kinds of other press.

See also Gary Vaynerchuk,^[150] the only wine seller I know who has a Hollywood agent. He's that cool.

Content marketing essentially means providing useful and interesting content with the goal that this work leads to a sale. To me, this is "the thing" right now. If I were looking to build even more business, and I might just do so, I'd blend content marketing with a mix of my own products, and perhaps some well-chosen affiliate opportunities, and start from there.

By the way, content marketing has the added benefit of helping you with organic search engine optimization, meaning that it helps people more easily find the things they're searching for.

There are lots of other ways to make money from a blog. I'm definitely not qualified to talk about search marketing, for instance, but an article by Paul J. Bruemmer^[151] provides a useful starting point. There are also projects like Ted Murphy's IZEA, which covers pay-per-post and SocialSpark.^[152] I'm not versed enough to talk about any of these, but you can swing by the IZEA blog.^[153]

The Web is an interesting place to make money these days, and there are many ways to take a swing at it. Be open about what you're doing. Be helpful. Offer value. And maybe something will come of it for you.

Update: Here's a plug for Darren Rowse^[154] and Chris Garrett's^[155] book, ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income.

If you have some other great ideas for creating business from a blog, let's talk about them in the comments section at http://chrisbrogan.com/comments-from-101. Some will be promoted to the main post via updates, so please fill out your URL when you comment, so I can give you credit if I use it in the post.

What do you think?