Blogging has become a highly profitable career choice over time and there's nothing wrong if you want to be a successful blogger and make money from it. Most of the bloggers though start blogging as a hobby and make it their profession once it gets a good amount of regular traffic while others start it as a career from day one. In either cases, it takes a lot of time and effort before you can earn a good revenue from blogging and make it your primary source of income as the basics starts from building trust among the readers and increase followers while the final step would be to persuade them to act as you wanted. Afterall, nobody would like to follow the recommendation link or purchase anything from a person whom they can't trust. So, before monetizing, you must focus on building trust and be vocal among the readers. Once you have a good number of followers, you can choose any combination of these 4 proven ways explained below to make huge money from blogging quickly.
1. Product Sales
This is the best business you can do through blogging which will generate the highest possible revenue. You can sell any digital or physical products through your blog which you can see most of the bloggers doing these days like selling digital products such as templates, photographs, graphic artworks, softwares, ebooks or analytical reports to name a few. It would be much easier to plan such sales if you could create a list of products which are related to your blog content and are most likely to be purchased by your readers promptly after reading that content. For example, I'm a graphic and web designer, web developer on Laravel and Wordpress, SEO analyst and a blogger, so I can sell digital products like graphic artworks, web templates, content management systems or other form of web applications easily through this platform.
You can also start up an online shop and sell any physical products like clothings, foods, electronics, machineries, sport materials, etc. via a blog which contains articles related to those products. Starting an online shop and advising people through your articles about the features and benefits of those products while displaying them on your blog can drive a good amount of regular sales and thus improve your overall revenue.
The basic here is that you must understand the need of your targeted readers and then sell them products which can satisfy their needs or solve their problems. These products can be utitlity products too which can make the readers' life relatively convenient.
2. Paid Services
If you possess some expertise level knowledge and skills on some areas of readers interest, you can even offer such paid services on your blogs which may include services like:
- Promotion
- Designing
- Web Development
- Consultation
- Content Writing
- Product Reviews
- SEO
You should be able to relate such services to your readers which will help them in specific areas to get those readers involved and thus generation revenue. You can provide a detailed article on what you can offer and then ask your readers to contact you with details of the task they want you to accomplish for them via the contact form or mail or some other means of communication. You can even quote a fixed price or ask the readers who contact you to declare their budget for the job to be carried out.
This is another option to make a huge turnover from your blogging although you will need to reach a huge number of readers to maximize your chance of getting such freelance jobs on regular basis while you must be able to prove your expertise in the areas you can work on through your blog.
3. Memberships
Once you have a good number of followers, you can add premium contents on your site like online courses, forums, downloadable contents, survey reports, etc. and introduce special paid membership scheme for the visitors to access those premium contents and make money through your blog. You can also introduce some discount offers for members on some digital or physical products on your site to generate revenues and ensure regular visitors too. You can also offer some expert advice, coaching or webinars to registered members on regular basis to add up value of your mebership scheme. The options go on and on, but, the thing here to keep in mind is, you need to offer something that is unique and capable of attracting interest from majority of your readers.
To be successful on membership scheme, you must have built trust among your readers and your offers must be something that your readers need and that thing must not be available for free somewhere else on the web.
4. Advertising
If you don't have any products or services to offer your readers while membership scheme is also not the best option for you, then, you can opt for advertising or promoting products or services of other companies to generate revenue from your blog. Widely known as affiliate marketing, you can receive a good commission from the sale of such products or services through your blog. The chances of generating high revenue from such products or services depends on your number of readers and the relation of the products or services to your contents. The only thing you need to do in this option is write great contents related to those products or services and recommend them to go through your blog to their respective sites and perform desired task. You can sign up for such type of online marketing and the companies will provide you with special links to add in your blog. Those links will include an additional referal code that helps them recognize the visitors visiting their site from your blog and pay you accordingly.
You can also opt to sell advertising space on your blog site to local business houses to display their advertisements which is quite similar to selling ad space in newspapers. The advertiser will pay you some amount periodically as per the agreement to display their advertisement on your blog site. The amount an advertiser would be willing to pay you for such advertisement would increase with the increment in number of visitors to your site and their relation to the specific products or services being advertised.
You can also opt for global advertisement partners like Google Adsense, Media.net, PropellerAds Media, Amazon Associates, Yllix Media, Chitika, PopCash, Infolinks, Adsterra, PopAds, RevContent, etc. to display their advertisements on your blog. Most of these advertisers pay you on the basis of advertisement impressions and the click count on those advertisements. The revenue you generate from these type of advertisements also depend on your site's global ranking, number of regular visitors and page views as well as the relation of your readers to the products or services beign advertised. While it may be a good option to choose as a secondary revenue source, setting it up as a primary source would require tons of visitors on your site on daily basis which is much harder to achieve as a new blogger. The payment amount per click and per ad views is very low for low ranked sites and depends on other aspects like the geographical location of the visitor, source of traffic and much more. The revenue is highly inconsistent in these type of advertising and won't be sufficient for your living until you reach a height in blogging industry.
Final Words
You can see the Google Adsense running on my site as well which is the only source of revenue online for me but it merely covers my hosting cost annually. I'm a trainer on web design and development at IT Training Nepal as well as the head of web application development at E-Prabidhi, so I've a stable income source from where I earn for my living. This site was initially developed as a reference material for my students of web design and development which I noticed was being visited by a large number of outsiders within a year as it was uploaded on the web, so, I started working on the SEO part recently and even started to share my knowledge and experience with you all out there following me via this blog section. Since, I already have a good income source and less time to focus on blogging, I opted for Google Adsense simply to cover my annual hosting cost only. If I earn anything above it then it would be a bonus while earning less than expected too won't hurt my pocket much but if you are totally committed to blogging and want to generate good revenue, you should opt for one or more sources of revenue apart from the global advertising in order to achieve greater success and earn for your living.
Some people would point out to donations as another source of online income which I totally disagree because people would happily donate to some charities but no one would be willing to donate for your living. A myth is prevalent among the bloggers that displaying advertisements on your site would automatically start generating revenue but as I stated earlier, it'd take a huge amount of time and effort to earn your living solely by blogging as the revenue at the beginning would only be a few dollars a month. So, if you are planning for a career in blogging, look out for a more reliable source of making money that matches your content and your readers' interest.
You May Also Like
If you are new to blogging, you may also want to read the following articles related to blogging:
- 13 Golden rules you need to know for a successful career in blogging
- 5 Common mistakes every new blogger makes (with best solutions)
Get in Touch
Since, no single source of revenue is guaranteed to work for all, carry out experiment with all above stated options one at a time and stick with the one that works for you. It'll surely pay you off in the long run while the signs would be clear from the first few weeks. Which option do you think will work the best for your blog? What options have you already tried out? How do you make money from blogging? What options do you think I should have included? Let me know through the comments.
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