Many have turned to blogging as a quick source of income and believe they will hit a gold mine overnight; simply said, not true. The most successful and lucrative blogs are those with months [and even years] of credibility and consistently great content. Both of which have helped grow a loyal following of readers willing to buy or promote whatever the blog produces.
There are three efficient ways to Make Money Blogging
Advertising
By allowing certain companies to place ads within their blogs landing pages, blogger receive a steady, passive income from consumer views or Cost per Click (CPC).
Affiliate Programs
When Blogger pitch the services or products of another company or merchant which results in site traffic and sale they are often awarded a percentage of sales from their viewers.
Product/Service Portals
Many use their blog as a way to draw in consumers for their own products or raise awareness of their provided services.
According to Authority Hacker, a majority of bloggers receive their income from Advertisements programs such as Google AdSense [36%], followed by products and services [33%], and lastly Affiliate programs [31%]. A majority of successful blogs incorporate at least two of these methods as they can used cohesively; such as offering services [like product reviews] and then aligning yourself within an affiliate program with those relevant companies or allowing those companies to place ads within your blogs landing pages.
A Bloggers ROI: Which Method is Most Lucrative?
It goes without saying that to make money you have to spend money; a bloggers return of investment [ROI] will either show profitability or lack thereof. Not every method requires a monetary investment aside from building your blogging platform; however they each may result in different margins of profitability.
Authority Hacker ran their own analysis of blogger incomes and their overall profitability in which Services provided by solopreneurs ranked the highest. Obviously, if they eventually had to outsource help to cover increasing consumer traffic this would most likely change.
At which point, Affiliate Marketing or Site Product Sales would run a tight race for leading ROI. Since it is easier to sign up for an affiliate program than to create and market your own product, the understandable winner for the blogger is affiliate programs. However, if you consider the amount of income which can be earned through the endless marketing avenues, mass production, and subsequent sales of merchandise- one might consider putting in the extra leg work to effectively sell products from their blog.
Advertisements within your blogs landing pages are always a toss-up. While you spend significantly less money acquiring pinpoint Keywords, if your site relies solely on naturally generated traffic, your ROI could be just as high as it competing methods of monetization.
Now here are some successful blogs and their monthly income (as declared by them):
Dispelling Myths and Facing Facts
Be warned, there are a myriad of myths and a handful of hoopla about how to effectively make money blogging. Many of which are more harmful to your Blogs potential Income earning than you think. By dispelling common Blogging myths and facing facts, you can turn your blog into a steady piggy bank or grow it into a Cash Cow.
Here are 4 Blogging Myths which could hurt your potential income:
Blogging is easy!
This couldn’t be more of an understatement. Surely setting up your blog is a breeze when using popular blogging platforms like WordPress; however WordPress doesn’t create the content for you. Unless you have a team of in-house writers, content creation will require a ton of research and hard work. Being passionate about the subject will eventually wear off as your readers will continuously demand content, so you will need to also be persistent and patient as you collect content for publishing.
Blogs are easy to Monetize and earn a passive Income!
Again, it takes months of credibility and consistently valuable content before readers will just promote or share in the services you provide. As for monetizing your site, if you haven’t taken the time to properly build your blog, create a loyal following, and generate natural traffic you will see very little ROI from your blog through affiliate marketing and Google AdSense. Be sure to create a loyal following by providing relevant resources before you attempt to pitch or sell services. Simply setting your website or blog to autopilot and redirecting traffic to affiliate sites might bring in a small passive income; however, you are sure to see better numbers when you are providing your natural traffic with frequently updated content, sales, and offering site freebies whenever possible. Again, these methods of attracting site traffic will require patience and arduous work.
Bloggers earn very little & Readers won’t buy!
Ten years ago this may have rang true as many didn’t have a clue what blogs were and how they worked. While the former myths provided by bloggers themselves were far fetched, this myth from those who doubt blogging is even more so incorrect than the former. Often times, people quit too early and don’t invest the proper amount of time in understanding their collected stats or developing a blogging plan that would properly connect them with their intended audience. If you aren’t viewing your blog as a business and planning accordingly- how can you actually make a profit from it? As for getting readers to buy, this is already noted with in the earlier myths relating to passive income. As you consistently provide worthwhile content, loyal followers who have developed trust in your blog will be more open to purchasing products or viewing affiliate links. Something to avoid is overselling.Just remember to be direct and perfectly honest when it comes to promoting outside services and products, as this will affect you relationship with your readers in the long run.
You need to post daily and remember readers hate long Post!
Both parts of this statement are false. You do need to post regularly so that readers can get a sense of when to check in and how often. Posting sporadically can cause you to experience a fluctuation in readers and even cause your blog to lose followers. Not only does the frequency of your posts matter, but the size. Readers view blogs as quick informational tools, so why would they want to read some long, boring article- right? Actually, blog readers don’t just come for the quick and easy tips, they come for your trusted advice and relatable way of simplifying things so that the readers can easily attain the information they seek. It doesn’t matter to them the size of the post if it can present a solution to their problem or advice to their dilemma. Try creating a Blog Schedule; this will help you keep track of your keyword usage, content curation, and the type of post you plan to incorporate. For example, you might decide on straying from generally written blog post to the audio or visual ads such as video insertions.
With the three mentioned techniques of monetizing your blog: Affiliate Links, Advertising, and creating Product/Service portals, you can successfully create a steady income by Blogging. While you may come across many myths pertaining to blogging, these most commonly placed myths are well known for breaking the spirits of new bloggers. Be sure to equip your blog with valuable content, great incentives, and consistent expertise into your Niche [area of interests].
Most would like to think that Blogging is just a temporary craze of the Internet; however, as many more businesses seek to market or reach new demographics, Bloggers can provide their established platforms and readily available audiences in return for a scalable income.
