How to Start and Monetize a blog
Monetize a blog, How much money can you make with a blog? Can we live on it? After how long? monetize blog? how to monetize a blog? monetize a blog effectively? how to monetize a WordPress blog? And above all: what are the techniques or levers to improve monetization?
These are questions that come up very often on the forums and in the exchanges, we can have with project leaders. Let’s start by dismantling a received idea: if you want to make easy money quickly, blogging is not the best solution.
Developing a blog that generates a few thousand euros per month requires a regular job of at least two years. This requires other sources of income in the first place, such as salaried employees. The main part of the work, of course, lies in the creation of content.
You should also be aware that the potential of a blog is very different depending on the themes and niches and need to think carefully ahead about the type of blog you want to create. A coaching blog does not monetize itself in the same way as an economic information blog.
There are several ways to monetize his blog. To develop a blog that generates substantial revenue, you don’t have to limit yourself to a single technique. You have to use and mix several levers. Some of them are very classic, others more original (and sometimes more complex to implement). Discover without further ado the 8 main levers to monetize a blog.
you might be one of them and you’re looking for ways to monetize that blog actually make some money from it so you can make a living online and not have to work a job the rest of your life and it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do for most people because they don’t know exactly what they’re doing and they get overwhelmed by
how many options there are some I talk about ten main options that you have for monetizing your blog and I’m going to break them down a little bit for you and kind of show you how they work alright so the first one we’re gonna go over here is affiliate marketing
okay because affiliate marketing basically you can just go to a site like Clickbank dot com, okay You go to a site like Clickbank and all you do is sign up and neither you can become a marketer or vendor now you probably don’t want to be a vendor yet if you’re just starting out in marketing
and you don’t have experience in creating our own products so what I recommend is you become a marketer this way you can get paid commissions on other on marketing other people’s products through sites like Clickbank as other sites too like JV Zoo is another one there are others but a Clickbank is probably the biggest
why in your prime had the most options here so if you need something that has the sales page done for you like the product done for you and you just want to send the affiliate link for your blog to sell stuff that way that’s going to be about the easiest way to do that now with Adsense
Adsense is basically ads like these as you can see here this is an AdSense ad you can it tell by these little things right here shows you the ad as the X on it and the other little symbol there but these are from Google and Google’s ad program is one of the biggest in the world and that’s
how they make all their money is through Adsense okay so you can come up with these ads that kinda look like this mostly text ads is what you wanna go for because people don’t really go for image ads as much as they used to they want you know people are kinda immune to ads these days but the thing about AdSense is it puts ads on there
that are related to what other people have been looking at before they visit your site so it’s always something that you know if they visited the page before they came to your site your blog then they’ll probably see an ad on Adsense ad space on your site about this site they were at before
so it makes it more likely to buy stuff but you get paid every time they click on it so it’s really the easiest way to make money if you get approved okay so when you’re going to get approved for something like that you want to make sure that you just go through AdSense and it’s free to sign up then you can also make money from your YouTube videos
but when he signed up for your blog make sure that when you have to put the ad code on your blog to get approved but it actually likes in the text like say you put HTML in here instead of over here in your widget bars see I put it in my widget bar and it kept messing up wouldn’t get approved
and when I put it right here you know in the middle of a blog post that’s when it got impressions it got approved so that’s just a kinda side note for you if you decide to go with Adsense another thing you can do is sell your own products okay when you sell your own products you make more money but it’s a lot more work because
you have to come up with something that you can sell obviously in usually when you’re on the internet here you have a blog you sell information or a mastermind group or affiliate stuff but when you sell your own product you can have kind of like a mat like I said a mastermind group
where people join and pay monthly to be a part of this group and kinda talk about the industry with each other share tips and ideas and strategies you can make e-books and sell them on Amazon Kindle or just sell them on your site he can take courses there’s a website called Udemy dot com
where you can do that if you don’t wanna hosted on your own site but you need to know a lot about a certain subject before you do this and the media look into how to create an actual product case if he’s regained the lights software and actual hand like products you can actually hold your hand have to ship in staff bag it’s really complicated
self you to sell your products make sure you know a whole lot about a certain subject that most people down and you evaluate what kind competition there is no market place in kinda get ideas from others that are on doing something similar to what you’re thinking about and I make it just like a digital course or something like that
like a video course or an ebook or something like that’s a good place to start but that’s probably gonna make you something most money especially if you get to where you can sell high ticket items Amazon ads are good to you because they’re actually products and you actually get paid
when products are sold within 24 hours people clicking on the ad cell if this wasn’t an Amazon ad and people clicked on that you don’t get paid for the click but you get paid if somebody buys anything on Amazon I didn’t have to be the exact product they buy anything on Amazon than 24 hours from your link from your blog
you get paid a commission on that commissions that going to be huge but you have related products to your blog a new you do a good job picking the right products to display then you’ll get some nice commissions building up and as you get more traffic you get more she at you can do is sell consulting okay consulting you definitely
want to be kinda more of an expert in your field before you start doing this but consulting can make you very big sales and I know people that are in marketing that make year no make that seven hundred thousand dollar up one clock of one client over the course you know maybe a couple of months
