How to monetize a blog: become a wealthy blogger
If you like sharing your experience and it’s been at least a year and you still are coming up with challenging topics that are getting attention, it might be the time for you to start blogging.
Sure to start blogging you need a website and like most of us, you probably wouldn’t want to invest both your time and money for nothing. So, you would probably like to know if there’s a way to monetize your blog. Guess what, yeah you can make money sharing your experiences online. – it’s achievable to monetize and create a nice revenue stream with it.
Since it’s going to be the start for you, having more than 1000 visitors per day won’t be easy. But worry not, as every investment, there are specific steps that are necessary to achieve success.
“My blog is a collection of answers people don’t want to hear to questions they didn’t ask.”
Ok, let’s go! You are here to find ways to monetize your blog. Get ready and take notes to assess the work you still have to do before being able to generate money from your blog.
1. Find your niche: relate to an audience
First of all, more traffic = more money. To build traffic, you have to stay consistant when you post online contents. The way your first contact are going to respond should help you get a sense on what your ideal audience might be looking for. Ask yourself if it is what your audience wants to read. People want to keep revisiting a blog –because it is interesting and offers quality information. So try to stay on topic. When you get it, be SMART by developing goals which are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound. For example “Increase the number of online visitors by 10% in the following 30 days by developing targeted offers”.
Photo credit: https://blog.presentationload.com/smart-goals-template/
2. How to build an amazing blog
Quality content is king
When you buy something, it’s mainly because it serve a purpose right? Then, think about it, those with whom you are discussing through your blog might not be that much different from you. So focus on developing quality contents, Google loves it anyway and thus will reward you with a better search ranking. Therefore, to get more traffic & generate more revenue, you should avoid copy-pasting stuff you find on Wikipedia, because it is older than you so even with the complex algorithm of search consoles, you probably will be appearing below Wikipedia results. It is best to publish content that is of high quality and relevant to your niche than lots of different articles that are poor quality. You can use Google to find the trending topics and start developing them with your touch.
Deliver value
An easy tactic to provide value is to study the wants, the pains and the needs of your audience. When you do so, what are the solutions you can develop to at least show them that you can relate to their specific situation. You can make it so simple by creating tutorials and informative contents to help people understand or figure something out. Avoid making your blog look spammy by having misleading tutorials about everything, stay on your chosen audience topic, solve a specific issue. Do not write a financial blog one day and a cooking blog the next because you'll never know who your readers are.
Pictures and video are becoming increasingly important online. Make sure you have images to go with your posts to keep readers engaged.
Monetizing a blog is about finding a market of buyers interested in specific products -- finance or cooking -- not the small number of people who like both.
Create engagement
Build a community of strong followers, they are going to power your blog’s earning. The more interaction you create through engagement, the more it is the more likely you can monetize your blog quickly. You can use social network or any type of media used by your audience to build traction. For example, if you have a large social media following and you decide to launch a blog, you can drive traffic quickly. If you just started a blog, then you could increase readership by choosing a niche, promote your contents with your social media account, add the links of other post in every post, deliver regular content and manage your SEO.
Without engagement, there’s very little chance of monetization. The main factor that determines your blog earning is the trust which people have on you and your site. So, you also need to focus on building trust among your audience in order to earn money in long-term. Only after that they will click to your affiliate links, buy products & subscribe to your email newsletter, which generates commission.
3. Powerful tools to monetize your blog
Now let’s talk about the tools you could use to make money from your blog. By following this guide you should be able to turn your “Hey, I like what you posted yesterday on your blog” into real money.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing today has become one of the most popular, commonly used & most beneficial monetization methods with the highest share on revenue. How does it works ?
An organisation has products or service which it wants to sell. In order to ease its sales’ process, the organisation choose to use actual users as ambassadors or experts who can then recommend the product.
The organisation then develop a plan to motivate their users to share their services or products. That plan require you to convince people to purchase whatever the organisation is selling. To make profit out of it, feel free to post on your blog, send recommendation by email
To track the number of sales which came to be thanks to your efforts, the organisation give you a code that should be shared as a way to mention that you were involved during the sale process. The organisation will provide you a certain amount of commission for each sale you make if buyers come through your site or a landing page.
He will provide you affiliate code along with the tracking link which keeps track of sales you made. You will paste that said code or direct affiliate link to your blog properly so that more numbers of people will see and take action.
After they make a purchase you will get some percentage of the total price of that product.
The challenge here is convincing your audience that by making a purchase, they will receive value. As a blogger, you will need to discuss about how the issue you are usually depicting can be alleviated through at least one of the characteristics of what the affiliate program is offering. If one of your visitors clicks on that link and purchases the good or service, you’ll receive a cut of the cost. There are a lot of affiliate program out there (Udemy, Mailchimp, Transferwize, Amazon Associate, etc…).
But you don’t have to stick with just the big-name programs. Businesses can also set up their own programs for a single product or a small group of products, and you can become one of their affiliates. For instance, a fellow blogger might offer an affiliate program for eBooks or eCourses in your niche, which would be a great opportunity for you since it’s highly relevant to your readers.
