Five Ways to Generate an Income from Your Blog
For many, blogging isn’t just a hobby – it’s a way of life. Bloggers find a way to share their thoughts, views and opinions about pretty much anything that they’re interested in from starting your own business to baking, with many developing their blogging endeavors into a full time job. If done right, blogging can generate an income which you’ll be able to easily live off, without needing to be employed. Whether you’ve been running a blog for a while or are just thinking of starting an online blog about a subject that you’re passionate about, there are a number of different ways in which you can make money. We’ve listed just a few of these ways here.
Paid Advertising
Displaying advertisements on your blog on behalf of other websites and businesses is one of the most popular ways that many bloggers use to make money. There are a number of different ways in which you can display advertisements on your blog, from banner advertisements to links in blog posts and articles. The methods in which you can be paid for displaying these advertisements also differs. Certain advertisers will buy space on your blog, which they pay for at a set rate. Others will pay you per click which generates them a sale.
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is a popular choice of advertisement for many bloggers, with the help of Pay Per Click management services. Cost Per Mile advertising is also a popular choice with bloggers, especially if they are not generating a lot of traffic. Cost Per Mile advertising is similar to PPC advertising, however rather than being paid on the basis of the amount of clicks, you generate an income based on the number of impressions, or page views, which you receive.
Selling Content
Those who have been blogging for quite a while and have gained a large audience online can easily make money by selling other content. For example, you could write an e-book expanding even more on the subject that you blog about, and list it for sale on the blog to anybody who is interested in learning even more. For many bloggers, this is an easy way of making money, as once the e-book is written, there isn’t much work that needs to be done.
photo/ Public domain pictures via Pixabay
Drive Your Traffic
Driving traffic to your blog is important, as the more traffic that you can gain, the more income you are likely to make. Social media is an important tool when it comes to driving traffic, and the more social media platforms you use, the better. Keeping connected is important in today’s digital world, and ensuring that you display share buttons and an option to visit and like your social media pages on your blog is important to your readers. The more shares of your content that you can achieve from readers, the more traffic you will gain.
Online Stores
Depending on what it is that you are blogging about, opening an online store to sell items could be a profitable option for you. Many great blogging platforms such as WordPress have plugins available for the easy creation and setup of an online store. For example, if you blog about arts and/or craft projects, you may be able to sell items which you have created in an e-commerce store.
Affiliate Marketing
If done right, affiliate marketing can be an excellent way to make money from your blog. Affiliate marketing is chosen over advertising banners by a number of bloggers as it can be less intrusive or annoying to readers. For example, if you are running a blog about gardening, you could research affiliate programs which contain products related to this subject. You could then write blog posts related to these products. For example, if somebody wants to advertise a new lawn mower product, you could write a post about the best kind of lawn mowers and promote the affiliate product at the end.
With this type of advertising, you earn a commission based on the amount of sales which are generated as a result of your promotion. This commission is usually offered on a percentage base, which can differ depending on the product. This method is often quite flexible, and you can change how you promote using a series of different advertising methods such as banner ads, recommendations, or text link ads.
Have you earned money from blogging, or do you currently generate an income from your blog? Which is your go-to method for making money from your blog? Let us know in the comments.
Guest Author: Carol Trehearn