but they’ve been in the industry while they have a reputation it’s easier for them to get this kind of business but Consulting’s and I think he can do if you have certain services that are in demand you can also sell solo ads basically is a way of advertising for people through email list okay
you can go to a site like next mark dot com and it kinda looks like this right here she can search for people’s email list and up people contact people with us email s and come up with a price to actually email their list leads and they said their own email with their own links
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so that they can opt into a whoever’s buying the rights to place an ad with that list its let’s say yes what say you you are on here and you wanna email to somebody else’s giant list and now marketing okay see find a marketing list and what’s s you know hundred thousand people it and you pay so much per click okay
so much for just a one-time payment for the rights to email that list and then you have links in that email and go back to your sales page or your capture page to get leads or sales from it, that’s the fastest way to get in front of a lot of people through email but they can be costly
but if you’re more vendor in your selling a list selling the rights to advertise to your list you can make why their money from that but you know you need to build up a very big email list before you think about it another thing you can do is flip blogs are flip websites now this kid the this can’t make you thousands of dollars me it’s like for me
how surf looking at cars can make you thousands of dollars but it depends on how good you are doing the work on it are how good you are outsourcing work on these blogs how fast can you get it to rank are you gonna buy sites that are already established in an auction on Godaddy dot com
are you gonna start one from scratch and build that up over the course of the Year to you and then sell it edges can depend on your expertise and how long weekend afford to work on it before you flip it how much you can make up that now that’s something for more experienced people
but if you can do it you can make some very big sales from a guest posting is well you know what a lot of people do to get backlinks things like that now I think Google’s can crack down on this a little or sis not prosper not quite as popular as it used to be but a lot of people do still do a guest post
if you have a very popular blog you can have people pay you to put a guest post on their or you can get paid to put guest posts on other people’s sites depending on how good you are writing you’re how good your blog years you can go either way with that are both ways few
what network marketing is a lot like affiliate marketing except you also have the option above making money off other people sales and not just yours, okay so network marketing is set the yet to be careful with that the same time they can have alive great benefits if you get and with the right company that’s actually gonna last and has good things
to sell so it’s like an affiliate company also has referrals basically so you can advertise that on your blog in another the lasting and talk to you about is ad space says kinda like with affiliate ads through Amazon it’s like ad space through Google Adsense ad space is a is great
because companies but you’re not gonna make a whole lot was hit on traffic but you can make more of ad space if you sell to individual companies or out people just looking to advertise in your niche set they will have ties internet she can actually have a tab at your blog menu that has a page
where you talk about the prices advertising on your site I know I’ll there a site called John Chow dot com, for instance, he’s in the marketing niche he sells ad space to other people on his site and you know there are other ones out there to bed depending on how they give another banner you get him
it’ll be like an I love square banner right here that’ll be your ad and then you pay the money to get that spot it’s usually a monthly payment as long as you want to be on selling it could be five hundred a month for a really small line may be and I can’t appear yet it kinda looks at how much traffic they have and if it’s really good traffic for
what you’re selling okay but I that’s if you wanna sell other people sites but you can also make a lot of money if you have good traffic you have a lot a good niche I am subscribers coming in all the time people why to advertise their business on the widget area of your blog okay
so that’s another way you can make pre good at money from your blog I so there’s that 10 probably the 10 very best ways you can monetize your blog and it kinda tends to watch which you wanna do the easiest ones do you are probably an Adsense Amazon affiliates maybe he can do consulting
if you already know certain skills and you can sell your own ebook sell your own video courses stuff like that and you can do affiliate marketing is well through Clickbank other sites like that on and then if you want to make bigger sales bigger commissions bigger
I am money online is getting more complicated stuff like selling your own products or I sayings light up even consulting selling solo ads flipping blogs is in everything that can be a have a really big turnaround even network marketing you’re selling ad space to a small individual companies things like that are more complicated but can make more money so it is kinda tenure which line do so
Monetize a blog Lever #1: CPC Advertising
Advertising is the best known and most rudimentary lever to monetize a site in general, and a blog in particular. You know the principle: you post banner ads on your site, and you make money as soon as one of your readers clicks on a banner.
monetize a blog effectively The CPC (cost-per-click) is the dominant business model in digital advertising. This is the one used by the major advertising agencies.
To display advertising on your site, you need to get in touch with an advertising agency. You can only use one board. Google’s management – Ad Sense – dominates the market. Also, mention click 4 France. If you use WordPress, you can install plugins like AdSense Deluxe or Ad Injection.
In any case, you can customize the ads, for example by choosing the type or format of ads you want to display on your blog. It’s up to you to then place the advertising blocks at the strategic locations of your blog, by copying the ad script in the source code of your site.
The main advantage of advertising to the CPC is that it is really very simple to set up. Simply copy and paste a code provided by the board. If you use a plugin, it’s even simpler.
This lever may be relevant if your blog generates a lot of traffic. We really have to wait for a large volume of visits for the revenue generated by advertising at the CPC to become interesting. Below 10,000 unique visitors per month, drop this lever. A click pays between a cent and a few euros, depending on the theme.
Insurance or credit ads are the ones that make the most money to the CPC. But to be honest, it’s in most cases much closer to a penny than a euro! Do the math: you’ll see that it takes a hell of a lot of clicks to get interesting revenue.
When you know that the click-through rate on this kind of advertisement is very low, it is better to think twice before opting for this monetization technique. Not to mention the often rather intrusive side of advertising banners. As you will have understood, this is not the technique we recommend the most.
