Now that you have a website fully optimized, tweaked and
filled to the brim with relevant content, and you have begun to
generate traffic to your website using free resources such as
blog communities and social networks, it’s time to transform
your blog into a cash generating machine.
This is where it gets interesting!
When it comes to making money with online blogs, there are many
different opportunities available. Like regular websites, you could
integrate Google Adsense, or other advertising networks such as
AdBrite, or you could implement CPA offers from services like
CPALead.com.
But it doesn’t stop there.
As a blogger, you can make money by promoting affiliate products on
your website, by growing a list that you can promote your own
products and services to, and you can even make money by joining
blog project databases, where you are paid for writing about new
launches, providing feedback on company products, or in offering paid
reviews for other new bloggers who are interested in gaining traffic
from you.
Of course, how much money you can make will ultimately depend on
how much traffic you are able to generate to your website.
The more traffic, the more lucrative your blog will be to potential paid
sponsors, and of course, with consistent traffic you can make money
through commissions from affiliate products that are purchased
through your referral.
As someone who has been blogging for over five years, I always
recommend to new bloggers that they focus on growing traffic before
ever trying to monetize their blogs.
You need to build a reputation within your market, generate as many
back links as possible, and push your website out in front of as many
potential prospects as possible before you focus on making money
from your blog. You need a captive audience, a loyal following, and
return visitors who find your website informative, useful, interesting
and worth returning to time and time again.
Once you have solidified yourself within the blogging community, you
can then take it a step further by implementing money-making
strategies into all areas of your blog, but you need to lay the
groundwork first and focus on generating a steady stream of traffic to
your website.
That being said, even from the birth of your website there are a few
things that you should do that can be monetized in the future. One of
these things involves building a list.
While you may have an RSS subscription option on your website, you
need to take it a step further by implementing an autoresponder opt-in
form on your site that captures your visitor’s information and lets you
stay in touch with your subscribers.
By doing this, you are able to grow a relationship with your target
market, and once you have developed that relationship, you can begin
to make money with direct offers, affiliate products and referrals even
before your blog is generating a lot of traffic.
To do this, you need two things:
2) An Autoresponder Account, available at
Sendinblue or Getresponse
With these two resources, you will be able to start growing a list from
the very first day that your website is developed. All you need to do is
consider what “subscription bait” (also referred to as your “opt in
bribe”) you are going to use in order to motivate your visitors into
becoming newsletter subscribers
The easiest way to do this is by purchasing rights to a high quality
report from places like http://www.ContentGrab.com or in outsourcing
the development of a free report or eBook from an experienced
freelancer on websites such as http://www.Elance.com
If you are capable of writing yourself, you could save yourself time and
money by developing a short report that specifically caters to your
blogs theme. You NEED to make sure that what you are offering is
relevant to your topic.
Once you have a report ready, you can log into your autoresponder
account and create your welcome email, which is the introductory
email automatically sent to each subscriber upon confirmation of their
request to join your list.
This email will thank them for subscribing and will include the
download link to your report.
Just like in monetizing your website, you need to first work to build a
relationship with your list so that they trust your recommendations
and look to you as a sound source of advice, tips and information
relating to the subjects that interest them.
Spend some time engaging with your subscribers, offering them free
material, information, tips and resources that will help them.
If you do this, it won’t be long before you have a loyal following of
people who will eagerly open up your emails, respond to your offers
and genuinely investigate the products that you promote.
Affiliate Links
The most popular affiliate programs out there for blogs are Clickbank,
Commission Junction, Amazon, and Ebay. A great way to integrate
these into your blog is either through banners ads or reviews.
When writing a review make sure you include a description of the
product, the benefits, the disadvantages (don’t leave this out because
adding the negative points about a product will make your review
more credible to your readers), how the product has helped you, and
add your affiliate link to the site where they can buy the product.
This is a great technique because it’s pre-selling to your readers and
will help to encourage a higher conversion rate.
Clickbank sells only digital products such as video courses, ebooks and
software. You can find a huge range of products to promote and it’s
very easy to do.
Also, a lot of the payouts are 65%-75% and on average about $30. If
you go to Clickbank’s marketplace you can sort the products by
different criteria and categories.
