If you’re new to blogging and want to see what your options are for making money with your new website, let me help you out! Many successful people make money by blogging, and quite a few make a full-time income off of it. I’m going to show you the ins-and-outs of monetizing your blog, and I will give you all the information you need to know to get the ball rolling!
I know it seems daunting at first to create a new blog and pour your heart into your writing without being able to see the returns right off the bat, but every good thing takes time and dedication. To make money off of that dedication, there is a lot you will need to learn. Don’t let it intimidate you, though, because there are tried-and-true solutions to making money with your blog. You just have to find the right advice! I’m here to help with that.
All you need to know about monetizing your blog will be revealed right here in this article. Just listen to my advice and follow each step that calls out to you, and you will have a money-making blog in no time!
Before Monetizing, You Need to Build Trust
Why is it Important to Build Trust?
It’s incredibly important to build trust with your readers before ever introducing the idea of taking money from them. They have to see a genuine passion and dedication to your blog to invest interest in the content, and if they think your blog is all in it for the money it may turn them away. Build up a good following of readers that come to the blog for the content and for the site itself, then build upon their trust and include the monetary aspect of its structure.
How Do You Build Trust?
Create content that truly draws people in. Inspire your readers, make them want to come back for more, and give them a reason to want to spend money on your website. Inform your readers, help them see the true value of your site, and provide excellent content. Then, you will have a good headstart!
7 Ways to Monetize Your Blog
1. Ads
2. Affiliate Links
3. Sponsored Posts
4. eBooks
5. Courses
6. Sell Products
7. Sell Services
8. Create a Membership Program
Monetize Your Blog with Ads
What are Ads?
Ads, or advertisements, are a public medium for creating revenue on websites and other forums. They use images and text to bring traffic toward their product or service. You can use ads on your website to create revenue by allowing other companies to pay you to put their ads on your blog.
The Importance of Not Overwhelming Your Website with Displayed Ads
Make sure not to overwhelm readers with a cacophony of ads the second they visit your website. This can turn away many people and make them less likely to visit your site and read your content. It’s all about moderation and placement. Balance the volume of the site by creating a cushion of content before introducing the advertisements.
Google Adsense: An Available Ad Program For Beginners
Google Adsense is an incredibly beneficial resource for your site once you get it up and running. It uses pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements that are automatically catered to the relevance of your blog page. For instance, if you have a blog about gardening, you may see ads for gardening tools appear. I will caution, however, that balance and moderation are key when you use these advertisements. Make sure you slowly introduce ads to your website so you don’t turn people away. What I mean by this is that you should build up your reader base and develop a sufficient amount of content so the readers understand the focus of the website. Always make sure to have enough content to justify the number of ads. Google Adsense will also be much more accurate to the context of your website once it has content to base the advertisements off of.
Monetize Your Blog with Affiliate Links
What are Affiliate Links?
Affiliate links are hyperlinks imbedded into your articles that take the reader to affiliate sites, or sites that you’ve agreed to advertise on your blog. It’s all about marketing products on your page with the help of the seller to produce more profit for both parties. Basically, you hype up another party’s product to entice people into buying it, then you get a cut of the profits from your affiliate.
The Importance of Only Mentioning Products You Have Used and Trusted
Try to only review and mention products that you yourself have used, trusted, and are interested in. It’s difficult to successfully sell a product if you haven’t become familiar with it, and readers will trust you and the product more if they know that you’ve tried it before and liked it.
Available Affiliate Networks for Beginners
- Share-A-Sale: This is a great place to find products to promote in order to earn referral-based commissions.
- Magic Links: This network is good for finding products in a huge variety of big retail brands.
- PepperJam Network: This is one of the best affiliate networks for promoting fashion and retail brands.
- ShopStyle Collective: This network is good for fitness blogs, health brands, beauty, and fashion.
Monetize Your Blog with Sponsored Posts
What are Sponsored Posts?
Sponsored posts involve a partnership with a sponsored post network in which you connect your blog to certain companies to promote products and brands.
The Importance of Only Writing Sponsored Posts for Products and Companies You Like and Trust
As I mentioned with affiliate marketing, you need to make sure you know and are comfortable with the products and companies you sponsor. That way, your readers will trust your input.
Available Sponsored Post Networks
- Clever: Clever is a great, straightforward network for campaigns.
- Linqia: Linqia is wonderful for blogs about parenting, lifestyles, and related topics.
- Acorn: Acorn is great because it works with big brands like Kraft, Nickelodeon, and P&G.
- Izea: Izea has a huge number of opportunities perfect for any genre of blogger and any niche.
Monetize Your Blog with eBooks
What are eBooks?
eBooks are electronically distributed versions of printed works of literature, such as cookbooks and novels.
The Benefits of Writing an eBook
Writing an eBook is a wonderful way to bring your writing skills to live and profit from it. When you publish an eBook, you make money off of every sale, which is called royalties. With royalties, you can make a steady income for a lifetime because eBooks never expire and never go away. You can also help your profits grow by advertising your eBook on your website!
Monetize Your Blog with Courses
The Benefits of Creating Your Own Course
– Courses can become passive income once they are launched. It can help you retain a reliable income while pursuing your other tasks and dreams!
