You’ve started a blog.
You’ve poured your heart and soul into every expertly crafted post, agonized over the minute details of your slick design, researched and analyzed relevant keywords and built up link juice by guest posting until you’ve fallen asleep at your keyboard.
Great! …Now what?
Put that baby to work, that’s what.
Direct monetization is just a fancy term for making a profit from your blog directly. Affiliate marketing, advertising, and writing an eBook are all ways of direct monetization.
In contrast, freelance writing, consulting and brand ambassadorship are all indirect ways of monetizing, where your blog just serves as a jumping off platform into other industries.
There’s a great big world of online marketing out there and if you’re just getting started, it can be hard to know where to look for your first dollar.
Luckily, we’ve put together this list of tried and true methods for making money with your sparkling new home in cyberspace.
Behold, four proven ways to make money with your blog.
Affiliate marketing is perhaps the most popular way for newbie bloggers to start making money on their blogs. It’s when you promote a product or service on your website and make a commission when your readers purchase through your provided link.
Affiliate programs often have very small commission rates, so don’t expect to be making a full time income from a few links just yet. However, they can bring in passive income on a monthly basis.
An affiliate link to your web host, for example, is a good place to start. If you can genuinely recommend the product to your readers, why not make a little cash from it as well? Just be sure to build the link into your content organically, let your readers know it’s an affiliate link and that you’ll be making a small commission when they purchase from your link.
This one is obvious but advertising is still a leading way to make money from your blog. There are a few different ways to do it. You can install Google AdSense or advertise with the brand directly.
Google AdSense is a good way for bloggers who are just starting out to start making a little bit of extra money. If you’re not technically inclined, it can be a bit tricky at first. It just takes a little time and effort but can pay off in the long run.
But most importantly, it takes a great blog with great content. Google installs ads on your blog, assuming you have visitors who will then click on those ads and in turn entitle you to a small commission. If your blog isn’t useful to your reader or has too many ads, your visitors will click away before they even have time to see the ads.
Advertising with a brand directly is another way to do it, and perhaps easier than AdSense. The concept is simple: you contact a brand in your niche (or hopefully, they contact you) and rent out a space on your site to their banner for a monthly fee.
Direct advertising can be more beneficial to you and your readers in a number of ways.
First, you get to choose the brands you think will be of use to your readers. Second, by embedding the banners directly into your site, you can apply your color scheme, dimension requirements, etc. to make your blog look seamless. And finally, direct advertisers usually pay better because you’re giving them access to your already targeted audience.
Writing an eBook is a bit of a commitment, but once it’s published, the income becomes passive and remains that way. You can embed a shopping cart on a page, so your reader can purchase it without having to leave your blog. There are plugins out there to help with this.
Once you’ve established authority in your selected niche, writing an eBook is a great way to gain even more authority. It also offers a lead magnet for people to subscribe to your newsletter.
“Get the first 15 pages of my eBook, _____________, FREE when you subscribe!”
Writing an eBook will also help fine-tune both your writing and business skills. Plus, you get to say you wrote a book.
There are a lot of ways to monetize your blog, and these are just a few. But it’s enough to get you started and give you a feel for what the process is like. Do some research, get set up with some advertising and you’ll be on your way to making money through your shiny new blog in no time.