If you’re in the process of establishing a blog, you might be wondering about monetization. A properly maintained blog can be a source of additional income. The income bloggers make varies greatly — some make next to nothing, others make a livable income, and very few manage to get rich. Usually, it takes several months of maintaining a blog before you’ll see any sort of income coming from it.
Before you can begin generating any sort of income from a blog, you’ll need to find the best domain registrar to register your domain. A reliable host would be next on the list.
You will need to have a reasonable amount of traffic visiting your blog. The best way to begin generating traffic to a blog is to have a niche topic that you write engaging blog posts about. You’ll also want to make sure your blog is ranking high on search engines.
So, while you’re not going to “get rich quick” from blogging, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pursue monetization. If you’re serious about earning money from your blog, now is the perfect time to get started. Here are four popular ways people are making a profit from blogging.
Advertisements
If you have a sizable amount of traffic visiting your blog, you’ll want to make sure that you’re running advertisements. Pay-Per-Clicks (PPC) advertising is when you run advertisements within your blog posts or on the sidebar of your blog. If someone clicks on that ad, the advertiser will pay you for that click. It does take time to earn money through this method because the amount most advertisers pay is very small and not everyone will click on ads.
Advertisements are a passive way to earn income, however. It doesn’t require a ton of work to set up advertisements and advertisers will pay you directly.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is another passive way to earn income from your blog. With this method, you promote products from a site such as Amazon. If someone clicks on a link to that product and then buys that product, you’ll receive a portion of the profits.
This method works best if you have a specific niche you’re writing about so that you can easily advertise products that your clients will be interested in. For example, if you’re blogging about gardening, you could write a blog post about the best gardening equipment and share links to various gardening products. The links would naturally fit in with your blog. Check out this course to learn how you can maximize your profits with affiliate marketing.
Selling a Service
This method isn’t as passive as advertisements or affiliate marketing, but if you have a specific skill set, you might be able to sell ebooks, courses, or coaching services through your blog. For example, if you’re passionate about fictional writing and your blog is all about how to become a better writer, you could offer services through your blog where you allow other writers to submit their work to you and you provide feedback.
If you decide to sell an ebook, you’ll need to establish yourself as an expert in the field so that readers will want to purchase your book. You’ll want to develop an ebook that aligns with the rest of the content on your blog, but that offers different information than what is already public access. Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing allows you to self-publish an ebook through its platform that readers can download.
If you opt to provide a course or coaching, you’ll want to do your research and see what other bloggers are doing. You’ll then need to figure out a way to make yourself stand out in the crowd. For example, you might need to offer competitive prices or you might need to offer some services for free before clients begin paying.
Writing Reviews
Writing reviews is another way you can actively earn income from your blog. Many services or companies are looking for people to write honest reviews of their products. In return for a review, you’ll either receive a free product or monetary compensation.
Most companies will only pay established blogs to write reviews because they want a good return on investment. You’ll have to have a good following if you want to make money from reviews. You’ll also have to research to find companies within your niche that are looking for people to review products.
Final Thoughts
If you’re hoping to earn a decent income from blogging, you’ll want to use several different methods. Work on optimizing your site so that you rank high on search engines. This will increase the traffic on your site. The more traffic you’re receiving on your blog, the higher your chances are of successfully monetizing your blog.
More on this topic: SEO and Blogging: Things that You Should Definitely Know