Once your blog is big enough it’s important you know how to monetize. In the end, there is NO point in blogging full time if you’re NOT making an income, right? The next question is with so many ways to monetize, what’s the best way to get started? We are lucky because we live in a time where you have so much information available for free. If you do a quick search online, you’ll find so many creative ways to make money. You just have to find out what will work on your blog with your visitors. Over the years when working with several clients I was able to learn about cool ways to monetize my blogs. I actually helped several clients at the same time by implementing awesome strategies which helped bring thousands of dollars each year. With that said, today we’ll be exploring the following:
When it’s time to monetize your blog, how do you know what to implement. I’ll also go over some of the best money makers online in terms of products, services and advertising opportunities. Let’s get started and your feedback will be greatly appreciated.
Know Your Audience
Before you can start to monetize your blog, it’s important you know your audience. If you DON’T know them, then you won’t know what to offer them going forward. However, this should not be a problem because you have two options available to you. First, if you have been blogging for some time then look over your stats to find out more about your audience. For example, you should have Google Analytics installed on your blog. This simple tool will be able to give you a breakdown of the following:
- Landing pages
- Audience
- Referrals
- Bounce rate
- Average time on site
By looking at the landing pages, you’ll determine what type of content resonates with your readers. You can then start to promote products or add advertisements to these pages to optimize profits. Next, your competition will tell you a lot about your audience. Many of your competitors have been in the business longer so skimming through their site, you can gather a lot of information. I like to visit them to find out what topics they continuously write about, and what type of comments people are writing. It’s important at the same time to focus on social activity because what they share can be huge for what you can write about. After,
You can start to understand your audience or simply just get a better idea into their thinking pattern. Once you have this data, you can start to implement some monetization strategies. Here are the best ones from my experience.
Before I continue, I encourage all of you to gather email addresses to build your subscription lists. Why does this matter? Much of your money will be in the list because with a huge count, you can market to a lot of people at one time. This will just make things much easier when going forward. These days to implement an email marketing form, you simply need to sign up for aweber, Constant Contact, etc. All are reputable and provide an all in one solution. Once your setup, you can start to market to them to increase profit gains meeting your bottom-line.
Affiliate Programs
These programs have been the backbone for earners because you can definitely make enormous money. What are affiliate programs? Simple.
Imagine starting a product and wanting to increase sales? You can enlist the help of other bloggers and give them a cut of the action when sales are generated through them. It’s a great incentive because if bloggers have a huge audience they can earn enormous money very quickly. However, there is a specific formula I like to follow when choosing the right affiliate program. Let’s take a look at my formula.
Relevant – before choosing an affiliate program, you have to make sure it’s relevant. The reason is very simple, it’s because one will buy a product which they feel has nothing to do with their preference. Imagine having a blog on SEO, and you’re selling a product on automotive cushions. This doesn’t make sense right?
Credible – one of the best ways to ensure people buy a product is to endorse it yourself. However, this route can be tricky if NOT done correctly. Never promote and product which you haven’t used because this is an easy way to lose loyalty. If you market products for the sake of money, you’ll lose readership quickly.
Price matters – That’s right! Many of the people following your blog are fresh newbies so won’t have a lot to invest. It’s important to ensure you keep an eye on your price, and provide people something they can afford. Maybe contact the product developer asking to have a free trial offer for your readers.
Value – people are on your blog to find value in everything so this means it’s important to ensure your product or affiliate program does the same. In the end, whatever product you are promoting should help with their bottom line, right?
Jobs Section
Problogger.com has done a great job utilizing this strategy. Once you are big enough, you can start charging for people to post on your site. Darren Rowse charges $30/month for people to post jobs on their site, and this ends up being enormous money because 2000 people post monthly. It’s also a great way to get industry jobs out in the market because this is exactly what people are looking for to earn some income. Think about it. What was the first thing you probably did online? If you’re like me, then you started with writing content, right? This was a great way for me to meet people in the industry and make some money on the side. However, how you plan to add a jobs section on your blog matters too. For example, here are some awesome tips to help you get started.
Price – In order for you to get people to post in your job section, it’s important the price makes sense for everyone. Too high of a price means less people will take advantage of the option.
Relevance – The more relevant your blog to what people are looking for the better for you. People want to be on a blog where they fell they’ll find people in the same nice. Which brings me to my next point:
Traffic – Not point in having a job section if the demand isn’t there. For example, you can have people list on your site, but if they are not converting because of lack of traffic then it’s NOT going to do you any good.
Banner Ads
One of the best ways to generate enormous money from your blog. As a matter of fact, it was the first method which exploded making people thousands of dollars each month. No matter what blog you visit, you’ll find banner ads which are probably paying 5,000-10,000 per month. This brings in a lot of money for each blogger which is why they continue to incorporate ads to their blogs. Many of the new blog WordPress designs have been based on the right side-bar layout so ads can be implemented by blog owners. Let’s explore some of the fundamentals of advertising:
First, in order for you to be successful, it’s important you drive enough traffic to your blog. The value of your blog goes up as you increase the amount of traffic visiting your site. For example, no one will pay thousands of dollars if their ad won’t be seen by people. Secondly, it’s important the traffic which is coming to your site is definitely relevant. With relevance, you have increase the chance of the advertiser getting conversions. This just adds value to your bottom line, and you can negotiate something better going forward. Third, price does matter, but not as much simply because advertisers are willing to pay when the traffic is there.
Blog advertising is huge for business and can generate enormous income for you every single month. However, you have to make sure its constant and is stable while increasing each month. That’s the only downfall because if the traffic goes down, then the value of your blog will suffer with it.
Your Own Product
As you become a giant in the industry, you can start to promote your own product. Many of the top bloggers are doing this, and it has worked for them incredibly. As a top blogger, you have leverage on the type of products you decide to advertise, and the sale of each is complete profits within your pocket. Your email list will be your best friend since one blast can generate thousands in sales netting you millions of dollars. Visit the top bloggers and you’ll get a good idea into their profits from OWN product sales.
Final Thoughts
When your blog is big enough, you can utilize many strategies to build profit momentum. However, from my experience all of the ones mentioned above are a great alternative to the typical. You have to make sure they are implemented correctly and tested before going any further. With that said, start by going through the list implementing each one, and over time you’ll learn what works well with your readers and what doesn’t.
