With a determined work ethic and the right strategies, you can generate a lot of income from blogging. As a newbie blogger, you can make a decent part-time job within your first six months. With the right strategies on how to monetize your blog, you’ll generate full-time income within one to two year.
There are bloggers who hit the 6-figure mark in the first year. It all depends on the amount of effort that you are putting in your blogging efforts. However, you can still do everything right and not succeed.
The competition on the blogging platform continues to increase each day. Therefore, you need to learn a few tips on how to monetize your blog. You can jumpstart your growth as a blogger even if you are starting from ground zero.
There are several things that you can do to make money from blogging. A blog that provides value will solve the biggest problems of your readers. You can turn that value into profit by focusing on the needs of your target audience.
Table Of Content
How to Monetize Your Blog: The 7 Steps
1. Select a Profitable Topic for Your Blog:
Most new bloggers will want to have an innovative blog topic all the time. However, you can put a lot of pressure on yourself by taking such an approach. The most important thing is providing value and not re-inventing the wheel.
Choose a topic that you will enjoy learning about. Other people should also find your topic to be interesting. The secret is to identify your target audience and address the problems that they are facing.
Every niche outside there has a countless number of blog topics. You may think so hard but it is impossible to come up with an idea that is 100 percent original. The only thing that you need to do is bring your unique perspective on the table.
Write about something you enjoy most and you can think about it daily. You have to become cozy about the blog content that you will be creating. You cannot hide from your readers when you have a genuine interest in something.
The mistake that people make is picking a topic simply because the market has the opportunity. Your initial blog will not succeed if you don’t have passion for the topic. You should learn to blog from the heart.
The readers you are connecting with want to get content that will speak to them directly. Therefore, you need to blog about the topics that you relate to. You can easily get into the mind of your target audience if you are one of them.
Don’t make life hard on yourself by blogging about something that no one would like to read. Make sure so many people have an interest in the topic that you are choosing.
Let no one cheat you that people will have an interest in a topic just because you love it. Do a quick Google search about the topic that you would like to blog about.
It is always advisable to target a bigger audience. You will get more engagement and traffic when you have a bigger audience. The internet gives you the target audience immediate access to information. People will not have the patience to read your articles unless you provide value.
Serious readers will want to find valuable content faster. Therefore, you need to have a crystal clear image of your target audience. The best approach is to create a detailed audience persona before you begin to blog. It will help you learn who you are talking to with your content.
You need to learn about their demographics and online behavior. You cannot target your audience well enough unless you know them. Check whether the audience that you are targeting has a clear pain point that you need to address.
The content will improve the value of life for your readers. The best way to help them is to directly address their pain points. You will discover that it has the best answers on how to monetize your blog.
It will take you a very short time to create a huge fan base. The good thing about people who are going through problems is that they tend to be loyal. If you get content that improves your life, you will definitely go to the same platform for further assistance.
If you can develop a loyal email subscriber quickly, you will turn your blog into a revenue-generating machine very fast. You will not fall short of ideas on how to monetize your blog when you begin from this point.
2. Rapidly Build Your Audience and Make Money before Starting a Blog:
Several bloggers out there are using traditional marketing strategies to generate a steady income. Revenue generation is a small portion of a successful blog. The first thing that you will need to do is establishing yourself as an authority figure.
The other interventions are to build an email list and make meaningful connections in the industry. It will take you some time before you can fully monetize your blog. Let’s look at these points separately to learn how to monetize your blog.
Read more: 15 Actionable Blog Writing Tips for Beginners
a) Establish Yourself as an Authority Figure:
When you are starting your blog from scratch, you will find is hard to establish your authority. It can take you several years before you can build a genuine relationship with the target audience and maximize your potential of earning.
You need to get to a place where your audience begins to see you as an authority figure by association. It will take you some time before you can build trust among your target audience.
b) Networking With Industry Leaders:
Most of the guests that you interview result in meaningful relationships. When you expose your guests to a broader audience, you will give them a lot of value. All online entrepreneurs love these meaningful partnerships.
c) Build an Email List:
The email list plays a critical role in the success of your blog. Therefore, you should strive to grow your email list to monetize your blog. However, you are not just talking about mere subscribers. You need highly motivated individuals who are willing to engage and convert.
