Last week I shared with you some tricks that had helped me write better posts, and today I want to tell you about the various ways to monetize (yes, I love that word) a website.
Many people start writing a blog with the idea to make some extra sueldecillo but think that there are only two sources of income: AdSense and affiliate marketing. The reality is that there are more ways to make money.
Whether you have a blog with lucrative intentions or not, this post you're interested. If you are in the first group, which I will tell you then you will get new ideas for economic performance to your efforts; if you are in the second, when you finish reading this article you will understand better how the bread you earn the authors of the most popular websites.
Have I convinced you? Keep reading.
Making money with a blog is a distance race, not a sprint
Before continuing, I would like to warn you that making money with a blog is always a long-term plan. A VERY long term.
Traffic, authority, confidence, connection with readers ... are essential things that are not achieved in two days, so if you're looking to get rich in three weeks sorry to disappoint.
Today there are millions of blogs on the Internet, of which 99% are abandoned after a few months. So if you want yours bring economic benefits, one of the essential qualities you need is perseverance. And I'm not talking about months, but years.
Are you willing to write on my blog over the next 5 years? Otherwise, you might be more appropriate to invest your time into something different, or you take your blog as a hobby and not a business.
Having clarified this point, we can start :) Here are 9 ways to earn money with a blog.
1. Advertise CPC (AdSense)
The easiest and fastest way to monetize a blog is through PPC advertising. The CPC acronym meaning "Cost Per Click", which means that you pay each time a user clicks on one of your ads.
There are many ad networks CPC, but certainly the most popular and works best is Google AdSense. Joining is as simple as entering this website and fill out a short form. Once Google approves your account (typically less than 48 hours), you can insert blocks of different sizes advertising on your blog.
What distinguishes other AdSense advertising systems is that you do not choose the ads shown, but Google does it for you. The big G analyzes the content of the page where you inserted the block and display advertising that it considers relevant to your readers. Thus, Google kills several birds with one stone:
The ads shown (in theory) be of interest to your users
Being interesting, are more likely to click and so you earn more money (and Google too)
Advertisers can reach potential customers despite not knowing you or your site
The revenue per click depends on the competence that exists in that niche. The more advertisers, the more they have to pay for your ad to appear and therefore more money you can split between you and Google. For example, in some super-competitive as "forex", "safe" or "criminal lawyers" theme you can get 3 or 4 charge per click, but usually receive only a few cents.
If you want to know how competitive is a term, you have two options:
Do a search on Google and dwelling on how many ads are displayed. If all slots are full (above the search results, below and in the sidebar) that means that it is a competitive niche in which the click is well paid.
Planner enter keywords and search for that term. The CPC column will give you an estimate of what companies pay per click for your ad to appear in searches and blogs related to that topic. What will you charge you less than half of that CPC (like 30-40%).
But not everything is pink and wonderful in the land of AdSense. Before you launch to put advertising on your blog you should consider the following:
You may be angry and your readers consider you a sellout. Sometimes, having bad publicity image subtraction gives seriousness to your blog
Normally for the CPC advertising is profitable you need a lot of traffic
Google has the right to close your AdSense account when they feel like it and without giving any explanation. Already happened to me in the past
Examples of CPC advertising blogs:
Digital Photography School. The popular blog of Darren Rowse generates a high volume of revenue through AdSense. If you enter any item you'll see ads on both the sidebar and the bottom, just before the comments.
Intexmedia. This cacereña company have a network of blogs that includes dinaBlog call traffic sites as bebefeliz.com or billing buscartrabajo.com thousand euros a month just with clicks of its users.
Two. Advertisement CPA
Another less known type of advertising is CPA advertising (Cost Per Action). In this case, when a reader clicks on your ad they are redirected to a landing page (landing page) in which you have to perform an action such as opening an account, complete a survey or provide personal data to request more information. For each user to complete the action you take with you a commission.
As you can imagine, the conversion rate (people who click your ad and also performs the action) is much lower than in the case of CPC advertising. However, this is compensated by a fee-usually much higher conversion of several euros.
Here's an example of landing page of an insurance company. When the user clicks on your ad, reached this page where you are asked to enter your name and your phone to call you later and try to sell you insurance. If you do, you take with you € 1.75 (even if the user does not end up buying anything then).
