I have been a professional blogger for more than five years now. I took to blogging initially for our content marketing services business, writing mainly for our clients. But over the years writing became more of a way of life than work or job. Blogs are now one of the main sources of making money online, for many. There are a number of ways you can monetize your blog and earn money from home.
Bloggers have come a long way in the last ten years and India has seen an explosion of bloggers in the last couple of years. Content marketing and entry of local and national businesses in content marketing has suddenly turned blogging into more of a means of a side-income than a hobby. That is not necessarily bad. When done right, a blog can be a source of more detailed information for the readers and can be a win-win situation for all stakeholders.
There are various ways you can monetize your blogs. The recent spurt in corporate spending has meant easy money, but if you want to make serious money and build a steady passive income, you need to focus more on what your readers want than what product companies want.
Niche blogs have a very specific focus and command a huge readership. This, of course, depends on the quality of information that you provide. If your information is well researched, clear, and helps your readers complete their tasks and solve their problems, your traffic and readership will surely rise over time.
I am not going to get into how to blog or the myriad ways you can boost your readership and get more readers to your blog. We have several authority blogs that talk about how to get more traffic in great detail. This post is about the many opportunities and ways you can monetize your blog once you have a decent readership.
1. Monetize with Advertising
Advertising was one of the first avenues of making money from web sites long before blogging came along. And it only flourished in the Web 2.0 world.
However, to get a steady income from advertising on your blog, you not only need a good readership, but also a steady and high traffic. The average CPM rate in 2015 was $ 2.8. What it means is that you would earn approximately $ 2 for every 1000 displays of ads.
The actual calculation is pretty complex. The income would depend on the number of ads you have on one page, and how many of these ads are shown to the user. But for a simple explanation, you could earn $ 2 a day with 10 ads on one page and 100 page views. Provided each ad is displayed for each page visit.
2. Affiliate Earnings
Are you an expert in your field? or do you like to dig deep and find out every little thing before making a decision or buying a product? If you are this person and have a niche blog, Affiliate Marketing is one of the best opportunities to earn from your blog.
Building a blog that talks specifically and authoritatively on one subject gets a lot of faithful readers. Readers who believe in what you say based on the accurate information that you provide them. These regular visitors look up to you for advice and believe that your opinion about a product or service is the final word.
If you have built this type of blog, begin using affiliate links and provide ample opportunities to your readers to follow these and buy the product you are talking about. Technology reviews blog, book reviews blog, and product reviews blog are some of the blogs that fit right in this category.
The earnings from affiliate marketing though depend on a lot of things other than the basic traffic metric. The product you chose must be something people buy online. Higher priced items like laptops, cameras, and similar products have a better revenue compared to low priced products.
With online shopping increasing every year, directing your readers to e-commerce stores is the best way to earn for your effort and advice to your readers.
3. Sponsored Posts Income
With Content Marketing becoming the preferred new mode of marketing, sponsored posts can boost your income from your blog. If you are an influencer in the digital world, consumer product companies associated to your niche will want you to talk about their products and services.
Show them that you have a steady readership of their target audience – not other bloggers – and you have a good chance of getting a steady income for reviewing their products. With sponsored posts you not only get paid for your content from the product owners, but also from the consumers, who click your affiliate links to buy these products online.
4. Job Board Fees
This is one of the less practised and difficult to execute avenues of making an earning from your blog. And I am not talking about being a Monster.com affiliate.
If you talk about professional subjects and your posts focus on tutorials and how to do things, it is ideal for starting a job board. For example, do you talk about how to write software using PHP or Ruby, or something similar. Does your readership include new coders and also veterans in the industry? You can host and start a forum around this topic to show how big your blog readership is.
Finding good talent is difficult. With a targeted readership, small businesses and solopreneurs can pay you a small fee to put up their requirements and jobs to get pitches from a very specific group.
5. Product Creation
Earning money through this method will take a bit more effort, but should not be a problem for an expert blogger. You are an expert in your field. Once you build an authority for your blog and credibility for yourself, earning money through tutorials and short courses in another avenue you can exploit. You can also create eBooks that distill all your experience and knowledge into one comprehensive guide.
There are a number of new entrants each month who want to do what you are doing. Although most of the information people need is available online, finding really good information needs hours of research.
Design a step-by-step email course on the one thing you are good at and have repeat success in. It could be building a niche blog, marketing a blog, or getting traffic to your blog.
There are a number of ways you can monetize your blogs. The best method of monetizing the blog, however, depends on what it is about and the type of blog that you have or want to create. Make sure you choose the topic that is close to your heart. Something you will not get bored about reading and writing everyday. Something that will excite you every morning and propel you toward finding What’s New and how it can be improved. Find this niche for yourself and you will not only enjoy what you do, but you will also be good at it.
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