subject: Top 5 Ways To Monetize Your Blog [print this page] Top 5 Ways To Monetize Your Blog Top 5 Ways To Monetize Your Blog
One of the main motivations for starting a blog is money. No shame in that. We've all got mouths to feed and bills to pay.
Some of you may have children, some of you may have charities you support, most of you may have a mortgage or debt and some of you may be on the verge of quitting your job - whatever your situation is, most blogs aren't started just for the sake of writing. Money is a big component for starting.
With blogging, you have the added bonus of being able to help or educate others while you make money.Those who start blogging usually wonder how much money they can make. How much usually depends on how you want to make your money and what kind of content you produce.
So let's see the ways you can monetize your blog or website (I'll break it down and explain each one for beginners):
Some of you may believe that putting ads on your website will turn readers away but it doesn't.I'm not talking about pop-up ads though, because I find those incredibly annoying. But ads that sit neatly on your blog are okay. As along as you provide quality content, people don't care if there are ads there to support your great work. You don't charge them anything for offering free content, readers shouldn't mind some ads in exchange.
Pay Per Click (PPC) / Cost Per Click (CPC)
What is PPC? Pay Per Click is an ad model where advertisers pay (you) the publisher of the website when an advertisement has been clicked. They use it on search engines too, where the advertisers bid on keywords that their customers may type, to show up along with the results. Advertisers only pay for ads that are clicked. Cost Per Click is what it costs the advertisers for a single click that directs a visitor to their website..
How do you put those ads on your site? After signing up, they give you your own unique code (or script) to paste into your website, which will populate the chosen area with the ads. Of course, they do give you various size ads and colours to pick from. I'll get into the more technical side of putting ads in your websites in the next post: How To Customize Your Blog.
PPC Ad Companies:
Google Adsense
Yahoo Publisher Network
Chitika
AdBrite
Bidvertiser
Kanoodle
Kontera (minimum 10,000 pageviews a month to join)
Cost Per Impression (CPM or CPI)
Cost Per Impression goes by a few names: Cost Per Mille (CPM) and Revenue Per Thousand Impressions (RPM). They work similarly to PPC except instead of clicking, it's cost per 1000 impressions, much like how traditional print and TV advertising works. You get paid in line with the number of impressions or page views and the position of the ad (top of page usually gets more.) Each time their ad loads on a new visitor's screen, that counts as one impression.Not surprisingly they do monitor and discount people who refresh their screens.
CPM Ad Companies:
Google Adsense
AdBrite
Affiliate Marketing (CPA or CPL)
I recall the first time I heard the words "affiliate marketing", it sounded dodgy and salesy.But when I learned more about it, it happens to be the opposite. It's a profitable and fair way to sell, and when done right, may be more profitable than PPC or CPI advertising. Sometimes referred to as Cost Per Action (CPA) or Cost Per Lead (CPL) advertising, you earn a commission on the sales made when someone buys the advertiser's service or product. Some provide you with an on-going commission for the life of the customer.
After signing up, advertisers supply you with a unique URL (a link) or code where you can paste banners and ads or hyperlinks on your website, if someone clicks through and buys something, you get paid. Affiliate marketing isn't just limited to your website, you can even include your unique affiliate links in your newsletter emails to your subscribers. Unlike PPC advertising, you can choose which companies you would like to affiliate with. Because of this control, I can choose companies whose products I am already using and feel confident in recommending.
Affiliate Companies:
Commission Junction
Link Share
Click Bank
Epic Direct
You can also ask your favorite online company if they offer commissions to affiliates
Pick Your Own Ads
Most PPC ad companies don't allow the publisher of the blog (you) to control what type of ads show up. On the other hand, affiliates ad companies do. There's another option if you want to exert more control over types of ads you want shown. OiO Publisher lets you choose what kind of ads to show and how to show them (banners, text links.) Without the need for any programming skills, it comes as a ready to use plugin for WordPress blogs - but not for the free WordPress.com hosted blogs ie: www.yourblogname.wordpress.com. Interested advertisers from the OiO marketplace may also contact you to advertise on your blog.
For PPC and other affiliate ads, you only get a percentage of the revenue, with OiO Publisher, you can keep 100% of the revenue. The only negative thing is that it's a paid service -- a one time fee of US$47.
