The blog was an abbreviated version of “weblog,” which is a term used to describe websites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. Blogging is simply the act of journaling online, either with a purpose or without. It is the process of sharing, or reaching out and breaking down cultural and ideological ideals.
Many blogs focus on a particular topic such as web design, home decor, sports, or mobile technology. Some are more eclectic, presenting links to other sites, and others are more like personal journals, presenting the author’s daily life and thoughts.
No matter what your blog is about there are things you can do to make money if that is what you want to do. This blog is about how to monetize a blog.
First, let’s take a look at a few benefits of blogging so that you can better understand how to make money with your blog or website.
Some Benefits to Blogging
Blogging creates opportunities. The most important reason to start a blog is that it creates endless opportunities for its owner. Whether it is in the form of friendships, financial gain, or self-growth, blogging puts your personality out there for the world and gets you noticed in a unique way.
Blogging has huge financial advantages. You don’t need to make money to enjoy blogging. In fact, sometimes making money from your blog can start to distract you from the joy that you found in the first place. That being said, whether you make $20 a year or $20,000 a year, it’s still pretty nice to have a hobby that pays you.
Advertising on your blog can help you financially, as can accepting sponsors if you’re reviewing products. Ultimately, your blog can lead to a career in blogging, which may seem far off from when you started, but it’s becoming far more acceptable today.
Decide why you want to blog. So now that you have started a blog what do you want to do with it? Do you just want to blog for the pure enjoyment of it? There’s certainly nothing wrong with that.
Would you like to earn a little money to pay for your website or would you like to start making money to fund something you want or need? It’s up to you and your imagination. For me, this was an easy question. I wanted to blog because I enjoy writing and wanted to help others. The reason I decided to use my blog to make money is to help fund my retirement. I will share a separate post about this later.
So once you decide that you want to make money with your blog or website, here are a few suggestions to try to monetize your blog. There are many ways that you can make money with your blog, and you’re only limited by your imagination. You should use as many ways as possible without turning your blog into a spam blog.
There are several ways to start monetizing your blog.
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Affiliate Ads
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Selling Products
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Pay-Per-Click Ads (PPC)
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Sell Digital Books (ebooks)
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Promoting Other Sites
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Review Products with Sponsors
Affiliate Ads
One of the best ways to monetize your blog is with affiliate ads. These should be Ads that are related to the content on your site. This will ensure higher click-through rates. No matter what niche or market you decide to break into you’ll always find suitable affiliate programs to promote. Other ads like Google Adsense, InfoLinks, FlexOffers, Yahoo Ads, and Content Ads are also great ads to place on your site. Shareasale has been a good one for me.
To begin as an affiliate marketer you need to apply to those affiliate programs you are interested in which relate to your niche.
A good way to find those affiliate programs is to go to Google and type in your niche and an affiliate program (ie. Disney + affiliate programs) like I did with my Disney site. Wealthy Affiliate also has a huge database of affiliate programs you can do searches for your niche and join.
Each affiliate program offers a different level of commissions. When you sign up with an affiliate program it will state what each company pays. Remember to read the “Terms of Service” for each affiliate program too.
Each program may require you to do certain things or to make a certain amount of sales in a specified amount of time. Amazon requires you to make three sales in a 180-day period while others may give you a little more time. It all depends on that particular company.
Selling Products
Another way to make money with your blog or website is to sell products. What’s that? You don’t have any products to sell? Sure you do! What are you interested in selling?
There are hundreds of affiliate programs that you can associate yourself with and promote their products through your site. Some examples are eBay or Amazon.
First, you need to sign up with their affiliate marketing program, and then you are able to go in and set up an automatic feed as I did with my website BookBastions. This site allows automatic feeds directly from eBay.
If you have products of your own to sell you can set up an e-commerce site. This may require you to change your website depending on which host you chose to use.
Once you have the e-commerce site set up you can upload pictures and pricing of your products and sell them. Good luck with this. I have not tried this approach as I do not have my own personal products to sell but maybe one day I will.
I have seen a lot of other people to be successful with the approach.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads
Google Adsense is just one example where you can apply to be an affiliate marketer through their program and you upload their available marketing ads to your site.
Through click ads, you make a commission from the clicks that go through your website. It is different for every program so make sure you read what each program offers.
Sell Digital Books
This is probably the easiest of all the ways to monetize your website. Clickbank offers hundreds of digital products to choose from. Again, you sign up with Clickbank’s affiliate program. Once your application has been accepted you will be able to log-in and choose from hundreds of products available. Choose products that are related to your topic or niche. I have done this with my BookBastions and Disney websites.
Conclusion
The options for monetizing your website are endless. There are thousands of affiliate programs, there are pay-pay-click ads, there are digital products, there are personal products to be sold or you can promote other products. No matter what you decide you’d like to do just remember to do your research, make sure to read the fine print when signing up as an affiliate, and start inserting the relevant ads or links into your blog or website. I have had a blast learning everything again. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts I had a website for a while and then got away from it. After being away for a few years I missed the writing and engagement with people. I had to basically start over. I wish you all good luck in your endeavors.
Once, you decide on how you want to monetize your site you will need to start driving traffic to your site. See “How to Drive Traffic to a Blog for Beginners.”
Happy Blogging!
Pamela