Blogging used to be a side gig thing now blogging has turned in a full-time career for many people and it gives you the chance of making 4-digit money every month. A blog can turn into a cash cow if done correctly, whether you have the passion for writing, expertise in a subject or just want to create an online presence.
This comprehensive guide will teach you how to make money from your blog, publishing steps on ways to monetize, grow traffic, and actually make revenue.
Choose a Profitable Niche
Before starting the perfect money making blog, you need to choose a right niche which is the backbone of your entire journey. Niche – a topic or general area of interest that your blog will center around. As much as you want to write about everything, doing so is also one way of cementing your niche and developing a loyal audience base. Related: How To Pick A Profitable Niche: Here Is What You Need To Do
- Passion and Expertise: Pick a topic you are passionate about and have experience in. Readers, who are looking for insight, trust your knowledge and feel confident in you because your writing reflects your passion.
- Audience Demand: Find out if there is a demand for the niche. Find out if people are searching for information about the topic you picked with tools such as Google Trends, Ubersuggest or Ahrefs.
- Monetization Potential: Assess whether the niche is able to be successfully monetized. Certain niches, including personal finance, health, technology and travel, are inherently more profitable because there are so many products to promote (plus tons of available services with affiliate programs).
Some common topics are personal finance, fitness, food, parenting, technology and fashion. Choosing the correct niche is essential as it will decide the further course of your blog.
Create High-Quality Content
Now that you have your niche, the next step is to publish good content. Your blog content is everything, the main focus of what attracts an audience to grow and begin your monetary journey. Even if there are other more popular blogs in your niche, use that idea to creat posts which mean something to your readers. Here are the steps to producing unique content:
- Solve Problems: Make sure you look into the problems or challenges that your audience faces and write blog posts accordingly to provide them with solutions. That can consist of how-tos, tutorial guides, tips & recommendations and such.
- Be Consistent: Publishing regularly will help you develop an actual readership base. Set and maintain a regular schedule — weekly, biweekly, monthly; whatever it may be.
- Engage with Your Audience: You can get people to comment, ask questions and share comments about their personal experiences. Reply to the commenters and interact with your audiences so you build a community.
Search engine optimization — (Needless to say, SEO is really important if you want your blog posts to rank!) But if you can optimize your content with proper keywords, it will help track organics that contribute significantly to the growth of your blog for a long time.
Build an Audience and Drive Traffic
If you want to make money from your blog, you need readers. After all, without an audience you won;t be generating any revenue, no matter how epic your monetization methods might be. So how do you build an audience and get people to visit your blog?
- SEO: Yep, you also guessed it right, SEO helps your blog rank higher on SERPs (search engine result pages) giving you better chances of gaining organic traffic. Research high-volume keywords that are relevant to your niche and use those in a natural way throughout your blog posts with tools such as Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs.
- Social Media: Share your blog articles through social media channels having different sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkin. Interact with your audience, follow groups that are related to what your workshop is about and leverage social media ads in order to attract a wider viewership.
- Guest Posting: Get exposure by guest posting on other blogs in your niche. It allows you to leverage the audiences that other bloggers have built and direct some of that traffic back to your blog.
- Email Marketing: You need to start building your email list from day one. Instead, give away something of value (say, an e-book or some sort of checklist) in exchange for readers signing up for your email newsletter. By using email marketing, you can inform your audience when new blog posts go live, you create a new product or run promotions.
Releasing consistency traffic guys takes a lot of time and energy however if you have good ideas, you can slowly gather an attention.
Monetize Your Blog
When you have an audience, it is time to monetize your blog. There are many ways to monetise your blog, and some of them pay better than others. Here are the top monetization methods:
a. Affiliate Marketing
One of the main ways we make money from a blog is through affiliate marketing. This also means that you will sell something by your blog and earn a commission when someone buys through your affiliate link.
This is where you can really kick off your affiliate marketing:
- Pick Affiliate Programs: Register for affiliate programs that corresponds to your niche. Amazon associates, ShareASale and Commission Junction are some popular affiliate networks. Alternatively, you might work directly with companies that have affiliated programs.
