Today, you’re going to learn ways to monetize a blog and how
to monetize a blog so that you can earn money online after starting your own
business. So far, I’ve published part 1, part 2 and part 3 of
this series on how to start your own business online.
You can click on the above links and read them in that order
and come back here to follow up with the rest of the tutorial. You’ve done so
well by registering a domain name, buying web hosting service and creating a blog to start
your business on the internet. Financially speaking now is the time to get your
rewards by adding money links to your blog content.
There are different ways to monetize your blog depending on
the niche market where you’re operating from and the content of your website.
You may use one or more of these ways to make money blogging. You’ve to test
everything if you hope to maximize your ROI (return on investment) from your
web site.
Also, it’s good business idea to spy on your competitors to
learn what they are doing and is working for them. However, some factors such
as the volume of monthly traffic which your blog is getting will be major
determinants to your success. Ultimately, it’s important for you to continually
hit the pavement to get targeted traffic to your blog.
With that said, let’s go through some of the ways to
monetize your blog and make money online.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing business is the commonest way webmasters
and bloggers monetize their websites and blogs and make money on the internet.
It’s simply a system of promoting merchants’ products and services on their
behalf using your affiliate links identifiable to your marketing campaigns and
at your own advertising costs in order to earn sales commission from your online
marketing efforts.
You can easily calculate your profits from affiliate
marketing business by deducting your advertising costs from your earned
affiliate commissions. Finding affiliate products and services to promote is
not hard to do. With the help of affiliate networks all over the place, you can
sign up with multiple vendors to sell other people’s products and services.
Few of these affiliate programs are:
The best way to succeed with affiliate marketing business is
to test and use the affiliate product you want to promote before you push it to
your readers. It gives you firsthand experience about the efficacy of the product
before pre-selling it to your readers and subscribers. For example, because
I’ve personally used HostGator website hosting service for years, I
can vouch for them as a digital publisher promoting their website builder tools
and web hosting services.
From the payments screenshot below, I can readily show and
prove it to my readers that I use their services and relate my experience to
them. This is how to make money with affiliate marketing without struggling to
do so. Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income does this so well and I
religiously follow his digital marketing efforts to a Tee to learn from him.
Where you cannot use the product before promotion, you can
ask the vendor for review copy if possible so that you can appraise its
relevance and usefulness before you get to your target audience. It helps to maintain
and sustain your credibility and trust with your market followers.
Google Adsense
This is one of the best ways to make money blogging if you
ask me. As it were, majority of publishers and webmasters partner and make money
online with Google when they display Google Ads on their web properties. Every
time website visitor clicks on any of these adverts, the webmaster earns a
percentage of the advertising cost paid to Google by advertisers to show their
adverts.
This is one of the top ways to monetize a blog by website
owners and bloggers. All you need to do is to start a blog, populate it with
regular but quality content, get constant traffic to your blog and then apply
to Google Adsense program for approval. As soon
as you’ve been approved, you can go ahead to get Adsense codes to place on your
blog content.
The type of adverts Google will serve your website visitors
will depend on the content of your blog articles. For instance, if you build a
blog around freelance writing business, Google may serve adverts related to online grammar checker tool, freelance writing
training courses, tools for writers and so on. They have special algorithm that
detects what your blog content is all about before displaying adverts related
to it.
One of the secrets of making it big with Google Adsense is
by targeting long tail keyword phrases which you can easily rank on page one of
Google search engine preferably positions 1 to 3. So, you must be good at
researching and finding money keywords to target. You should learn how to write
SEO articles while avoiding keyword stuffing and padding. SEO stands for search
engine optimization.
Also, target niche markets with high CPC. Cost per click
(CPC) is the amount of ad spend an advertiser pays to Google for showing his
business adverts to his targeted audience. There are niches known for high CPC
such as finance, technology, business, etc.
Sell Your Own Digital
Products
Creating and selling your own digital products from your
blog is where the money really is. Although it involves much more work and time
to research product ideas, create it, write sales copy, open customers’ help desk,
fulfill orders, etc, you’ll ultimately make money and maximize profits from
your hustle.
There are various digital products or services you can
develop or simply outsource it to freelancers if you don’t have the
skill to do it. Examples include writing and selling ebooks online, developing
software, app development, creating videos or audio, and the like. Personally,
I love this money making system because you make money online while you sleep.
If you want to learn how to make passive income online,
write and sell ebooks online or create other digital products after doing your
due diligence. With this online business opportunity, you’ll continue to wake
up and see money daily in your PayPal account for work you did a long time ago.
It’s a source of daily income as long as the product or service has relevance
to your market.
The above screenshot is from an electronic book I created
some years back and I was still earning from it without doing any work. I
regularly earn money online from writing and selling e-books online from my
websites whether I’m sleeping or on vacation. The shocking news is that I’m not
a well-known online marketing guru with thousands of email subscribers and I
don’t do product launch.
Although this is one of the best ways to make money
blogging, you really need to interact with your blog readers, leads,
subscribers and clients to know what they want before creating any digital
product. Creating digital product before searching for customers is like
putting the cart before the horse. You’ll not sell anything this way except
from impulse buyers and you may be inundated with refunds and charge backs at
the end of the day.
You can send questionnaires to your subscribers’ list or use
survey model to elicit information from your readers. But have a high success
rate, you’ve to promise your target audience complimentary copy of the final
product as an incentive for them to take action. Other places you can get
product ideas are question-and-answer sites like Quora.com and niche specific
forums.
Build an Email List
of Subscribers
If you sniff around on the World Wide Web, the common cliché
you will be reading is “money is in the list.” If you ask me, list building is
the best way to make money online and monetize your blog on every level. If you
learn how to build an email list from scratch, you’re on your high way of building wealth
from the web.
After starting a blog, the only and only tool you need immediately
to add to your online business arsenal is email marketing software. There are
many list building tools to choose from on the internet but the best email
marketing software I can gladly recommend is GetResponse autoresponder. With this online business automation software, you can do
a whole slew of things on the web hands free.
This is all it takes to start building an email list of
subscribers. First, create self-hosted WordPress blog on your domain name for
free. Secondly, write and publish content regularly for your target audience to
read, know, like and trust you as the go-to expert, guy or gal on the subject.
Thirdly, build relationship and trust with them. Next,
create a free ebook or video which you can give away to your potential readers
who sign up for your business newsletter. Your lead magnet should be of high
quality. You can research questions which your target niche are asking and
provide the answers in your ebook, video or podcast. Also, you can look out for
specific problems they want to solve and supply the solutions in your handbook
or blueprint.
For you to successfully build an email list of subscribers
from scratch, you need to have the following online business tools in place:
- Registered domain name
- Website hosting service
- Email marketing software
- Lead magnet
- Landing page to capture leads
- Targeted traffic to your lead capture page
The three methods explained above are the best ways to
monetize your blog and make passive income online. Sooner or later, I’ll
publish a detailed blog post to explore all known, tried and tested blog
monetization methods I’ve researched and seen veteran bloggers use.
The best way to answer the question of how to monetize a
blog is for you to use contextual links in your content. This seems to work
great and get results. People try to follow text links that will add value to
their experience. If your content is good to great, you’re sure of getting
clicks to your landing pages. Another option is to make use of blog side bar.
Simply place banners, say 125 by 125 sizes, and link them to your target
locations.
In conclusion, as a blogger, you’ve to test every variable to know what works and improve on it. In my next blog post, I’ll look at how to get targeted traffic to your website or blog on a constant basis. Without regular and increasing website visitors who will hopefully become your subscribers and customers ultimately, it will be difficult for you to maintain and make money from your blog.
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