Wondering how to monetise a blog? There’s several ways you can make money from a blog. So if you have a blog already or are just thinking about starting a blog, this post is for you!
Blogging is a hugely popular way to build an online presence, but with over 6 million blogs on the internet, it’s also hugely competitive. So getting people to visit your blog is problem number one. Once you’ve managed to build a good number of daily visitors to your blog, then comes the question of monetisation.
There’s many pros and cons of blogging. One of the pros is that it’s super cheap and you can blog from anywhere. One of the cons is that it’s super competitive and you not only need to find visitors for your blog, but also turn those visitors into cash in some way. Here’s some of the ways you can do it.
How To Monetise A Blog: Google Adsense
There’s many alternatives to Google Adsense, but it’s the favourite when it comes to putting ads on blogs. With Google Adsense, anyone with a website or blog can join and place ads on their site. When people click on those adverts, you make a percentage of the advertising revenue.
Although the percentage of revenue you receive is only small, by getting a lot of advert clicks, you can make a passive income from a blog. This can be grown over time by getting more traffic to your blog.
The money you make from each advertising click on your site depends on the topic of your blog. In a highly competitive topic, there’s more people bidding against each other for advertising clicks. Hence, in a competitive topic, you’ll earn more money from each click. However, if a topic is more competitive, it’s usually also much more difficult to get free traffic for that particular topic, too. With Google Adsense you’ll need free traffic because it’s not worth paying for ads when you only make a tiny amount from your visitors.
How To Monetise A Blog: Affiliate Marketing
Another popular method to monetise a blog is with affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a business model where anyone can refer website visitors to products and services online. There’s thousands of affiliate products you can choose from online too, so whatever topic your blog covers, there’s usually something appropriate which you can sell from it.
Amazon is one of the first stop shops for affiliate marketers because there’s such a huge array of products which you can choose from. Clickbank is another popular “bank” for affiliate products which are digital. With digital products you can generally earn a larger percentage of the sale than with physical products.
If you’re going to monetise a blog with affiliate products, you need to find products which relate to the interests of your audience. A bad match between topic and products mean you’ll be unlikely to sell anything. Affiliates with a blog usually also offer an opt in offer on their site with some free information. Visitors can then join their email list and be updated regularly about affiliate products which they sell. This is a good idea because it helps the sales process by getting an email autoresponder. See free autoresponder for affiliate marketing.
How To Monetise A Blog: Leverage Your Blog To Become A Freelancer
Once you have some content on your blog, you can present yourself as a freelance writer in your specific topic. Depending on your niche, and the businesses who are looking for freelancers, this can be quite lucrative.
Sites such as Upwork, Fiverr and SEOclerks tend to be where many freelancers hang out. But you can also search for other freelancers in your area on Linkedin to validate your niche topic.
You’ll need to find gigs yourself so it’s a good idea to establish your authority first before reaching out. Do this by creating a lot of content on your site and perhaps reach out to do some guest posts on other authority websites.
To find potential opportunities you can do a simple Google search for niche businesses in your area who might want the services of a freelancer. Type “your niche blog” into Google and approach businesses directly through their website.
Sell Your Own eBook
Yes eBooks are a great way to monetise a blog. It’s relatively simple to create an ebook and sell it on your website. Use your existing expertise to offer something of value to your visitors. You can even use existing content to create an ebook which you can sell. Ideally build an email list from your blog and use your marketing messages to promote your ebook.
Ebooks are also great lead magnets if you choose to use affiliate marketing with your blog. A lead magnet is something you use to encourage website visitors to sign up to your email newsletter.
See also how to sell a ebooks on your website.
Sell A Course
Many bloggers have a huge amount of knowledge and expertise which they can turn into courses of their own. You can ask your email subscribers what they would want from a course or come up with ideas based on your content. It’s not super difficult to create a course which you can sell. You can even upload a video series or training videos and have it hosted on your site. There’s lot of software and plugins which can help you create a course on your blog.
If you’re not up to creating your own course you can sell someone else’s as an affiliate marketer. Here’s an online course I promote which helps people build online businesses.
See also subscription affiliate programs which are a useful way to monetise a website and earn recurring income from memberships.