If you are writing a blog, then there may be a couple of reasons why you started doing it. One was, more than likely, that you simply love writing and you had a story you wanted to share with others. The other reason might be that you wanted to share your stories and get paid for doing it. If you were one of those writers in the latter category, then you have probably been working hard to get your visitors up and getting those companies to pay for advertising and to offer you products. However, it isn’t always as straightforward as you would imagine, and there can be a variety of obstacles in your way that you need to overcome. Here are some ideas to help you take your blog to the next level.
Decide on Your Route to Making Money
There are many ways that bloggers can turn their blog into a money-making enterprise, but, not all of these ways will work for every type of blog. You need to be aware of this and think about how you can make money that fits in with your visitors and your genre. For example, if you were writing a blog about knitting, then trying to sell shirts or hats might not work (unless you have knitted them, of course!). Other forms of income from a blog will also depend on how much traffic you can get to your site. Many advertisers want to see hundreds of thousands of visitors before they decide to offer you ad space. However, by approaching smaller companies, perhaps those local to you, then you might find more interest.
Affiliate Programs
For some bloggers, one of the best ways that they can earn money is to use an affiliate program. Essentially, they are the same as any web-based advertising, in that a company will pay you to place an ad on your site. The difference is that with an affiliation program someone not only has to click on the ad, they also have to make a purchase. The owner of the site will then get a commission on the sale. Many big companies such as Amazon use this way to sell advertising, and it is popular among many bloggers. The only thing to be aware of with the affiliate program is that you need to have a large following for it to work effectively. Otherwise, you won’t be getting the traffic you need to gain the sales.
Post Regularly
To achieve more money from your site, there are a few things you need to do. The first thing is to get more visitors coming to your site. According to one SEO in Brisbane, the key to getting reoccurring web traffic is to focus on evergreen content topics. Put simply, evergreen content refers to content that never goes out of fashion or becomes dated. By focussing on evergreen instead of news topics, the content is far more likely to attract long term visitors to your site. Most bloggers who are doing their blog for a hobby, may post once a week or so, which is fine, but to maintain a regular following, you need to be consistent. Try to post your blog at the same time each day and on the same day each week. That way, your readers will know when your next post is coming. Posting at various times will only serve to get your post missed by your fans.
Keep Your Content Fresh
Another part of creating a successful blog is the content that you post. It needs to be fresh and relevant to your blog or people who follow you might be turned off. For example, if you blog about cooking, your readers will want cooking related posts. If you start to blog about fashion or movies, then they might become bored and move on. You should also be making your posts interesting to the eye. By adding photos and video clips to your post, you will gain more attention than one which only has text. Remember to make sure your photos and videos are not breaching copyright, and using your own photos is by far the best way to avoid this.
Maintain a Presence on Social Media
Part of a bloggers life is social media; many bloggers regularly use Twitter, Facebook, and now Instagram to comment and post their thoughts and feelings. It is a good idea to be as prolific as possible on social media to get your name out there and to start attracting followers. The more followers you have, the more chance you have of getting them to read your blog. When thinking about posting on social media, you need to be careful about what you comment or post. Big companies won’t want to associate with someone that is being rude or trolling others.
Give Your Site a Lift
An attractive looking website is as much of a draw to people as the content on it. Part of keeping your viewers is minimizing the ‘bounce rate.’ The bounce rate is the time it takes someone to arrive and leave your site. The longer they spend on your blog, the better it is for you, because it means they have found something that has engaged their interest. If you have a high bounce rate, then you need to think of ways you can get people to stay longer. Apart from creating more engaging content, you can also change your website design to make it easier to navigate and brighter to the eye.
Write for Other Popular Sites
If you are trying to build readers to find better advertising, then writing for other sites can be a quick way to gain readers. You need to be aiming for sites that are more popular than yours so that you can attract readers across. It is important that your articles are relevant to your blog site as people will be coming across expecting to see more of the same topics. You should also be saving your best and strongest posts for other sites because you want them to be engaged by your opinions.
Offer Something to Your Readers
Some bloggers will try to engage more with their readers by offering them something for free. If you are a blogger that is offering help and advice to other bloggers, then why not offer a free eBook or PDF file with hints and tips. It will encourage people to click on your site to download the eBook and hopefully stick around to read other things. It is important to mix your blog with your social media for this, tell all your followers that you have a new eBook that can help them and include a link to the download page. If you want to add other tips or tricks, you can offer that for a small fee which will be an attractive offer to those that liked the first one.
Asking for Donations
Some people have successfully sought revenue from their readers or viewers by asking for donations. YouTube video makers are among those that are the most successful with this because they are asking for donations to add content or keep their content running. Those who donate are often given added extras or bonuses as a way of encouraging others to do the same. A similar plan can also to be having a paid or subscribed section of your website. Behind the paywall, you would have other content that is better or add extra content to that you have already uploaded. However, this isn’t the most popular with readers or viewers, unless you are a popular blogger that is offering something exceptionally good.
Merchandise
A good way to spread the word about your brand is to offer merchandise from your website. You need to have a good following for this, or no-one will want to buy it, but it can generate good revenue for you. Think about how your blog logo will look on your merchandise, will it look good on mugs or t-shirts? Perhaps you can create a design for other things such as hats or pens? Try to tie-in your merchandise with your blog, for example, if you are writing about movies, maybe you can create some 3D glasses with your logo on them? It will be both functional to those who love movies, and also a way for them to show they like your blog.
Selling Ad Space
One of the best ways to generate money from your blog is to sell advertising space. Many companies will gladly pay for you to show their ads on your site. However, for the bigger companies to do this, you need to have a lot of viewers to your blog. For most sites, the companies will scan your site for keywords and place an ad based on that. It makes their ads more relevant to your site and therefore more likely to be clicked. If you are just starting your blog, then signing up to Google AdSense or a similar service from Bing and Yahoo! will give you some income early on. Once you have started to gain more visitors, you can use more lucrative ad networks.
There are many ways that you can add elements to your blog to raise money for you. All you need is to think about what method of revenue will suit your blog the best.