CPA advertising to be successful it is important that it is highly relevant to the niche of your blog. If you have a blog of personal development and of Movistar put an ad to attract new customers, it is more likely to be a failure. However, that same ad on a blog about mobile rates deals work much better.
In general, the more specific the topic of your blog, the CPA campaigns work best (provided they are relevant, of course).
The best known of CPA advertising network in Spain is Adjal.
Examples of blogs with advertising CPA:
Rastreator. Although more than a blog is a website, Rastreator is a good example of CPA advertising. This company is dedicated to making comparisons of products that pay (insurance, mortgages, ADSL ...) higher conversion charges, and shows each company CPA ads on the results of these comparisons. You can do the same on your blog, but on a smaller scale :)
Three. Deprived Advertisers
An alternative to ad networks that I mentioned in the previous paragraphs are private advertisers. Like magazines companies rent their pages, you can rent areas plugin sector companies for a fixed monthly price.
There are two ways to find private advertisers:
Offer your services to prospective clients. This strategy involves contact by e-mail or phone with your niche companies that might be interested in advertising on your blog. You can start by those who have contracted AdSense advertising, because you know that already invest in online advertising every month. If you are able to prove with facts and figures that would be more profitable to advertise on your page through Google, may be willing to make the change.
Them to get in touch. If you get your blog to become a leader in your niche, it is very possible that they are the companies that get in touch with you for advertising on your website. The easiest way for this to happen is publicly showing that accept ads on your website. For example, you can have a banner with the message "Advertise on this blog" that leads to a page where potential advertisers can download a file containing the statistics of visits last year, why they would be profitable to advertise your site and prices.
As in the case of CPA advertising, the more specific your niche better work this method of monetization, as there will be more companies interested in advertising on your site. Also, the more traffic you generate the more money advertisers will ask, as more people will see your ad every day.
If you want to see what it looks like a good dossier for advertisers, I recommend you take a look at the Forum Police. You can download it by clicking here.
Examples of blogs with private advertisers:
Baballa is a blog for working moms. The author, Lucia, writes about a lot of topics: stories with kids, crafts, things to do with them, things to do without them, beauty, things to give away ... the page was becoming increasingly popular and now works with the income of sponsors that you can see on the sidebar.
Requirements National Police. When I started looking for ways to make money online, I created this site with the idea of making money with ads academies competitions and gyms. Failed for lack of traffic and sell only got a notice (hurray), but still can serve as an example. I use a plug-in for WordPress called CrankyAds that manages everything automatically. If you want to see how it works, go to the page and click on the banner below there at all and it says "Click here to advertise in this space."
Affiliate
Affiliate marketing is simply a specific type of advertising in which the CPA action that the user has to perform is to buy something. I mean, you act as shopping, on your blog promoting a product or service from another company that pays you a commission every time you generate a sale.
Affiliation platforms operate as follows:
You register as an affiliate
Through the platform you create links with a special identifier, which point to the product page to promote
You put these links on your blog
A reader clicks on any of these links, make a purchase in the next X days (X depends on the company) and you carry you a commission
At the end of the month you enter your account the full amount of all fees
Easy, right?
The first affiliate program was the history of Amazon, but today there are many more and virtually all sectors: travel, telephony, digital products ... To find them just search in Google the company name followed by the word "affiliate".
Sometimes it is the companies that manage their affiliate programs, but the most common is to do so through affiliate networks. These are some of the most important:
Amazon Spain
TradeDoubler
zanox
Clicbank
ComissionJunction
The amount of commission varies depending on the company, ranging from 3-5% of the sale price in the case of physical products to 50-70% when it comes to digital products.
The key to success is to intercept affiliation with users who are in the middle of the buying process and bring them to your blog, and the most common way to do this is by writing articles about offers or product analysis and position in Google for terms commercial. Let me explain.
If someone searches Google the word "coffee" do not know what is intended. You may want to buy a coffee maker, but you may already have one and it has failed, or perhaps a child is looking for pictures of coffee for a school work. However, if user searches for "buy coffee", "coffee Nesspreso analysis" or "Tassimo coffee price", we know that you are thinking of buying a coffee maker and, therefore, is much more likely to end generándote a sale. This second type of user is the one that interests you to visit your blog.
