How To Make Money With A Blog
Is it possible to
make money with a blog? Yes.
Is it easy? At
all.
Many people start
writing a blog with the idea of taking an extra, but they think that there are
only two sources of revenue: AdSense and affiliate marketing. The reality is
that there are more ways to earn money.
Whether you have
a blog with intent lucrative as if you are not interested in this post, if you
are in the first group, that'll tell then will give you new ideas to get
economic performance to your efforts; If you are in the second, when you finish
reading this article you will understand better how the authors of the most
popular websites earn bread.
You've convinced?
Keep reading.
Before
continuing, I'd like to warn you that making money with a blog is always a
long-term plan, in the very long term.
Traffic,
authority, trust, connection with readers... are essential things that fail in
two days, so if you are looking for is to make you rich in 3 weeks sorry to
disappoint you.
Today there are
millions of blogs on the Internet, of which 99% are abandoned within a few
months. So, if you want your contribution to economic benefits, one of the
essential qualities you need is constancy. And I'm not talking about months,
but years.
Are you willing
to write in your blog during the next 5 years? If not, perhaps you want more
invest your time in something different, or that you take your blog as a hobby
and not a business.
Once clarified
this point, we can start :) Here are 9 ways to make money with a blog.
1. Advertising (AdSense)
The fastest and
easiest way to monetize a blog is through PPC advertising. CPC stands for
"Cost per click", which means get paid whenever a user clicks on one
of your ads.
There are many
networks of CPC ads, but without doubt the most popular and which works best is
Google AdSense. Sign up is as easy as entering this website and fill out a
small form. Once Google approves your account (usually takes less than 48
hours), you can insert blocks of advertising of different sizes in your blog.
Here list of thousands niche that you can optimized:
What
distinguishes other advertising system AdSense is that you not choose ads that
are shown, but that Google does this for you. The big G analyzes the content of
the page in which you have inserted the block and sample advertising considered
relevant to your readers. In this way, Google kills several birds with one
stone:
Ads that are
displayed (in theory) are interesting to your users
To be
interesting, there are more possibilities that they click and you therefore
earn more money (and Google also)
Advertisers can
reach potential customers despite not know you or your page
Revenue per click
depends on competition that exists in this niche. There are many more
advertisers, most have to pay because their ad appears and you can therefore
deliver more money between you and Google. For example, in some
super-competitive themes such as "forex", "insurance" or
"criminal defence lawyers" you can collect 3 or 4 dollars per click,
but usually receive only a few cents.
If you want to know
how competitive it is a term, you have two options:
Do a Google
search and see how many ads appear on screen. If all the spaces are complete
(on the top of the search results, below and in the sidebar) that is to say
that you it's a competitive niche in which the click is well paid.
Enter the planner
of keywords and search for that term. CPC column will give you an estimate
companies than they pay per click to have your ad appear in searches and blogs
related to this topic. What you earn is less than half of that CPC (as 30-40%).
But not
everything is pink and wonderful in the land of AdSense. Before you throw to
put advertising on your blog you should consider the following:
It is possible
that your readers angry, and consider yourself a sold. Sometimes have
advertising da bad image and subtract seriousness to your blog
Normally, to make
the CPC advertising profitable you need to have a lot of traffic
Google has the
right to close your AdSense account when you give them the win and without
giving you any kind of explanation. Already happened to me in the past
Examples of blogs
with advertising CPC:
- Photography
- Parenting
- Self Help
- Car
- Health
- etc
For more high CPC
Adsense list, you can Download Here
2. CPA Advertising
Other types of
less well known advertising are CPA (cost per action) advertising. In this
case, when a reader clicks on your ad are redirected to a landing page (landing
page) that has to perform an action, such as opening an account, complete a
survey, or give your personal information to receive more information. For each
user who completes the action you get a Commission.
As you can
imagine, the percentage of conversions (the people who clicks on your ad and
also performs the action) is much lower than in the case of CPC advertising.
However, this is offset by a Commission by much higher conversion - usually
several euros.
Here is an
example of the landing page of an insurance company. When the user clicks on
your ad, you reach this page that ask you to enter your name and your phone
number so that they call you later and you try to sell insurance. If you do,
you get $ 1.75 (although the user then ends up not buying anything).
CPA advertising
is successful, it is important that this is very relevant to the niche of your
blog. If you have a personal development blog, and put an announcement of
Movistar to capture new customers, it is safest to be a failure. However, that
same ad on a blog about rates of mobile offerings will work much better.
