When you start off in the blogging game some people get drawn into just one revenue stream for their blog and this can be a great shame because there are so many different ways to make money through a blog. If you get trapped into just one revenue stream online then what happens if something happens to that or if it starts loosing popularity, where will you turn then? Having more than one income stream is a good idea just to give you a bit of financial security from your blog and giving you the ability to move on quickly if one part of your blog sees a downturn of business.
Method 1 – Adsense
I mention Adsense first because it is one of the best known advertisers on the internet as well as being a good source of income for any website or blog. The way that this income stream works is that you put some Adsense adverts up on your site and then every time one of your visitors clicks on one of those adverts then you get a payment from Google into your Adsense account. Now depending on what niche you are in any one of these clicks can give you any money between a few pennies and about £10. It is fair to say though that £10 is extremely. Google does not allow you to show your Adsense earnings anywhere on the internet which is an interesting thing to note. Also this ties in to my point about not getting to involved in just one revenue stream. If you have a free blogger blog and are running off just Adsense then your who business is working through Google and if they decide that they don’t like you then that’s your whole business gone in a flash.
Method 2 – Affiliate Marketing
In case you aren’t familiar with what affiliate marketing is it is the process of you advertising someone else’s product for them and if you get a sale for the owner then you get a good percentage of the sale, usually between 50% and 75%. There are a few ways that you can use affiliate marketing as a source of income on your blog. Firstly you can simply put picture or text adverts up in your sidebar so that people can click on them that way. Or alternatively you can slip an affiliate link to a product that you would like to recommend into one of your posts. This way of putting affiliate links in usually gets you more clicks in a short time but it can annoy some readers if you keep reviewing products and trying to blatantly get money off of them instead of just writing good helpful content.
Method 3 – List Building
This income stream might not technically be directly involved with blogging but blogging can certainly help with this. If you have a sign-up box for your mailing list on your blog then you can have lots of organic sign ups from targeted traffic. The advantage of a mailing list is that you know that the people you are emailing have an interest in the products that you are selling because they have already expressed an interest when they signed up. This makes for much better conversions on your sales efforts. This also leads on to another avenue for making money. As an incentive many people offer an ebook to encourage people to sign up to a mailing list and in this ebook you could put some affiliate links so that you get the best chance to carry on selling in the back end of your list.
In case you aren’t familiar with what affiliate marketing is it is the process of you advertising someone else’s product for them and if you get a sale for the owner then you get a good percentage of the sale, usually between 50% and 75%. There are a few ways that you can use affiliate marketing as a source of income on your blog. Firstly you can simply put picture or text adverts up in your sidebar so that people can click on them that way. Or alternatively you can slip an affiliate link to a product that you would like to recommend into one of your posts. This way of putting affiliate links in usually gets you more clicks in a short time but it can annoy some readers if you keep reviewing products and trying to blatantly get money off of them instead of just writing good helpful content.
Method 3 – List Building
This income stream might not technically be directly involved with blogging but blogging can certainly help with this. If you have a sign-up box for your mailing list on your blog then you can have lots of organic sign ups from targeted traffic. The advantage of a mailing list is that you know that the people you are emailing have an interest in the products that you are selling because they have already expressed an interest when they signed up. This makes for much better conversions on your sales efforts. This also leads on to another avenue for making money. As an incentive many people offer an ebook to encourage people to sign up to a mailing list and in this ebook you could put some affiliate links so that you get the best chance to carry on selling in the back end of your list.
Method 4 – Blog Sponsors
Once you feel your blog has grown a little bit and you have a nice amount of traffic then you can start to think about offering advertising space on your blog to private advertisers. In this way you have a more stable form of income and you have more control over where your income comes from. Once your blog gets a good amount of traffic people will come to you for advertising space so you won’t even need to promote it very much.
Method 5 – Writing Reviews For a Fee
This is another method for blogs which have got a good amount of traffic already and it involves charging people to write a review or put up a review that they have written for one of their products. There are a few ethical issues with this income stream such as you may start to take the money to advertise products that you don’t have a good belief in. This can start to degrade the quality of your blog if you aren’t careful. But if you don’t take on to many of these jobs and only pick products that you believe are actually of some use then they can be an asset. There are a lot of people out there looking for useful products and if you show it to them then they will remember you for that.
There are of course many other ways you can monetize but I believe these are the best options and there is a range here that you can start to use at different stages of your blogs growth.
Method 5 – Writing Reviews For a Fee
This is another method for blogs which have got a good amount of traffic already and it involves charging people to write a review or put up a review that they have written for one of their products. There are a few ethical issues with this income stream such as you may start to take the money to advertise products that you don’t have a good belief in. This can start to degrade the quality of your blog if you aren’t careful. But if you don’t take on to many of these jobs and only pick products that you believe are actually of some use then they can be an asset. There are a lot of people out there looking for useful products and if you show it to them then they will remember you for that.
There are of course many other ways you can monetize but I believe these are the best options and there is a range here that you can start to use at different stages of your blogs growth.
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