How much can you make through affiliate links? Melissa Culbertson of Blog Clarity points out just two examples of a mommy blogger and decorative concrete blogger who make $20,000 and $32,000 per year respectively, and that’s with minimal visitors.
If you choose to join an affiliate program, it’s always a good idea to:
Only promote products relevant to your niche.
Only promote products you’ve personally used and recommend.
Include a disclaimer on your site as to not mislead your readers.
Google AdSense
If you are a new blogger who has low traffic to your site, then Google AdSense may be the best option for monetizing your blog by displaying banner ads. You can easily make $500 per month from AdSense, 6 months after starting your blog. Some people start a blog solely for placing ads, and Google AdSense is one of the most popular ad networks around. Simply put, you make money by displaying ads on your site. There are two ways to start earning cash from Google AdSense:
1. Based on impressions: This depends on page views. For instance, for every 1,000 page views you get, you earn a set dollar amount.
2. Based on clicks: Regardless of page views, if a visitor clicks on the ad from your site, you’ll earn a certain cut of the ad revenue. This can range anywhere from $0.01 to a couple of dollars depending on the ad.
The major issue with adsense is that some readers are turned off by the sight of ads, which drags them away from your content. No one likes to click on a website and get inundated with ads. If your readers feel like you're selling them out, or that you care more about money than content, they will leave. So, be cautious about this tools, using other methods like direct sales or services to make your money.
Course and/or Services
If you are discussing about an interesting topic online, then you probably have a certain know-how on that topic. So, why won’t you start selling your own paid courses? Are you a marketing expert, a serial traveler, or even an international relation expert sharing your experience and understanding of specific situation through your blog? What you have to do is, create audio or a visual course where you can explain about any topics you like or what your visitors are interested to learn about. Many bloggers are also freelance writers, and they get paid to write blog content for other people.
You have the choice to make your content available either through requesting a membership fee to access specific content either by selling courses online. Also, you can promote your course through paid advertising or social media advertising. And, the best part of it is that you can set the course price whatever you want because you are the owner.
Paid Reviews
If you are managing a group with a good audience (Facebook, LinkedIn), and trending online, you might catch the eye of digital marketer and be considered as an influencer. To make money of it, you could be paid for product reviews (Paid reviews are when the business sends you their product and pays you to write a review about it) and sponsorship posts (some businesses will sponsor a specific post in exchange for a link back to their site. It is an ethical practice to disclose the sponsorship to your readers).
eBooks
Your blog is often just the front-door for your business. It gets people engaged and involved with free content, building up a market of readers who would buy your actual product. For example, you might be a humor writer working on a comic book -- you can be sure the fans of your blog posts will be the first people to buy your book. EBooks could also be used like a magnet to build your contact list.
Original artwork
How much money can you make? If you’re not terribly well-known, you can still make a decent chunk of cash. Turn your originality into cash.
Mix and match your monetization sources for the best results
Building a revenue stream is a full-time job, however, with the right strategies, you can turn that into a passive income. As we usually advise our clients who are starting a business, it is important to develop a mix of strategies.
Sell advertisements directly
By going outside the box, you can look yourself for companies which might need a special boost when it comes down to their audience. Why not jump on the train and lend them a space on your website. The pros of doing it yourself is that you have the possibility to negotiate and to sell package according to the market or to any other parameters you are going to use.
This takes some time, but will net you much higher profits. Basically, you just ask a business or individual if they want to buy space on your site, charging by the month to keep it up. You can offer different sized ads for different prices or lengths of time and you get the entire profit. To build your negotiation power, get ready to:
Learn using analytics and manage data in such a way that your results can assert that advertising on your website is going to be an opportunity.
Understand your audience behavior online to find the best spot to advertise on your blog.
Learn the dimension of the ad box you would like to sell.
Be transparent to build trust.
4- Reach a wider audience (in your niche)
Build up a mailing list for direct outreach to your readers
This is especially important if you sell or plan to sell anything on your blog. Use a service like Google Drive to collect and store mass emails. When you will post something, you can retain those who subscribed by sending them a newsletter alert with tool like Mailchimp. You can also use whatsapp business to build a group of active audience participant. But, PLEASE don’t spam your contacts and always make sure to have their authorization before adding them to a mailing or sms list. Do not spam your readers.
Build relationships with other bloggers and websites
The better you can tap into other sites like yours, the better your chances of attracting viewers. Comment on other blogs, offer to share or write specialty posts, follow your favorite writers on Twitter, and generally make your presence known. Within 2-3 months you'll see the uptick in traffic as your friends recommend you back and start building up your trustworthiness.
Publish Sponsored Podcasts
CEO of Google just announced that podcasts will now appear on Google search & will be given more priority than the written contents same as youtube video which appears on the top. This means podcasts are the future & we can create a good opportunity of monetizing blog through this. You can take an interview of some Company/Brand owners and can charge for it. Also, you can recommend some products through podcasts which listeners will buy.
5. Don’t forget to have a powerful website
Yes, you can still make money blogging in 2020. But, as the number of bloggers is increasing day by day there may be more competition and difficulties for the part-time blogger to succeed. So, build your mindset, it’s not going to be easy or happen overnight. A SEO export we had a discussion during a website audit told us that “to get the best out of SEO management, your post need to have at least 600 words related to your keywords”.
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