To make money blogging, you will first need to understand the Internet’s current landscape. Content might be king, but it’s also becoming quite overwhelming. When it comes to creating content, you need to focus not only on the value of what you produce but also how you are going to promote it.

Below, we are going to look at three of the most effective ways to make money blogging in 2016. Each of these methods will help you build out your content, target your audience and get people to convert to a revenue model once they hit your site.

Google AdSense

Google is the largest search engine in the world. They make billions of dollars every year from advertisers who want to appear at the top of their search results. Google AdSense is based on this same principle. Through their AdSense program, Google is able to display this type of advertising on millions of other sites, giving the site owner a small percentage of the advertiser revenue.

This method works so well for two reasons: It’s extremely simple to set up, and only relevant advertisements will be displayed on your site (based off of the written content). For a new site owner or blogger, Google AdSense is the easiest way to make money online. You only need to place a simple line of code on your site to start serving banner ads. Google does the rest.

While the process is dead simple for anyone to implement on their site, this is also factored into the compensation from Google AdSense (which isn’t publicly displayed, but guessed to be around 20-30 percent).

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has been one of the greatest ways for both site owners and online businesses to generate money online. The concept is simple in that you (the site owner or affiliate marketer) earn a commission every time a referred lead or sale comes from your site. This model also works out very well for the brand or business, simply because you are only paying for legitimate leads or sales to your site.

For site owners and bloggers, affiliate marketing works extremely well because you can pick and choose the different products or services you want to promote. Amazon.com was one of the very first affiliate programs out there. As an affiliate of Amazon, you could promote any product on their site and earn a commission from all referred sales — never having to deal with customer payments, process orders or even hold any inventory.

No matter what product or service your site is catered to, there is a good chance you can find a relevant affiliate program to join and promote to your audience. The more relevant your affiliate promotions are to your audience, the more likely they are to convert.

Creating Your Own Product

Google AdSense and affiliate marketing are two very effective ways to make money with a site of your own. However, if you want to wipe out the advertiser margins and middleman, creating a product or service is the best way to go.

You don’t need a physical product or even a team of employees to make this happen. Some of the most successful sites in the world sell ebooks, guides, consulting, video courses and much more. They are all easy to create and offer to your audience with immediate downloads.

Whether you are a site owner or blogger, content is also going to be the most important aspect of your business. After all, it’s why people come to your site in the first place. The quality of your content is defined by how well you cater value to your audience. Once you have the content in place, it’s time to examine your monetization methods. The better you can implement relevant monetization within your content, the better results you’ll see.