You have started your blog. And you are searching for a monetization strategy.
Once you have successfully completed a few articles which generate a handsome amount of traffic and page visits, you can now think of converting your traffic into real money.
There are people who write because it’s their passion and they have no intention to generate income blogging. It’s fine. The choice is yours.
You should always remember why you started blogging in the first place?
Here, we will be discussing 8 different ways to monetize your blogs. You can choose whichever suits you.
Table of Contents
1. Google Adsense
AdSense is Google’s advertising service program which generates and gives more than 90% of its revenue.
It acts as an intermediary platform between advertisers who want to promote their products or services and the publishers who have blogs, websites or YouTube.
It helps publishers like you to earn money by placing ads on their websites and blogs. If visitors on blogs interact with these ads, publishers make money in return.
Google shares the ad revenue with the publishers.
It is very simple, free and you don’t need coding skills to benefit from this.
You need to be very careful though because Google has its own terms and conditions and violating that will lead to forfeiting your AdSense account and you’ll lose all the money you have earned.
This is actually one of the easiest ways you can choose to earn money but the return you get is comparatively low unless you have a solid audience.
Google AdSense can be a good start and a relatively easier way to monetize your blogs.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is the process where affiliates (people like you) earn a fixed percentage of commission by promoting and bringing sales to the company. It could either be a product or service.
Overall global affiliate marketing industry is expected to reach $10 billion this year. Around 81% of brands use affiliate marketing as part of their overall marketing strategies.
This is one of the best ways to earn passive income.
This works best even if you don’t have much more traffic on your blog. You need few but quality traffic.
If your website is under a specific niche, you will always find affiliate products in that niche.
It is one of the best and profitable ways to earn through your blog without inventing the new wheel. If your audience is finding your content valuable, it’s a good time to think for yourself too.
If you don’t know what to promote on your blogs, just go to Google and search affiliate programs with your niche name for example – [blogging affiliate programs].
Don’t be too greedy with the commission rate you see out there. Just be loyal to your audience and recommend only those products which you think might be helpful to your audience.
It will be a win-win for both of you. All you need to do is to attach an affiliate link.
Pat Flynn, Neil Patel, Darren Rowse are some of the big names in the affiliate marketing industry.
You can read about 21 best affiliate programs that you can use to monetize your blogs.
3. Sell your own products and services e-books courses or digital products
When you’re blogging, your primary focus should be building an audience.
And based on what the audience needs you can create courses or sell books or sell your services.
If you do it the other way, there are high chances of failing.
You can take their opinions or feedback through emails, Google forms, comments, or many different ways.
In return, create courses around those topics that already have demand among your visitors.
Here are the 5 different ways
A). E-books
As per 2020 report, the e-books market has been valued at $19 billion and seems to keep growing in upcoming years.
All you need is a problem you want to solve for your audience.
In fact, many bloggers now include e-books selling in their stream of income.
You can anytime write valuable content to your audience or for all with the help of book writing software and publish it on your blog, and sell it for a few dollars.
You can choose other platforms to sell your EBooks.
Through this, you can make $2000 per month by making a sale of 200 eBooks for $10 each.
b). Online courses
This may not suit everyone because to create their own courses they need to have good knowledge and understanding about the topics they are going to teach. It requires some sort of expertise.
Also, it needs some time to design, create, and document your content in-depth in digital form.
Once it is done you can start promoting it on your blog or various other platforms too.
Slowly you watch your content being bought on these platforms on a regular basis and you earn recurring money with these if you have really created a good online course.
Selling online courses can be a very profitable way to monetize your blogs.
c). Monetize your blogs by selling Digital products/tools
This doesn’t seem as easy as it looks.
It will take a lot of effort to make something that really provides value for your audience and solves their problem.
One it’s done, you should keep upgrading it based on the bugs found.
Ubersuggest, AHREF, SEMRush are all digital marketing tools. They make more than 200$ for every sale they make.
This value depends on the product. Premium products cost much more than this.
d). other products/services
As the name suggests you can sell your own products/services.
If you have nurtured your audience well, you could possibly make good sales.
e). Consulting
Consulting is nothing but helping or advising somebody to scale or improvise their business or product/service.
If you are really good at something people are always there who need your support in that.
