Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

In a New York Times (NYSE: NYT) article, they quoted Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban as saying you shouldn't try to blog to make a living. “Don’t go into blogging to make a living,” Cuban warned in an email message.

Is he right? Absolutely not! What he's talking about, and is partially right on, is if you're going to blog with the strategy of just throwing up a few Google Adsense (Nasdaq: GOOG) text ads in an attempt to make a living, he's correct. Unless you have a built-in following, it takes time to build up a large enough web audience to make it worth your while.

There are some exceptions to that, but overall that's the reality. The exceptions are highly targeted niche content which cater to high paying clicks. Those are rare, but they exist. Of course what your definition of financial success and your personal goals are are part of the mix.

The key to monetizing your blog is to not consider it a blog from a making money point of view, but rather view it as a web site. Why? Mostly because you are tempted to think the way you monetize them is different. It isn't. That's the real secret.

Opt-in Lists Still the Key

So building up an opt-in list remains a tried and true way to make money online. It's been that way almost from the beginning, and it will remain that way, even though those trying to evangelize other ways of making money don't promote that at all. All you have to do is have a little piece of code on your site and a way to collect email addresses to get this process going.

Develop Own Product

Second, the best way to make money online for the individual will remain offering up a product you develop on your own. That way you get the money from it, and take in all the profits.

Build Affiliate Program
 
From there you can develop an affilate program that can really generate a lot of revenue if you set it up right. You can't be cheap and attempt to keep to much. Affiliates to good marketers have learned to expect a big percentage of the take from sales. The better marketers understand they can in some cases offer even 100 percent of the profits, as they make their money on backend sales which include much higher profit margins.

Don't be overly concerned about how big of a list you have. Many marketers make nice livings from lists in the single-digit thousands. The key is to make sure the list is highly targeted and motivated.

So whatever you learn and read about as to how to make money in what may be termed a regular Internet business, can simply be migrated to your blog. A blog, after all, is nothing more than a web site that includes the ability to have your latest post seen on the top of the page, and where people can give feedback through comments they make.

Understand that, and the mystery of monetizing a blog is taken away.

So back to Mark Cuban's comment: he is wrong. He's wrong for the reason I said at the beginning, that he is only thinking in terms of text ads being placed on a Web site. In that case you would have an uphill battle, although that battle is won by many online marketers and blog owners as well.

For a person with a single blog though, these are the three major foundational pieces needed to launch a successful blog business.