People who subscribe to your blog should be willing to learn and be willing to form an active part of your community. The secret is to attract subscribers who are in need of the solutions that you are providing in the market.
d) Generate Revenue:
You can generate a lot of income from your blog when you learn how to monetize your blog. You can do this using several approaches as long as you have valuable information about the products. Several people are doing the same thing and you need to stand out to succeed.
3. Determine the Strategy You Will Use for Blog Monetization:
As your site continues to grow, you will get more money-making opportunities from your blogging efforts. Some of the blog monetization strategies work perfectly in different growth phases.
For instance, affiliate sales work best in the early stages of growth and beyond. You will pay the affiliate marketer a percentage of the sales that he drives.
An excellent strategy is to write reviews about the courses or programs that you have undertaken. If you optimize these reviews property, they will rank so well in Google. You can be sure that they will have a direct impact on your ROI.
One of the largest affiliate programs globally is on Amazon. The company pays the affiliate marketers a rate that ranges between 1 to 10%. Amazon is the leading site in terms of traffic volume because of this high payout.
If you are not sure of where you should start with your affiliate offers, you can check on sites like ShareASale and ClickBank. The amount of commission you receive varies from one site to another. However, do not overrun your website with ads because the blog may come out as a giant billboard.
As your site continues to grow, you should look for better ways on how to monetize your blog. You will come across very creative blog monetization opportunities over time. You can even decide to host your personal life events.
There are so many opportunities of how to monetize your blog. These include using physical products, donations, software/apps, online courses, workshops, forums, and membership sites. The most important thing is to determine the best strategy for your blog.
4. Start Your Personal Blog:
After knowing how to monetize your blog, you will need to develop your own website. You will need to choose a blogging website and get a host. You should also register a domain name and design and configure your blog.
The most popular web development platforms are WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace. The best blogging platform globally is WordPress. More than 30% of the websites are running on the WordPress platform.
WordPress gives users an endless list of plugins to use in tracking, customizing and automating their website. With WordPress.com, you can start for free and pay to upgrade. You will access the website from the company’s domain. Besides, WordPress will take care of the back end.
The other option that you have is WordPress.org. In this case, you will own your domain and have complete control over the design. You have the freedom to choose your host and you will control how to monetize your blog. Most people prefer the use of WordPress.org for obvious reasons.
When you have full control of your web design, you can make more profits from it. Apart from the limitations of WordPress.com, it is much easier to setup.
You also need to get a WordPress Website host. The host will provide the real computing power to run your website. When you have a high-quality host, it will increase the loading speed of your website. This will, in turn, improve your ranking in the Google search engine.
The best starting point for beginners is Bluehost. The platform has adequate shared hosting plans and has an easy to navigate cPanel. Even though premium hosts come at a cost, you can begin to rank faster than you thought.
The next step is to register your domain name on any of the available sites. However, it is advisable to do it through a hosting provider. If not, you will be forced to transfer the registration to your host at a later date.
The market has several options but it is recommended to stick to .com. People are used to .com websites and it is good to stick to their expectations. The last step here is to configure and design your blog. There could be a few challenges along the way especially if you are building your website for the first time.
The secret is to choose the right hosting plan and implement the right tools. You will have a site that is running smoothly and is ready to start generating revenue.
5. Create Epic and Searchable Content for Your Blog:
What most people don’t know is that SEO is a multi-billion dollar industry. SEO is the content creation process that uses organic search results to direct content to your website. Most of the success of your blog comes from relevant and highly discoverable search terms.
Read more: Top 10 White Hat SEO Techniques To Rank 1 On Google
You cannot rank on the first page of the SERPS unless you create searchable and epic blog content. Create content that users are searching for online. You need to target keyword phrases that have a high search volume.
Write articles that plenty of people are searching for information about. The Google auto-populate feature will help you to find the most searchable features. While searching a phrase in the Google search bar, it will populate several suggestions depending on the most common search phrases.
Some of the tools include KWFinder, Ubersuggest, Moz, Ahrefs, and SEMRusha among others. MOZ, Ahrefs, and SEMRush are more advanced market research tools that you can use in competitor backlink analysis among other functions.
It is advisable to use the low competition keywords if you want your blogs to rank for those keywords fast. Low competition implies that the internet has fewer articles that are written for those keywords. SEMRush will give you detailed metrics on sites that are ranking for particular keywords. It will also show you what they are doing to rank highly.
