How do blogs earn money? Blogs earn money in several ways. Most bloggers use a business model called affiliate marketing, if they don’t have their own business or product/s. What is affiliate marketing? With affiliate marketing, you can refer website traffic to other people’s products and services and earn a percentage of the profit. Bloggers can link out to affiliate products and programs which offer things like physical products, training and software products.
The other way bloggers monetise their blogs is through advertising. Google Adsense is one of the most popular advertising platforms which lets you do this. Simply join Google Adsense and connect your blog to your Adsense account. You’ll be able to place code on your website which is turned into appropriate advertising for your visitors. When they click on your adverts, you earn a percentage of advertising revenue.
You need a lot of visitors to make advertising pay though since each click is only worth a tiny amount – usually less than $1 (or £.075 pence).
How Do Blogs Earn Money?
Bloggers also use email marketing to connect with more people who have visited their blog. Selling an affiliate product is quite difficult directly from a website. Most people will need to see a product several times before they buy. So selling directly from a blog can be tricky. But with email marketing, a blogger offers something for free from their website, in exchange for a visitor’s email address.
I offer a few giveaways on my site, for example. Here’s an ebook I wrote to help people learn how to make money from a blog:
This ebook is used as a lead magnet. When a website or blog visitor signs up to an email list, they usually do so through a “lead magnet”. Once they sign up to an email list they become a lead. On a website, someone only has a few minutes to decide whether to buy an affiliate product from the blogger, or not. But once they have signed up to the blogs email list, this time span is greatly increased.
Once on an email list, the subscriber will receive a number of automated email messages which help them with their particular interest/problem. Bloggers usually use their list to build trust, provide value and sell affiliate products.
An email list is a great way to monetise blogging, when used in conjunction with a good affiliate product which is a good match for the subscriber/visitor.
How Do Blogs Earn Money – Traffic
Blogs need traffic to make money through Advertising or affiliate marketing. What is traffic in affiliate marketing? Traffic refers to your visitors who come to see content you have created. To get people to your blog there’s a number of activities you need to do as a blogger. It’s not just about the creating of content, although that is a large part.
Bloggers create hundreds and thousands of posts in order to gain the attention of the organic search engines. If they accomplish this, they get free traffic, and make money through advertising and/or affiliate sale. If they have their own business or product, they might use a blog to attract customers to sell their own product or service.
No Traffic = No Money!
Without traffic, even with the best products on your site, you won’t make any money. Getting traffic to make enough money to be a full time blogger is a commitment. Not all bloggers manage it and everyone starts from having no traffic at all. Bloggers craft their content and share it as much as possible in order to help put content in front of potential customers. They might use:
- A keyword planner to help them find search terms which are already being looked for online
- Plugins to help them optimise their content and get more shares on social media
- Share plugins which automatically syndicate content out to their social media platforms
- SEO services who build links for them to generate greater SEO (search engine optimisation) power in the view of the search engines: Google, Bing, Yahoo, Duckduckgo etc.
Keyword Research – Finding Long Tail Keywords With Low SEO Difficulty
Bloggers use a variety of different strategies and some will simply write content regularly in their subject area to build up a content library. Some bloggers will deliberately target long tail keywords which have low SEO difficulty. Finding long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty can be done using Google’s free keyword planner.
With the planner, you can type in your main “seed keyword”. The keyword planner will then give you a number of ideas of keywords which are already being searched for on the internet. By finding the long tail keywords, you can target articles written on a blog which are more likely to show up in the organic search results. If successful, this can mean you get free traffic, although this strategy will be a little hit and miss at times.
Often the long tail keywords being searched for online have much less competition than those which have more searches. Shorter keyword phrases often have millions of monthly searches online. But these kinds of keywords are incredibly competitive and a new blog especially will struggle to rank for them even in the top 10 pages of the search results.
So it makes sense for bloggers to target the longer tail keywords which have 4 or more keywords in them. “Do blogs earn money” for example, rather than “blogging” will have more chance of getting found in the organic search results.
Summary
Blogs can earn money through an existing product/business which the blogger owns. If a blogger doesn’t own their own business or product, they can monetise through advertising (e.g. Google Adsense) or through affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing lets a blogger send visitors to a third party product/service and earn a percentage of the profit.
Sales can be generated directly from a blog through linking to third party affiliate companies. Alternatively, many bloggers build an email list of subscribers and promote products through their list. See the power of email marketing. An email list allows a blogger to build a longer term relationship with their subscribers and showcase a product in more depth. From a blog, visitors only have a small “window” of time to make a purchasing decision. But once on an email list, this time period is dramatically increased.
Traffic is key to making money from a blog and then bloggers need to convert traffic into leads and sales. Without traffic a blogger won’t make any money and this is often the hardest part of earning money from a blog. See also blogging away debt and Blogging QnA.