8 Ways to Monetize Your Blog
If you are yet to create your first blog, don’t freak out… I have written a super beginner/starter article over here about how to set up your first blog – check it out – and then come back to this article to see how to make money with your blog.
How to Monetize Your Blog
Now that you have your first blog up and running you need to know how to make it work for you financially. There are many different ways of generating income from a blog and none of these ways are right or wrong – every website is unique and you will need to think about which revenue-producing method is going to work best for yours.
With this in mind, I have compiled a list of eight simple ways you can make money from your website and earn cash for doing what you love! Why wait? Monetize your blog today!
1.
Affiliate Marketing
One of the most effective ways of earning income is by promoting products related to your blog. This is known as affiliate marketing.
In affiliate marketing, you seek out products that are associated with your blog niche and then create awareness of the product on your blog. Should somebody buy the product using your link, you will receive commission from the sale.
For example, if you have a gardening website, you might write a blog post addressing ‘The Best Way to Get Rid of Weeds’, and then at the end of the entry promote a weed killer product. When your readers purchase the weed killer, you get a cut of the purchase price for having referred them.
There are several online marketplaces which specialise in affiliate products you can promote on your blog. Clickbank is a popular choice, as is JVZoo and Amazon but there are many others to choose from. These companies all run affiliate programs, allowing you to sign up and choose the right products for your blog.
2.
Product Reviews
This one is similar to affiliate marketing, but is undertaken in a more specific manner, and is more suited to those who are opening a blog in order to monetize it and market affiliate products. However, if you have an existing blog and want to incorporate some reviews, you might also be able to integrate some product reviews into your blogging schedule in amongst regular blog entries.
For product reviews, you will create your content as reviews, creating videos or blogs that offer a detailed review of affiliate products that cater to your niche audience. You then promote the product.
As with affiliate marketing, you will receive a commission but in this case you may be able to generate more sales as the review targets the product more directly.
3.
Teaching
Teaching and tutorials have commanded a huge online presence recently and there is certainly money to be made from offering them.
The selling and buying of knowledge has exploded and there is no time like the present to cash in on it and claim your piece of the pie.
Everybody has skills or knowledge in something. It might be the application of make-up, creating art, doing up furniture or fishing. Whatever you can DO, you can TEACH.
Get out pen and paper and start jotting down some ideas for what you can teach from your blog niche, then think about what medium you might want to use. You could include podcasts, videos or step-by-step guides.
You can decide if you want to charge for the teaching as a membership or as a one off fee for access to the content. What’s important is that the information you are selling is of good value and is not something they can receive for free on your site. Premium prices must go hand in hand with premium content.
4.
List Building
Everything you ever read online about internet marketing will tell you that one thing is absolutely worth its weight in gold: an email list.
Email lists allow you to reach tens, hundreds and possibly thousands of people with your website, services and products. When visitors come to your website there is one valuable piece of information you are going to want from them more than anything – their email address…and you are going to need to do everything you can to get it.
Using your email list you can offer your visitors special deals on your membership or affiliate products, send them your latest content to view or ask for donations. Just be sure not to fill your campaigns with affiliate links and don’t send more emails than they can handle. Spam will have them unsubscribing which is counterproductive to your purposes.
5.
Offering Premium Content
Once you have established yourself as an expert, or are at least perceived by your audience to be one, you can then leverage premium information in exchange for a payment.
Lock the premium content in a particular section of your blog and get members to sign up to a paid subscription in order for them to unlock this ‘members only’ section.
This premium section could also be a forum which allows only paid members to post or read the boards. If you have loyal readers who would enjoy interacting with one another, then start a private forum and charge a small fee to access it.
Increasing numbers of websites are using the premium membership model to monetize their sites. Once you have attracted visitors with your free content, introduce them to the amazing content and added benefits they will have access to, by paying a small fee.
6.
Product Creation
The best way to make monetize your blog, hands down, has got to be creating and selling your OWN product.
If you don’t have a product, get creative! You could create an e-book, a video, photographs, or anything! You could even record your blog posts into audio and sell them as podcasts. Have a brainstorm about what you could offer, within your niche that would be worth money and then get working on it!
The best part? You make 100% of the profits. And, because you are not selling out of a local shop – the world is your oyster. Putting your product on your website puts it out there for the whole world to buy.
The world, and particularly the internet loves consuming, and what better way to feed your hungry visitors than by offering them a quality product which you know they will be interested in. That’s what makes this idea so fantastic– you will be selling to a database full of warm leads because you already know they will be interested in your product.
7.
Service Offering
If you don’t feel that products are your calling, then why not offer a service?
This comes back to knowledge. What do you have going for you? Offer it out as a service. This could be coaching, mentoring, assisting with financial planning, instructing and giving strategies for things (e.g. stock trading)…the possibilities are endless!
Put simply, you are taking whatever real work skills you have and offering them out as a service to your blog followers. Your followers can then pay to use your professional services through your website.
8.
Donations
This may seem like a long shot, but it’s worth putting out there.
If you have a loyal audience on your blog, then try asking your visitors to donate a small amount to assist you with the costs of providing your website.
Be sure to tell your followers what the money is for – hosting fees, domain registration etc… The most important thing to remember is that people will only pay for information that has been helpful. Make sure your offer is worthy of their hard earned money and they may just let you have some of it.
I hope this list has prompted you to think about how you might monetize your blog, and inspired you to try your hand at making money online.
Feel free to leave a comment telling us what your favourite way of making money on YOUR blog is!