Monetize a blog Lever #2: Affiliation
Affiliate is one of the most effective levers for monetizing a blog. The principle is simple: you promote a product or service by incorporating a banner or text link on your site that refers to the product/service page. When a reader of your blog clicks on the banner or link and buys the product, you receive a commission from the site that markets the product or service. In some cases, you are paid on the lead: you receive money (between 0.10 euros and 20 euros) every time a visitor clicks on the link or the headband.
Digital products or services (such as SaaS software) are the most interesting to promote. They are the ones who earn the best commissions (sometimes in the order of 60% of the amount of the sale!). This makes sense as margins on this type of product are always very high.
The company that markets them can afford to offer a substantial commission. On the other hand, affiliation is much less attractive for physical products. If you earn a 10% commission on the sale of a book, consider yourself happy!
To do affiliation, you have two options:
Use an affiliate board, which allows you to choose from a very broad list of products or services offered by companies from all sectors. It’s up to you to select the products or services that are most relevant to your audience. for Example CJ Affiliate.
Enter into an affiliation agreement directly with the merchant’s website, without going through an intermediary. Example: Amazon’s partner program.
To get more clicks on your affiliate links (and therefore more money), we advise you to write an article about the product or service in question. For example, if you’re affiliated with a SaaS solution, write a test article for the solution.
You can also email your contacts by promoting products and containing the affiliate link. Affiliate platforms typically offer several formats to integrate your affiliate links into your blog, in order to highlight them. The secret to affiliate success lies in your ability to properly contextualize affiliate links or banners.
This means selecting products/services that you really like and that you will know how to sell to your readership, offering products/services that correspond to your target, and integrating your links or banners into the body of your items.
Affiliation is a much less intrusive technique than conventional CPC advertising. And also more interesting financially.
Monetize a blog Lever #3: The Sale of Leads
Let’s say you’re a legal advice site. how to monetize WordPress blog You write articles on legal topics to help your readers solve their problems. If you are in this case, why not propose a form offering your readers the opportunity to contact a lawyer or legal advisor who can find a solution for them?
In this way, you will get leads (contacts) that you can then resell on a lead platform that will in turn sell them to professionals able to meet the needs of leads. You can also sell your leads directly to companies. In our example, for example, you can resell your leads to lawyers with whom you are in contact.
This technique how to monetize WordPress blogs can be applied in most service sectors. The leads you generate are more or less qualified depending on the form’s fields: email address, phone number, more or less accurate description of the need, etc. This technique is ultimately quite close to affiliation. The method of remuneration is usually a fixed (10 euros per lead for example). Models for the commission also exist.
Monetize a blog Lever #4: Sponsored Items
You probably already know this technique. It consists of writing an article about a product or a service, being paid by the advertiser. In some cases, the article is already written: just publish it on your blog. It’s an interesting lever to monetize his blog.
The price of sponsored articles varies according to several factors, especially depending on the notoriety of your blog, its theme and of course its traffic. The range ranges from 40 euros to more than 1,000 euros.
Several platforms provide opportunities for sponsored items: Rocketlinks, Seeding Up, Buzzparadise, etc. The principle is simple: you register, create a profile (thematic of your blog, editorial line, traffic, rates) and wait to be contacted by the platform.
Companies can also contact you directly to offer you a sponsored article, but this assumes that your blog already has some notoriety.
This technique can be a good way to generate revenue, even if the revenues of sponsored items vary greatly from month to month, depending on the opportunities. If you’re interested in this monetization lever, here are some good practices to follow:
Only accept sponsored articles that promote products or services related to the theme of your blog. Sponsored articles should be consistent with your editorial line.
Stay neutral and objective in your judgment, unless you really love the product you’re writing about. You have to try to do as little “advertising” as possible.
Make it clear at the beginning or end of the article that it is a sponsored article, out of transparency to your readership. It is an obligation in the Consumer Code.
Don’t overdo sponsored articles (no more than 10% of your content), so as not to annoy your readers, distort your blog and pass for a sale!
The renowned blog Presse Citron decided in 2015 to remove “classic advertising” from its site, replacing it with a new business model based on sponsored articles (charged around 1,000 euros):
Monetize a blog Lever #5: Selling Products
Very few bloggers think about this lever of monetization. Still, it’s probably one of the most interesting. The idea is to propose a product related to the theme of your blog. These can be physical products: jewellery, boxes, drawings, paintings… But not only, far from it.
You can also sell information products that showcase your expertise and know-how: a pdf e-book, software, infographics, video, etc. This involves a lot of work on your side, but the return on investment is often much higher than you originally imagined.
Example www.creationsdeclaire.fr:
how to monetize WordPress blog Beyond the purely financial aspect, this technique allows you to increase the value of your blog and differentiate you from your competitors. Create a sales page on your blog and set up a PayPal button to cash in the proceeds of your sales.
Don’t hesitate to promote your products on the different pages of your site, to generate more sales. Before going on sale, teasing on your blog, but also on social networks, in order to create an expectation. If you choose to sell products on your blog, you need to put in place a communication strategy, or even consider marketing (emailing, advertising…).
This monetization lever can be activated even if your blog doesn’t have monstrous traffic. If you have few readers, but readers who trust you, they will be very receptive to your products.
Monetize a blog Lever #6: The service offers
how to monetize WordPress blog You can offer products… but also your services. If you are an expert in the theme of your blog, why not offer your readers online courses, training or even technical services. If you are a designer and you run a design blog, why not offer your services as a designer?
You could replace “designer” with a whole bunch of other professions: architect, sports coach, plumber, cook, lawyer, financial advisor, developer, etc. The blog can also serve as a platform to monetize your skills. Of course, with this technique, you only get paid when you work… But it allows both to make your blog more credible and to attract new visitors.
Here is another example of a coaching blog, Kolibri coaching, which this time offers coaching services:
Monetize a blog Lever #7: the newsletter
how to monetize WordPress blog The newsletter (newsletter in French) allows you to communicate with your readers, keep them informed of the latest articles published but also promote products. The newsletter represents a very good (indirect) lever to generate revenue. monetize a blog effectively
To make emailing, and especially newsletter, a lever to monetize, you need to put in place an email collection strategy. The more emails you have from users, the more effective your newsletter campaigns will be. At a minimum, this means offering a registration form on your blog. On this subject, check out our 7 tips to boost your email collection.
There are several ways to monetize your blog via the newsletter:
Promote products with which you have an affiliate.
Promote your own products.
Promote events or workshops.
Encourage your readers to read your articles, to generate more traffic on your blog. More traffic always translates into more revenue.
Offer your services.
Rent your email address base. We advise against the latter technique, which is not necessarily very respectful of your readers.
how to monetize WordPress blog monetize a blog effectively The newsletter is not a direct lever to monetize his blog, but helps to strengthen the effectiveness of other levers. Be careful not to send too many emails to your contacts to avoid annoying them and increase churn. You need to adjust the “marketing pressure” based on the level of responsiveness of your subscribers.
Monetize a blog Lever #8: the call for donations
how to monetize WordPress blog monetize a blog effectively Few people think about it, but appealing to the generosity of your readers is a lever to seriously consider. Of course, this is not an applicable recipe for all blogs. This assumes that you publish content of very high quality, with useful information, and that you have a very loyal readership.
monetize a blog effectively Even more: that you have managed to build a community, to unite a core of people very interested in your blog. It is not given to everyone. In any case, if you meet the criteria, monetize a blog effectively you will surely be amazed by the generosity of your loyal readers. People give much more easily than you think when they feel it is for a good cause, even if it is often small amounts. Technically, all you need to do is place a PayPal button on your site to collect donations.
how to monetize WordPress blog Paul Jorion’s blog is often highlighted. Anthropologist and former trader (!), Paul Jorion decided to devote himself entirely to his blog after the crisis of 2008. The aim of his blog: to inform the public about the economic crisis. 10 months after its launch, the blog reached 100,000 page views per month. monetize a blog effectively Paul Jorion now owes most of his resources to the donations of his readers (and the proceeds from the sale of his books). Another blog, another context: “Don’t you have a PO?” is a blog about the World of Warcraft universe that also appeals to the generosity of its community of readers:
How To Start a Blog in 2021 and Make Money Online
From marketing your business to growing an audience to making extra income online, there are tons of great reasons to start the blog. today we’re going to learn how to start a blog. As the co-founder of a lifestyle blog, that’s served a monthly audience of 2.5 million visitors and the former head of content for a media company that serves 16 million people, I know exactly how to start and scale a blog.
I’m really excited to share some pro tips today, to set your blog up for success. So strap in, we’re about to get started. If you’re just looking to have some fun by sharing knowledge or expressing yourself then starting a blog is really as easy as picking a platform and starting, but if you want to make money from your blog, then you need to be a bit more strategic.
And that’s exactly who this video is for: people who are looking to create a blog to drive customers to an existing business or create a blog that will become a business in itself. So we’re going to take you to step by step from monetization strategy to publishing.
This might sound counterintuitive, but if you’re looking to make money from your content, it’s advised that you start with the money part and not with the content part. And that’s because your monetization strategy will ultimately affect how you grow and what types of content you create.
So to begin, we need to think less like artists and more like entrepreneurs. When it comes to monetizing a blog, for some reason, advertising and brand-sponsored content are often the first things people think of. And while these can be lucrative ways to make money from your blog, they don’t typically become economically viable unless you have a good amount of traffic.
Thankfully, there are tons of other ways that a new blogger can monetize faster without the need for a massive audience. So here they are. Selling a book. James Clear is an amazing example of someone who’s done this. James was writing a personal development blog when he decided to write a book called atomic habit, it was based off of the years of knowledge that he garnered while writing his blog.
Then he decided to sell this book in physical and digital formats. Not only did this make his blog economically viable, but it landed him on the New York Times bestsellers list. Affiliate marketing. This is a form of monetization where you gain a commission every time you sell a partner’s product.
When executed correctly, this can really add up and be a great way to create passive income services. If you’re an aspiring blogger, chances are you’re already an expert in a given area and have a way with words, services like consulting, coaching and speaking events are great ways to generate income. Digital products.
For example, online courses can be a really natural way for bloggers to monetize. Bloggers are already expert content creators. So creating a course allows them to capitalize on the knowledge that they already have. Just take a look at Copyhackers for a blog that already made the jump.
Physical products, products that align with the blogs, mission and message are a great way to monetize. A legendary example of this is Glossier. Glossier is a makeup brand that grew out of the success Emily Weiss found in her fashion blog Into the Gloss.
Since then Glossier has grown into a household name and is an absolute Titan in the world of direct to consumer brands. Subscriptions Patreon isn’t only for YouTubers. When people find a lot of value in the information you provide, some will be willing to pay a monthly fee to access exclusive content, making subscriptions a really great way to monetize a blog.
The last cornerstone of your monetization strategy, and this one is really crucial, is smashing that like button and subscribing to our channel. Every week, we’re releasing videos that empower online entrepreneurs to grow their businesses with confidence. So subscribe now because you don’t want to miss it.
In the age of information, we are constantly inundated with content. The sheer amount of information available leaves a lot of would-be bloggers to question how they can stand out when the entire digital universe feels like it’s already been charted, how can you find new territory? Well, the internet is far from oversaturated and there are countless audiences that are underserved.
The key to creating a blog that stands out and has a better chance of succeeding is by picking a niche. By narrowing a focus, you can significantly reduce and sometimes outright eliminate competition. When choosing a niche, you want to choose something that is an inch wide, but a mile deep.
What I mean by this is you want to pick something that has a narrow enough focus that you can carve out a market. It needs to be deep enough that you can continuously create content without running out of ideas. You’ll also need to ensure that your chosen niche creates an audience that aligns with your monetization strategy.
Ask yourself what sorts of products and services would this audience buy, whether you’re using advertising or any of the monetization strategies we talked about earlier. Make sure to ask yourself this crucial question. The last thing that you want to do when picking a niche is conducted a competitor analysis, use tools like BuzzSumo and AHREFS to get a bearing on how content does in this space.
This is also a great way to build topic ideas for the content of your own. Don’t skip this competitor analysis step. Beyond making a data-driven decision this will help you get an idea of how you can make your brand and your voice feel unique in this space. Look for a gap in perspective and fill it.
Now that you know your niche, it’s time to build your new blog. When choosing your blogging platform it’s important not to make this decision hastily as it will be a bit of a commitment. While pricing is an obvious factor it shouldn’t be the guiding principle, especially if you’re looking to make money from your blog down the road.
From Shopify to Wix, to Squarespace, to WordPress, to Blogger, there are so many options. It’s really easy to get overwhelmed. First, you’ll need to choose between a hosted and a self-hosted platform. A hosted platform will allow you to get up your blog faster and easier. Shopify, for example, includes hosting in all of its plans.
Some hosted platforms though like Blogger will limit your customization options. Then there’s self-hosted. A self-hosted form like WordPress.org will give you the full range of customization options. However, with increased options comes increased complexity. You’ll also have to pay a monthly fee for hosting.
Self-hosted sites are great for blogs that have larger followings and are looking for increased control. As a side note, don’t confuse WordPress.org, which is self-hosted, with WordPress.com, which is hosted. When choosing a platform, you’ll want to make sure that you pick one that’s easy to use, doesn’t require any coding skills and will be able to grow with you during your blogging journey.
There’s probably going to come a time where you want to change the look, feel, and functionality of your site as your brand matures, your traffic grows and you have more posts to organize. When choosing a platform, you’ll want to make sure that you choose one that has a healthy ecosystem of apps and plugins.
These can make a world of difference in automating and simplifying tasks and improving your site’s performance. Now I know what you’re thinking: what about Medium? Well, Medium won’t actually let you monetize through advertising, so if you’re looking to turn your blog into a business, it’s not the best platform for you.
Also Medium owns all of your traffi, so if you’re looking to transfer later, you won’t be able to take your users with you. So while I wouldn’t suggest Medium as your primary blogging platform, it can be used for strategic distribution purposes, like republishing articles. We’ll talk a little bit about that later. Next up is picking a theme and name.
After you’ve picked your platform, it’s time to pick a look and name. Picking a domain name is a really important step in the journey as it’s going to be the thing that people recognize first, and it’s a bit of a long-term commitment.
When picking a name, make sure to take these four things into account: make it memorable, make it fun to say, make it easy to spell and make sure it isn’t taken by another brand. When picking a name, it’s important to choose something that evokes the spirit of the brand.
Here are some naming conventions used by popular websites to help get those wheels turning and get you started. You can combine two words into a single compound word like Facebook. You can use a single word that evokes a feeling or an image like Complex or Amazon, or you can use a unique suffix at the end of an already existing word, like Shopify .
Choosing a domain name can be tedious, but it’s also a crucial process. We wouldn’t advise that use your own name unless you’re trying to build a personal brand or a portfolio site. And that’s because it’s often easier to build a brand if you choose a domain name that reflects your brand’s identity.
This will also make it easier to seamlessly integrate other writers later into your blogging journey if you ever decide to scale. Once you’ve chosen your domain name, it’s time to pick a theme. A theme is a pre-designed layout that allows you to create a professional-looking blog without touching a line of code.
Make sure you look into your theme options before committing to a platform. This usually calls for a one-time fee, but some platforms like Shopify will offer beautiful free themes for those just starting out with the option to upgrade later.
The design of your site can have a massive impact on your SEO, user experience, and the way that users interact with your content. Nearly everyone makes a snap judgment about the trustworthiness of a site based on how it looks and feels.
Most of us have landed on a poorly designed webpage, had trouble finding what we are looking for and left because we felt frustrated. Take some time when picking your theme, it can make a massive difference in how your blog performs.
When it comes to distribution, most bloggers only think about it after they’ve already created and published content. The truth is this can result in a lot of unnecessary misfires and leave a lot of opportunities on the table. What you really want to do is start thinking about distribution before you even launch.
The first thing that you need to take into consideration when crafting your distribution strategy is search engine optimization, also known as SEO. And that’s because traffic from search is a bit more predictable than from other sources, right? Unlike social media where content is served to audiences passively, with search it’s active, meaning users must make a definite decision as to what they’re looking for.
This is why traffic that comes from SEO is often of higher quality and results in a higher return on investment. To take advantage of the opportunities of SEO you’ll need to utilize keyword research in your content strategy. There are tons of best practices on SEO, and I’m going to be making another video that does a deep dive on this topic.
So make sure to subscribe so that you don’t miss it. For now though, here’s the simplest possible explanation: the higher the search volume, the more demand there is for a topic, and the more demand, the more potential traffic you can gain.
What you’re really looking for is high search volume, but low competition. This means you have a better chance of ranking for a topic and the higher you rank, the more traffic you are likely to receive. The next thing that you’ll want to incorporate into your distribution strategy is social media.
And while it may be tempting to try and distribute on every social media channel under the sun, this can quickly become a recipe for burnout and watered-down results. Go deep, not wide. Focus your energy on the channels where your audience is most likely to be spending its time. As every blog is different.
I can’t tell you which social media channel is going to give you the freest engagement. I can tell you the best way to find out is to test social channels until you unlock the one that works best for your content. Make sure to give each channel a fair amount of time to gain traction before you zoom in.
Social media platforms are great places to release micro-content that repackages and repurposes content that already exists on your site by leveraging formats, like videos, infographics, carousels, and media, you can create content that feels really native to that social platform to drive up engagement.
When possible, make sure you provide a link back to the original blog post so that you can drive traffic back to your site. We briefly touched on this before, but regularly republishing your content to platforms like LinkedIn, Medium and Tumblr is a great way to build additional awareness for your blog and reach the built-in audiences these platforms have.
And the beauty is that your post doesn’t need to be unique to these platforms, just make sure to include a link back to the original book blog posts. Here are some other pro tips for distribution. Try and create relationships with other related, but not competing blogs, where you can share each other’s content on social media.
Make sure to only approach blogs where the relationship is obviously going to be mutually beneficial. Leverage Facebook groups and subreddits to reach highly targeted audiences. Make sure to become an engaged member of these communities before you share your own content.
This will help you avoid the perception that you’re just shamelessly self-promoting. Capture emails early and often. Every reader is a potential email subscriber, and every email subscriber is a potential return visitor. To optimize this includes an email opt-in pop up on every blog post.
Create roundups of past posts, creating roundups like Ultimate Guides and Best Ofs can be really great ways to help people find your old posts. They can also really benefit your SEO. Update old content. Search engines like Google will actually reward blogs for making their content richer over time.
As a best practice, only add to and refrain from deleting old content unless you’re correcting a mistake. Guest posts. Let’s face it, you’re always going to need more content and guest posts are a really great way to build a bridge to another audience.
By writing guest posts, you can also build backlinks and thought leadership, which can really contribute to increasing traffic over time. Become a guest on a podcast. This can be a great way to reach audiences that are hungry for knowledge and inspiration.
Now that we’ve discussed site building, branding and distribution, it’s time to talk about what inspired you to create a blog in the first place: content. When you’re creating your content strategy, it’s really important that you begin by creating what is known as content pillars. Some people call them content buckets.
If this were a newspaper content pillars would be similar to the sections that they cover regularly. For a fitness blogs, examples of content pillars would be nutrition, fitness, motivational stories, and supplement reviews. Content pillars do a lot more than just help you organize content, they also make ideation and crafting tailored content for specific people a lot easier.
After completing that, what you’ll want to create is an audience persona. An audience persona is basically a sketch of your ideal reader. And it’s going to answer questions like, what is their lifestyle? What are their passions, fears, problems, desires, what brands do they like? What networks are they a part of? And what will speak to them.
As blog owners, we’re really interested in how people think and how they behave. And that’s why psychographics is a little bit more helpful than demographics. Of course, we do want to know the approximate age ranges and geographic locations of our audience, but we need to dig deeper than that.
We need to find out how do they think, how do they act and how do they feel? Ultimately, these will be a lot more helpful in crafting effective content and helping us monetize our traffic later. Once an audience persona is created, it’s a really good idea to write out a mission statement.
Writing out a mission and principles can really help to codify the “why” of the blog. And ultimately it’s the “why” that’s going to motivate you to keep creating consistently. This is a step we really don’t recommend skipping. Mission statements can also be featured in the about us section of your blog, and they can be a great way to communicate shared values with your audience.
When executed correctly, this can turn viewers into super fans. Also, it can be a great way to align creativity. Should you choose to bring on other creators in the future? Once you’ve created the foundational themes of your content. The next important step is breaking down the balance of content types.
This will really help you when you go to fill out your content calendar. Here are the most popular content types. Evergreen content. This is the type of content that never dies, and it often answers common questions that people have. At its heart, evergreen content is educational. Then there’s topical content.
