More and more people are getting into blogging because they want to make money. To feed this desire more and more bloggers are writing about making money from blogs. I get asked how to go about monetizing blogs, and also why I don’t write more about the subject. This post will answer both questions.
First let’s be clear; blogging is not a magic route to instant riches. While there is certainly no harm in wanting to earn an income from blogging, make sure your expectations are realistic. A few hundred dollars a month from a moderately popular blog is a reasonable goal. Enough to pay for your time, hosting and perhaps some toys, or for the grown-ups (physical or mental) help towards your rent/mortgage/loan repayments.
Rule number one – stick to producing valuable content, despite what the snake-oil get-rich-quick meisters will tell you. Go for long term and stable income not dump and dash spamola.
These steps are simple but not necessarily easy.
1. Choose a niche with potential and where you can make a splash
2. Find appropriate affiliate offers that match your topic
3. Use keyword tools to investigate high-paying adsense phrases and write about them
4. Build or select an adsense-friendly template, use Text Link Ads when you get to a decent price, and test schemes such as chikita, auctionads, etc.
5. Grow your RSS and email subscriptions, use full feed and FeedBurner RSS advertising
6. Post regular, useful content, at least one article a day
7. Generate traffic, using compelling headlines, networking, commenting, carnivals, memes, viral, social networking, SEO and Flagship Content
8. Do more of what works – use your stats to see which keywords and articles bring in visitors
9. Pay for advertising out of your adsense and affiliate income
10. Build another blog in a related niche, cross-promote, diversify, start over at step 1.
As you can see there are no silver bullets, not instant gratification answers. Each one of those bullets hides a million other pieces of the puzzle.
Why don’t I write about this stuff more?
Most people when they talk about blog monetization mean they want to make a direct income through adsense and affiliates. My income is indirect, that is my blogging builds an audience which leads to profile, credibility and leads. While the two revenue subjects overlap there are significant differences in approach.
Those of you who want to learn more about direct income strategies I recommend you subscribe to Problogger – Darren does it so well another blog on the topic is not really necessary. When I started this blog I had a clear idea of where my niche sits, I let others cover adsense and affiliate stuff.
If you want to use your blog for
- Traffic
- Lead generation and sales
- Customer Retention
- Credibility, Authority, Fame
- Networking
- Publicity
- …
.. then subscribe now as starting from monday I will be covering these topics in more detail.
Regardless of which approach you follow, earning money from blogs is hard work and time consuming. Don’t listen to the latest “can’t lose” get-rich schemes. Stick with it and create a valuable resource and the rewards do come.
Tags: blog, monetization, adsense, affiliate, marketing, tips, problogger, seo, tla