Everyone claims to have the secret formula for success to making money blogging. But success comes from more than just choosing the right way to make money. You have to have the right content, you have to have good content, and you have to know how to market that content. As they say, content is king.

That being said, once you’ve got your content strategy mapped out and you are in the process of implementing it, you will need to figure out ways to make money from that content. Here are five ways you could do that away from the traditional avenue of online advertising and mailing lists.

Making Money Blogging: Steps to capitalize your blogging skills

Make Yourself a Store

Sell something. If you have an idea as to what to sell, go out find yourself good shopping cart software . This could also bring in some free advertising to you as well, since if you sell things with your logo on it, people will get exposed to your brand in the real world. It could be a great free marketing opportunity.

Sell Sponsored Tweets

If you have a lot of followers on Twitter, find advertisers that would like to take advantage of that fact and sell your audience to them. One word of caution, however: Don’t make your followers mad by spamming them with a lot of sponsored tweets or by trying to sell irrelevant or nonsensical products. If you are consistently tweeting about technology, say, don’t go out and try to sell your tech related audience knitting patterns. They probably won’t be happy about that.

Naming Rights

Imagine a section on your blog that has been sponsored. Maybe something like the Tostitos Forums or the Citibank About Page. If you have a huge following and a large readership, you might be able to talk some companies into sponsoring sections of your blog in a non-traditional way. Another word of caution, however, remember that you probably won’t get Tostitos or Citibank to sponsor your forums or about page. Be realistic. 🙂

Wallpaper ads

These are becoming mainstream, so they don’t really fit on this list, but if you could figure out a way to make the background of your blog an advert in a unique way, it could help you make some money. Also, there aren’t many true bloggers that are doing this yet, so you could be one of the first to join the big boys.

Sponsored Comments

Another way you could make money – that not many people do – is to offer your readers a way to promote their comments above others by paying a small sum. It would create some new ways for readers to get their comments noticed and would also stimulate conversation. In order for this to work, though, you’d have to have an active community already established.