How to Generate Income From Blogging During Your Student Years

Blogging might not be a career path that will sustain you from graduation to retirement but it is a relatively simple way of generating a few pounds to augment your student loan. What's more, blogging is the sort of thing you can fit in around your studies. So long as you're not too tired to write after a busy day of lectures, lab work, library sessions and essay writing, blogging can also be a good way to organise your thoughts and get things off your chest. What do you need to begin earning income as a blogger?

Own Your Own Site
If you blog and post your text as a guest on other people's sites, then your business won't have the capacity to grow. Instead, you should take the plunge and register your own site's domain name with a suitable company, ideally one that will also host your site for you at a low cost. Many such options exist for blogging sites which need very few server resources since they tend to only contain text as their primary content. Some of the best hosting services also contain a website builder you can use to create the look and feel of your site. These are very handy for non-technical bloggers because they do the donkey work for you. In other words, if you don't know how to have your site reorientate itself for a mobile phone user or a tablet user looking at it in landscape, then you won't have to worry because this will all be taken care of for you. Website building software is designed for novices and means you'll use a standard template that's tried and tested. You can always customise it though, so your site will have its own personality.

Sell Advertising
Once you've generated a readership from your blog posts - something that may take several months to achieve, you will be able to attract advertisers to your site. Typically, internet advertising works by Google - and others - placing ads onto the site that a user is viewing. They'll be targeted ads with things they're likely to be interested in. In other words, you don't host this so-called banner advertising in this digital set-up, you merely allow it on your site and accept the income it generates when users access your site.

Accept Sponsored Content
If your site is successful and attracting subscribers, then you may be approached by marketing companies to host content on your site. Generally, they write it for you and have a link that heads to the website of one of their clients. This is called backlinking and it helps companies to improve their online presence. Typically, sponsored content will be written to match your editorial style or you can choose to write it yourself, in some cases, so long as you remember to include the requested backlink, of course. Once you've accepted a few of these posts, more will probably follow but you won't have to pay tax on this income unless you go over the earnings threshold.

Conclusion
In summary, blogging is a good way to earn money as a student. However, you need to stick at it and don't expect an immediate return. Like other forms of self-employment, it takes time to succeed.