6 Top Ways To Monetize Your Blog And Make Money From It

If approached correctly, monetization is not that tricky. In this final chapter I will cover the points that you need to keep in mind when trying to make money with your blog.


Authority First, Money Second 

I reserved the last chapter for monetization exactly because it should be the last part of your overall blogging strategy. In other words, before worrying about making money with the blog you need to make sure that:

1. your content is top notch,
2. your traffic is high,
3. your blog is seen as an authority inside its niche,
4. you have a loyal audience, and
5. your design is clean and ready to receive ads.

As this point many people wonder: “Should I avoid all sorts of ads on my blog initially?” The answer is: “It is up you.” Both routes have pros and cons. Starting with no ads keeps your blog cleaner, but once you add them some readers might be disappointed. Starting with ads signals to your readers your intentions and it also lets you experiment with different revenue sources. The drawback is that while your blog is not established the ads might have a negative impact on the traffic. The important thing, though, is that you focus your energies on the content, networking and promotion. Build an authority blog first, and then worry about making money with it.


AdSense 

Most bloggers experiment with Google AdSense sooner or later, but very few manage to make
substantial money with it. The reason is simple: CPC ads do not work on every website. You need to meet two basic requirements if you want to make good money with AdSense:

• 1. Your blog needs to have high traffic (e.g., 1,000 daily unique visits or more) 
• 2. A good percentage of that traffic must come from search engines (e.g., 70% or more)

Getting traffic from search engines is essential because those visitors are the ones who most often click on ads. If you meet these two requirements, it will be just a matter of choosing the right AdSense units and positioning them effectively.
According to Google itself the most profitable ad units are the 336x280 large rectangle, the 300x250 rectangle and the 160x600 large skyscraper. As for positioning, you must be willing to hurt the user experience a bit if you want to have a good CTR (click-through rate). This is so because ads blended with the content perform much better than ads isolated in the sidebar.
The best combination is usually the 336x280 unit on top of your posts, right below the headline. If you want something less intrusive, try placing it between the post and the comment section, or try using a 160x600 unit on the sidebar.

Finally, if you don't want to annoy your loyal visitors with the AdSense units, you can use the Search Ads plugin to display ads only to visitors coming from search engines.

CPM Ads

 If your blog generates a good amount of page views (e.g., 5,000 per day or more), regardless of where the traffic is coming from, you could experiment with CPM ads. CPM stands for cost per mille, and it is a type of online advertising where advertisers pay for every 1,000 impressions on their ads (in Latin mille means thousand).

Here are some popular CPM advertising networks that you could try:

• Technorati Media 
• Tribal Fusion 
• Burst Media 
• ValueClick 
• Casale Media

The most common CPM banner formats are the 728x90 leaderboard, the 300x250 rectangle and the 160x600 large skyscraper. Usually networks pay a premium price if you display the banners above the fold, so the trick to making good money under CPM deals is to have a design that supports all the three banners above the fold.

Direct Advertising and Sponsorships 

Once your blog achieves a certain size (there is no magical number here, it varies from niche to niche) you will find that selling your ads directly could be more profitable. Basically you will reserve some spots for the advertisers, create an “Advertise with us” page, and start handling the ad sales yourself. The advantage of this strategy is that you have more flexibility regarding where and how the ads will be sold, and you also cut the commissions of the middle man. The disadvantage is the fact that it will take some extra work to manage the whole process. A common question among bloggers starting to sell direct ads is: “Do I wait for advertisers to approach me, or should I approach them first?” If you are getting started with this monetization strategy you will need to approach advertisers. In fact, you will need to hunt them down! First of all create a list of potential advertisers. Those are companies that are already spending money with online advertising and that have a product or service related to your audience. Here are some tricks that you can use to find them:

• Check who is advertising on the other blogs inside your niche.
• Search for keywords related to your blog on Google and check the companies that will appear on the “Sponsored Links.” 

• Create an account with advertising networks like SponsoredReviews.com and BuySellAds.com to check their advertisers. Once you have 50 or so potential advertisers on your list, start contacting them via email. It is important to send a custom message to each of them, as this will improve your chances of success. Here are some points that you should include in your message: 
• Introduce yourself and your blog. 
• Explain that you are opening some advertising opportunities, and that you believe the product/service of that company would be a good match to your audience. 
• Give some basic statistics about your blog, including traffic and subscribers. 
• Highlight the advertising options, including banner formats, position in the blog and price.

