A monetization strategy for your blog is something that many people dream of and often think is unattainable. But what happens when your little blog starts getting a lot of traffic?
For many it’s something they never expect will happen, but when traffic starts to hit your site, and you aren’t converting that traffic into customers, you may be missing out.
But there’s a problem. The prospect of taking money away from their visitors terrifies most people.
It may scare you into thinking you’ll lose your new found traffic, which you’ll turn away longtime fans or even petrify you into thinking that your blog will fail altogether.
Luckily, with the right monetization strategy, all of these fears will be a thing of the past, and this article will guide you through the best way to get started.
Let’s jump into how to monetize your blog quickly and easily.
What’s the Right Way to Monetize?
When it comes to monetizing your website their’s a right way and a wrong way to go about it. You can just link to your product or service, such as a body rub in one of your blog posts but chances are unless it’s relevant you won’t get a lot of clicks.
The better way to monetize is to work your site around your chosen monetization strategy so that every page of your site is encouraging users to interact and use your product or service.
Monetization Strategy 101
To give you a better idea of all the different ways you can monetize your blog, this article will run through four of the top ways you can start earning with all that extra traffic your blog is receiving.
Let’s get started.
1. Membership Sites
A great monetization strategy for creating good monthly revenue is to build a membership site. However, it’s important to understand why a membership site is a good idea in the first place.
The key to getting a membership site right isn’t just throwing up a paywall but getting the concept of your website correct. Before people will be willing to pay for any of your content you have to demonstrate that it adds value.
The focus needs to always be on the value that your reader/customer will receive not the cost of signing up. A great approach to crafting a membership site is to make your members feel like they are gaining something.
It could be a number of different things such as:
- High-value information
- Elite status
- VIP style treatment
- An opportunity to network
- Inside access to the site owner
You can go about operating a membership site in a few different ways.
Paywall or Subscription Service
The most widely used membership site is to use a paywall or subscription service. This monetization strategy involves you charging monthly or annually a subscription and then giving your customers full access.
Transactional
This type of membership site revolves around purchasing individual pieces of content, like training or audio or video downloads. You consume this type of content in as small or as large a quantity as people want.
Metered
This type of site operates by giving full access for free until you reach a certain threshold. This might be videos watched, time spent on site or amount of articles read.
It’s worth considering all options and some people operate a mix-and-match approach.
2. Create an Info-Product
Info products are a great monetization strategy when first starting out. This gives you the opportunity to build up a variety of info-products such as:
- Videos
- E-books
- Courses
- MP3 downloads
This content can be individually sold to your readers, and once you have enough content, you could consider releasing it all as a membership site in the future.
Info-product creation is a great way to make money from your site as you can create content that is specific to your site, and you would receive 100% of the revenue.
As an alternative to info-product creation, 55% of full-time bloggers are using affiliate marketing.
3. Affiliate Products
Affiliate products are where most bloggers will get started when building their first monetization strategy. At least 60% of affiliates are using blogging as their primary method of driving traffic to their websites.
Affiliate products are an incredible first choice for bloggers for a number of reasons.
No Need to Create
What puts most bloggers of the idea of monetization is the amount of work required to get started. The thought of writing an e-book or creating an online course sends them running in fear.
Affiliate products don’t require any creation, and you can piggyback off other peoples creative energies. For example, if you wanted to write a book about Pinterest growth strategies, you could easily find one that someone created instead.
You then become an affiliate for that product and promote it on your blog. No creation is necessary.
It’s important to remember only to recommend products you’ve used yourself, and you are confident offer value. Remember, you are putting your name to that piece of content.
If somebody purchases it and doesn’t get good service or results, it looks bad on you.
Wide Variety of Options Available
With affiliate products, you have 100’s or 1000’s of products to choose from which you can promote. Some vary in quality and pricing.
The only downside with affiliate products compared to info-products you create yourself is you can’t customize the product usually, and you will only receive a smaller portion as a commission.
For example, most affiliates will pay anywhere from 5% to 50% or upwards.
4. Make Your Email List Work for You
Targeted email marketing is hugely profitable for new bloggers wanting to monetize. If you’re receiving a lot of traffic to your blog, converting those readers into email subscribers should always be one of your top priorities.
When you have a strong email list of people interested in your brand and blog, you can then use this to work for you. It’s usually agreed that for email marketing each email subscriber should be worth around $1 per month, presuming you have at least 2000 email subscribers.
By building up your email list, you can promote affiliate products or your info-products to your audience easily and quickly. The best tip is to not be to sales focused and always try to add value wherever possible.
Time to Monetize
Now that you have all the different techniques figured out, it’s time to get your blog monetized. For more tips on how to increase traffic and monetize your passion blog head on over to our blog.