The Most Profitable Ways of Monetizing a Blog
alt="The Most Profitable Ways of Monetizing a Blog" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/affiliate-program-500x401_c.png" />
Blogging is one of the most popular ways of making money online. It is an entry point for many non-technical people as it requires no previous experience of blogging or working online to set up a blog.
It is common for many people to start a blog without thinking about how it can make money long term.
The good news is, every type of blog can make money.
If a blog has a lot of traffic and a loyal readership, it can be monetized. Today I would like to talk about the main ways you can monetize your blog. Most bloggers use a combination of the methods detailed in this article. So don’t worry, you do not have to pick one particular method over another.
Affiliate Links
I have found embedding affiliate links within articles to be the most profitable way of making money through blogs over the past six or seven years. When I sold my former WordPress blog last year on Flippa, commissions from affiliate links were responsible for more than 75% of my website income.
This obviously did not happen through sheer luck. From the very start of the blog’s life I set out to actively link to services I recommended. The concept is simple:
- Find a service that you like.
- Sign up to their affiliate program.
- Link to their website using your affiliate link.
I know of many bloggers that will link to any website if the affiliate program pays well. I strongly recommend against doing this. Trust is a precious thing and readers will quickly realise that you are only recommending a product or service because you want a commission. Therefore, I only ever review products I have tested myself and I only ever recommend products and services that I know are good.
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class=" wp-image-1137 border" alt="Affiliate Program" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/affiliate-program.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/affiliate-program.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/affiliate-program-300x241.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />
class="wp-caption-text">An example of an affiliate program.
Promoting a bad product to readers may make you a quick buck in the short term but it will damage your reputation in the long term. Do not take your readers trust for granted. The rate of commission is something you should not too worry about when writing a review. It is something I believe that takes care of itself. Some products I recommend only earn me a couple of dollars, others earn me more than per conversion. The most important thing is that the article is useful to the reader. You will be pleasantly surprised at how quickly a few dollars here and a few dollars there can add up to a large chunk of your monthly income.
Affiliate links can be used within your posts and pages. You can also promote products and services using affiliate links on your sidebar, using text links or banners. Below is an screenshot of a page from my friends WordPress website title="WP Squared" href="http://www.wpsquared.com/">WP Squared. Notice that within the article itself, he has reviewed a WordPress design and linked to it using an affiliate link. On the sidebar he is promoting a WordPress theme company using an affiliate link too.
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class=" wp-image-1138 border" alt="Affiliate Links" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/affiliate-links.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/affiliate-links.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/affiliate-links-300x148.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />
class="wp-caption-text">An example of affiliate links being used within content and on a sidebar.
Whilst you should not worry too much about the rate of commission for promoting products when writing articles, it obviously makes sense to place your best converting affiliate programs in premium advertising space such as your sidebar. I recommend using a link cloaking application too (I use the free WordPress plugin title="Pretty Link Lite" href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pretty-link/">Pretty Link Lite). Not only does it make your affiliate URL’s more user-friendly, it also allows you to track the number of clicks every day.
Note that many top blogs do not use affiliate links within content. Doing so may not be in their interests as it could appear to others that they are biased. For example, title="Huffington Post" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/">The Huffington Post would not be able to appear impartial if they were promoting companies within articles (though most top blogs do this in more sneaky ways!). For most bloggers, this is not something to concern yourself about. href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/disclaimer/">A small disclaimer that states that affiliate links may be used is sufficient for most readers, as they know the money is supporting the blog they love.
Banner Sales
Once a blog reaches a few thousands visits per day, it becomes much easier to sell your premium advertising positions directly to advertisers. Revenue from banner sales tends to be much more reliable than promoting companies using their affiliate program. Which is one reason why most top blogs sell ad space directly rather than promoting products using affiliate links.
You can sell advertising directly through your blog. All you need to do is add an advertising information page and invite advertisers to get in touch. You could also automate this process by using a script such as title="OIO Publisher" href="http://www.oiopublisher.com/">OIO Publisher.
Getting advertisers to promote their services on your blog every month can sometimes be a battle. It can also be time consuming. This is why many blog owners use an advertising marketplace such as title="BuySellAds" href="http://buysellads.com">BuySellAds. They take a 25% cut of any sales you make, however they automate the whole process of selling ads. More importantly, their marketplace is viewed every day by thousands of advertisers, therefore your odds of selling advertisements on your blog are greatly increased (75% of something is better than 100% of nothing!).
