Monetize Your Blog

Creating and maintaining a blog can be a chore. But if you can monetize that blog, it can be an endeavor you look forward to writing. Here are some tips on making the most of your blog. Once you start writing your blog, you will need to increase your audience. These tips will help you grow your audience so it will become easier to monetize.

Choose a niche

What is it that you know more about than anyone else? Or as much as other experts? It could be that you make the perfect chocolate chip cookie and are a whiz in the kitchen. You might be very knowledgeable about stamp collecting. Maybe you are an amazing chess player. Each of those is a niche topic. These are very specific topics, and you could choose something a little broader, but you get the idea.

Choose appropriate colors

When you write about something very business oriented, use basic colors. If you are writing about art, more vibrant colors could be used. Writing about being a mom? Try classic baby pink or blue. It sounds cliché, but the colors help with the vibe of your blog. The color scheme becomes part of your brand.

SEO

Use SEO (search engine optimization) apps like Yoast SEO in order to help search engines locate and index your site. Make the text more readable by using shorter sentences and paragraphs. Also adding images helps readability.

Your voice

When writing, you have a style, your voice. Your voice should line up with the niche in tone and vocabulary. Make sure your audience can understand what you are saying. Put links to definitions or pages on the subjects that need more explaining (that helps the SEO too).

Use images/videos

Images are important to make your blog posts appealing. Blogs with no images get less engagement. Videos are even better than still images to attract people.

Social proof 

Are you a member of a professional organization that relates to your niche? Add credentials to your blog which adds credibility.

Analytics

Set up analytics on your blog so you know how many visitors you have each month. The more visitors you have, the more opportunities for monetization are possible.

Grow your subscribers

Create a mailing list or use an RSS feed to let people know when you posted a new blog. Try to grow your list by asking people to sign up (a call to action).

Mutual link building

Do you have a business associate with a similar or adjacent niche? You can write blogs for each other to add to both of your subscriber lists. If you are a car repair expert, maybe get a car detailer to write blogs for you and vice versa.

Private Ads

If you have a relationship with a supplier or adjacent business you could get advertising on your site from them. The more page views you have per month, the more you can charge for advertising on your site.

Affiliate marketing

Investopedia says, “Affiliate marketing is an advertising model in which a company compensates third-party publishers to generate traffic or leads to the company’s products and services. The third-party publishers are affiliates, and the commission fee incentivizes them to find ways to promote the company.” You can sign up with cj.com, adsterra.com or another affiliate marketing company to post third-party ads on your site and get a commission from anyone who makes a purchase via your link. Some of the links are like ads, others are simply a link. You can set them up the way you want them to appear within your blog.

Product offerings

Have you written an ebook (or a physical book)? Offer your products for sale on your site. Make sure any financial transactions are secure by using PayPal.com or some other payment system. If not, you need to have a secure site and use E-commerce. PayPal is a much easier and less expensive way to go.

Get sponsored by a brand

Getting sponsorship is difficult, but if you have a good relationship with a company that wants to sponsor you, it’s a great way to make money from your blog.

Summary

These things don’t happen overnight. It takes a lot of work, and maybe even a little luck, to have a highly successful and monetized blog.