This is the type of content that capitalizes on a currently trending event or topic and is executed correctly it can drive a lot of traffic from social. However, you don’t want to make this the cornerstone of your strategy, or you’ll be what blogger Andrew Sullivan calls “feeding the beast”.
And that’s because vitality is unpredictable, so don’t lean on it for traffic. Next, we have curated content, and this is a really great way to augment your original content strategy. The internet is a big place and readers really appreciate thoughtfully curated content that aligns with their values and interests. And then there are feature pieces.
Interviews can be a great way to build rich content in an editorial style. At their heart feature stories are storytelling and should take you into the minds and lives of extraordinary people. Interviews with notable people can also be a great way to build authority, as you do gain some credibility simply by association.
Then there’s visual content, and this is something that all bloggers should definitely be incorporating in their strategy. The search gods heavily reward blog posts that incorporate original images, video and graphics. And finally interactive content.
Quizzes can be a great way to increase engagement, like time on-page and also unearth deeper insights about your audience. One thing that’s important to remember is that quality and consistency beat quantity and speed. When it comes to blog posts, because Google penalizes duplicate content, but rewards long-form content it’s better to take your time to create something that you’re truly happy with.
That being said, you need to maintain a consistent schedule and not succumb to the trap of perfectionism. So pick a monthly or weekly blog post schedule that’s manageable and then stick to it. For some reason, the myth that creative people are unorganized by nature continues to prevail, but in content production, the opposite is actually true.
Disorganization hurts creativity, and that’s because when you’re organized, you unburden your mind from worry and allow yourself to focus on the act of creating when beginning content production. It’s incredibly important to create a content calendar.
In your content calendar, you should include what content you’re creating and when what audiences you’re creating it for when you’re releasing it, and what distribution channels you’re releasing it on. You can make a simple spreadsheet to create your content calendar, but there are more effective tools available.
I personally like Asana, Trello or Airtable because they make organizing content really intuitive. Before writing your post it’s recommended that you write an outline. And while this is a step that some bloggers might opt to skip, it’s really effective in making sure you hit every point you need to.
It also helps ensure that you include any relevant keywords and helps liberate your mind from the destination, so you can focus fully on the journey. When you finished writing your blog posts before hitting publish, here are some things you should do. Edit your work.
While coming back with fresh eyes and using a tool like Grammarly can really help you catch syntax and grammar errors, having a human editor to bounce ideas off of can really take your blog posts to the next level. Ensure you’ve organized the information under a hierarchy of headings. Headings really help scanability.
They make the piece feel approachable and Google loves them. Workshop headlines and social sharing images. Images and headlines can really make or break your distribution. So take your time to make a headline and image that stand out on a social feed and inspire curiosity. Finally, you’re ready to hit publish.
Now let’s talk about understanding your audience. Once you’ve hit the publish button, your work isn’t done. Now it’s time to dive into the data, understand where we can improve and learn what opportunities are untapped. That’s why it’s so crucial to take the time to set up your Google Analytics.
Not only is it free, but it gives you really deep insights into your audience, like what content is resonating with it, the quality of readers coming from different platforms and also how many people are on your blog right now. Take time to study these analytics and do more of what’s working and less of what isn’t.
Something that’s also recommended is installing a heat map on your site. Heat maps like the ones you can easily install with apps and plugins like Clicktale and Crazy Egg, allow you to see exactly how far people are getting in your content before they depart.
This can be really actionable data that shows you exactly what parts of your blog posts need to be improved. One final piece of advice is that so many bloggers make the mistake of assuming they know what their audience wants, instead of simply asking.
Comments on social posts, surveys, and simply posing a question to your audience can be powerful ways of unearthing massive content opportunities. That’s why I want you to leave a comment below with any online business topics you need guidance with so that I can cover them in a future video.
Hopefully, this video has given you everything you need to begin your blogging journey. And while starting a blog can feel daunting, really the hardest part is sitting down and getting started.
6 Effective Ways to Monetize a Blog to Make Money Online in 2022
how you can monetize a website using each of these different methodologies and we’re gonna have a look at what they are and how they work so let’s dive right in the first way that you can monetize a website of course is with e-commerce and most often this has to do with retail you could sell physical products or someone else’s physical.
products and you can sell them on Amazon eBay or on your own website you can also sync all of these methodologies together and sell from one platform to multiple platforms this is possible with Ecwid e-commerce it’s one of my favourite eCommerce solutions to sell online.
if you want to learn more you can check out the video above I explained what Ecwid is and how it works and it actually allows you to sell on social media also so you could sell on a Facebook business page and you can sell on an Instagram business account with Instagram shopping now here’s how this works the customer goes in places.
order on the website and then you physically pack the product and ship it at the post office to the customer now that has to do with physical products but you could also sell digital products now this is my favourite way to sell online I actually sell digital products in my online store Daniella.io/store you can find Ecwid commerce ebooks.
and an Ecwid commerce course in that online store so that’s my own digital product of course if you have their legal authorization you could sell someone else’s digital products and examples include music jingles beat ebooks digital files courses videos and lessons and in this case, the model is the customer places an order on the site.
and the digital product is directly shipped to them and I absolutely love this business model because you don’t have to physically go and ship something or prepare any physical parcels now let’s talk about selling merch so print on demand print on demand is an e-commerce business model.
