Making Money From Blogging [Chapter 6]

Chapter 6.

 Making Money From Blogging

I'm sure you've heard of some blogger success stories - people who started a blog and made it rich a few years later.

Peter Cashmore, founder of Mashable makes about $ 7.2 million a year and Michael Arrington of TechCrunch makes about $ 10 million a year. Pat Flynn, blogger at Smart Passive Income makes hundreds of thousands a month. Lindsay and Bjork of Pinch of Yum made more than $ 85,000 in one-month revenue.

While becoming an overnight daddy Daddy Warbucks may not be in your future, you can certainly make money from your blog and start making some money.

Your first step to making money on your blog is to decide what your margins are.

*Want ads on your site?

*What kind of ads will you receive?

*What kind of ads will you ban from your site?

*What percentage of ads versus content do you want?

*Be careful because if site visitors and search engines see your site as spammy, you will get a ranking hit. Once you've set some guidelines on the types and number of ads you'll receive, it's time to consider some of the ways to monetize your blog.

1. Direct Advertising:

Direct advertising is probably the fastest way to get revenue from your blog.

Put simply; you place space on your blog for outside companies to advertise, for a monthly, quarterly or annual fee. You have to choose which companies you allow to advertise, where the ads go and how much space they get on your blog!

Here are some requirements of your blog to attract advertisers to your site:

*.A blog with a minimum of 1,000 page views per month and good engagement

*A great and effective following media, ie Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

*A clear, focused place.

*Positioning the excellent search engines for your niche.

*A professional presence and appearance for your blog.

*A template or theme with space for advertising. Keep in mind that you want users to read and click but you don't want them to be so overwhelmed with ads that they stop visiting.

How to get started?

To begin with, creating a media device is a one-page information guide that will help prospective advertisers recognize your blog with a single glance. It should include measuring all of your social media numbers (followers, engagement levels, etc.), blog page views and unique visitors, as well as information about your audience and location.

There are a variety of standard web ad sizes. The larger the ad, the more you have to upload. Typically, ads are sold on a month-to-month basis. Find sizes that work for your blog. You don’t want to engage with a large leaderboard at the top of your blog right away and then discover that it is driving away visitors.

The most common ad sizes (in pixels) are 125 x 125 px, 150 x 150 px, or 300 x 300 px, but there are many more options. Keep in mind how much real estate you are willing to give up on your blog, ad position, and duration.

2. Stock marketing:

Stock marketing is a performance-based business, where companies pay people to promote their products - these people are known as affiliates.

Most affiliate companies pay affiliates through Cost of Action (CPA). This means that the affiliate earns money every time an action takes place. This usually takes the form of a sale (when someone buys something) or a bullet (when someone subscribes to something eg newsletter, free trial, registration, etc.).

How to get started?

As new bloggers, the best way to get your foot in the door of affiliate marketing is by signing up with affiliate networks. Sites like CJ Affiliate or Shareasale represent a range of products from multiple vendors. They also provide useful tools for new bloggers that can help you track sales and act as a broker to ensure you get paid fairly.

Which affiliate product to promote?

Choosing the accompanying product to promote is a bit of a ‘chicken or egg’ question. It depends on which direction you want to go. Many bloggers often create content related to the topics they are passionate about - and look for collaborative affiliate products to support the creation of their content. Alternatively, you can also target a specific site that you think might be right for you and build your content geared towards those products.

Do note that different types of products often come with very different rates of affiliate commission. Retail products tend to be very low commissions and your revenue relies heavily on you being able to push large amounts of those products. Big ticket commissions are usually for digital services or goods such as subscriptions and software.

To get a better idea of how well some products can do, you can use the data from your affiliate network as a guide. Alternatively, an interest rating can also be obtained from online tools like Google Trends.

3. Selling premium content:

If you are not comfortable selling other people's products, consider creating your own products to offer. Whether it is new software that helps business owners, a cooking tool or a guide on how to guide, there are many different things you can create and offer on your website.

Digital Downloads:

The most common items are e-books and instructional videos. These items are based exclusively on your knowledge of your niche area. They go a little deeper than short blog posts or offer very specialized information. It's easy to get ebooks through platforms like Amazon's Kindle Publishing and Smashwords.

Membership pages:

Speaking of specialized information, some blog owners choose to create a special, membership-based area where the best articles or videos are posted. Those who are members can access this information. You can get people to sign up for a membership by offering a short excerpt to entice the reader to subscribe.

There are a few keys that will help make your membership area more successful:

Keep membership reasonable. Think $ 5 / month instead of $ 5 / day.

Offer quality articles, videos, guest speakers, and other events for your members. No one wants to pay for membership in something that is never updated.

Make recurring payments. we use PayPal, Tape, or any other recurring billing model so that membership fees and cancellations are automated. This is a great time saver.