You might have heard that it’s possible to earn a living from blogging, but how do you do that? Especially if you’re new to blogging or you haven’t earned anything from it in the past.
The answer is it takes time, effort, and plenty of imagination. You first need to develop your blog and grow your audience. This is key when starting out.
You need to give up thinking of your blog as simply a passion project and start thinking of it as a business that requires marketing efforts and investments of time and possibly money.
Still, there are plenty of free and effective time ways to monetize your this year and earn some proper monthly income from it. Read on to find out more.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing has been practiced for hundreds of years, well before the Internet became a reality. In the past, affiliate marketing took the form of going to network events and handing out business cards.
The hope was that the referral might lead to a sale. Now with the Internet traveling at full steam more possibilities have opened up.
If you want to transform your blog from a passion project into a small business this year you should seriously consider boarding the affiliate marketing gravy train.
In this model, you sign up to a company in your niche, like bed linens, that have an affiliate marketing program.
They take care of product sales and shipping, while you perform some of their marketing for them.
Typically you will have a range of products from their stores to discretely advertise on your blog.
You can do this by introducing products, outlining their features and benefits, then providing a link to the store. If customers click through and make a sale you will earn a commission for very little outlay or effort.
Advertising
Advertising is one of the main ways businesses and brands earn money on the Internet.
It has always been important for businesses to advertise, not only to generate interest in a new product but to maintain their brand visibility.
Today, much of these advertising efforts have been shifted online. If you have a blog you can benefit from this.
One of the easiest ways to earn money from advertising is to sign your blog up to Adsense or a similar online advertising agency.
You will have to meet the criteria for the platform, such as quality content and reasonably sized audience.
When you’ve been accepted the agency will assign ads to the specified ads section on your website.
If your worries that ads might take over your blog and cheapen it’s appeal you might be surprised. Google in particular is committed to relevance on the Internet.
This means the ads you see on your website are always meaningful to the content. They are also discreet and only take up the space you allow for advertising.
Ebooks
When you started your blog you probably didn’t have ebook writing in mind, you probably pursued an interest or passion, got some good feedback and continued writing.
As your blog has grown, however, you may have started to wonder how you can monetize your blog and generate some income. One good way is to write an ebook.
After a while of writing your blog content you will have built up a certain degree of expertise and authority in your field.
This is a knowledge base few people will have in the same way as you, and it has monetary value. It also has marketing value and can be harnessed to improve your readership and SEO performance.
Writing an ebook is not as difficult as you might imagine. It’s a bit like writing a long form blog post that’s around 50,000 words.
And it’s especially easy if you already have a lot of research and free-floating knowledge about your niche subject. When you have your ebook written you can sell it directly and link to it through guest posts.
Podcasts
The Internet is changing and so is content. The written word is still central to much of the content online but it’s becoming extended in several ways.
Video content, for instance, is becoming much more popular and common, as is interactive content in the form or games, puzzles, polls, and podcasts.
If you want to successfully turn your blog into a business this year you should consider extending your content.
One leading way to do this is through the medium of a podcast. A podcast is easy to arrange and brings a wealth of value to your website and audience. In terms of audience engagement it is excellent.
A podcast is easy to set up and run based on the knowledge you have of your niche, but your episodes can also be broken up into valuable written content for blog posts and ads.
When you interview guests you add further value to your project. It may not earn you money firstly but it’s an essential marketing tool and content strategy.
Your Services
Turning your blog into a small business means you need to think outside the box and stretch your imagination.
The value you can offer your audience is the knowledge and skills you’ve built up while running your blog. This could be in the form of a knowledge base, or it could simply be your experiences.
Your experiences and knowledge base have value on the Internet and you can make use of that to monetize your blog.
Start by creating a course that you can sell on Udemy and promote on your blog and social media.
This will generate both active and passive income for you. But that’s not all, you might also create a workshop or consultant service.
Depending on your niche you could create an online workshop or series of short courses.
These are proving to be a lucrative source of income for many people and provide good value to your blog as well in terms of inference and audience.
This is an effective growth strategy as it co-presents other forms of monetization.
- DISCLOSURE – This post has been written by an outside source
