November 1, 2009
How To Monetize Your Blog
It never ceases to amaze me to see so many people starting a blog without having any idea of how they will benefit from it. Of course there are literally thousands of blogs that have been set up solely for the purpose of generating income from Google's Adsense programme.
However, relying solely on Adsense is not a great idea. Firstly because Google's terms and conditions explicitly forbid the creation of "Made for Adsense" type sites. So even if your intention is to monetize your blog with Adsense, you should also have alternative monetization methods in place.
One of the most effective monetization methods is to add a sprinkling of affiliate links to your site. The most effective affiliate link can be found within the text of a blog post. Some time ago I decided to automate the process of adding affiliate links to my blogs with "Easy WP Affiliate" a simple plugin that automatically formats a pre-determined keyword phrase with an affiliate link.
Blog readers are used to seeing links and, if the link leads to a relevant product, a click through will often lead to a sale. Of course it's important to presell the click by emphasising with your readers situation or problem and then offering a product or service that will provide them with a suitable solution.
If you wish to monetize other areas of your blog then you can offer advertising space in the form of a simple text link in your blogroll or by selling banner space. The most popular banners seem to be 125×125. Although I've had great success with other sizes.. especially "tower" style banners. If you don't want the hassle of managing manual submissions, there's an excellent banner management plugin that automates the entire process. Leaving you free to provide your readers with great content.
As, you may have noticed, a couple of the links in this blog post lead to my own products. And, if you want to maximise your income from blogging, then it's always worth remembering that you get to keep 100% of the profit from your own products.
I certainly haven't covered all the possible monetization methods, in fact I've barely scratched the surface. However, if you implement just one or two of my suggestions, you'll be making more income than the vast majority of other bloggers!
Comments on How To Monetize Your Blog »
Do agree with your post there…you got nice blog too!
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Cheerio!
Brian & Jennifer Baulch
Thank you so much for your comment because I have no idea what I am doing with this blog thing but its all I think about. My children and husband think I am crazy and keep saying, "what are you doing? you spend to much time on the computer". Thanks for the tips from Nov 1, I will try to monetize it. I want to blog about my experience blogging and my weight loss journey. Yes I am losing weight to and its finally easy to do.
I totally agree whit you John. Also for people who do not yet have their own products,there is a plugin you could place into your blog new products from clickbank and so. Completly automated and free.
As you say that just some of the many ways that exist.
Great post,John.
I especially like the line about not creating a blog just for adsense, and for that matter I wouldn't recommend keeping the focus of your blog on just making money. You need to make sure the blog offers some real value to the visitors, or else they won't stick around long enough to click on any ads or links anyway.
Great info! When I conduct my marketing webinars with clients, the segment of the session they seem to get the biggest kick out of is about site monetization.
The majority of my clients pay a small monthly hosting fee for their website and are thrilled to find out that they can easily offset this fee by maximizing the advertising space available on their website.
Thanks for commenting on my site http://laurelinternetmarketing.com. You make some great points here. So many of my internet marketing clients 'just want a website'. Most of these clients are not putting up a site for profit from adsense or similar programs. They are putting up a site to promote their 'real world / brick and mortar business'. However similar questions need to be asked. "What exactly is it that we want to get out of the site? Is the monetization of the site going to come from getting new clients to call you? Do we want people to book an appointment online? Do we want people to print a coupon and physical bring it in to the store?"
No matter what the case you need to know ahead of time how are you going to monetize the site. What is the desired action you want the visitor to take.
Wicked points John.. I've heard people talk about plugins like "Ninja" something or other and didn't really take it seriously or take note of it. Just seeing those links in your posts highlights how well they can work…
What do you do with the plugin if you're writing a review of an affiliate product and use an affiliate link for it… but don't want the plugin to create other distracting links? Can you switch them off for certain posts?
Thanks again.
Allen,
"Can you switch them off for certain posts?"
No, the idea is to use affiliate links carefully. I usually set up the plugin to show only a link a maximum of three times in any one post.
Thanks
John