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Want to know how to monetize your blog? First, build a loyal readership base and reach out further by way of social media. Learn more practical tips here.
Engaging articles and text-based content have long been part of the fabric of the World Wide Web. In its early days, blogging platforms offered anyone with something to write about the opportunity to do so at little or no cost.
Today, there are numerous options for bloggers, such as BlogSpot, Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, and Medium. But over the years, that democratization has brought about increased competition for eyeballs and retention. For this reason, quality content is no longer a secondary variable leading to success. It has become the primary determinant.
Others Have Found Ways to Monetize Their Blogs…
There are people who have found remarkable success by blogging online. However, such success never comes easily. For every popular blog, there are probably tens if not hundreds of similar sites that struggle with a low readership.
Moreover, even for many widely read or followed bloggers, it usually takes patience and years of effort to gain readers. Those who succeed have learned to focus on what their audiences find interesting and engaging. However, sometimes all it takes is for a single post to go viral. Then, that fortunate blogger could get a big break toward achieving their creative goals.
…and You, Too, Can Monetize Your Blog
Long and rough as the road to success may be, that doesn’t mean success isn’t attainable. It’s probably true that nearly every blogger would like to make a living off their writing. However, to make money doing so requires a fairly large audience of loyal and regular readers.
This is typically the key substrate upon which most other forms of financial success will result. Before you can monetize your blog, you must grow your readership base. This is crucial, as you’ll see from the ideas we give below.
With that in mind, let’s look at a number of actionable approaches that you can use to successfully monetize your blog in 2019.
1. Focus on a Niche You’re Good at and Be Consistent
At this point, we already know that the first major step toward monetizing a blog is to build the readership base. A practical way of doing so is to write with a focus on a specific area.
For example, if you are passionate about mobile games, you could write only about them. Similarly, if you are into talking about education-related issues that concern students—such as admissions, studying tips, or offering college papers for purchase—you should dedicate your writing time to that.
It’s important to emphasize the role of genuine interest or passion in blogging. Remember that success takes time. What’s more, you need to consistently create novel and interesting content to keep more people reading. As a matter of fact, without passion, you’ll eventually get bored and stop.
2. Social Media Channels Can You Help Monetize Your Blog
Compared to their counterparts in the early 2000’s, one of the biggest advantages bloggers have today is the widespread adoption of social media. There are billions of people around the world spending hours every month on social media platforms.
You can tap into this opportunity to create awareness for your blog. One simple way of doing this is to share your blog posts across social networks like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and others.
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However, never forget to interact with your audience by responding to their comments and questions. That has a lot of significance in terms of how your brand is perceived and how your social media content is ranked. Over time, this can help attract more readers and build your audience organically. Also, you could choose to pay for your posts to be shown as ads to users.
3. Use Ad-Serving Networks to Monetize Your Blog
Ads displayed on your blog can help generate massive sums of money in ad revenue when you do them right. For one thing, the chances of success with this method are closely tied to the size of your monthly audience and the relevance of the ads.
However, be careful to choose the right ad network. Make sure it can serve highly relevant ads to your readers and have attractive payment terms. Additionally, always monitor how the advertisements affect your monthly readership levels. You don’t want to lose readers due to flashy ads getting in between them and your content.
4. Partner with Suitable Brands to Advertise Directly on Your Blog
When you have made significant progress with growing your monthly audience, begin to explore direct partnerships with relevant brands. Do not be afraid to reach out to brands that offer products or services that can be useful to your readers.
These companies may offer you a fixed sum of money for an ad or blog post about their products. Such posts are known as sponsored content. This can also apply to your social media accounts, allowing you to make money by posting such paid content. Alternatively, they may offer to pay you periodically for running their ads and writing about their brands across your social media pages.
5. Offer Paid Courses with Some Free Content
When you have built a reasonably broad audience, say a few thousand monthly readers, you can decide to offer more focused and insightful content on topics related to your niche, some of which you may have previously covered in your blog posts.
Another way to know what topics to choose for your courses is to ask your readers via surveys or by reading their comments. Users who gladly talk about your free content helping them would be more inclined to buy your paid courses since they’ll expect to get more value.
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You may also create e-books on highly sought-after topics relevant to your writings. Sharing them for free on social media platforms but requiring readers to leave their email addresses can help you build your email newsletter base. This is a potential source of students for your courses and a good way to monetize your blog.
6. Sell Merchandise Relevant to Your Niche
This involves acquiring and selling physical goods that are related to the subjects you blog about. Ideally, the products should be custom-branded for your blog or the persona you have created via social platforms.
For this monetization method to generate meaningful sums of money, you would need to have a massive and avid readership/viewer base. Therefore, this method would make sense for big-time bloggers who’re looking to explore other monetization methods besides those above.
Also, procuring merchandise in large quantities may require significant investments that may be readily available to already successful bloggers vis-à-vis less popular ones.
