Most bloggers understand the basic blogging principle – traffic equals income ‘potential’. So the first thing each blogger tries to generate is quality traffic.
After generating some traffic, the next step is to monetize your blog and make your traffic a source of income. The method you choose to use at this step could seriously affect how much you make so it is wise to consider all your options. Also, you do not have to use only one method of monetization. In fact, most successful bloggers use a mix of methods and this is usually the best approach.
If your blog is new but you have been able to generate quite some traffic, or you are looking for new methods to make money from your blog, this post explains 5 of the most profitable and popular methods.
1. Affiliate Marketing
This is one of the best ways to monetize your blog. As an affiliate marketer for a product or service, you are giving a unique link to the page where the product can be purchased and you can put this link in a banner or text ad, or include it in an article or product review. Each time a person buys a product or service through your link, you get a commission from the sale.
Whether your blog is about cars programming, or agriculture, you can find merchants that offer related affiliate programs using a simple Google search.
2. CPC and CPM Advertisements
Ad services such as Google Adsense provide advertisements you can place on your blog. These advertisements usually fall into two categories, Cost Per Click and Cost Per Mille (or cost per thousand).
Cost Per Click: In this method, you place an ad from the service on your blog and get paid anytime someone clicks on the ad. Cost per click literally refers to the actual amount you get paid each time someone clicks on the ad, and the average amount is about $0.30.
Cost Per Mille: Here you get paid per 1000 impressions. That is, when the ad is shown 1000 times to readers of your blog, you are paid a specific amount. The average cost per a thousand views (CPM) is around $2.80 for banner ads.
CPC and CPM ads are best suited for high traffic sites because of two basic metrics – click through rate (CTR) and CPC/CPM (which we have defined). Click through rate is the rate at which your blog readers click on your ads. It is a ratio of clicks to pageviews, that is CTR = (Number of clicks / Number of pageviews) X 100.
So if you have a 1% CTR and your blog gets 5000 page views per day, this means 1% of the pageviews lead to a click which gives you 50 clicks. If your CPC is $0.30, then you’d be making $15 (i.e. 50 X 0.30) per day.
On the other hand, if you are using CPM ads at $2.80 per 1000 views, and your site gets 5000 pageviews each day, you’d be making $14 per day.
3. Sell A Product
If you are a blogger, I’m pretty certain you know how to write, and you have knowledge and passion about a certain topic. You can thus create and sell ebooks to your readers. Many bloggers have used this method and made big bucks from it. Besides ebooks, there are many other physical products you can sell. As long as the products you choose are related to your blog, you can promote them in your posts, get people to buy, and make money from selling to your readers.
4. Sell A Service
Many bloggers have made a name and a business out of selling their professional services, such as online courses, speaking at events, designing client websites, consulting, personal coaching, and a lot more. Evidence has shown that this is one of the best ways to make money from your blog.
5. Sell Ad Space
Instead of renting your ad spaces through CPM or CPC ads, you can sell them yourself. This method offers more promise for higher income, but you have to directly sell your space to companies.
To use this method, your blog first needs quality traffic with which you can convince ad space buyers. After building some traffic, you can then identify companies that sell products and services related to your blog topic and approach them about advertising on your website.
Even if your website does not yet get a ton of traffic, as long as your traffic is ‘targeted’ (i.e. from people who are interested in what your target company offers), you can sell your space based on this.
A Few Things To Keep In Mind
If you started a blog with the aim to make money from it, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that mindset. Many bloggers suggest that you spend time blogging passionately and wait for it to naturally lead to income, but I believe that’s simply hiding away from the obvious. People make money through blogging and you want to do the same. And here’s the simple truth, you can and you will. In fact, I believe you can do better at this if you approach it with a business mindset. However, even if initially, the income from your blog is minimal, keep on blogging, continue learning from professionals, and continue upgrading your methods, and you will soon be reckoned among the internet successful.
Hopefully, the monetization techniques I’ve shared in this post can help you start making some money with your blog. If there some other methods you’ve tried and found effective, I’d love to hear about them in the comments below.