Another good thing about ad marketplaces such as BuySellAds is that it allows you to find out the market rate of your own ad positions. The marketplace displays information about a website such as how many page views they generate and how much they charge for each ad position. This makes it a fantastic place to research the value of your own blog.
Sponsored Reviews
Sponsored reviews are a popular way of earning a little extra cash on your blog. I made thousands of dollars with my former blogs by charging a set fee for reviewing products and services. When a blog reaches a certain traffic level, they will attract a lot of attention from advertisers. Sponsored reviews was a way of me scaring away advertisers who did not want to pay for their product to be reviewed and a way of making money from those who did (i.e. it got rid of time wasters).
I never guaranteed any review would be positive, I only guaranteed that my review would be fair. Each review had a disclaimer at the bottom that advised readers that the review had been paid for as well.
All of my sponsored reviews came from emails I received directly through my blogs, however there are marketplaces available that match up bloggers with potential advertisers. title="http://www.sponsoredreviews.com" href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/go/sponsoredreviews" target="_blank">Sponsored Reviews and title="http://www.reviewme.com" href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/go/reviewme" target="_blank">ReviewMe are two of the most popular.
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class="aligncenter wp-image-1142 border" alt="Sponsored Reviews" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/sponsored-reviews.png" width="750" height="511" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/sponsored-reviews.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/sponsored-reviews-300x204.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />
Many companies also send products to blog owners so that they can be reviewed. If you agreed to do this, please ensure that you are upfront about any products you are sent within your review. Most Countries have policies in which bloggers need to disclose whenever a company gives them a product for free (such as the Federal Trade Commission in the USA), so you need to be upfront about this.
In-Text Advertising
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In-text advertising was apparently developed to address ad-blindness amongst internet users.
It does this by converting certain keywords within your content into links. It is common for the links to be styled with two underlines, a different color or with a larger font; thus ensuring that everyone can distinguish the advertisement links from normal links. Once a user hovers over an in-text link, an advertisement box will appear.
Popular in-text advertising services include title="Skimlinks" href="http://skimlinks.com">Skimlinks, title="Kontera" href="http://kontera.com/">Kontera, title="LinkWorth" href="http://www.linkworth.com/">LinkWorth and title="InfoLinks" href="http://www.infolinks.com/">InfoLinks.
I have tried in-text advertising in the past though I did not like it as I felt the links made my blog look like a spam blog. Additionally, it did not generate that much extra revenue, certainly not enough to cover the cost of pissing off readers.
Paid Posts
Paid posts allow another blogger or advertiser to pay for an article to be published on your blog. It essentially means someone is willing to pay you a small fee for guest posting on your blog. Occasionally the advertiser will give you an idea of what to write and encourage you to reword it so that it sounds authentic.
The rate you get will depend on the Page Rank and popularity of your blog. Marketplaces such as title="PostJoint" href="http://www.postjoint.com">PostJoint and title="PayPerPost" href="https://payperpost.com">PayPerPost tend to offer around for an article.
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class="wp-caption-text">PayPerPost allows you to negotiate rates with advertisers.
I have considered selling posts in the past, however the poor quality of articles that advertisers submitted stopped me from ever agreeing a deal. I remember an advertiser who sent three different articles for me to review. I rejected all three because they were so badly written. It was clear that they outsourced the task of writing the article to a cheap writing service. My continued attempts to tell them that the article had to be of a high quality fell on deaf ears.
I would certainly consider this option if the standard of articles being submitted was higher. It would be a win-win situation as I would get a quality article for one of my blogs and they would get a backlink or two in the bio area. Unfortunately, the standard of articles that are being submitted to paid post marketplaces is sub-par.
The money is in the list. That is what marketers have drilled into everyone’s brains for the last ten years….and they are correct. An email marketing list is one of the most powerful tools a blogger can have. It can encourage readers to return to your blog, increase engagement with them and allow you to promote products and services directly to their inbox.
It is therefore vital that you build your email list from the very start. Give readers a reason to sign up to your newsletter by offering them something like a free eBook or access to an eight week email course. You can then contact readers whenever you need to.
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A loyal readership is a powerful thing. Successful blogs have thousands of people who trust their judgement. It is the kind of trust that most companies can only dream of. This trust can be leveraged to sell related products to readers. A great example of this is title="Copyblogger" href="http://www.copyblogger.com/">Copyblogger. They built upon their highly successful blog about copywriting by developing high quality products and selling them directly to WordPress users.
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title="Copyblogger" href="http://www.copyblogger.com/">Copyblogger’s business relies on the success of their blog.
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