I received an message today from a reader wanted to know about a particular company. This company offers an advertising service, and bills itself as giving you 100% of the profits. And they do it for only a one-time fee.

First off, I think the focus on 100% profit appeals, but not much. I’m reminded of those ’sell your own house’ businesses, where you can eliminate the middleman and keep all the profits. How many people actually lose in the long run doing it that way?

We’re used to fees: whether it’s hosting, PayPal, domain names, or anything else, there’s a reason people pay – it’s cheaper than doing it yourself. And the quality is (arguably) higher.

But this highlights something bigger: how to profit from blogging.

Let me repeat – HOW DO YOU EXPECT TO PROFIT FROM YOUR BLOG?

A business needs to make money – any business (even charities, which depend on generous benefactors).

For example, everyone likes to point to YouTube as a company that did it all for free and made money.

But if you read the history of YouTube, it started with angel investors, and in the year and a half before Google bought them, they spent – and spent, with one company, Sequoia, investing over 11 million dollars with them.

So even free is not quite free!

In business, you hear of the term ‘business model’, and it is well worth considering when you run a site.

In fact, if you don’t have a business model in mind for your site when you start, you will become miserable quite quickly.

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