In general, how
much more specific is the topic of your blog, they will work better CPA
campaigns (as long as they are relevant, clear).
3. Private Advertisers
An alternative to
the ad networks that I have mentioned above are private advertisers. Magazines
like they rent out their pages to businesses, you can rent areas of your blog
to companies in the sector for a monthly fixed price.
There are two
ways to find private advertisers:
Offer your
services to potential clients. This strategy is to be contacted by e-mail or
phone with your niche companies that may be interested in advertising on your
blog. You can start with those who have contracted advertising AdSense, because
you know that every month they already invest in online advertising. If you're
able to demonstrate them with data and graphics that they would be more
profitable to advertise on your page that through Google, may be willing to
make the change.
That they get in
touch with you. If you get that your blog will become a reference within your
niche, it is likely that are enterprises that get in touch with you to
advertise on your website. The easiest way of this happening is publicly
showing that you accept ads on your website. For example, you can have a banner
with the message "To advertise on this blog" that lead to a page in which
the potential advertisers may download a dossier with the statistics of visits
last year, the reasons for which would be profitable advertising on your page
and prices.
As is the case
with CPA advertising, how much more specific is your niche better work this
monetization method, since there will be more companies interested in
advertising on your page. Furthermore, the more traffic you generate more money
you can call advertisers, since more people will see your advertising every
day.
If you want to
see the aspect that has a good Pack for advertisers, I recommend that you take
a look at the Forum police. You can download it by clicking here.
Examples of blogs
with private advertisers:
Baballa is a blog
for Working Moms. Its author, Lucia, writes about a lot of topics: stories with
the children, crafts, things to do with them, things that do without them,
beauty, things that give... The page was becoming more and more popular and now
works with the income from the sponsors that you can see in the sidebar.
National police
requirements. When I started to look for ways to make money online, I created
this page with the idea of making money with ads of academies of oppositions
and gyms. Failed due to lack of traffic and I only managed to sell an ad (live!),
but you can still set an example. I use a plugin for WordPress called CrankyAds
that it handles everything automatically. If you want to see how it works,
enter the page and click on the banner down there at all and it says
"Click here to advertise in this space."
4. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate
marketing is just a specific type of advertising CPA that action that should
the user perform is to buy something. I.e., you act as a salesperson, your blog
promoting a product or service of another company, which pays you a Commission
each time that you generate you a sale.
Affiliation
platforms operate in the following way:
- You register as an affiliate
- Through the platform, you create some special links with your ID, pointing to the page of the product to promote
- Put these links on your blog
- A reader clicks on any of these links, make a purchase in the next X days (X depends on the firm) and you get a Commission
- At the end of the month they enter in your checking account the total amount of all commissions
Easy, right?
The first
program's history was that of Amazon, but today there are many more and
practically in all sectors: travel, telephony, digital products... To find them
only you have to search on Google the company name followed by the word
"members".
List of high paying affiliate programs:
Sometimes they
are enterprises which manage their affiliate programs, but the most common is
to do so through affiliate networks. These are some of the most important:
- Amazon.com
- ClickBank
- ComissionJunction
The amount of commission varies according to the company, and ranges from 3-5% on the price
of the sale in the case of physical products up to 50-70% when it comes to
digital products.
The key to
success with the affiliation is intercept users who are in the midst of the
shopping process and take them to your blog, and the most common way to do this
is to write articles about offers or product analysis and position them in
Google for terms of trade. I understand.
If someone
searches for the word "coffee" in Google you don't know what
intention is. I may want to buy a coffee, but may already have one and has been
damaged, or maybe a child looking for photos of coffee for a college job.
However, if user search "buy coffee", "coffee analysis
Nesspreso" or "price Tassimo coffee maker", we know that you are
considering buying a coffee maker and, therefore, it is much more possible to
that end up generating you a sale. This second type of user is that you are
interested in visiting your blog.
5. Sell Products
The more
lucrative method to earn money with your blog is to sell your own products,
since there are no intermediaries and therefore the margins are wider.
It is most common
on the Internet is selling digital products, and more specifically of
info-products like eBooks or courses. The advantage of this type of product is
that duplicate them is free, so once created costs so sell one to a million. In
addition, the entire sale process can be automated easily through platforms
such as E-Junkie, Gumroad or even Amazon (as have I done with my book).