Examples of blogs that use affiliate marketing:
Ofertaman. The author of this blog published daily deals on various electronic products, with a brief analysis. All web links are affiliate links for which a commission is carried. I do not know how much money you earn each month, but I think it should go pretty well.
Running Shoes. The web page is LuÃs ClausÃn reference on running shoes (a good example of super-specific niche). All links are affiliate.
Otogami. This browser game created by David Bonilla and his partner Jerome crawls 29 stores and tells you where you can buy at the best price. Obviously, the purchase link is affiliate link :)
Interested in the world of affiliate? Visit specialized forum afiliado.com.
May. Own products
The most lucrative for making money with your blog method is to sell your own products, as there are no middlemen and therefore margins are wider.
The most common online is selling digital products, and more specifically of info-products such as ebooks or courses. The advantage of this product is that duplicate is free, so once created it costs the same to sell one million. Moreover, the entire sales process can easily be automated thanks to platforms like E-Junkie, Gumroad or even Amazon (as I have done with my book).
In addition to digital products, you can also sell physical products through a blog. For example, mine could be sold posters with my manifesto or, if I had a decent logo, selling T-shirts and other merchandising :) The biggest drawback of this monetization strategy is that it works automatically: you have to keep a stock go a post to make deliveries and manage incidents and returns. However, this paste can be solved using a system called Information dropshipping consisting pass orders directly to the supplier. This, in return for a fee, is responsible for making shipping directly to you. This way you do not have to worry about anything :)
Selling your own products is not easy, because to succeed you have to do many things well. Create something that others want to buy it is a challenge, but that's just the beginning. In addition to creating the product you need marketing knowledge, copywriting, pricing, customer search and much more. It is for this reason that 99% of people trying to create and sell their own products fails.
Examples of blogs that sell their own products:
Lifestyle squared. Frank specializes in online business for one person, and through his blog sells many courses: e-mail marketing, blogging, creating ebooks ...
Triggered. Borja Prieto organizes webinars (online seminars) payment through your blog. While teaches, writes them to turn them into training pills that sells to 19 euros each.
Templates to be higher. Palmez Miguel, one of the oldest blog readers, created a page template to be higher than several years is still giving you a few euros a month ago. Calls to China templates through a web as alibaba.com and resold in Spain much more expensive. As your sales volume is not very high, he is in charge of maintaining a stock and make orders on delivery.
6. Services
Having a blog and write about a topic he frequently will help you position yourself as an expert in your niche. After a while, you can use that authority to offer your services. As throughout the months have shown that you know about your field and have established a relationship of trust with your readers, can some of them are interested in what you offer and become customers.
The key to this monetization model is trust. Demonstrate your knowledge of what you write is not enough; your life must be a reflection of what you preach, ie you have to live your own story. Or do you would hire a fat nutritionist to lose weight?
Here are some ways to build trust in your blog:
Credentials. If you enter the website of Andrea, a Mexican entrepreneur who travels and love football, you'll see the video presentation below has a section that says "As you saw it in ..." along with the logo of some pages and conferences. It conveys confidence and serves to demonstrate that it is an unknown, because if has appeared in all these places ... for nothing, right?
Testimonies. The reviews from other satisfied customers are one of the best ways to get new customers trust you. To achieve the first, start working for free or half price in exchange for a positive testimonial at the end. Each time a reader will write an e-mail telling you something nice ask permission to use it as evidence in the future.
Give your face. Let your readers see you in photos and videos transmitted closeness. People would like to interact with people, not robots.
Design. Designing a blog matter, a lot. Not the same entering a blog with domain xxxxx.wordpresss.com and the default template, you enter the blog of Javier Megias. The first transmits distrust the four sides, while the second is much more professional. A website with a good design is screaming "I'm serious".
I myself will premiere my own services page shortly.Estate existant hire me if you're interested!
Example of people offering services through its blog:
Javier Malonda been writing for years about NLP. Anyone who gets to read your blog and will be considered an authority on the subject. For that reason, if you need a session of NLP, that person will go to Javier instead of looking for other options on Google or the Yellow Pages. Because Xavier is not unknown, but a "friend". The reader knows his philosophy, how he thinks and even details of his private life.
