5 Easy Ways to Monetize Your Blog

Jul 10, 2011 Posted By: No Comments

OK maybe it’s true that most people go into blogging hoping to get some money from it. It may not be as easy but with a bit of preseverance you can actually achieve it. That said, here are handful honest ways to earn with your blog.

Sell Affiliate Products

Sell other people’s product. Yes, you can sell products that offer either a one-time commission or a recurring commission. The beauty of the strategy is that you don’t have to own or create the products yourself. You just have to sign up as an affiliate for a product you yourself use and enjoy, and then promote that product in exchange for a small commission. It maybe small but it’s still commissions.

Some affiliate commissions can be in the 50-75% range which is really quite high. So this can be a potential earning for you. And if you sell recurring commission products then you’ll have a sustainable income rather than just a one-off commission.

Direct Advertising

If your blog has a decent amount of traffic you can get brokers to deal directly with advertisers to buy space on your blog. Alternatively you can go through services such as Blogads who do the legwork for you.

Text Link Advertising

This is where you sell text link ads within your sites content to advertisers. This can be done directly or through a reputable broker such as Text-Link-Ads.com. The benefit of going through a broker is you will have more opportunities to earn as these companies typically have access to a very large pool of advertisers spending money.

Google Adsense

This is the most basic straightforward way to monetize, however it may not be as effective. You earn less than if you sell direct ad space to advertisers, and your income depends on traffic and what niche you are in. Payouts is generally quite small, although there are others with huge payouts. Just be careful not to violate any of their TOS as they can terminate your account and you will lose all revenue from that source immediately.

Selling Your Own Products

Most bloggers would agree that this is the best method to monetize your blog. Not only are you building an income, you’re also building your own brand and line of products and you can recruit your own affiliates to further grow your income. Yes it does take some initial effort to create your own product, but once you learn how or learn to outsource it, it becomes the ultimate strategy for all bloggers.

Categories : Internet Marketing Blog

Which is Better? Niche or Authority Blogging?

Jul 7, 2011 Posted By: No Comments

Well. does it really matter? you might say. After all you just want to simply get something going and be able to make some money out of the internet.

Let’s see the differences. To create an authority blog is a long term project; it’s about presenting yourself as an expert in your field. You need to keep on creating loads of content over time and some will have to be outstanding or good quality. You will also have to connect with other bloggers for additional exposure. It takes time and effort to get your blog ranked well in Google and other search engine and you may be up against some stiff competition from established bloggers, but the rewards are great.

Say for example you want to go for ‘blogging for money‘ niche; be prepared to compete with people like Darren Rowse from “Problogger”, and Yaro Starak from “Entrepeneur’s Journey”. This could be a real challenge to break into this niche, especially for someone with no prior branding campaign. However you can still be an expert in other niche or sub-niche; just follow your passions or your interest and build slowly from there.

Niche blog is easier but also somewhat limited. There is only so much that you can write on any given topic, after which it can become difficult to come up with new ideas to write. Worse if you get tired of writing about the same subject so it helps to pick a niche that interest you in the first place. You may maintain a couple of niche blogs (so you can have more than one stream of income) so whenever you tire of any given topic, you can always sell or “flip” your blog (go to flippa.com) get some cash and and start something new.

But the benefit of niche blogging is that it is easier to rank well in Google. You just have to hang in there a bit longer to reap the fruits of your labor.

On the other hand, if you built an authority blog, it would be harder to let go of something that you put so much work into, and it would also be harder to sell something with which you deliberately have branded yourself.

Basically, it all boils down to your own expectations and preferences. If you get bored easily, you might want to consider creating niche blogs, build them a bit and sell them later on. In fact, there are many marketers who specialize in creating profitable niche blogs, and that is their sole business model. They create a string of small, profitable blogs and they either sell them for cash or outsource the maintenance from others or use an automated blogging software for fresh contents.

Categories : Internet Marketing Blog

Blog is better than Website?

Jul 7, 2011 Posted By: No Comments

You may have read numerous comments about how great blogging is and many people who are doing business on the internet would prefer a website over a blog.

And why is that? Well, blogging unlike a website allows you to create a conversation with your readers, thus allowing you to engage in a meaningful exchange of ideas because in many cases you will find visitors return to check on new comments on a given post. If your topics are interesting, you might find comments among readers start piling up thus creating a lively and interesting debate and racking up page news. Page views are vital if you ever plan on making cash from your blog.

Blogging also allows more freedom in choosing your topics. You can vary the topics on your blog as much as you wish and vary the length of your posts. So you don’t bore your visitors with the same information day after day. Blogs allow you to spice things up.

You can also change or fiddle with your writing style and approach from time to time and get away with it; unlike a static website, any changes in tone or style would immediately stand out like a sore thumb.

With WordPress,the most popular blogging platform, you can have a multitude of plug-in’s with which you can add additional functionality to your blog; anything from an online contact form to creating a custom site-map for search engines. Some plug-in’s will add visual changes, while others will simply work behind the scenes to make your blog more efficient.

The simplicity yet effective WordPress allow you to increase the usability and functionality of your blog, making it interesting and your visitors will love the results!

Blogs possess an RSS (real time syndication) feed. As a result, every time you add new content, a number of services are notified of the update, resulting in attention from the search engines.

So if you have a Facebook or Twitter account, this feed can be routed to this sites allowing you to share your blog updates on your status without even logging in. Visitors can also subscribe to your RSS feed to stay updated on new content, or even subscribe to the comment’s RSS feed to follow new conversations.

Most importantly, the structure of blogs also make them search engine friendly by nature, which means it’s ten times easier to attract search traffic than it is with a static site.

It’s also very simple to change the appearance and layout of your blog and it can be literally done in seconds!. You can change the colors, the sizes and the layout of your sidebars by simply selecting a new theme (template set). This, along with adding plug-in’s, can be simply done from within the admin area of your blog – something which is not possible with any other website built on any other platform.

While it does take some time initially to set it up and install your preferred plug-in’s, etc, adding new content afterwards is as easy as clicking the mouse.

The best part is that you can add all this new content, tweak a new appearance and install new plug-in’s, without any knowledge of FTP (file transfer protocol) or PHP (the coding language on which WordPress was written). Awesome news to all newbies out there!.

The WP platform is continuously being improved. Every few weeks there are updates available for the platform itself, as well as frequent available updates for plug-in’s and themes.

So there you have it. Now why would anyone still prefer to waste their time with the old school static sites anyway.

Categories : Internet Marketing Blog
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »