Bloggers of today are collective winners, for a simple fact at least. And that fact is that blogging refused to become another fad or a passing trend in the world of ever-changing web trends. What better way to congratulate yourself on being a part of the blogosphere Wonderland than being able to focus all of your efforts on the content itself while being able to live off it at the same time? That’s why you need to take five minutes to consider these winning tactics that will allow you to make money blogging without compromising a single bit of your web property.
The first thing you want to do is know what you want to do. By laying out a strategy and keeping it in sight while executing it, you will make sure you’re always on the right track and never lose the sense of where you want to go. The preparatory part includes understanding your audience, what kind of content they like consuming and how you can improve your content in that regard. Then, how you’d want to advertise your blog, including paid ads, social media advertising, influencer marketing, inbound marketing, or any other creative solution you might think of. And finally, the third step is monetizing or knowing exactly how you will turn your efforts into income.
The most obvious tactic that a person on the street is likely to point out when asked about possible monetization methods – going the way of putting ads. This involves adding another role to your resume as a blogger who is now ready to become a publisher, and who uses blogs to run ads for other people’s stuff and brands. The easiest way to do this is finding and become part of an ad network that will serve advertisements on your site. A less easy task is finding the best one, particularly for young blogs with unimpressive traffic numbers, as the favorites such as Google AdSense can have steep requirements in this regard. Google AdSense, for example, requires the site to be at least six months old and to comply with a couple of privacy policies. You can find the details on this link.
Those that don’t wish to wait, or aren’t really interested in complying with Google, can consider alternatives to Google’s behemoth. Yet, having networks with lower admission criteria does not mean that you can just randomly pick any one of them. Ad networks have to offer you a clear record in terms of their payment practices and dedication to transparency and the quality of ads on offer. Just make sure to take your time in evaluating them, as a hasty selection of partners in this process will probably do your monetization efforts more harm than good.
If you consider ads to be too distracting from the content or you consider them misaligned with it, another tactic in blog monetization involves joining an affiliate marketing program. This method involves receiving a commission as a share of sales of products offered by affiliates on your blog. If your blog, for example, deals with any aspect of health and wellness, you can easily link up with stores selling organic food and supplements, herbs, etc. Once again, the size of your audience will either improve or decrease your chances of working with the cream of the crop affiliates, emphasizing the need to keep an ever-watchful eye on traffic metrics.
Another key to succeeding in this segment is the seamless alignment of the content you produce with the ads for products that come to you as part of this model. Provided that you can offer relevancy of the content in relation to the products on offer, affiliate marketing can be a healthy source of income for you and your web property without requiring too much effort.
Source: Vimeo
As all of the above methods involve promoting other people’s products and services, you don’t have to own a blog on powers of insight and perception to start asking yourself how a blogger can turn tables on them and become his/her own boss? The answer comes in the form of making and selling your own products and services, which can be extremely rewarding, yet risky and demanding at the same time. So, if have been feeling a bit more adventurous lately, you need to take a hard look at your skills and decide what matter you can consider yourself an expert in.
If you passed this stage more or less successfully, you can embark on offering specialized content behind a paywall, and your best allies in this regards are ebooks, eguides and instructional videos dealing with any topic you feel comfortable with. You can e-mail these materials periodically, or offer them in form of downloadable content once the visitor checks out, but you will do best to study your audience and determine their preference for delivery in this case.
This is widely considered as best practice, as it allows the blogger to create a database of people who are super interested in their content. That way, the blogger can be sure the content always gets into the most relevant hands. At the same time, it gives the reader a little bit of exclusivity as he/she is offered with content that is of high relevance and quality, which isn’t easy to come by these days. One such example is Smart Passive Income, Pat Flynn’s blog on running an online business and optimizing it for passive income.
Yet, this involves going through many hoops in the sense that you need to determine what content is relevant enough for your audience to make them throw their money your way. Their conversion will be largely determined by your success in marketing your own offer, but, at least, you will not depend on other producers or brands determining (or being blamed for) the volume of the revenue stream.
Finally, your blog monetization can be based on an effort to “sell” yourself as an expert not just to your regular audience, but to specialized clients as well. Basically, your strategy in this regard will revolve around creating content that can be consumed and absorbed only through you, such as in the case of selling online courses, webinars or even coaching services. The scope of topics in relation to which you offer your services is limited only by whatever you determine to be your forte, ranging from creative writing and photography to business management or software development. Just make sure to pick your talents carefully.
While not dissimilar to monetization of specialized content mentioned above, these efforts will be marked by your need to promote yourself as a consulting expert who has already done his homework in the field of building the confidence of your audience. And your strategically most important bridge to them will still be your blog as a monetization sine qua non.
Source: Flickr
No matter whether you blog for artistic, commercial or any other reason, if you want to make money blogging, the best first mental step you need to take is starting to think of yourself as a creator, with the blog being your product that attracts an audience. The word “product” suggests that its sustenance is ensured through securing revenue streams for it. Their successful utilization will depend on the level of your financial needs and the size of loyal audience, as well as on your readiness to take an extra step in producing content whose demand and quality can justify your putting a price on it (ebooks, webinars, consultancy services). Just as the blogosphere itself, monetization potential of a blog is huge and wildly variable in its shapes and opportunities whose suitability will be finally determined by you.
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