The other tip is to write for Google. Google algorithm will rank your content depending on the likelihood of satisfying the needs of the searchers. Google evolves constantly to provide better search results. What will make your content searchable is stellar on-page SEO?
On-page SEO refers to the elements that are in your article itself. Include your primary keyword in the title, first page, several headings, and subheadings, and maintain a natural keyword density.
Keyword stuffing will have adverse effects on your keyword ranking. Use your keywords naturally and keep your readers in mind.
Good SEO practices entail writing for your audience by providing high-quality content to them. If your target audience appreciates your content, there is a high possibility that Google will do the same. A sentence should have less than 20 words. Let your paragraph have utmost two to three sentences.
The above formatting will be unintimidating, easy-to-absorb, and highly-scannable. For the tone and style, make sure you use a conversational tone. Use words like ‘I’ and ‘You’ to speak to your audience directly.
It is also good to use simple words throughout your writing. Google expects you to do what is best for your readers. The most important SEO trick in the market is to provide high-quality content to your readers.
6. Promote Your Content to Your Current Audience:
Promoting your content in your email will help it to get traffic. Creating shareable content is a great way to learn how to monetize your blog. The content should trigger strong emotions, offer a unique perspective, be entertaining, and solve a problem.
When a person shares content, he wants he is sharing with to feel the same emotion as he did while reading the content. The best content will make the audience to feel something.
You need to be so good that your audience cannot ignore you. Make your content to be so amazing that your audience cannot avoid sharing it. You can create a weekly newsletter that features the best content of the week.
Be consistent by sending your newsletter out at the same time every week. Your visitors will be expecting that content and you should not let them down. It is also good to use engaging subject lines throughout the article. A good subject line will trigger emotions by piquing interest.
Don’t share for the sake of just sharing. Provide a lot of value in each email that you send to your audience. The recipients will continue opening and sharing with their friends and colleagues who they believe have an interest in the content.
Your email list will grow very fast as people continue sharing your content. Apart from the email list, real sharing takes place on social media platforms. Share your content on Google+, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook among others.
Several social media hacks will make your content to rock. You need to time your shares so that you post when your target audience is active. It does not make sense to post your content in the middle of the night when everyone is asleep.
Timing means that you are sharing your content when your audience is more likely to engage. A service like Buffer will help you in managing your campaigns on social media. For Facebook, the best tines are at 3pm on Wednesdays. Each platform has its optimal publishing time.
The accompanying text that you write should be highly engaging. Your text should have an engaging headline and hook. Like emails, you need a headline that will capture the attention of the reader.
You need to create useful facts, create intrigue, and trigger emotions. Stir up sufficient curiosity that will encourage people to click the content.
Read more: SEO Content: A Step-By-Step Guide
It is also advisable to tag influencers to your content. The strategy will give you very solid connections in the industry. Tag important figures in the industry whenever you are sharing relevant posts. If they discover it is share-worthy and useful, they may post on their individual platforms.
You also need to thank influencers for the inspiration. If you are using the idea of another person to improve your content, inform them. Put them as references, link to their blog, and reach out to inform them.
The person will be pleased that he has attained resource status that they are sharing with their audience. Therefore, it is a good practice to promote your content to your existing set of audience. The step is crucial if you are looking for tips on how to monetize your blog.
7. Setup Your Website for Organic Email List Growth:
You need to start building your email list from the first day. Every visitor you get is an opportunity to capture an email that you can turn into a loyal fan.
Growing an email list takes time but you can do several things to speed up the process. Don’t wait for a long time before you begin to build your email list. You only require a single individual to subscribe. The email list is one of the most powerful tools that you have.
Don’t allow your visitor to go before leaving his contact details. Doing so is like throwing a great business opportunity. The email will help you to share content and survey your audience. You will also use it to promote special offers and in pre-sell products.
Read more: Step By Step Guide to Successful Email Outreach
How to Monetize Your Blog: Final Thought
With all these tips, you have all you need to monetize your blog. It is important to learn how to monetize your blog if you wish to take your earnings to the next level. The most important thing is to put in a lot of effort and learn to be patient. Remember you will not transform your blog into a 6-digit dollar earner overnight. As you do this, the quality of the blogs is more important than the quantity.
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