 At this point you might be asking yourself: “All right, but how much should I charge for my ads?” A rule of thumb that I use is to start charging a $0.50 CPM for 125x125 banners on top of the sidebar. If your blog generates 200,000 page views monthly, therefore, you 125x125 banner on top of the sidebar should cost $100 monthly. Make sure to use the real page views of your blog for this calculation. You can find that with Google Analytics, as opposed to software like AWstats and Webalizer that always inflate numbers.
 If you want to use other banner formats or place them somewhere else you will just need to adapt that initial CPM. For example, if you want to use a 300x250 banner on top of the sidebar, you could charge a CPM of $2.00 for that, since that banner is roughly equal to four 125x125 banners. Again if your blog generates 200,000 monthly page views, you could sell your 300x250 banner for $400 monthly. Finally, remember that this is just a rule of thumb to get you started. Over time you will find the optimal price level that will maximize your earnings while keeping your advertisers happy.

Affiliate Marketing 

Affiliate marketing can and should be used as a complementary revenue source on your blog. First of all examine the products and services that you already use (e.g., books, online applications, web hosting, gadgets), and check if there is an affiliate program for them. If there is, write a review about the products, and use your affiliate links. As long as you are honest in your reviews and upfront about the fact that you are an affiliate for the product or service, your readers won't stop trusting you or reading your blog.

Secondly, keep your radar on for the launch of new products and services that could be useful for your audience. Once you find one, approach the owner to see if he has or will have an affiliate program. Finally, you can also join affiliate marketing networks like CommissionJunction.com or ClickBank.com and browse for products that are related to your blog. If you find some, experiment with them on the blog, using both banners and links inside blog posts.

Email Marketing 

Ever heard the saying “the money is in the list”? Well, it is true. Having a large and responsive email list is one of the most profitable assets you could have. Why? Because email is the most direct form of online communication, as it puts your message right in front of people. If on top of that you manage to build relationships with your subscribers, you will be able to leverage your list for a wide range of purposes, from driving traffic to your website to selling affiliate products.
The takeaway message here is: start building your email list or newsletter as soon as possible. There are some free services for email marketing available, but since getting emails delivered is a critical issue (due to spam problems) I recommend that you pick a paid service. Three reliable companies that offer email marketing ct and ConstantConstact.
Once your list is ready to go, start experimenting with different techniques to get people subscribing, and focus on building relationships with them.
For the content part, try to send one message every week, or at least one every fifteen days, and make sure to add valuable information in every email you send.

>>LEARN HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR BLOG<<

Beyond Advertising Money 

Generating advertising money with the strategies I described above is possible, and some bloggers make enough with it to live comfortably. Limiting your blog to being a source of advertising revenues would be a big mistake, however. A blog is a much more than that. It is your interface with the Internet (and consequently with the world). You can use your blog to: 

• Make friends. 
• Build an audience. 
• Establish your expertise. 
• Network with relevant people. 
• Experiment with new ideas. 
• Find Partners. 
• Launch related projects.

 In other words, you should aim to make money with your blog but also thanks to it. And the interesting thing is that you don't even need to know what you want to do in the future. If you manage to build a popular and authoritative blog in your niche, you will be able to leverage it for any type of venture, be it launching a product, publishing a book or landing a dream job.

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5 Easy Ways To Promote Your Blog

Writing outstanding content is not enough. You need to make sure that as many people as possible will be exposed to that content. This is where promotional activities come in.

1. Blog Comments

Leaving comments on popular blogs inside your niche can be very effective at promoting your blog, especially in the early days. If you write a funny, insightful or controversial comment, the readers of that blog might get curious and click on your comment link to check out your website. And since these readers are interested in your niche, there are good chances that they will like your content too. You need to be consistent for this tactic to work, however. This means that you should comment on many blogs and write many comments every day (e.g., 20 comments every day). There are two mistakes to avoid here. The first one is to write useless comments like “Great post!”. Your comments must add value to the discussion. The second mistake is to use keywords or the name of your blog in the name field. Keywords should never be used, as they make your comment look very spammy. Imagine getting a comment on your blog from someone named “Buy Cheap Car Accessories”.... The name of your blog could still be used, but make sure to precede it with your personal name. For instance, instead of using “CarsBlog.com” in the name field, use “Joe Smith – CarsBlog.com.” Promoting a blog is about interacting with other people. That is why you want to always have your personal name there.

2. Link Exchanges

Many webmasters believe that link exchanges are obsolete, but that is not true. If done correctly, they can still be effective for promoting a website or blog. In fact they can send you both targeted traffic and search engine juice. You just need to make sure that your link exchanges will not violate Google's policies (and that of other search engines).

The first requirement for this is to exchange links only with blogs that are relevant and useful to your own readers. The second requirement is to use a natural anchor text. This means that you should use the name of the blog in the link, and not some keyword that the blogger wants to target. If you are still worried about getting penalized with a link exchange, you can use the rel=”nofollow” attribute on the links (and ask your partners to do the same). This will remove the sharing of search engine juice, but the links will still be useful to share traffic and brand awareness. The most common place to put links is the sidebar of the blog. You could call them “Blogroll,” “Friends,” “Recommended Blogs” and so on.

