Before thinking of monetize your blog, the first thing you should consider is quality content. If you have quality, unique content and you keep blogging for more than a year, I believe you will get significant traffic from search engines and referrals. Why traffic is so important after quality content? You can’t monetize any blog when you don’t have traffic.
Without further ado, let’s take a look of the possible ways where you can monetize your content.
1. Affiliate Programs
Affiliate marketing is a great way to monetize your content. You offer the products of others to your audience and get paid when they buy it. It is not necessary for your article to actually “Sell” the product, sometime a review or comparison of different products will work the best. It is as easy as pie by simply put a link to the relevant product.
In fact, any time you write about a relevant product or service to your audience, check to see if they have an affiliate program.
For instance, I have an article talking about innovative life hacks and this is one of the relevant product:
Initially I have simply link the product to Amazon without signup any affiliate. When I realized that many of my readers actually click that link and find the product on Amazon, this is actually a potential way to monetize my content. So then I have signed up Amazon Affiliate Program and whatever link to Amazon products I get commissions for the sales. The crazy thing is sometime I even got pay for the product that I am not referring to. Let say a reader click that link and view the shower cap, he/she continue shopping at Amazon and eventual bought a camera, I will get the commission too!
2. Advertising Networks
There are many advertising networks out there but usually blogger only use the “good” one as they pay you more compare with other networks. In order to participate for a good advertising networks, they might have some minimum requirement in terms of your blog design, blog traffic and your blog content.
The network will pay you either on CPC (Cost per click) or CPM (Cost per mille). With CPC you got pay for every clicks while CPM you got paid per thousand ad views
ream more: Top 10 Reliable CPC/CPM Ad Networks For Publishers
4. Direct Ad Sale
If you don’t want to run network advertising, you can sell your own ads directly. Banner ads and in-text ads are another popular way to make money. In fact, it is usually the first method you think of. However, selling the ads directly will result in more cash in your pocket. As for pricing, I would recommend you double up your eCPM from your current advertising network. Why double? Because that’s what they are charging (they take half).
When you get more direct ad you might need to use Google Double Click for Publisher to manage ans serve your ads better.
5. Paid Post
Yeah, you can get paid to review relevant products and sites on your blog. Sites like PayPerPost and ReviewMe are popular options.
6. Selling Information Products
If you build up your position and reputation in your market, you can then sell quality information to that market. This can take the form of e-books, audio, videos, or all of the above. You can package them up or just sell them digitally. It is recommended that you author the product yourself, and you will keep 100% of the profit.
7. Membership programs
The “freemium” model is a growing trend in online income right now. You provide a lot of free quality content to your audience, and you provide a premium program to those willing to pay for it. You charge a monthly membership and that provides passive and a steady income stream.