It entirely depends on what your blog is about.
If your blog is career-related, then your consultancy will be to help a student and guide him in his career.
A Business consultant, you will consult on issues related to sales or marketing or any other business development related functions.
A design consultant will be advising and giving suggestions to improve the design of the product.
You don’t have to be an expert to do consulting. But you need to be knowledgeable and have some experience.
Through consultancy, you can make even up to $100 per phone/Skype. You just have to advise them or do any other similar task.
Pardeep Goyal of cashoverflow.in takes consultancy calls on content marketing and he takes between $100-$150 per hour.
4. Monetizing your blogs through Banner Ads on your page
This is an easy monetizing method.
You can consider consulting other people/companies and advertise using banners on your website.
You can charge them based on the placement of ads and based on the traffic you’re having.
Try to advertise relevant products/services as much as possible.
You must be familiar with this method and have been watching a lot of blogs being monetized through ads.
There are many Advertisement networks through which you can start showing ads and monetize your blogs.
Here are some of the popular advertising platforms you can try – Google AdSense, Media.net, Amazon Associates, and PropellerAds.
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing is sending commercial intent messages to your target audience using emails.
It usually involves using emails to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations, and is meant to build loyalty, trust, and brand awareness.
Email marketing can be the best among all the marketing methods that you implement and it will never get old.
This is the safest way. Do you know why?
It’s because none of the social media like Instagram or Facebook is in your hands and your account may get banned anytime.
Take for example, Mr. Faisu, a famous social media influencer was among the top 3 TikTok influencers when TikTok was banned in India.
The website also is not in your hands. It can get banned too.
Step 1: Build an email list
Collecting emails is like collecting phone numbers of people. You never lose it unless you want to delete it.
You have to find your unique way to collect email addresses. One way is to make promos and offers.
And once done you can usually send emails to all your subscribers whenever you post new content or when you want to talk to them about a unique strategy.
You can use tools to track your emails.
As it is said, money is in your list.
Step 2: Writing good emails
Learn how to write effective emails. These include
- The clear, direct subject line
- Including a Signature block
- Using exclamation points sparingly
- Using Classic fonts
- Avoiding shortcuts
Your email is a reflection of you. The better the emails you write, the better the chances of attracting customers, the better the chances of earning.
All professional conversations are made through the mail and most of the people/organization in this world have an email.
According to reports, US employees receive an average of 126 emails every day. Your email would be just one amongst them.
You have to create your unique ideas and creativity and implement your skills to attract readers.
Step 3: Call for Action (CTA)
Email marketing campaigns have the best conversion rate and you get loyal and paying customers through this.
Returns on investment are very high with email marketing compared to all other strategies.
You have to find your own sales funnel for this. People would hesitate to buy your product with just one email.
You keep sending them valuable emails and then one day you can try to sell your product/service.
Your email funnel could be 4-5 mails or it could be more than that. The choice is yours. You can use tools to automate emails.
If things aren’t working out, try to change your strategies.
6. Sponsored posts/reviews
Gone are the days of traditional marketing! We are now living in a digital world.
And therefore, the marketing trends have been shifted to digital platforms. You cannot deny the fact that Digital marketing has a higher rate of returns than Traditional Marketing.
When was the last time you saw a product on TV or on the newspaper and then bought it?
The number one thing anybody does before buying a product is they check it on the internet and then they end up buying it from there itself.
You have to find people who want to publicize their products or services through your blog. And once done you can run a sponsored blog for them which will increase their outreach.
Anand Khanse from TheWindowsClub has exclusively sponsored posts related to tech gadgets.
You need to try to contact people related to your field and make money for a sponsored blog you make.
You can have a blog written exclusively to market their product.
Conclusion:
Blogging is still considered one of the best ways to make money. It’s because the investment here is very low.
However, generating income through money isn’t that easy as you think. Understand your audience, their needs, and act accordingly.
It’s not necessary to have millions of visitors to monetize your blogs. You just need to channelize your existing visitors.
One thing that you always keep in mind is to provide value to your audience. It helps to increase your recognition and you can easily monetize.
The more people you help, the more money you make, as simple as that.
Everything takes time. So be patient, be consistent, and work hard.