You may blog for self-expression, but if you aren’t looking for ways to get exposure or make money out of the time and effort you put into sourcing photos and writing for your blog, then what’s the point? Say that you’re running a food blog to share your baking recipes with people – what then?
If you have all the time in the world and just want to share your recipes, then that’s great. But what if you could earn passive income from your blog without having to do a lot except post the content you want to make, and your readers want to see? These are some of the ways bloggers make money on their website, and here’s how you can do it, too.
PPC / CPM Ads
Once you’ve created your blog, expect that you won’t get any traffic at first. After creating a few blog posts that catch readers looking for certain topic in various niches, you may start to see a boost in views. Having social media presence linking back to your blog can help, as well as getting some SEO help to increase your visibility on search engines.
When your blog reaches a certain amount of viewers, it’s time to consider monetizing your blog. The most common way of doing this is by adding ads on every web page. If you’ve been on any website before, you might notice the ads on the side of the article, in between the paragraphs, or at the bottom of the website.
You have the option to make these adds a PPC (pay per click) ad, which pays you for every click, or a CPM (cost per impression) ad, which pays you for every thousand impressions. Instead of looking for advertisers, you can go to Google AdSense and simply place the banners on your blog. Google will be the one to put ads targeted to the demography your readers usually fall under.
Get Sponsored Blog Posts
The difficult part about running a blog is coming up with interesting topics and maintaining active posting so that it would improve your SEO score. Some bloggers choose to address this by allowing sponsored blog posting on their website. These sponsored posts are related to the niche the blogger belongs to and are more likely to interest the readers.
It’s an ideal win-win situation for both the blogger and the marketing agency offering sponsored blog posting opportunities: the blogger gets paid to post related articles written by other people while maintaining an active blog, while the marketing agency gets link backs to the website they link on the article.
However, sponsored blog posts aren’t available for all bloggers. Marketing agencies only work with businesses that have a certain Domain Authority score. This ensures the agencies’ post get a certain amount of traffic for the posts they pay for.
Partner with Advertisers and Businesses
Working with websites such as Google AdSense isn’t the only way to get ads on your blog. If most of your readers fit in a certain group, advertising networks and businesses may directly go to your website and ask for ad space or pay you to write a sponsored blog post featuring their brand or product.
This usually only happens with blogs with enough traffic, though. The good part is that you can set your own rates since Google AdSense doesn’t act as a middle man between the blogger and the business. If your blog has an email newsletter, subscription or other forms of media, advertisers may even pay you more to advertise them on these platforms.
Affiliate Links
In some cases, advertisers and businesses want to provide a link that will take your reader straight to their product. Apart from the money you make from writing about them or adding their ad on your page, you can get some money from affiliate links.
A good example of this is YouTuber Zoella’s blog page. She has an entire page dedicated to affiliate links. If you look at it, you’ll find that none of these products are hers, but are products from sponsors and brands she patronizes. The links are unique, so when a follower clicks the link and purchases a product, the sponsor can see that they purchased a product because of the blogger, so the blogger is given a percentage of that revenue.
This method is usually available through networks such as Amazon Associates, but businesses may also contact bloggers personally.
Do more with your website than just blog. There’s a lot of opportunities to make money writing and creating content that you love and your viewers will want to read, so why not maximize your time by profiting from it? Through these methods, you can continue to do what you love while earning. Do well, and you could even turn this into a sustainable income earner.