Text Link Advertising
This is actually the least intrusive form of advertising where ads only show if someone hovers over a double underlined text link (usually in green.) Even though some ads aren't geared to your keywords, the click rate is higher. After signing up, text link advertisers provide you with a unique code (or script) to paste into your website which will automatically populate every page with text link ads. Some advertisers have ad management systems where you can control the quantity of text link ads to show and which page to show them on.
Text Link Ad Companies:
Info Links
Text Link Ads (not a favorite of mine)
By all means the ad companies I've listed above are not conclusive. There are many more out there but the above are the big guys online and are well known and trusted. Some are superior to others and a few require you to have a Paypal account to receive payments.
If you go with lesser known companies, do your research to make sure they're legitimate.
I have purposely left out other ad companies like Advertising.com, Burst Media and Casale Media because they require your blog to have 10,000 page views or more to join. Once your blog audience grows large enough, those companies are worth considering.
Selling Digital Products
Ebooks
I adore ebooks, they're an instant gratification product and they're easy to create. Customers don't have to wait for items to arrive, there's no shipping involved for the author, ebooks can link to websites online, you get to have colorful images without worrying about printing costs and they cost close to nothing to make. The hardest part is the writing but creating it is a really simple process. With the popularity and growth of ebooks exploding, you'd be crazy not to ever create one if you have a blog! Best of all, creating ebooks is free!
To make an ebook, open your word processor, structure the document well (look at other PDF ebooks for structure/design inspiration), write it, then spell check and ask a friend to read through for errors or suggestions. Then go to www.primopdf.com and download the FREE Primo software which will convert your document effortlessly into a PDF. The most popular ebooks are "how to" and non-fiction ebooks.
If you're stuck for time or just lazy, you can get somebody else to write an ebook for you -- although I don't really recommend it because of ethical reasons. But I'm not here to judge and what you do with your ebook is your own business. Where to find writers? oDesk and Elance are great places to find writers.
E-courses (video/audio format)
Do you have a camera? Do you have online skills that you want to teach to others and make some money with? If you do and even if you are camera shy, you can still produce e-courses that you can sell. E-courses are just like normal courses except they're in digital formats which can be downloaded so your readers can instantly begin to learn the new skills.
No shipping, no stock to store, no manufacturing required -- other than the initial digital product creation.For instance, say you want to sell a downloadable jewellery making e-course. If you have a camera, you can get someone to film you making the items. Then categorize them into earrings, bracelets, necklaces etcetera. Editing can be done in Windows Movie Maker or the Mac iMovie video editing software. If you're camera shy, have your friend film your hands making the item instead.
Another example is Photoshop. Say you want to sell an e-course concerning how to use Photoshop or how to create cool images, Camtasia is an awesome software that will capture your on-screen shots of you doing the tutorial. Then you edit it and voila: video e-course ready to sell. And it's not some blurry, fuzzy videos either, it captures in high quality. The downside is, Camtasia is expensive (as of writing, it's USD$299 a pop). But they do offer a free 30-day trial so if you can create your whole e-course within that time frame, the e-course would've cost you nothing to make. On-screen tutorials isn't just limited to images and Photoshop, there are thousands of tutorials, just pick the ones you know or are passionate about.
Another digital e-course format you can sell are audio files, but they're not as popular. However it depends on the topic or industry your blog and product is about. If you're a singing teacher attempting to sell e-courses, an audio format would be best and would be a cinch to create with a microphone and recording software. However you can also produce CDs too. But having to make copies of the CDs, doing the cover and shipping them will increase the time you have to spend on these trivial things, rather than on important things like promoting your blog.
Selling Physical Products
Affiliates (Amazon or someone else's products)
Affiliate marketing may also apply to physical products and the best example is Amazon. With such a large range of products on Amazon, it'd be tough to not find a compatible product that suits your website or keywords.So, just how does Amazon Associates (aka affiliates) work? You search their items or find products you already have that you would like to recommend. Amazon will give you the text links, image banners and widgets for that product for you to use on your website. Widgets are blocks of ads you can customize to your liking with a few clicks. In the event you can't find a product or don't know what to choose, you can advertise whole categories like toys, cosmetics, clothes, gadgets etcetera.
