How to make money from blogging
There are several ways to monetize a blog. Learn about different online monetization models and
popular strategies for monetizing your blog.
If you own a website or blog, or you're thinking of starting a website or blog, it's never too late to start monetizing it. There are several ways to monetize a blog. This article discusses different online monetization models and popular strategies for monetizing digital content.
Let's start with the basics. What is meant by making a profit? To make it simple, monetizing means getting income from your website. When you monetize your online content on your blog, this process is known as monetization.
To start monetizing your blog, there are several online business models available:
- Ads
- ad network
- Digital or physical product offerings
- Subscriptions
- training
How can you and your blog achieve success through these templates? Let's take a closer look at each of the monetization models.
Make money with ads: You can display ads on your blog to get income
As a blog publisher, ads can provide a good source of revenue for your online content. Advertisers are willing to pay to show their ads to your audience. The more popular your website and the content you provide, the more you earn, in the same way that a highly traded newspaper can charge more fees from advertisers.
You can provide advertising space on your site directly to businesses who want their ads to appear alongside your content. This procedure is known as live viewing. You can also use a network of advertising sites, such as Google AdSense, to sell your ad space on your behalf.
AdSense works by displaying ads related to the content that appears on a specific page of your blog. For example, if your blog is about adventure tourism and you just uploaded a post about a trip to Reykjavik, AdSense might display an ad for travel insurance, Iceland, or cozy clothes. As the owner of the site where the ad appears, AdSense pays you when a user views or interacts with the ad.
With the ability to make online ads relevant to your blog's content and readers, many advertisers are keen to pay extra for your ad space.
Ad Network: Generate revenue with product suggestions
The ad network model applies when you include a link to a service or product sold on another website, in your content. Here's how this model works: When a user clicks a link on your website, goes to the affiliate website, and then completes the purchase of the product you've recommended, you'll get a commission for the sale.
For blogs with an engaged audience of users who are interested in product suggestions, this may be a viable revenue model. Articles providing information, how to do things and about lifestyle provide many opportunities to promote affiliate products.
Using the adventure tourism blog example again, let's say you've posted a story about a wild swimming tour. You can use the ad network to suggest items like swimwear, towel, and goggles that you've prepared for your trip. When a blog reader clicks on your suggested swimwear link, and then purchases it, you'll earn revenue from your blog.
To ensure that you maintain your audience's trust, make sure your relationships with affiliate partners are transparent. Disclosure of relationships with affiliate partners is a legal requirement in many countries, so be sure to discuss this with your legal advisor before subscribing to an ad network. Also, remember that your blog's reputation is related to the service or product you're promoting, so please focus on quality when choosing affiliate partners.
Digital and physical product offerings: Sell items to generate revenue from your blog
Many bloggers build their presence on an e-commerce platform and create an online store, and then start selling products, as a way to monetize their blogs. Your products may be physical or digital. In the example of an adventure tourism blog, you could sell T-shirts featuring your logo or digital guides to exotic destinations.
Whether your products are physical or virtual, you need to set up a system to accept payments. Selling
physical goods requires thinking about stockpiling, organizing shipping, and paying taxes and fees. For these reasons, digital goods can be less logistically complex, because they can be delivered electronically.
Subscriptions: You can be charged a regular fee to add a new source of income
If your blog has a community of active members eager to learn more about your topic, a subscription or paid membership form is another way to use the valuable content you provide for long-term profit.
In this business model, readers pay a fixed amount on a regular basis, usually monthly or annually. By charging your readers a subscription or membership fee in this way, you can generate a recurring revenue. This type of continuous cash flow makes it possible to provide a more predictable, accurate and stable source of earnings.
In return, you can offer featured content, a space to meet with community members, educational resources, videos, or additional tools and services. You can combine some of these elements to match your blog.
Training: You can monetize your blog by providing training programs
If your blog is suitable for training services, you can earn money by setting up and getting paid for training kits or online courses.
When you create self-learning materials, such as videos or downloadable e-books, you allow members of your audience to continue at their own pace. As users progress through the course stages, you can assess how much they are interested in other topics you want to cover.
Developing an online curriculum can take a lot of time and resources up front, so you'll need an engaged audience to make it workable.
Offering training programs through live videos and getting paid for your time is another option to increase your earnings.
Whether your service is an online course or an on-demand training program, you can also provide opportunities to connect with your students through email or on your blog.
Remember that you have a lot of options to monetize your blog. You can master a single blogging monetization strategy, or you can combine and match any number of monetization sources to see which one is doing the best for your business. And if you are interested in learning more information about making money online, you can head over to our blog.