Beginner’s Guide to Blogging: Monetization – Episode 5

This is the last episode of the “Beginner’s Guide to Blogging” series and I intend to teach you in this episode the different types of monetization options you can use for your blog and when it is best to monetize your blog. If you really want to start making money with your blog, then you really need to carefully read this episode. If you have not read the earlier published episodes I recommend you read them now.

So far in this series I have discussed the following;

Beginners guide to blogging: How to build a blog – Episode 1

Beginners guide to Blogging: Content Creation – Episode 2

Beginners guide to blogging: Search Engine Optimization – Episode 3

Beginners Guide to Blogging: Web Promotion – Episode 4

By now I hope you have built your blog, created some amazing high quality and optimized contents and have promoted your blog and now receiving tons of traffic to your blog. So today I am going to talk to you about how to monetize your blog and make money with your blog. That sounds nice right? Yeah! It does… Now let’s go and make some money with our blogs…

Beginner’s Guide to Blogging: Monetization

You want to make money with your blogging efforts right? There is no shame in it, I make money from my blogging efforts and I am proud of it. But the big question today is “Which monetization method is best for your blog”?

In this article I am going to outline the top blog monetization methods and hope to find the best one for your blog so you too can start making money with your blog. You can also use more than one monetization method on a blog, just like I have on this blog. But before then let’s discuss when it will be best to monetize your blog so you can make the best of out it.

When is a blog ready to be monetized? This is a question many bloggers always ask, when is a blog ready to be monetized? The answer is a very easy one;

“When you have something of value to provide”

Some may argue otherwise but blogging is not all about the money, it’s about the quality of content you add to the already junk-saturated internet. Are you just another blogger ready to fill the internet with more junk contents? Then you are not worth earning a dime from the internet.

If your content cannot add quality to its readers, if you contents cannot solve the problems of your audience, then such content is not worth making a single dollar from the internet.

So until your blog can add value to the internet at large you shouldn’t bother monetizing it.  Once you have a good feel for your blog, your influence and place in the world of blogging, you will come to monetization with a clearer understanding of your value and what to ask for.

Until you begin to see engagements on your blog and social media, then you can start thinking of the best way to monetize your blog. Do you receive comments from your readers when they read your posts? How many people subscribe to your feeds? How is your blog traffic coming? Because without good web traffic you won’t earn a dime from blogging, when your visitors cannot respond to simple call to actions on your blog, how can they respond to your recommendations to buy this product or that product?

Another way to know when your blog is ready to be monetized is when a brand or individuals contacts you for an advertisement opportunity on your blog. While some people may immediately monetize their blog from beginning, some others may need to wait for some months before monetizing. It depends on your influence and audience engagement.

Types of Blog Monetization:

1. Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) – Pay-per-click advertising is a method of advertising in which advertisers pay for each ad clicked. PPC advertising seems to be the most common monetization option for most bloggers; you hardly find any blogs these days without PPC ads on it. Google adsense, Chitika, Infolinks, BidVertiser, Clicksor, Media.net etc are some of the companies offering such services.

What type of blog best performs with PPC ads? To simply answer your question any blog with good amount of web traffic and high impression can do very well in this type of monetization method. This type of ads will require a visitor clicking on it before you can earn money from the ads, so you need huge traffic and another thing that can affect this type of ads is your skills in creating and embedding the ads.

The top converting spot is right under the post title, so you need to ensure your ad is camouflaged to look like part of your blog because over time people becomes what I call ads-blind and tend to ignore such spots.

2. Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate marketing simply means making money by earning a commission from sales of products. Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways of making money through a blog, I know many successful bloggers who have built their entire business on affiliate marketing.

All you need to do is carefully select a good affiliate program to promote either via reviews or banner placements on your site and when a sale is made through it you earn your commission. I have reviewed a couple of Amazon products and some good web hosting affiliate programs on this blog which had lead to sales and I got paid my commission.

So you see why I said you must build your blog and earn the trust of your audience because when they trust you they can buy the products you recommend to them.

3. Banner Ads – You can also sale the empty spaces on your blog and earn money with your blog, some time ago I had some banner ads on my sidebar for a company that wanted to rent the space for awhile. Sound nice right? Yes you can actually rent out your sidebar and earn money for simply promoting a product/brand by simply placing their banner ads there.

4. Services/Consulting/Coaching – Take a look up at my navigation, can you see hire me? Yes hire me for your blogging services; you can also hire me for coaching services. Would you like me to teach you blogging and how to make money from blogging one-on-one? Hire me…!

You can actually offer your services via blogging and earn good money with it. What is that you are very good at? Advertise it and earn money from it.

5. Speaking Gigs – Are you a good speaker? Can you speak at seminars? If you are an expert in what you do, then you can turn it into speaking gigs and get paid for it. I have earned money a couple of times from speaking at seminars and events. You too can…

6. Product Sales – Do you have any products to sell? Mostly info products, people will pay you good amount of money for the information you have, simply package it very well and sell it directly on your blog. Some years ago I used to sell guides to making money online as an eBook, so if you have any information that can add value to your buyer, I say you package it and sell it and make money from it.

7. Paid Posts – This is my second most paying method of earning money on this blog, I have published a good number of paid articles on my blog some pays as much as $250 per article. Yes you too can earn such money from blogging, all you need to do is develop your blog and rank high, add quality to the internet via your blogging and people will approach you to publish their articles on your blog and get paid for it.

8. Flip It – Do you know you can build a blog and sell it after sometimes? I know a lot of people who are earning good money from this, they develop a blog say for 3 – 6 months and sell it off. This is a great monetization method.

General Advice:

Note it may not be as easy as you think to make money from the internet, a lot of bloggers have made it sound so simple in their posts, I don’t mean to discourage you but to prepare you for the challenges ahead. But with patience, dedication and consistency you too can also start making money from your blog. Don’t look at the money for now, strive to build a quality blog and someday the money will start flowing.

Do you have any questions to ask me? Do you have any contributions? What monetization method do you prefer? Which has brought more $$$$ into your pocket? When did you monetize your blog? Please use the comment section below to share your views.

This is the end of this series, I can’t wait to begin another series soon, it’s been nice to write a complete “Beginner’s guide to blogging” series, and I must say thank you for following all through. I hope you find it interesting and useful. I am looking forward to hearing from you about your blog, if you have not subscribed to my RSS feed, please use the form below to do so.