Commission Junction has a range of different affiliate programs for a
range of products; both physical and digital. You can get paid for
either a lead or a sale.
Although Amazon doesn’t pay as big of a commission as Clickbank and
Commission Junction does, it is good at converting clicks to sales.
Plus, there’s a variety of ways they provide you with to advertise their
products on your website, such as rotating widgets displaying lots of
products and Amazon aStores that allow you to have a whole
customized Amazon product store on your blog.
Ebay is similar to Amazon and has a large range of products you can
promote on your blog. They also have a Pay Per Click program too.
The Clickbank.com marketplace is filled with thousands of products
that you can promote. It’s free to setup a Clickbank.com affiliate
account, so you can begin exploring potential products and services
instantly.
Here is an overview of how to choose the best products for your niche:
Visit http://www.ClickBank.com and click on the Marketplace link.
Then, enter in keywords relating to your market in order to generate a
page listing products and services that you can promote as a ClickBank
affiliate.
Whenever you view the details of any given offer, you will see stats
located under each listing, one of these statistics is called gravity
The gravity rating in Clickbank.com is just an estimate of the most
recent sales for a particular product. The higher the gravity rating, the
more popular the product is among affiliates since it appears that the
product is receiving a large number of sales.
When a product also has a high gravity rating, since sales are factored
in, it means that the product is converting. That’s the critical aspect of
selecting a product to promote within Clickbank.com. You always want
to ensure that the product you are promoting actually converts.
Google AdSense Ads
This is a form of advertising that involves full text classified ads getting
displayed on your websites or blog.
Once you apply for the program and get approved, Google will display
relevant AdSense ads on your website.
How it works is that every time a visitor to your site clicks on one of
the Google ads displayed on your blog, you will get a small
commission. The average commission per click is about 20 cents, but
it depends on how competitive the keywords used in the ads are.
Advertisers will have to pay more money for more competitive
keywords.
These are usually the keywords for topics that are very profitable such
as making money online, insurance, credit cards etc. More competitive
keywords can cost up to $30 per click sometimes.
With AdSense, you are paid for every click made to advertisements
featured throughout your blog. It’s free to join as an AdSense
advertiser, and you are able to generate code that you simply copy
and paste into your blogs pages that will feature advertising boxes
from various merchants.
To sign up, visit http://www.Google.com/adsense and create your
account. Once you have it all set up, you will be able to customize the
size and color scheme of your AdSense advertising boxes so that it
blends well with your existing blog’s theme
This is an easy way to start making money with your blog even with
little traffic, because rather than selling directly to your target
audience, you are simply making money each time they click on your
ads, costing them nothing in the process (you earn money even if they
never purchase anything from these external websites).
You can also create campaigns within your AdSense account so that
you can have a number of different advertisements across a network
of blogs, which will give you the ability to determine what
advertisements are converting and working well, and which ones may
need to be tweaked to better preform.
From personal experience, larger square ad boxes convert better, with
the colors modified to blend well with your website. You don’t want
these advertisements to intrude on your visitor’s experience navigating
throughout your website, but instead focus on creating advertisements
that fit well within your template and use a similar color scheme.
Start with the 250×250 square ad boxes o the 300×250 medium size if
your blog’s theme can accommodate it. Otherwise, the tower
advertisements can be integrated into the side panels of most blog
themes.
The 728×90 leaderboard ad box is great for the upper portion of your
blog’s theme, right under the header, or at the very bottom, featured
within the footer area of your website.
Just be sure to avoid overloading your website with AdSense
advertisement boxes.
Remember, that you want to provide your visitors with the most
experience possible so that they return to your site frequently.
There is a free plugin available for WordPress that will help you
integrate Google AdSense advertisements into your blogs pages.
You will also want to create individual channels for each blog that you
plan to feature AdSense on, so that you can determine what
campaigns are working well and track the CTR of each advertisement.
If you find that a particular ad isn’t preforming well, you can choose to
change the placement, color scheme or size of the ad, as well as the
general channel so that your advertisements are highly targeted to
your audience.
For those who are interested in participating in blog networks that pay
you per assignment or project, there are many different opportunities
available to even the newest blogger.
