There are several strategies you can use to monetize your blog, but we’ll focus on four.
1. Selling Your Own Products
The natural fit for creating revenue from your blog is selling your own products and services. Now, there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about this. The wrong way is to write a super-promotional post about your product. That’s the fast track to turning off your blog readers and making them never come back.
The right way is to provide value in that copy about your product. Maybe you include a video of you demonstrating how to use your product. Or write a post on ten unusual ways to use it. Share product reviews from around the Internet. Whichever you choose, include a juicy offer at the end — one readers won’t find anywhere but your blog. This should entice some of them to click the link to your product page and buy.
2. Advertising
Another option is to accept advertising on your blog. This works best once your traffic is pretty high (meaning over 10K unique visitors a month), since advertisers want to maximize the number of people that see their ad on your blog.
Typically, blogs that offer ads have several sizes to choose from, including a wide banner up at the top and smaller square ads on the sidebar. You can price these accordingly.
With advertising, you have two options for how you find advertisers:
- Include a link on your site that advertisers can click to sign up with you
- Work through an ad network like Media.net that populates your ad space for you
You will, of course have greater earning potential with the first option, but you’ll need to do more legwork to find advertisers. The nice thing about working with an ad network is you can specify the types of ads you want, install some code, and let that network do the work for you.
3. Affiliate Links
Another fairly easy monetizing strategy is to become an affiliate for brands you admire. Then, whenever anyone clicks on the link on your blog, you get some change in your account. Some affiliates pay out nicely whenever someone clicks the link and then makes a purchase.
Again, you have options here. You can work one-on-one with companies that offer affiliate programs, or you can use a network like Commission Junction, where you can handpick from hundreds, the brands you want to represent on your blog.
4. Sponsored Posts
One technique that helps you leverage your influence is working with corporations to create sponsored posts on your blog. Let’s say you write a small business blog, and a well-known office supply store reaches out to you to discuss opportunities to work together. That company wants access to your blog readers, and you want compensation for the privilege.
So you charge a fee for that brand to write a post for your site. Or you can write a post about a product or service. The clients gets a link back to their website or special offer, they get the brand exposure, and access to your readers. This strategy also works really well, if you have a significant social media following and blog subscribers.
Tips for Smarter Blog Monetization
Remember not to get so greedy when monetizing your blog that you devalue your content. Always weigh each advertiser carefully and ask yourself: Will this advertiser bring value to my readers? Is their content relevant to my core purpose and audience? If the answer is no, politely decline the offer and keep looking for the right partnership.
Finding good advertising partners for your blog can help you build long-term relationships that are profitable to your business.
“Blog Computer Keys In Blue ” courtesy of Stuart Miles / www.freedigitalphotos.net
This is the third and final post in my series on blogging. Click to read Why Everyone Should Blog and How to Launch a Blog.