Your Guide to Monetizing a Personal Blog
For some, blogging is a means to escape from their boring lives by expressing themselves through writing. Besides, if there is an audience that recognizes writing skills, the motivation to continue blogging gets even stronger.
On the other hand, there are bloggers who publish articles with the sole purpose of monetizing the content.
Making money from a blog can be quite difficult. However, if the content’s quality is decent and you work on promoting the blog regularly, you can improve your financial situation. Here are some suggestions on how to monetize a blog.
Custom Merchandise
Let’s start with merchandise. Once your blog grows and becomes a recognizable brand, making money from custom products should be quite easy. Bloggers can hire graphic designers who customize mugs, t-shirts, face masks, hoodies, stickers, and other merchandise.
You do not have to create an online store from scratch because there are services that allow you to create and sell merch directly on their platform. You just need to redirect your readers to a landing page that has your merchandise.
Dropshipping
In 2019, the top 10% of eBay dropshippers made on average $7,731/month profit. Dropshipping on a popular platform like eBay means reaching an audience that is already familiar with the website and is visiting regularly.
As a blogger, you will not have to start a dropshipping venture from scratch because some of your readers might be interested in products you would be promoting.
However, keep in mind that if you decide to combine your blog with dropshipping, you may lose some readers if the website’s focus suddenly shifts to making money from dropshipping rather than publishing articles.
Publishing Sponsored Content
Publishing sponsored content is beneficial for more than just making money. Sure, you get paid for adding a guest blogger’s article on your website, but it also means more content for your readers.
The amount of money bloggers make from this method varies on a couple of factors. The first is how renowned a blog is. If it has poor domain authority and other metrics that influence search engine optimization, guest posters will be reluctant to pay a lot of money.
At the same time, if the content quality is lackluster, a blog’s owner could ask for more money to publish the article on their website. However, similar to the dropshipping example, you should avoid adding poor writing to yours. If you publish poorly written articles, expect a backlash from your readers.
Running Ads
Ad networks are another common method to monetize a website. In fact, this is one of the earliest ideas that internet marketers used to rely on regardless of the type of websites they had.
Nowadays, there are plenty of different ad networks that you can try. Some networks pay for impressions; others require clicks.
Nevertheless, despite different ad networks, the idea may not be as effective as you wish because many people use ad blocker extensions on their browsers. Besides, some ads slow a website’s loading speed even if it is built on a reliable platform and has a great hosting provider.
Just like with other monetization methods, you will need some time to test ads and see whether they are effective and worth keeping on the blog.
Including Affiliate Links
Affiliate links are similar to ads, but you do not have to clutter the blog’s content with random pop-ups. Affiliate links can be included in articles by creating anchor texts.
The goal of affiliate marketing is to redirect people to a landing page and have them purchase services or goods while the cookies are still active. You get commission for each redirected person who spends their money.
Creating a Patreon Page
A Patreon page means that you will need to rely on your fans to support you. This particular monetization method is a different kind of marketing, but it is quite popular among YouTubers who had to look for new channels after the platform changed its algorithm and does not pay as much from running ads.
As a blogger, you may struggle to incentivize readers to support you on Patreon. For that, you will need to come up with various perks, such as content exclusive to Patreon, or custom merchandise for supporters.
One Patreon advantage is that if you use it as a sole monetization method, you will not have to clutter the blog with various promotional ads, links, or banners that disrupt readers.
Promoting Webinars and E-books
You can use the blog as a platform to promote e-books and online courses. Creating digital products yourself is one of the options, but you can also collaborate with other content creators and promote their work. However, make sure that you advertise quality stuff. Otherwise, your readers will not hesitate to leave negative feedback or do not bother visiting the blog anymore.
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