In addition to
digital products, it is also possible to sell physical products through a blog.
For example, in the mine could sell posters with my manifesto or, if a decent,
sell t-shirts and other merchandising :) logo the major drawback of this
strategy of monetization is it doesn't work automatically: you have to hold
stock, go to post to make shipments and manage incidents and returns. However,
this drawback can be solved using a system called dropshipping which consists
in passing orders directly to the supplier. This, in Exchange for a fee, is
responsible for making shipping directly to the user. This way you don't have
to worry about anything :)
Sell your own
products is not simple, because to be successful you have to do many things
well. Create something that others want to buy is a challenge, but that is only
the beginning. In addition to create the product you need to have knowledge of
marketing, copywriting, pricing policy, search for customers and a long
etcetera. This is why what 99% of people who try to create and sell their own
products fail.
6. Services
Having a blog and
write in it often on a theme will help you to position yourself as an expert in
your niche. After a time, you can take advantage of that authority to offer
your services. As throughout the months you have shown that you know about your
field and you've established a relationship of trust with your readers, maybe
some of them are interested in what you offer and become customers.
The key to this
monetization model is trust. Demonstrate your knowledge with what you write is
not enough; your life must be a true reflection of what they preach, i.e.: you
have to live your own story.
Here are some
ways to build trust in your blog:
· Credentials.
If you go on the website of Andrea, a Mexican entrepreneur who travels and
loves football, you'll see having a section that says "How.. so
dress" along with some pages and major conferences logo under the video
presentation. That conveys confidence and serves to demonstrate that it is not
an unknown, because if it has appeared in all of those sites... it will be for
something, right?
·
Testimonies.
The opinions of other satisfied customers are one of the best ways to get new
customers to trust you. To achieve the first, begins working free or at half
price in Exchange for a positive testimony to the end. Whenever a reader write
you an e-mail telling you something nice ask permission to use it as testimony
in the future.
·
Give
the face. That your readers see you in photos and videos transmits proximity.
People like to interact with people, not robots.
·
Design.
A blog design matters, and much. The first spread distrust by the four sides, while
the latter is much more professional. A website with good design is screaming
"I'm serious!".
7. Promotion Of Your Company
If you already
have a business, a blog can be a great marketing tool. Want your customers know
who you are, how you work and how things in the backstage work.
One of the
best-known cases is that of 37signals, whose blog, Signal vs. Noise - which speaks
of his philosophy of work - was a key factor for the growth of the company and
also helped them to win hundreds of thousands of dollars.
This is how they
got him:
They published
posts with quite different to the traditional ideas. These items produce traffic,
monetization thanks to ads that had in the sidebar
They created a
book in PDF called Getting Real with the best posts about his philosophy of
software development and sold it for $19
They created the
version in paper of the book and put it on sale through Lulu.com for $25
With the content
of Getting Real, they created a series of conferences. For every one they
earned $50,000
In total, they
took out more than $750,000 from the blog!
The history of
37signals is incredible, but in my opinion the true potential of a blog you can
see when it comes to starting a company. In that case, create a community
around a blog can give you many things and give you that initial push. When you
have 2,000 faithful followers it is much easier to bring forward any project,
because those people who rely on you will be delighted to beta testers, give
you feedback, promote your product and support your campaign of crowdfunding.
Let me put you an example.
David Bonilla has
a mailing list with more than 2,700 subscribers that writes every Sunday. A
year ago, before opening his store of Galician pies to the general public, it
offered 100 pies test at a special price only for subscribers of the blog. It
sold 89, but beyond sales, got two more important things:
Invaluable feedback
that allowed him to solve errors before opening to the public
Free marketing.
Most of their customers mentioned pies by Twitter, and there were even some who
recorded a video unpacking (unboxing) pie
All this, as you
can imagine, translated into benefits in the short but also long-term.
And it is that
without the help of his followers, all would have been a little more difficult
for David.
The most
important thing you should remember when using a blog to promote other projects
is that a community is not created in a day. For this reason, you need to start
to build it before you need it, because when you get that time will be too
late.
8. Donations
Few people
realize that the easiest way to make money with a blog is asking your readers
that, if your work has helped them in some way, they enter you what they see
fit via PayPal. You know: sometimes just have to ask for it!
This is something
to everyone and requires no knowledge of programming of any kind, since PayPal
provides you with the necessary HTML code and you only have to add it to your
blog.
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