It is the dream of almost every blogger out there to be in a position of making enough money to be able to make that your job. Many bloggers, though, find themselves struggling to get to that point. And 2009 isn’t going to make it any easier.

As we head into 2009, the economy is going to be a pressing issue. Companies will be downsizing and (most relevant to bloggers) they will be cutting back on advertising. Now, online advertising is going to likely spring back before other other forms of ads because it provides a lot of bang for the buck. That said, however, companies will have a knee-jerk reaction to cut expenses and, hence, ad spending.

We’ve already seen this as the holiday season ended. Advertising has dropped quite a bit. This is typical for this time of year, but I think the effect is being amplified over concerns in the economy.

Obviously, this will effect bloggers because many bloggers depend on ad revenue. If companies aren’t paying bloggers for ads many bloggers will find themselves shutting down.

The solution is to bring revenue in-house. Let me cut to the chase – there are two avenues that I think ANY serious blogger should look at hard as their future as a problogger:

1. Selling information products.
2. Selling a membership program.

Both of these revenue models make YOU the provider.

Information Products

Information products (herein I mean e-books, audio recordings, videos, etc) are nothing new, however many bloggers fail to recognize it as the income generator it is. Many bloggers fall into the assumption that you should just write everything for free, publish it, hope people come in droves, then charge a little money to advertisers. No! Change your outlook. Why can’t you provide a lot of great content for free, but then provide EVEN BETTER content and offer it to your readers as a paid product?

The content is relevant. It helps them. It takes advantage of your expertise. Not only that, most bloggers write A LOT so it shouldn’t be that big a deal to write a little more and put it into an e-book rather than on your blog.

Membership & Continuity

Membership sites are already a big item, but it is also a huge trend in internet business at this time. The idea is to make a recurring revenue model. Instead of charging your customers a one-time free for some block of information, you provide a constant stream of information and you charge them monthly.

Any blog can be turned into a membership site.

Also, let me make one thing clear: I am NOT saying to protect your whole blog and make it a paid site. No, a blog is a powerful marketing tool and only works that way if it is freely accessible. So, you should NOT password-protect your blog! It probably will not work as a business. Instead, you continue publishing free content (good stuff, too) but you offer a premium program where your readers can opt in. The content they get in the premium program is extremely high quality and over and above what you do on the free side of your site.

Using this revenue model, almost any blog can begin generating a nice revenue stream, each and every month. Obviously, market selection is important. People will not pay for a news site, for example. People will not pay for a site full of editorials or you venting about something. But, they will pay for solid information in a market they are interested in if it helps them accomplish their goals.

This is REAL Business

Pro-blogging is a lot more than “write and hope”. The write and hope method doesn’t work. This is where you write a lot and then hope for some money to fall out of the sky.

Blogging in the traditional sense can be evolved into a true business, one where you are an information publisher and an information marketer. Membership programs as a revenue model are going to be HUGE this year.

To find out more about this, and to learn how I put it to work for myself to generate over $12,000 in the span of 10 days with my blog, join my mailing list above and get a free copy of my new report, The Future of Blogging Income. This post is a synopsis of that report, but the report contains a full story. Click here for the report.

What are you looking at as a revenue model for your blog as we head into 2009?