Most of the new bloggers and webmasters struggle to make money with their blogs even though they have reasonably good traffic. If your main intention is to make money out of your blog, then definitely you have to concentrate on monetizing part also as how importance you give to content development and SEO. Recently one of my reader asked a question that how I’m monetizing my blogs?. This post could be the answer for his question and show you how to monetize a blog. I’m keeping the new bloggers with good traffic views in my mind while writing below methods that can be applied to make money.
I’m not going to ask you to create your own products or dive into affiliate marketing directly because I’m thinking you are at the beginning stage in blogging. The below methods to monetize a blog are completely free and easy to use. I’m sure you would have read and know them already, but here I’m talking from my real experience. This would be suitable for any new and part time bloggers.
You are giving valuable content to the world for free, right? but what you are getting from it? most of the bloggers do blogging for money, knowledge sharing, user appreciation and self satisfactions. If you expect some serious income from your blog, then keep reading.
Before you expect decent income from your blog, firstly you’r blog needs some traffic. I could say around 500 to 800 daily visitors would be enough to get daily decent income (of course, it depends on your requirement too).
10 Tips on How to Monetize a Blog
1. CPC (Cost Per Click) Programs – Google Adsense
This is the popular way of making few bucks from a new blog initially. I realized that getting the approval from Adsense is difficult nowadays. But if you have a great blog with decent traffic, then you can get the approval quickly. Here are few simple tips;
- Utilize the all three ad blocks in Adsense.
- Make sure blog posts are long enough (more words in the post) to accommodate all three units.
- Target some high paying keywords on each articles.
- Drive traffic from search engines.
More Adsense tips available here.
2. In-Text Ads – Infolinks or Vibrant Media
This is another type of advertising network to make money from a blog. Installation is very easy and the best part is, it will not take any space in your blog. The ads will appear with the text. This also works in CPC ( Cost Per Click) model but the CPC rate would be less compared to Google Adsense but Click Through Rate (CTR) is high. Infolinks doesn’t require any specific requirements from webmasters, but for Vibrant Media your blog need to have minimum particular amount of page views monthly
Basically the above two methods are easy and simple to make money from a blog at the initial stage. Step by step you can move to different form of making money online with your blog later.
The below tips will show some basic rules on how to monetize a blog.
3. Regular, return and social networking visitors will not be useful for CPC Programs
This is the common problem for some of the bloggers nowadays. They have good daily page views, but less Adsense earnings. The reasons is their main traffic source is facebook or twitter. To make good money from CPC programs like Google Adsense, you require more new visitors daily. How to get new visitors? it is by search engines . Regular users don’t click your ads. Once you have established yourself as a ‘super hero’ among your regular readers, then you can start selling affiliate or your products.
4. Traffic IS NOT Money
People say ‘Traffic is money’, I do not agree that. If you are not converting the incoming traffic as money, then what is the point?. You must use some techniques, experiments and try several methods to monetize a blog.
Traffic + Conversion = Money
5. Understand the Traffic geographical areas
From which country is your blog getting more traffic?, change your tactics to monetize a blog based on the traffic geographical area. Though most of the ad networks work globally but they do not pay equally for every country. Most of the advertisers will be bidding higher rates for specific territory like US, Canada and Europe.
Therefore if your blog gets more visitors from Asian countries, then the earnings from CPC programs will be less. In this case, you can promote the local affiliate products or partnership with the advertisers who want Asian country traffic, they may convert the traffic much better.
So, basically you have to understand the geographical traffic source and change your monetizing plans accordingly.
6. Join CPM Networks
All CPM networks work well for US traffic. So, if you are experiencing good daily traffic from US and surrounded countries, then join a CPM ad network and implement it. CPM ads pay based on every 1000 page views with their ads and they do not care much about how many clicks it received. Using a CPM network with CPC and in-text ad network will bring handy income to your blog.
You can check few best CPM ad networks here.
7. Blog design is still important
When it comes to monetization, the blog design and arrangements of every elements in a blog is important. Ads, content and traffic are not just enough to make money from a blog, it’s all about how you arrange them and make a better user friendly blog. Though we are trying to make money, but it is not an appropriate way of showing all Adsense, CPM, in-text, pop-up ads and affiliate banners together. These types of attempts will spoil your blog credibility and earnings also. You should be very careful in arranging elements on a blog to monetize it properly.
8. Do not decide anything quickly
After reading this post if you think you need to do some changes on your blog, better do it immediately. But the result of the changes will take some time to appear, you have to wait for that. I see people take decisions very quickly in blogging, it will not work. What is not working today may work well tomorrow. So, don’t decide and conclude anything so quickly. If Adsense is not making enough money what you expect, don’t worry, be patient, it will start picking up later.
Whatever changes you do in your blog, I suggest to allow 4 to 6 weeks to see the changes and decide the next change ( if required). This rule is very important when it comes to make money from blog.
9. Don’t Keep the Money as the only Encouraging factor for blogging.
Of course we are here to make money by blogging, but if you run only behind money then your initial online journey would be tough. Keep the money as a long term goal, but initially work harder to get more traffic and make your blog famous. Don’t let the money to influence in your blogging. This should be the fundamental rule in monetizing a blog.
10. Experiment and create new formula for you.
The methods (or points) I explained above worked for me in last 5 years, but I do not think all of them will work for you and your blog. So, what is next? ‘create your own formula’. Your formula may be depended on;
a) Blog niche and keywords
b) Number of traffic
c) Traffic source
d) Traffic geographical area
e) Your visitors type and expectation
f) Blog design and color combination
g) How you treat readers
h) Your Expectation
I hope I have provided enough basic information on how to monetize a blog maxim with less efforts. If you have any doubts and comments, feel free to leave them in the comments area below.