There are several ways to monetize a blog. Discover different online revenue models and popular strategies for making money from your blog.
If you have a blog or site – or if you are thinking of getting started – it is never too late to start making money from it. There are several ways to monetize a blog. This article covers various online revenue models and popular strategies for monetizing digital content.
Let’s start with the basics. What is monetization? Simply put, monetization means making money from your site. When you make money from online content on your blog, it’s called monetization.
To start making money from your blog, there are several online business models:
Affiliate Marketing
Offer digital products
Subscription
Coaching
How can you do this for yourself and your blog? Let’s take a closer look at each monetization model.
Ad Monetization: Offer ads on your blog to earn money
As a blog publisher, advertising can provide a healthy revenue for your online content. Advertisers are willing to pay to get exposure to your audience. Just as a newspaper with a large circulation can charge advertisers more, the more popular your site and content, the more you can earn.
You can place ads directly on your site that want to appear next to your content. This is called a direct contract. You can use an ad network – such as Google AdSense – to sell your ad space on your behalf.
The way AdSense works are to show ads relevant to the content displayed on a specific page of your blog. For example, if your blog is about adventure travel and you’ve just uploaded a post about Reykjavik travel, AdSense may show an ad about travel insurance, Iceland or warm clothing. As the owner of the site where the ad appears, AdSense pays you when a user sees or interacts with an ad.
With the content of your blog and the ability to make online advertising relevant to readers, many advertisers are willing to pay a premium price for your ad space.
Affiliate Marketing: Make Money Through Product Recommendations
Affiliate marketing is when you include a link to your content with a product or service for sale on another site. Here’s how it works: When someone clicks a link to your site, goes to an affiliate’s site, and proceeds to buy your approved product, you receive a commission on the sale.
For blogs with an engaged audience for those who are interested in product recommendations, this can be an effective revenue model. Informative, how-to and lifestyle articles provide plenty of opportunities to promote approved products.
Again using the example of an adventure travel blog, say you posted a story about a tour of wild swimming spots. You can use affiliate marketing to recommend gear – such as a swimsuit, towel and glasses – that you packed for your trip. When a blog reader clicks on the link to your recommended swimsuit and then buys it, you generate an income from your blog.
To ensure that you maintain the trust of your audience, aim to be transparent about your affiliate relationships. In many countries it is a legal requirement to disclose your affiliate relationship, so be sure to consult with a legal advisor before engaging in affiliate marketing. Also, keep in mind that the reputation of your blog is related to the product or service you are promoting, so pay attention to quality when choosing your authorized partners.
Physical or digital product offer: Sell things to make money from your blog
As a way to monetize their blogs, many bloggers establish a presence on an eCommerce platform, create an online store and start selling products. Your products can be physical or digital. In the example of Adventure Travel Blog, you can sell T-shirts displaying your logo or digital guidebook for overseas destinations.
Whether your products are physical or virtual, you need to set up a system to receive payments. To sell physical goods you need to think about saving your stock, arranging shipping and handling taxes and duties. Digital products can be less logistically complex because they can be delivered electronically.
Subscription: Charge a regular fee to add a new income stream
If your blog has an active community that is interested in learning more about your topic, a paid membership or subscription model to use your valuable content to earn money in the long run.
In this business model, readers pay a certain amount regularly, usually monthly or annually. You can earn more by collecting subscription or subscription fees from readers in this way. This type of continuous cash flow provides the possibility of more stable, predictable and accurate revenue flows.
In return, you can provide customers or members with premium content, a community area, learning resources, videos or additional services and tools. You can combine some of these elements according to your blog.
Training: Monetize your blog through training
If your blog lends itself to training services, you can earn money by setting up and charging online courses or coaching packages.
When you create self-directed learning materials like videos or downloadable ebooks, you allow your audience members to move at their own pace. As people progress through your course, you can measure their interest in other topics.
Developing an online curriculum may require significant time and resources, so you need a dedicated audience to make it effective.
Another option to increase your income is to offer live video coaching and pay for your time.
Whether your offer is based on an online course or on-demand coaching, you can include the opportunity to communicate with your students via email or within your blog.
Remember, you have many options for making money from your blog. You can master a blog monetization strategy, or you can combine any number of revenue streams to discover which one works best for your business.
