How do I
make money blogging?
It's a question I get asked quite frequently ~ especially when people don't want to do a "make money blog". There are numerous ways you can
monetize your blog no matter how much traffic you get or how many subscribers you have.
Today I am going to show you 7 Great ways to Monetize your blog. I will add one caveat. I would wait until you have at least a couple weeks worth of content (14 or 15 good quality posts) before you monetize. There are others who will tell you to wait at least a couple months before you start to monetize your blog. I see the benefit in that, but if you need to start making money try one of these ideas at a time, wait a couple weeks in between.
Don't over do your monetization. People come to your blog for information or solutions not to buy things. If you provide your readers with good quality content and help them solve the problem they came to you looking to solve they will be much more likely to purchase a product or click an ad to find out more.
Contextual Ads ~ Everyone knows about at least one of these ~ google adsense. It can be somewhat confusing to the beginner blogger though. Adsense is when you have google put ads on your page. You get paid each time someone clicks on one of the ads on your page. There is no fee to you to do this. All you have to do is set up a google adsense account.
What everyone doesn't know is there are many more of these contextual ad companies including Yahoo. You can google "contextual ad network" and you will find many places that will provide ads for you to show on your blog.
Text Link Ads ~ These are a little different than google ads. These are ads that advertisers pay you to put on your blog. They become an underlined word in your content. Content ads are more frequently clicked on possibly because they look less than advertising than other ads on your page.
Targeted Advertising ~ This is a great way to make money blogging. I think this would be much easier if you have a very targeted niche blog because this is when an advertiser comes to you and asks to pay you a monthly fee for advertising on your blog. This is kind of like the holy grail to bloggers. It can happen! It will only happen if you have good quality information in your blog. It does not necessarily matter how much traffic you are getting if you traffic is very targeted to a specific industry.
Affiliate Links ~ Another great way to make money blogging. It will also cost you nothing. All you have to do is sign up at an affiliate network like clickbank, commission junction, linkshare ~ there are tons of them out there. You find a particular product that fits well with your blog topic and add the link within an article or in the sidebar of your blog. (You can see we use this method on this blog ~ the friend blaster pro banner). The kind of products you can find online with affiliate programs in endless. You can sell digital products like ebooks or you can recommend real world products by creating an affiliate relationship with a store. Did you know Wal Mart has an affiliate program? Anything you can find at Wal Mart you can offer to your blog readers. :) Pretty cool huh?
If you are looking for an affiliate program for a specific product or niche just go to google and search for "your product + affiliate program" this should lead you to a number of affiliate programs for what you are looking for.
Sell Your Own Products ~ This is a huge money maker and beginners generally think they just can't produce their own product. Hogwash. It's really not that hard. In fact if you are blogging on a specific niche topic you could pull out some archived blog post and put them together as an ebook.
Any idea, system, information can be turned into an ebook. Take a look at what you do during your day ~ it may seem mundane and easy to you, but I can bet you there are people out there that could benefit from some of the things you know and do during your day.
An ebook does not have to be a Phd dissertation ~ it can be written in a friendly tone as though you were talking to a friend.
Another great idea for a product is interview someone about your topic. Have the interview transcribed or turn it into a podcast and sell it. If you get over the idea you can't have your own product you will start seeing product ideas around every corner.
The cool thing about having your own product is you get to keep all the profits ~ unless of course you set up an affiliate program so OTHER people can start selling your products for you. (Then you'll have to pay your affiliates) ;)
Sell Niche Related Products ~ You can set up a virtual store at Cafe press where you can make products related to your niche that others can buy. Just put the link to your cafe press store on your website. There are plenty of places online you can do this now, cafepress is not your only choice ~ Zazzle is another choice and I found it much easier to understand and get up and running than cafepress.
You could also build an Astore from Amazon ~ offer books about your niche or topics your niche would be interested in. This is really more of an affiliate topic, but you would be selling real books. :)
Take Donations ~ this one probably won't make you scads of money unless you have a loyal readership. You can do this by putting a "donate" button from paypal on your blog. If you a hosted wordpress blog there is a plugin you can use that will encourage people to "buy you a beer" (or a cup of coffee) at the end of each of your posts.
Within a week or two of installing the "buy me a coffee" plugin in at my
Internet Marketing Tips blog I had a women send me a 10 dollar donation. She read and implemented the suggestions in my post on
My Story Marketing at Myspace. She said it had already produced more clients for her and she was grateful. So she sent me some money to say thank you ~ that's the kind of thank you most bloggers like best ~ right? It can happen, although it may not happen often, I think it's worth having the reminder there. If you don't ask you don't get.
Those are my top 7 ways to
monetize your blog. Believe me there are plenty more, but I don't want to overwhelm you.
If you are thinking about monetizing your blog and don't know how to go about it, leave a comment below and Mary K and I will help you make it happen.
You can also come over to the new
Internet Marketing Action Plan community. You can get assistance in setting up your personal action plan and get support and accountability to follow through as well as lots of CELEBRATING when you accomplish your goals. :)
There are tons of free blogs available to use online. With millions of registered users, I've heard that blogger.com is by far the largest provider of free blogs. Also, according to others I've talked with, blogger.com blogs tend to be a little more sophisticated than other comparable free blog services.