– Courses can scale your blogging business by setting up a foundation for growth. With proper planning, you can create a solid backbone to protect your blog’s development without being hampered.
– Courses increase your income! When you offer courses, you make money on their profits and build a reliable client base through the reliable use of media, information, and more.
Platforms to Create and Sell Courses on a Blog
– Teachable: This is a great resource that allows you to create and spread your course over many different devices and platforms.
– Thinkific: This platform is saturated with amazing media resources and has great options for customization.
– OpenSesame: OpenSesame offers multi-lingual resources and a huge variety of courses in a multitude of formats.
– LearnDash: LearnDash is excellent with the ability to create multi-layered courses, and it offers the option to have both public and private platforms for students.
Monetize Your Blog Selling Products
Products’ Go Beyond Just eBooks and Courses
The products you offer don’t have to just be virtual, such as courses and eBooks. They can also expand to physical items as well! Selling paraphernalia is a wonderful and fun way to add some extra profit to your website.
Product Ideas to Sell on a Blog:
– Printables: There is an endless amount of ideas for printables. They’re cheap, easy to make, and creative! Add quotes from the blog, graphics, your logo, and more and make it your own!
– Planners: Everybody loves a good planner, especially the intellectuals that will be reading your blog! Slap on your logo or graphic to make it more unique!
– Workbooks: Workbooks are a great physical representation of the tips and content that you write, and can help your readers hold on to your great writing!
– T-shirts: If you offer unique graphics on your site or a neat logo, it could be really cool to sell T-shirts advertising them. It will make your blog more recognizable, and it will get your logo out into the world!
– Stationary: Stationary could be a great outlet for featuring your favorite blog quotes and more!
Monetize Your Blog Selling Services
Expand Your Blog by Offering Your Own Services (mention how it should be related to the blog niche)
Keeping in mind the niche of your blog, offering services of your own can be a great way to spice up your blog and bring in some much-needed cash. The best reason for doing this is that you will be able to keep a detailed portfolio of your work while offering services that are related to your blog. Working hand-in-hand, your content and services can compound your overall reader and client base while boosting your popularity and pockets.
How Offering Services Can Diversify Blogging Income
Services can break up the monotony of advertisements and writing and give you another unique avenue for revenue. Many bloggers use more than one method for receiving profits from their blog, and adding this one to the mix can give it a practical application of use. Because this method imbues the values of your overall site into the services, it is a double-whammy of profit. It is also bolstered by your other income sources, such as affiliate marketing, because while it gets started up, the other revenue sources pay you while you wait for it to pick up.
Service Ideas to Offer
- Freelance Blogging: You love to write content, most likely, if you own a blog, so why not advertise your writing for others as well? This can be a great way to make some extra cash on the side while you bulk up your blog.
- Graphic Design: Great for art blogs and those who have succeeded in making graphics for their blog. If that is you, you can offer your services to other blogs with similar needs!
- Photography: Similar to graphic design, if you have a knack for taking pictures and have already embellished your own site with them, share your photography prowess with others, and make some profit!
- Social Media Management: If you have successfully mastered managing the social media for your own website, it may be a good idea to look into managing others’ websites as well! This can be a great way to hone your skills and get more ideas for your blog.
Monetize Your Blog with a Membership Program
What is a Membership Program and How Does it Work?
Membership programs turn everyday readers into paying customers! By offering a membership program, readers have the option to pay for additional aspects of your site and business. It is best used for bloggers that sell their products or digital content. In order to create a membership program, you have to offer a specific service or product to readers who will become recurring members. Therefore, you will get paid multiple times by the same reader over the course of a preconceived amount of time. With a membership program, people who visit your site can have earlier access to your content, services, and products while providing relevant feedback and revenue.
The Benefits of Having a Membership Program as a Blogger
- It creates greater revenue increase.
- It cultivates raving fans.
- It can sustain your business and make it easier to understand.
- It creates more two-way interactions with your readers.
- It gives your blog an added pop of excitement.
Tools to Help Create and Run a Membership Program
- Membership Softwares: A membership software such as EasyMemberPro help you create a membership site quickly and efficiently. EasyMemberPro specifically is ideal for media-rich content such as videos and courses.
- Plugins: Plugins such as Simple:Press and MemberPress on WordPress are great tools for building a forum community on your websites where members can gather and give feedback.
- Membership Content Management Softwares: Softwares such as MemberGate help you manage your members and keep unwanted people out, such as trolls, spammers, and more. This can be incredibly beneficial for those who want to create the most appealing site for their serious customers.
In Conclusion
In case you are intimidated by the idea of finding ways to rake in site revenue, I sincerely hope that reading this article has helped you set your butterflies at ease. I know it can be daunting to find just the right platforms for transforming your site into a lucrative, monetary source of income, but now you have the tools you need to wade through your confusion!
In this article, we have covered many distinct paths to creating a monetized blog, and we have highlighted many key aspects of how to make money blogging. From eBooks to affiliates to membership programs, you should now be well-equipped with the resources you need to get started.
Now that we’ve gone over some of the best ways to profit from your blogging, get out there and blossom into the successful blogger I know you can be! I truly hope that this article has helped you realize just how lucrative blogging can be, and I wish you the best in your endeavors!
