First of all, there’s no way to make money blogging without a web audience.
So, before we discuss monetizing your blog, let’s talk about getting an audience.
You don’t necessarily need millions of people visiting your blog on a monthly basis. For every 1,000 visitors/month on growthmarketingpro.com, we make $500/month.
Still, bottom line: the number visitors your blog has corresponds to the income it produces.
In any form of business, you have to win people’s trust to sell them something. The same rule holds for blogging. Offer your visitors something of genuine value. They have to have a reason to come back to your blog frequently.
If you’re an expert in your field, be a thought leader and start a blog!
Be Active Frequently
The biggest mistake many bloggers make in the beginning is not blogging frequently. Being a blogger takes a lot of commitment. Some blogs don’t start getting an organic following for 3-6 months.
Only Publish Quality Content
A good barometer should be, “would I read and genuinely enjoy this post?” If you don’t like your own writing, how could some other internet peruser?
If you’re going to be a thought leader in your niche space, you better be a really, really quality one. Almost always, I see a correlation between how much time I spend on a post and the amount of traffic the post gets.
If you want Google to rank your content in Google searches, it must be best-in-class. The Google algorithm is very sophisticated. It knows good content vs bad content.
Use Social Media
Social media is the best place to reach out to the audience that will be interested in your content. Join communities on social media that are relevant to the content and theme of your blog. Interact with people there and ask them to pay a visit to your blog. Provide a link to your blog on your social networking profiles.
Doing this will “distribute” your blog content. This will “put you on the map” so to speak.
On social media:
- Further cementing your status as a thought leader by sharing relevant and thoughtful updates
- Interact with others interested
- Attract users with links to your content
Use social media! Your friends and connections will likely be your early readers.
Try Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is one of the perfect ways to get people’s attention to your blog. Guest blogging means you write a blog post and give it to some reputable and well-known blog to host it.
These blogs already have thousands of people visiting them, and so you will have to chance to benefit from their traffic.
I wouldn’t spend too much time guest blogging, as you want to make sure your best content is on your blog. But as a way to get your readership and organic traffic off the ground, it can be useful.
Design Your Blog in an Appealing Way
The looks of your blog can play a huge role in bringing people back to the blog. When it comes to the design, the first thing you want to do is make the content easily scannable. It should be organized and relatively explanatory.
Ask yourself, “if I landed on this website, would I ‘get it?’”
Match the color theme of your blog with the mood of the content.
Keep the contrasts such that the text is easy to read.
Try to make your posts more clickable by adding pictures to them.
A Self-hosted Blog Is Better
As attractive as it sounds to have a free blog like Tumblr or Medium, but it will not serve you in the long run. For the love of god, start a WordPress blog or some other type of self-hosted blog.
First of all, you will not have your own identity because the name of your blogging platform will appear in your domain name. People who visit your blog will see the domain name and realize that you are not serious about your passion.
But more importantly, these are not optimal for SEO. WordPress, Ghost and other CMS blogs be optimal for attracting “organic” visitors — users who simply “stumble on” your blog while Googling “best way to fix a Volvo” or “how to monetize your blog?”
Read choosing the best blogging platform if you still have questions.
But, you should probably start a WordPress blog.
The Many Ways to Monetize Your Blog
1. Monetize Your Blog Selling Online Courses
Selling online courses is one of the most popular ways for bloggers to make money.
You can generate income even with only a few thousand readers by selling online courses. Just make sure you’re niche enough that your readers can’t get your information through a simple Google search.
But if you know some things your audience is willing to pay for, you use a tool like Teachableor Udemy to create and sell your course.
The idea here is to know your audience and create a course that addresses their particular needs. People will pay for good advice online!
An important thing to know here is to realize your authority as an author. Do not underestimate yourself by thinking that you are not an expert. An advantage that bloggers have is that their readers see them as thought leaders.
Marketer Neil Patel, is pretty prolific marketing blogger who promotes and monetizes his blog with a combination of online courses and consulting.
2. Monetize with Ebooks
Many of the same tactics as above will help you monetize your blog with ebooks.
As with selling online courses, you have to write what you’re most passionate and knowledgeable about. You should should make it graphically pleasing — maybe consider creating some infographics in Piktochart?
Here’s an infographic I made about the best blogging platforms.
Assemble the whole ebook in a tool like Apple’s Keynote, a locked Google Doc or in some other format you like.
A quick Google search confirms that there are even some options for make-your-own ebook software. Use Canva to make an ebook.
In order to collect money from your sales, use PayPal or Stripe or some other digital way to collect payments.
3. Monetize Your Blog by Selling Other People’s Stuff: Affiliate Marketing
This has proven to be the most popular and one of the most lucrative ways of monetizing a blog.
You can earn a few hundreds dollars a year, or in the case of a large affiliate marketing company like NerdWallet — which sells leads to credit card companies — over $100 million.
If you’re monetizing your blog with affiliate marketing, you promote certain products or services of a company in exchange for part of each of that company’s sale.
If you have bought a plane ticket on Expedia or Search Flights, Hotels & Rental Cars | KAYAK, you’ve transacted with an affiliate. Expedia and Kayak certainly don’t fly your plane, but they do sell you the ticket. They take a cut of every sale.
The affiliate marketing universe is huge. There’s literally thousands of companies that are affiliates of other goods and services.
Affiliate marketing works for a lot of blogger verticals:
- Fashion bloggers who sell shoes or bags to their readership with affiliate partnerships in place
- Tech bloggers who get a cut of every gadget their audience buys through their links
- Industry bloggers who promote trusted software tools
- Finance bloggers who recommend certain credit cards
How to become an affiliate partner:
- Reach out to the companies in your niche and build a one-off partnershipMany companies will have a link somewhere on their site to an affiliate page where you can sign up
- Sign up for sites like Commission Junction and browse through all the products you can sell
- Sign up for AmazonAssociates and sell any Amazon product and earn a 4%-10% commission on every sale.
If you have a business or product and you’re trying to build an affiliate program so that other people will sell your stuff for you, I recommend reading my