Your blog monetisation method will determine how much you can make from a blog as well as your traffic. Without traffic a blog will definitely not make any money, but unless you get your blog monetisation right, it can also be a problem.
There’s several ways you can monetise a blog and here’s the main ones used by bloggers:
- Affiliate marketing – sell other people’s products from your blog
- Advertising – place paid ads on your blog (Google’s Adsense program, for example)
- Sell something you own – if you already have a business or product, a blog can be used to find new customers
- Create an ebook and sell it from your blog – ebooks are simple to create. You can sell them hands free without posting anything physically.
- Sell space on your blog site – marketers are interested in your traffic. So you can sell them banner space on your site
Blog Monetisation – Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to monetise a blog. With enough traffic and with enough of the right traffic, you can sell almost anything from a blog. You only need to find a product or program which appeals to your target audience.
With affiliate marketing your product and target audience is really important. You can’t just sell anything to anyone. You need to find the appropriate product which is a good match for your traffic.
For example, if your blog is about motorcycles, you’ll need a suitable motorcycle related item to sell, you can’t just sell garden furniture to motorcycle enthusiasts. If you’re monetising with advertising (e.g.Adsense), it doesn’t matter so much because you can advertise in almost any topic/niche. However, your topic will determine how much you can earn from an advertising click if you use ads on your site to monetise.
Blog Monetisation – Adsense
Google’s Adsense program lets you place clickable adverts on your content which you earn from every time someone clicks on them. However, you’ll need a huge amount of traffic to make this profitable because the click value is usually very low. In more competitive topics you’ll earn more. However the more competition you have in your niche, the harder it is to get free traffic from the search engines.
However you decide to monetise your blog, it’s worth considering your topic before you start. With affiliate marketing, you’ll need to be very targeted with your content creation strategy. Otherwise you’ll attract visitors who aren’t interested in your products. With advertising (Adsense), you don’t have to be so specific because the ads will appear relative to your content.
In a very low competition topic, you should find you can attract more traffic more easily. However, your ads will likely only product the smallest commissions when clicked. Competitive niches such as money making online or Forex marketing will pay more for clicks but will be harder to attract free traffic for.
Selling Yourself/A Product/A Service
A blog is a great tool to sell from if you have your own business, product or service. Small business owners often use blogs to write about their topic and attract free traffic from the search engines (Google etc).
If you’re building a passion based business, blogging about your topic is a great way to answer potential customers’ questions, build content and attract an audience for free.
If you have an existing business which is physically based, you can also use Google My Business which will give you a free listing. This is a great tool for more exposure of your business and it only takes a few minutes to set up. See Google My Business for more info on this.
Sell Your Own Ebook
An ebook is a great way to monetise a blog and you can even use your existing content to create it. You only need to set up a sales pages and direct your traffic to it via an image of your ebook.
To create an ebook is easy and if you don’t already have a pdf creation tool on your laptop, you can easily find a free one online.
Once you have your pdf file, you can also create an ebook cover or get one done for next to nothing. I use Fiverr.com for my ebook covers. You can then create a PayPal button on your site and automate the full download process to sell an ebook on your website.
See also how to sell a ebooks on your website.
Selling Banner Space On Your Website
You can also sell banner space on your website directly to marketers. Create an “advertise here” page on your site. You’ll need to attract the right people and you can find other websites in your niche to see their terms for selling and prices etc.
Before anyone will pay to advertise on your blog though you’ll need to have generated a considerable amount of daily traffic. So this is an option for when your site is doing really well. If you’re new to blogging, it’s unlikely anyone will pay to show a banner on your site; particularly if you’re still struggling to get visitors.
This article explains more ways to sell advertising space on your website.
