Blogging is typically just a hobby, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t earn from it as well. Of course, the more regular readers you have the greater the earning potential; but even if you have several thousand people visiting your site every day, you still need to go about it the right way.
You might be fully versed on the subject matter of your blog, but not have much of an idea when it comes to the mechanics of monetizing your site. Don’t worry, you are not the first person to be in this position, and you can get the ball rolling just by following these few simple steps.
1. Look to incorporate advertising
One of the easiest ways to monetize your blog is to incorporate advertising around and spaced throughout your text. Rather than tying up deals with various businesses and products at the start, it might be better just to incorporate Google Ads into your site. This can provide you with some tick-over revenue while you approach brands that are associated with the subject matter of your blog. Of course, if your site already gets a decent amount of traffic, some agencies might approach you.
2. Use woo commerce to sell relevant products
In addition to this, you will probably want to start selling products that feature (or are relevant to) the topics that you write about, and for this, you will need an online shop somewhere on your website. If you aren’t sure how to go about this (and even if you think you are), there are experts who can provide migration services or even website development and design to get you set up and look professional.
As you are new to this you will probably want somewhere local rather than in a different time zone, so if you are based in London you’ll want a London woocommerce agency and the same applies if you happen to be in Bristol, Manchester, or Glasgow. Of course, this may incur a fee, but when it comes to an element as vital as this you should not be cutting corners, and this will doubtless get better results than trying to do it yourself.
3. Build a mailing list
If you aren’t already capturing your reader’s contact details, then you are sorely missing a trick. Building a mailing list of interested parties is one of the most prominent methods of making money from your blog. Of course, in order to do this successfully you need to be able to offer them something in return.
This could be a bit of free swag that is associated with your regular topics; or more often than not, it is a regular newsletter that features interesting articles that will pull the readers once again to your website—or selling page. Even if you have no desire to sell to your readers yourself, you will find it worthwhile to have a nice long mailing list sitting on your CRM software that can be contacted about any joint venture offers you get involved in.
4. Take on sponsored posts
Another way in which you can make money from your blogs is to open it up to other writers. Undoubtedly, you are not going to want to accept just anything, so it is important that you vet each piece carefully to make sure that it makes sense, that it is plagiarism-free, and that it is relevant to your readership’s interest.
For the articles that you do show, you can charge sponsorship for—even noting at the top of each piece, if you like, that it is a ‘sponsored’ article. This will also help to fill up your website and keep it active and interesting with new content.
5. Write product reviews with affiliate links
You already no doubt know a little bit about affiliate marketing. If you don’t, then this is where you approach a company that provides products or services that are within the same niche as your blog, and offer to create content for their products on an affiliate basis—normally in the shape of a product review.
They will then supply you with a personalized link, and you’ll receive a commission for each item sold to anyone who clicks it. If you are going to do this you need to put in a disclaimer on your site to say that you could make money from any sales; and to maintain credibility with your readers you should remain honest in your reviews regardless of how much cash is on the line.