where you upload images to different products that you want to sell online and the sales are fulfilled by a third party so what happens is you upload some images or designs that you want to sell on t-shirts for example or hats or phone cases there are lots of different things that you could print on demand and then when the sale is made in your online store.
the order is sent to the print on demand but he who fulfils the order for you so they take care of shipping it and sending it to the customer and they take care of returns in most cases this can be great for influencers people with an audience small and medium-sized business owners or larger business owners.
and examples include YouTubers Instagrammers bars any events if you want to give away freebies and they may be shirts hats mugs phone cases beanbags pants I’ve seen so many different things that you can print on demand depending on the service that you’re using now here’s.
how this business model works the customer places an order on your website and the print on demand service takes care of shipping it to the customer what’s really cool about this business model is that you don’t have to physically create the t-shirt and print on it and then ship it to the customer that third party will take care of it for you.
if you’re interested in learning more about print on demand definitely check out the video above there’s a full course on print on the man available in my online store Daniela dot io/store what’s really cool is that you’re not in the picture here your role is pretty much to create the product so to upload the image to the shirt or whatever you want to sell and then market it so.
the big job in print on demand for the person who’s carrying out a print underman business model is marketing and of course, creating cool designs that people actually want to buy now let’s talk about dropshipping this is a very popular business model that a lot of people are selling in courses and things like that but it’s somewhat misunderstood it can be interesting for business owners.
anyone who wants to sell physical products online for example furniture kitchenware clothing and shoes but if you don’t want to be in the process of packing and shipping those products so instead of being the person who actually physically sells them your roll kind of like with print on demand is more marketing.
you actually have to find the customers sell it to them and then the third party fulfilment service takes care of shipping those products for you so here’s a visual of how this works the customer makes an order on your website and the drop shipping service sends it to the customer kind of looks like the print on demand business model.
now there’s a lot of things to look out for with dropshipping it can be a very attractive business model but there are so many things to look out for especially costs that most people don’t talk about in their YouTube videos so I’d really like to invite you to check out the playlist above that playlist goes into detail about things to look out for.
if you’re interested in the dropshipping business model another way that you can monetize a website is with a subscription model this could be great for business owners some ways that you can do this is by selling subscription boxes or physical products for example you can sell essentials like razors or food like tea and coffee.
and most often this is on a recurring monthly or yearly basis so you would make recurring monthly or yearly revenue here’s how this works the customer places an order on your website you receive recurring revenue and of course, you have to go and ship those products on a monthly basis subscription can be kind of complex if you’re fulfilling them yourself.
you could have them fulfilled by third parties but if you’re doing it yourself you need to make sure that you have a good methodology of tracking those who are still customers and those who are not another way that you could monetize your website is with memberships are often people who subscribe for content.
so they’re going to get digital products like courses are access to a forum and in this case, you would get yearly recurring or monthly revenue it can be a very attractive business model to be able to monetize a website but you need to make sure that you’re providing people value on a yearly or monthly basis depending on the costs.
and what you’re including in your plans because they’re going to expect to get good value out of the money that they’re paying you every month or every year now here’s how this works the customer goes in places in order on your website to become a member and then you receive recurring revenue, of course, you need to make sure that you reinvest in your website and provide them value on an ongoing basis.
now another way that you can monetize your website is with affiliate marketing you could refer products and most often you would receive a commission on the sales that could be a monetary commission or a percentage and of course you should promote products that you’re passionate about I promote Ecwid eCommerce.
I’m gonna fill it for Ecwid commerce and it’s easy for me to promote Ecwid because I absolutely love that eCommerce solution and I use it myself and I’ve taught many many small and medium-sized businesses how to use Ecwid eCommerce.
if you own a business and you would like to refer products this can be a great way to add another revenue stream to a website and it’s very simple the company gives you an affiliate link and you would share it on your website or on social media etc and you would receive a commission based on the sales.
generated from your affiliate link ad placement is another way that you can monetize a website so pretty much you allow ads to be shown on your website and you receive a revenue per thousand views which is an RPM and you do this with an ad placement service or you can do it with a chosen business.
so you could work with an ad placement service that’ll just activate ads on your website or you can work with specific businesses that you would like to promote on your website and you can add banners to your site and track clicks and things like that so the ad company would give you a piece of code and you would add it to your website.
and you receive revenue depending on the views and clicks on those ads this is very simplified of course there’s more complexity behind this this is just a very simple illustration of how this business model works of course it’s more complex but just to give you a general idea this is pretty much how it works and here are some tips combine these ideas together you could have an e-commerce store.
where you also do print on demand and offer memberships and affiliate marketing with ad placement of course these ideas are non-exclusive of each other you can combine these ideas together with no problem always adapt to your customer’s needs make sure that the products that you’re promoting make sense for your customer for your audience.
and that they provide them with the value, of course, don’t forget customer support what often happens for example in the dropshipping business model is that people kind of forget about the customer when there are returns involves or things like that you’re still responsible for customer support.
even if there’s a third party fulfilling those orders for you definitely keep expenses in mind also in this case I’m definitely thinking about dropshipping there’s a lot of expenses included when your dropshipping online same thing for e-commerce you can have high marketing fees.
it’s just important to make sure that you’re tracking your expenses that you’re actually making a return on investment or an ROI when you’re carrying out any of these monetization strategies and of course especially when it comes to affiliate marketing promote products that you actually love and are passionate about.