Whether you’re a newbie or someone that has been blogging for some months/years already if you’re thinking on how to monetize your blog here are 10 effective ways to achieve it and create a passive income stream online.
10 Ways to Monetize your Blog
1. Affiliate Marketing
This is my favorite and one of the most recommended ways to monetize your blog. Affiliate Marketing allows you to sell a product from another company/service and earn a commission. In many cases, Affiliate commissions are very high (sometimes up to 50%), so if you sell a $100 product, you get $50 for achieving the process. Depending on the niche of your blog, you should check what kind of affiliate programs you can subscribe to. In the blogosphere, you can be an affiliate of Themes/Hosts/Domains/SEO/eBooks and more.
One great example of how big the affiliate market is by checking out the Amazon Associates program, which includes thousands of products for every niche.
2. PPC (Pay per Click Advertising)
Perhaps the simpler example for this is to use Google Adsense on your blog. Google Adsense is probably the biggest advertising network and you only need to put their code on your blog so that Google recognizes your content and shows related ads. By each click you receive from your readers, you’ll earn a commission based on the CPC (Cost per Click) of the Ad. You can earn from $0.01 and up to $20 per click, based on the country, the type of Ad, and your audience. Google Adsense is an easier way to monetize your blog, but it won’t generate that much if you don’t have a good chunk of traffic.
Don’t worry, I know some persons that live from Adsense depending on their niche. Another great ad network with similar performance is Media.net. You can check out my Media.net review here.
3. CPM (Cost per Thousand) Advertising
If your blog has been growing its traffic recently, you might consider going for a CPM program as well. CPM means someone will pay you for every 1,000 visits to your blog, even if they don’t click the banners at all because of the exposure this generates. A very famous website where you can use Adsense with a CPM program is Hubpages, where you can write Hubs (posts) and they’ll put some Ads in them to make money. So remember, if your blog has lots of pageviews, maybe CPM advertising is for you.
4. Private Banners
When a company is interested in promoting their products or services in your blog, they might be able to pay you for ad space. This means you can charge a decent amount of money to have the banner in your blog, even without the page views or clicks. But don’t get me wrong, if you don’t have enough exposure and clicks, they’ll soon realize that the banner has a bad ROI, and they will stop paying for it. So, even though it seems like a more secure way to earn money for months, you still need to work and get the best traffic and audience for them.
5. Sponsored Posts
I’ve been very picky with the sponsored posts because most of them are just SPAM or a sales pitch that won’t provide good quality content. Sponsored articles usually include URLs to other pages that might not even be
related to your blog. However, if you trust a brand, company, or even an affiliate and want to accept a sponsored post for them, it could work. Just don’t forget that your readers are what gives life to your blog. Mad readers = bad thing. In fact, I definitely recommend Guest Posts, as they usually provide a more valuable opinion and insights than a sponsored article, even if you don’t get a payment for it. Stream SEO pays for Guest Posts.
6. Product Reviews
I’ve been working on Product Reviews in the Computer Niche for 5 years, and this is a great way to monetize your blog while doing what you love the most. So would you like to test the latest iPhone 5? Well, that’s fine, as long as you can provide a great review, but even more important, that you can be partial at all times without favoring a brand just because of their products. Normally, instead of charging for a review, I’d just ask to keep the sample with me for future references and comparisons, so my bedroom was full of computer parts and stuff like that for a long time.
7. Ebooks
This is something that I’ve never tried but I know it could be very interesting to do. Many bloggers self-publish their eBooks (Amazon is a great point to start) and sell additional and valuable information to their readers for a decent price. If you’re good in your niche or you just represent an authority elsewhere, publishing an eBook could be a very effective way to create a passive income stream.
8. Donations
Many people believe that nobody would donate anything to them. If you believe that, it is because you don’t even like your content. If you think your content is great enough, and your readers love it, then asking for a Donation could work. A very interesting example is The Oatmeal, who raised a lot of money ($1,370,511) from a donation for a Tesla Museum. The key here was to create great content (comics in this case) and then appeal to your readers for help. When you’ve got that kind of power, you’ve owned the internet.
9. Create a Job Board
If you’re an authority on the niche and you’ve got great exposure on your site, creating a job board could be an awesome idea to create a passive income and monetize your blog. People will post jobs on your board for an amount of money, and you’ll help more people to get a decent job and increase the overall quality of the niche. Creating a Job Board isn’t that difficult. To achieve a high-rank authority is the challenge.
10. Create your own product or service
You don’t necessarily need to build it yourself. You can outsource it or team with an ally to achieve it. Whether it’s a simple product or a great service, your blog could be the vehicle to promote it as well. I usually don’t recommend doing this unless you have some experience and consider all the risks, because it might cost you more than anything else, and you don’t know if it will succeed or not. Kick-starter is a great place to start if you’ve got a good idea and need some funding.
Conclusion
While there are literally hundreds of ways to monetize your blog, the ones I write above are definitely one of the most common and effective ways to achieve a passive income online. It depends on you, but remember, the more you diversify, the better. Many people fall in love with a certain way to earn money and after some time if something goes wrong, you’ll need a plan B.
Which one is your favorite? For me, definitely Affiliate Marketing with a mix of the rest, but how about you? do you even monetize your blog?
Leave a comment below 🙂
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