Another place that you can use to exchange links is the RSS feed. Simply add a message at the bottom of your feed (you can do that with the RSS Footer plugin) with a link to your partner, and ask him to do the same on his RSS feed.

3. Guest Posts

 When you guest blog, you basically write an article to be published on someone else's blog. This practice is common in the blogosphere because it has benefits for everyone involved. The hosting blog gets a free piece of content. The guest blogger gets the opportunity to showcase his expertise or ideas to a new audience. The readers of the blog get to read an article from a different author. Guest bloggers can also include a byline on their articles, with a link pointing back to their blogs. If you manage to guest blog on popular blogs in your niche, therefore, you should be able to attract new visitors, new subscribers, and also to improve your search engine optimization thanks to the highly relevant backlink that you will receive. Here is how you can structure the process:
1. List the blogs where you want to guest post.
2. Analyze the first blog on the list trying to understand what kind of content is popular there.
3. Write an article specifically for that blog.
4. Make it something valuable, possibly a killer article.
5. Email the article to the blog owner, asking whether he is interested in publishing it.
6. If he accepts, you are are set, and you can move on to the second blog on the list.
7. If he rejects, adapt the article to the second blog on your list and send it to that blog owner.
8. Write a new article for the blogger who rejected you, and repeat this process until you have covered all the blogs on the list



4. Social Bookmarking Sites 

Social bookmarking sites allow users to store and share bookmarks of pages from around the web. Most of them use a ranking system to determine what bookmarks and submissions are popular among the community, and usually those get displayed on the front page.

One of the most popular social bookmarking sites is Digg.com. If one of your blog posts gets featured on the Digg homepage you can expect to receive anywhere from 20,000 up to 100,000 visitors in a matter of 24 hours. The drawback of  Digg is the fact that it is hard to get promoted to the front page, as there is a lot of competition from larger websites.

StumbleUpon.com is another large social bookmarking site, and it works around a toolbar that users must install on their browsers.
The advantage of StumbleUpon over Digg is the fact even a small number of votes can bring some traffic to your site, and that traffic can last several days. Other social bookmarking sites that you could try include:

• Reddit.com 
• Delicious.com 
• Mixx.com
• Propeller.com 
• ShoutWire.com 
• Fark.com 
• Buzz.Yahoo.com
• Newsvine.com 
• Faves.com

The important thing is to dedicate some time to using those sites and trying to understand the tacit rules around them. Analyze what kind of content gets promoted to the front page, how the headlines are crafted, what kind of comments the users leave and so on.


5. Social Networks 

Social networks are useful marketing tools because they allow you to interact with your existing audience on different channels and because they can also be leveraged to attract new visitors. The first network that you should use is Twitter, given its exponential growth on the web.

You could create an account with the name of your blog and use it to share posts from your blog and relevant links from around the web. Your goal is to create value through your tweets while interacting with as many people as possible. Facebook is another popular social network you should try.

Create a personal profile for yourself there, and then a page for your blog. Make sure to explore the other features as well, including the ability to post pictures, videos, articles, and to interact with groups. Finally, consider using niche social networks as well. They will probably be smaller and have less traffic generation potential, but you will be able to find a very targeted audience on them. Here is a list that you can use with over 400 niche social networks.

6. Promoting Killer Articles

Your promotional activities should focus on two points: promoting your blog as a whole (i.e., by leaving comments on related blogs) and promoting your killer articles. In the first chapter of this ebook I already covered the concept of killer articles, but here are some tactics that you can use to promote those articles after you hit the “Publish” button:

• Email all the people in your network to let them know about the article.
• Email the owners of blogs and websites in relevant niches and let them know about the article. 
• Ask a friend to submit the article to a suitable social bookmarking site.
• Give the submission an initial push by asking other friends and contacts to vote on it. 
• Mention the article and link to it from your social networking accounts. 
• Link to the article from other blogs and websites that you might own. 
• If the article has a good chance of ranking high for a keyword, do some linkbuilding focused on that keyword.

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Top 5 Networking Blogging Strategy Tips

Top 5 Networking Blogging Strategy Tips

In most professional fields, who you know is at least as important as what you know. Blogging is no exception. If you have a good relationship with many bloggers and site owners they will be more likely to link to your posts, recommend your blog to other people and even help you sell a product or service. In other words: networking is key. In this chapter I will list how you can network effectively online.

1. Genuine Relationships

 The first principle to keep in mind is that networking is about building genuine relationships. This means that you should not approach people solely because you think they are popular, rich or important. Instead you should approach people who you respect and whose work you would be glad to recommend to others. Why? Because networking is about finding win-win relationships. Before people help you, you will need to help them. You must be willing to support and contribute to the people in your network.