- Promote Products Naturally: Writing product review, tutorial or comparison post and naturally use the affiliate products. Promote only those products that will benefit your audience.
- Disclose Affiliate Links: It is important to tell your readers about the use of affiliate links. This helps establish trust and is even necessary per relevant advertising laws like the FTC guidelines in the U.S.
As long as you keep getting traffic exposed to your blog pages, Affiliate marketing can offer passive income.
b. Display Ads
Just as common is making money by displaying ads on your blog. Or if you apply for ad networks such as Google AdSense (possible at the beginning) or Mediavine, these will insert ads automatically. You make money per impression or click that the ads serve you.
- Google Adsense : For beginners, Google AdSense is the best choice since it can easily be setup. Payments are done in the form of CPC and CPM.
- Premium Ad Networks: After you scale your blog enough, you can apply to premium ad networks such as Mediavine or AdThrive that almost always pay more than Google AdSense. The catch, though, is that those networks typically have minimums for how many page views you need to be getting monthly (and IAB-compliant ones too).
In the beginning stages of your blog, ads will not bring much income, but when you start to get a higher volume of traffic they can become a consistent source of revenue.
c. Sponsored Posts
Once your blog starts gaining traction, brands might reach out for you to write sponsored posts or product reviews. In this category of work, companies will pay you to create content that promotes their product or service. So, we begin with sponsored posts:
- Reach Out to Brands: If brands are not contacting you yet, then go ahead and approach companies in your niche. You can suggest them collaboration where you will make a content on their product.
- Set Your Rates: How To Set Your Rates Your own blog traffic, social media following and audience engagement will dictate your rates.
Just be sure to work with a sponsored content brand that fits into what your blog stands-up for and offers value to your readers.
d. Sell Digital Products
Selling digital products is another lucrative way to monetize your blog. Digital products are, therefore, scalable and you only need to create the product once and sell it multiple times with less effort. Here are examples of digital products:
- E-books: Create and sell an e-book related to a topic relevant to your audience.
- Online Courses: You can create an online course or video series for your readers to follow if you have skills that help them achieve a certain goal like getting fitter or learning a new skill unit.
- Printable Templates: Provide templates, planners or checklists that fit your niche and end up being downloadable files.
By selling digital products, you can generate revenue directly from your audience without involving third-party advertisers or brands.
e. Offer Services
If you are experienced in something, say web design, SEO or writing or how to coach someone, then you provide these experiences to your readers on the blog. A lot of bloggers sell freelance services or consulting via their blogs.
If your blog is about digital marketing, you could include services like SEO consulting, social media management, or website audits. This is a great method for using the authority of your blog to get clients.
Track and Optimize Performance
Writing content/blogs are the first step, but to increase your revenue through it needs you to record/track from time to time. Monitor your traffic, visitor movement around your site and top content using tools like Google Analytics;
This will also help you to have more options when it comes to optimizing your blog for monetization:
- A/B testing: Try different formats for your blog posts, different placements on affiliate products, etc. as well as ads positions among other things, and check what works best for the audience you are addressing.
- Optimize for Mobile: Make your blog mobile-friendly since a majority of the traffic comes through mobile devices. Having a blog that is optimized for use on mobile devices enhances the user experience and increases your standings in search engines.
- Improve Site Speed: A blog that takes a long time to load can annoy the visitors and affect your SEO performance too. Google PageSpeed Insights can help you find areas for improvement.
By tracking performance, you can make informed choices and refine your blog as a money-making tool.
A blog isn’t a way to get rich overnight – it’s a long game that takes dedication, consistency and a good plan. You can create a source of income from your blog by selecting a profitable niche, establishing quality content, generating traffic, and monetizing through affiliate marketing, ads or sponsored posts as well as producing goods & services.
Of course, building a profitable blog which will allow you to earn money consistently for years is not something overnight, but definitely achievable with the right objetives set in place.