Hana Kanjaa offers courses, workshops, conferences and coaching through his blog circus :)
7. Promoting your Business
If you already have a business, a blog can be a fantastic marketing tool. Your customers will want to know who you are, how you work and how things work backstage.
One of the most famous cases is that of 37signals, whose blog Signal vs.. Noise-in speaking of his work philosophy-was a key factor growth of the company and also served them to win hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That's how they got:
They published posts with quite different ideas to traditional. These items produjero traffic, monetised through advertisements in the sidebar had
They created a PDF book called Getting Real with the best posts on his philosophy of software development and sold for $ 19
They created the paper version of the book and put it up for sale through Lulu.com for $ 25
The contents of Getting Real, created a series of lectures. For each earned $ 50,000
In total, they took more than $ 750,000 from the blog!
37signals The story is amazing, but in my opinion the true potential of a blog you can see when starting a business. In that case, creating a community around a blog can provide you with a lot of things and give you that initial push. When you have 2,000 loyal fans is much easier to move forward with any project, because those people who trust you will be delighted to make beta testers, give feedback, advertise your product and support your crowdfunding campaign. Let me give an example.
David Bonilla has a mailing list with over 2,700 subscribers in writing every Sunday. A year ago, before opening his shop to the public Galician empanadas, empanadas 100 test offered at a special price only to subscribers of the blog. Sold 89 but beyond sales, got two much more important things:
Valuable feedback that allowed you to fix errors before opening to the public
Free Marketing. Most customers mentioned by Twitter pies, and there were even some who recorded a video unpacking Pie (unboxing)
All this, as you can imagine, resulted in profits in the short term but also long.
And without the help of his followers, all would have been a little more difficult for David.
The most important thing to remember when using a blog to promote other projects is that a community is not created in a day. Therefore, you should start building before you need it, because when that time comes it will be too late.
8. Donations
Few people realize that the easiest way to make money with a blog is to ask your readers that if your work has helped them in some way, you enter what they see fit through PayPal. You know, sometimes you just have to ask!
This is something available to everyone and requires no programming knowledge whatsoever, since PayPal gives you the necessary HTML code and you just have to add it to your blog. You can get your donation button here.
If you want to be more original, you can also generate code for a donation of a fixed sum instead of PayPal to use one button that says "buy me a coffee" or "buy me a beer" :)
Example of people receiving donations through his blog:
Rafael Fernandez is a writer who self-published. Vive month with what pushes your books, but sometimes it has undergone economic difficulties and asked his readers to help him financially. Many of them, among whom I include myself, we send a few euros to lend a hand. In my case, I did it because I had enjoy their free post from years ago and I was indebted to him. In addition, we considered a friend despite not knowing him personally, and admired his courage.
Steve Pavlina, best blogger in the world in the areas of personal development, put a donate button on your blog following escribiesen several readers asking him how he could afford that for their posts. She now earns between 500 and 700 dollars in donations, but a few years ago their profits in this way were between 1000 and 2000 dollars.
9. Career Opportunities
We live in a time when giving a CV in Spain is equivalent to putting a brochure advertising the windshield of a car: it is more likely to end up in the trash.
A college degree is no longer enough to find work. Now required to further prove that you can do something useful. And what better way to show it through a blog?
Post often means exposure, to face. Yes, it is possible that both friends and anonymous readers laugh at you, but it is also possible that what you do like and call someone's attention. And if that person has a business and are looking for someone with your profile, maybe you're the one.
Do not you think? Here's some evidence:
A Laura contacted by Google through your blog. Too bad I did not have the level of English needed to do interviews ...
Aisa Marina does not have a blog, but Navhy created a YouTube channel with videos in English subtitled in Spanish. The great success (more than 20 million hits) led to the BIDDEN other entrepreneurs for their projects as singer Tony Brown's hired to design the covers of three of his singles.
Risk Michelangelo, which takes 7 years working in Infojobs also thinks like me.
Having a blog means opening the door to all kinds of opportunities, not just labor. Since you give away a travel guide to Barcelona because a publisher has made a post yours amused to find a boyfriend, everything is possible.
So ... what are you waiting for?Start your blog today!
Support Living the Most
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