2. Make a List 

I will try to highlight some practical tips that you can use for your networking now. The first one is to build a list with all the active blogs in your niche and possibly in related niches as well. The size of the list will obviously depend on your niche. If you blog about technology, you probably should have at least 200 blogs there. If you blog about orchids, on the other hand, probably it would have fewer than 20. The important thing is that you make your list as complete as possible, because this will be the starting point of your networking activities. Here are some tools and websites that you can use to find blogs inside specific niches:

• Technorat i 
•  AllTop 
•  BlogRank 
•  Wikio Top Blogs 
•  BlogCatalog

3. Introduce Yourself 

Once your list is ready, you want to introduce yourself to all those bloggers. Most blogs have either a contact form or an email address listed somewhere, so use either to get in touch. Here is how you could craft your message: 

•  Be straight forward about the fact that you are introducing yourself.
•   Mention that you blog in the same niche, and include the URL either in the message itself or in the signature. 
•  If you like the content of the blog, say so, and mention that you will link to it when possible. Here is a sample message to illustrate these points: 

Hi Mark, I am writing just to introduce myself. 

My name is Daniel, and I also have a blog in the ________ niche. The URL is ________________. 

I found your content very interesting, and I will definitely be recommending it to my readers. 

Best wishes, Daniel

4. Link When Possible 

A golden rule of networking is “give before you ask.” If you want bloggers and site owners to link to you, link to them first. I would recommend that you subscribe via RSS to all the blogs on your list. This will be useful both to keep updated with the trends in your niche and to spot good articles from those bloggers. When you come across one, write a post about it, add your opinion to the topic, and link to the source. You could also write an email to that blogger mentioning that you really liked his article, and that you decided to share it with your readers. 

Finally, keep in mind that linking out to quality and related content is always a good thing. Many bloggers fear that by linking out they might lose readers or Google PageRank. This is a myth. Your own readers will appreciate if you point them to useful content, and Google itself encourage webmasters to use external links to enrich their sites.

• Support in Other Ways Apart from linking often to people in your network, you should also try to support them in other ways. Examples include: 
• recommending their websites to other people, 
• endorsing their products or services, 
• suggesting them for an interview or award, 
• submitting and voting for their posts on social,bookmarking sites, and 
• sharing their posts on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. 

It is when you give without the expectation of getting something back that people start seeing you as a friend.

5. Share Your Best Content 

By now you should be asking yourself: “Well, I will do all that stuff for the people in my network, but when will I get something back?” If you try to help people genuinely as I mentioned, they will certainly notice it and be glad to return the favor. One thing that you can do to encourage this, however, is to share your best content with them. When you publish one of your killer articles, for example, you could send emails to the people in your network with a link to the article.

 It is important to not beg for a link back, but simply to mention that you believe he or she will like the article.

With this approach the person on the other side will be more likely to read the article, as there is no pressure involved. If he likes the content, there is a good chance that he will link to it. If he doesn't link, however, don't get frustrated or pissed off. Just keep working on your blog, and sooner or later that person will link to you.

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Headlines Are Key For Getting Traffic

Most copywriters defend that you need to spend as much time working on the headline as you do on the rest of the copy. This principle applies to blogs too, where you need to make sure that your post titles are as good as they can be. Why is the headline so important? Because it is the first thing a person sees, and unless you craft it smartly, it will also be the last one.

The headline, in fact, will affect both the people who are about to visit your blog and the ones who are already visiting it. Suppose that one of your posts was submitted to Digg.com, a social bookmarking site. If it has a poor title, people will not click on the link to visit your blog (let alone vote on it). Similarly, even if someone is already inside your blog, he might decide to leave if the titles of your posts don't grab his attention and encourage him to read the rest of those articles.

A good headline has two main factors. First of all  its wording is aligned with the mindset of target visitors. This is important because it will communicate to web users that your content matches exactly what they are looking for. If you want to discover how your target visitors word their needs and wants, use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. It is a free service, and once you input a certain keyword, it will create a list with 150 related terms, including their respective search volume in the Google search engine. Suppose that you just wrote a killer article with 20 tips to clean a house efficiently. Your first idea for a title is “20 Tips to Clean Your House.” Upon using the AdWords Keyword Tool, however, you would discover that “tips to clean house” is a term searched only 28 times per month. A much more popular term is “house cleaning tips,” searched 4,400 times per month. So you would probably get better results with the title “20 House Cleaning Tips.”

Google Adwords Tool

 The second factor that makes a good headline is an emotional hook. The headline should be crafted in a way that will trigger a certain emotion in the reader, encouraging him to click on the link (in the case of someone outside your blog) or proceed to read the rest of the article (in the case of someone already inside your blog)

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