And if you still don't know what to choose, you can pick books to advertise that are relevant to your keywords and blog. Once these items are being promoted on your website, if a visitor clicks on the ads or links and buys something from Amazon, you earn a commission -- even on other stuff that the customer adds to their order.There are other companies which offer commissions to affiliates. You can find them by Googling.
Drop Shipping (someone else's products)
Drop shipping is more geared towards traditional e-commerce websites than blogs but it doesn't mean you can't use it to monetize yours. Some blogs are a hybrid of a blog and an e-commerce website. If you're wondering what drop shipping is, it's the retailer (you) without having to deal with holding stock or shipping stock to customers - the wholesaler or manufacturer does everything - all you do is market and sell the products.
The pros of drop shipping:
No stock to buy
No storage fees because you don't have inventory to store
No shipping required (thus saving you time)
Wholesaler / manufacturer provides you with product & product info (images, etc)
You get paid by the customer before you pay the wholesaler / manufacturer
You purchase at wholesale prices and in low volume
The cons of drop shipping:
There are dodgy drop shippers out there so do the research
Products may be sold out when your customer orders so you always have to check their stock availability
Defective products and returns might reflect badly on you
Slow shipping by wholesaler or lost packages might reflect badly on you
Some wholesalers charge a monthly fee to use drop shipping
Here's a well known US drop shipping company: Doba
There are others out there too, even on eBay so do your research and make sure they're legitimate.
I mentioned above how there are lots of ways to produce digital products to promote. But selling one-off items means you must continually promote to get new customers (or create up-sell products).E-courses and online training programs that run for a few months have become more popular because people want to be taught and have their hand held to gain new skills. Self learning is one thing but having a teacher live with you (even though it's online) makes it so much easier and faster to learn. The best thing for publishers of mentoring programs is that sales can be phenomenal if you do the product launch correctly.
To top it off, you can charge reoccurring billing so you get consistent income.
On-going web based classes usually last anywhere from six to nine months or even a year for some. Lessons are delivered by email (like a newsletter), webcasts and other downloadable video and audio formats. Some also deliver CDs and physical workbooks, but that may require additional cost and time (and I prefer to be as free as possible so I like digital products better.)
Paid membership sites work in a similar way except the reoccurring billing for that can run on for as long as the site and content continues! -- and of course as long as your customer stays subscribed to the membership. Think of it like a magazine subscription that's read online.
Paid membership subscriptions can be something so simple as a newsletter - however, you must deliver on great content as most people won't pay to subscribe to a newsletter unless you provide value to them. There are plenty of free newsletters out there so you need to convince customers why they should pay for yours.
While the reoccurring billing sounds awesome, the downside to on-going memberships is that you have to continually come up with great content for your subscribers -- whereas one-off products like ebooks are made once at the beginning. And if you have a free newsletter and you also write free content on your blog then that's 3 sets of content you have to write.
How do you deliver the content for paid memberships? It can be sent exactly like a regular newsletter -- you can either use AWeber or a free newsletter widget that you can install into your blog to email your subscribers list. Remember: not being consistent with your newsletters may cost you subscribers.
Donations
Even if your blog is a business and isn't a charity, it doesn't mean you can't have a donate button on it. Paypal offers donate buttons which you can paste onto your website to get donations from generous readers. Why ask for donations? A number of people like to give if you have provided them with valuable information or have entertained them. One of the most successful bloggers online, Steve Pavlina includes a donate button -- even though he monetizes his site as well.
If your blog helps people, your readers may choose to support you back. It's like a monetary "thank you". You may even help raise funds for your favorite charity by giving the donations away. There's no shame in monetizing your blog or website with a donate button if your content brings entertainment, provides education or provides helpful information.
Monetizing Your Blog Is Good!
I hope this post will give you a good idea of the ways people monetize their blogs. You don't have to do all of them to earn some income so choose what's comfortable for you.
Monetizing your blog or website shouldn't feel bad, after all, you're providing value to people and should be rewarded. If you feel bad about monetizing your blog then just use the donate option instead. Or figure out why being rewarded for your efforts would make you feel so guilty.
Next up in this series: How To Customize Your Blog
