Are you getting traffic to your blog, but still struggling to make a good income?
Blogging is a great career option but only if you do it the right way. Of course, everything starts with
providing great content to your readers and steadily
growing your traffic. Once you have decent traffic to your blog and a loyal audience, it’s time to focus on the revenue.
You may have heard a lot of people say that your blog revenue is directly proportional to the traffic coming in, but that’s not really true. It’s all about executing the
money-making ideas in the right way.
So here are six marketing tips to make more money from your blog:
1. Place your ads better
Placing ads on your website is not enough, you have to place ads where your readers are more likely to click on them.
Before placing an advertisement, ask yourself why the readers are here and where exactly you should place the ads so that they don’t hamper the user experience and yet, are starkly visible.
Here are a few ideas for ad placement for a better click-through-rate:
- Sidebar banner
- Above a blog post title
- Right below the post title
- Between different sections of your post
- At the end of your post, above the author bio
But, of course, every website is different, and that is why I would recommend checking your website’s heat map which could tell you where exactly your users tend to click more, and that is where you should place the majority of your ads.
I also recommend checking
Google’s ad placement policies at regular intervals so you can stay on top of any changes. Also, it’s in Google’s best interests to make sure the user experience isn’t affected, so you won’t have to worry about bothering your readers either if you follow their guidelines.
Here is an image that depicts the best places to put ads, the darker the orange the better the placement;
2. Go beyond AdSense
Yes, Google AdSense generates the most intuitive ads for your readers, since Google already knows what the readers have been searching and surfing. But, with a minimum payout threshold of $100 and a difficult approval process, it doesn’t hurt to look at some other options as well.
Here a few ad platforms you should definitely consider (all of them work alongside AdSense):
With in-text and in-frame ads, Infolinks can monetize your blog in a completely different way. Getting approval on Infolinks is extremely easy and there is a minimum payout of $50 through PayPal.
This is one of the premier ad platforms which gets you direct advertisements from clients and takes a 25% commission charge. With a minimum payout of $20, the only downside to BuySellAds is that it’s not that easy to get approved.
What Viglink does is, it monetizes your outbound links. It turns your ordinary links into affiliate links, so when a reader clicks on your link and buys something, you get a commission through it. This brings the power of affiliate marketing to natural link building.
3. Explore native languages
With so many languages in the world, why should you only focus on English? Google AdSense now supports over 35 languages, and this gives you no reason to ignore native languages.
While English might be one of the most popular languages on the internet, there is an array of readers looking for blogs in their regional languages and you can be the first few to exploit that market.
I launched my blog’s Hindi version,
ShoutMeHindi, back in June 2015 and I’ve been getting great feedback ever since.
You don’t need to make it exclusively in your local language – you can mix and match English terms, as people tend to be familiar with the digital marketing terminology in English.
4. Collaborate with brands for sponsored posts and reviews
This is the quickest way to earn some good cash, but at the same time, you have to be very cautious about it.
Sponsored posts are where you talk about a product in general, or you try to incorporate something associated with the product naturally into your content. Sponsored reviews are when the company pays you to write reviews about their products.
Sponsored posts should only be done when you can talk about products or brands that your readers would be interested in. I don’t need to tell you that when you attempt blatant advertising, readers’ trust evaporates.
Now, sponsored reviews are a very sensitive ground. You might be getting paid by the company, but you don’t have to completely sell the product. It’s important to be unbiased and write your honest thoughts about the products.
Test the product extensively, and then list down all the pros and cons. Be sure to let the company know beforehand that you would be writing an honest review.
To connect with brands, you can create a media kit explaining what advertisers can expect from sponsored posts and reviews and how much you would be charging them.
Suggested networks;
5. Implement affiliate programs
Affiliate marketing, in a nutshell, is where you refer your readers a product and when they buy it through your recommendation, you get a commission out of it.
Our very own Jeff described affiliate marketing as one of the top ways to
make money by blogging in 2016. Every affiliate program has a different commission rate and minimum payout. But the reason why it’s so popular among bloggers is because you only have to set it up once and you can get paid from all your posts, whether they are old or new.
Even the traffic doesn’t matter so much, because it all depends upon the readers buying products through your recommendation.
There are many different kinds of affiliate programs available, and you can select the ones that relate the most to your blog niche.
6. Write an impressive Ebook
One of the best ways to get revenue from your blog is by developing premium content for your readers. Creating ebooks are cheap, and they also make you
a niche expert, which can drive in more business later.
You can also build up your subscriber list with an ebook by providing the book – or the first few chapters, depending on your inclination and the worth of the information – free of charge for every subscriber.
But, there is a burning question plaguing every blogger who creates an ebook – should you sell it on your blog or Amazon?
Well, the answer is not as simple as you would want it to be. To make the right decision, you should definitely check out this
post by Jeff.
