While some people choose to blog for fun many others will start a blog for the sole purpose of earning some extra money. Why not? You get to write about what you want or love and earn a little money at the same time. Unfortunately, it’s not often that you will find a blog that made money from only one single way right from the start. Using multiple diverse tools for earning income gives you the opportunity to increase your potential blog earnings. Here you will discover ten quick ways to monetize your blog.
- Advertisements
Advertisements are the most popular method for many bloggers; beginners and advanced alike. There are different advertising methods to consider but the most common is PPC, or pay-per-click means you will receive a payment from the advertiser every time a visitor clicks on that ad. While it is a popular advertising method it needs to be used in addition to other methods to be the most effective. Contextual ads are based on the page’s content where you are going to display the ad. For instance suppose you publish a post about cooking. The contextual ad will contain relevant ads about cooking. This is more attractive to many and contextual ads can increase the chance of persuading a visitor to click.
You should also have the option for others to purchase advertising space. Leave this space for your home page as most advertisers are more likely to choose your blog if their ads will be noticed by every visitor.
- Services
A blogger that already freelances might consider offering their services on their blog. (Such as writing, graphic design, etc.) It’s easy to add a page where you can give your pitch and acquire paid work while managing your blog. If you don’t have any services to offer you still have a chance to earn some money. Offer to review products and services of others for pay. This is a neat way to earn money while trying out new products and services.
- Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing consists of advertising a product someone else made and receiving a commission fee for visitors that go on to purchase the product. The commissions are typically really good offering you a percentage ranging anywhere from 50% to 80%, depending on the advertiser. Affiliate marketing has improved in terms of providing several tools to make it easier; pictures, text ads, etc. While it sounds like something most people would do, they don’t because many readers find this a bit annoying. More so if you pack your blog full of reviews for these products and services in hopes that your readers will click on your link and purchase the product. Affiliate marketing is a competitive world but if done properly can be a means to monetize your blog.
- First-Time Visitor Pop-Ups
Most people do not like pop-ups and get annoyed when a pop-up is displayed on every page they visit. To prevent annoying your readers and keep them on your blog you might consider pop-ups for first time visitors. You can either aim to sell a product or service with the pop-up or work on building a subscriber list using the pop-up. Give visitors a chance to subscribe and consider offering something in return for them signing up. Most blogs offer a free eBook of some sort often created by the blog owner. This puts a little profit in your pocket in the long-run. How? Your subscribers are more likely to purchase products or services from you or that you will recommend from now until long in the future if they have learned to trust you and view you as an authority in your niche.
- Create and Sell Your Own Product
This is a popular method today because anybody can create and sell their own product if they know what to do. This product could be a physical product, maybe some type of hobby you could pursue into a career or it might be a digital product such as an eBook or app. By offering your product or service on your blog you have the potential to reach buyers across the world.
- Theme Affiliate
Many blogs are powered by WordPress and allow easy theme customization. What many don’t realize is that most premium themes have an affiliate program. You can join the program and have an affiliate link at the footer of your page so that interested readers can purchase the theme as well. It isn’t uncommon to find inspiration for your next blog after coming upon a blog whose theme is exactly what you want. When they share the link it makes it much easier to acquire the same look for your own blog.
- Offer Memberships
A membership/site group should only be your route if you have valuable content to offer the subscribers and make it worth paying to access your site. An ordinary blog will most likely be unsuccessful in utilizing a membership feature but a blog offering a variety of how-to or tutorial videos, coaching, expert advice, forums, etc., could easily benefit from a membership site. If you know that you can satisfy your reader’s interest and give them what they want and deserve then consider offering memberships.
- Paid Reviews
Reviews are always sought by consumers who prefer to do some research prior to buying a product or using a service. Some companies are even willing to pay others to provide a review of their own experience with a product or service. This is an easy way to offer your personal experiences about products and services you regularly use to your readers.
- Disqus
A popular moneymaking method for blog owners today is Disqus. Disqus is a commenting feature that displays on your page underneath the comments. You have probably noticed this feature on many other sites you visit regularly. It allows your visitors to easily access other content on your site. They’ll discover content they may not have noticed before. It’s a free plugin available for WordPress blogs. While you aren’t making money directly from using Disqus you are increasing your traffic which in turn increases your page views.
- Improve SEO
Proper SEO is highly important for a successful blog. Even if your blog is of high quality and has a lot to offer readers, it won’t be of any use if they can’t find your blog. Learn how to properly optimize your blog content so that readers can find you easily when using certain keywords during a search. More traffic = more readers = more page views = more income.
Test out the different methods to earning some money on your blog and determine which one or combination works best for you.
Dan Ripoll is the co-founder and CEO of GuestBlogGenius, a link building service and content marketing platform for SEOs and eCommerce site owners
