sarmlife As a blogger, overcoming the hurdles of a start-up is no small feat, and afterward comes the necessary question of ways to make money blogging. And not only that but also the specific blog monetization strategies that will be effective for your niche.
I say ‘necessary‘ because having an effective monetization strategy for your blog is crucial to your growth as a blogger.
I mean, what is growth without profit? As you read through this post, I want you to have at the back of your mind that “becoming a successful blogger isn’t an overnight achievement.”
SARMLife started with zero interest in monetization and a truckload of passion for sharing travel experiences. But the more she grew beyond an online diary, the more it became clear that an obvious sign of growth is profitability. It was a milestone that could not be ignored or overlooked. Now, I’m proud to say we are breaking limits with effective monetization strategies that have allowed us to break even in dollars and surpass our goals for 2021 as at the first half of the year.
With less than two months into 2022, we are breaking our revenue limits still!!!
If you are just getting started with blogging and want to explore ways to make money blogging, you will need to learn how to drive traffic to your blog before utilizing any of these strategies.
Just in case you have the basics down but you’ve been struggling with finding effective monetization strategies, then I’m about to make it a lot easier and doable for you.
Owning a blog, sharing valuable content regularly, and getting substantial monthly visitors alone will not get you the revenue you desire. All these are crucial steps in blogging, but it is only the means to an end but not an end in itself. You need to find a monetization strategy that works for YOU!
What is blog monetization?
Blog monetization simply means making money from your blog.
It is the positioning you have or strategies you put in place for your blog that enables you to earn money from it without you being online 24/7. Once you start earning through your blog, you are already an entrepreneur or, more specifically, an entrepreneur-blogger.
Monetizing your blog is beyond having a price placed on your product or services, it is the shifting/transitioning you do that will enable your pricing to be accepted by clients. The transition is all about intentionally increasing value output to your target audience, and the price of your products or services should be directly proportional to the value output.
Your blog niche, monetization probabilities, and requirements
It is vital to talk about the blog monetization and niche because of the misconception that some niches are more profitable and suited for specific monetization strategies.
The idea is that if you have a seasonal niche or a niche that is limited to a minority group, monetization might not be as effective as a niche that cuts across several groups.
THAT IS ALL LIES AND A MISINFORMED THOUGHT!
The world comprises over 1 billion persons, and I do not believe that you are the only person with interest in that particular niche.
One of the importance of a blog is to connect with your target audience, and you do this by effective SEO strategies to increase your visibility, traffic, and online rankings.
Effectiveness is not only a measure of the monthly or annual income your blog gets, but it also involves a cross-analysis with the percentage of exposure your niche gets. I’m stating this because the misconception has left a lot of niches dormant, with passionate bloggers opting out because of the fear of ineffectiveness and non-profitability.
Imagine a situation where Miss A. has a widely known niche and gets about 50,000 monthly site visitors, which earns her a monthly income of $30,000, and Miss B. has a niche with less exposure and gets about 10,000 monthly site visitors, which earns her a monthly income of $10,000. Both make money blogging regardless!
It seems plausible to conclude that the less widely known a niche is, the more serious the audience would be because it would consist of people actively in need of the products and services in that niche.
Every niche can be monetized effectively and profitably! All it takes is to know your target audience and have valuable, quality content optimized. This will help you gain visibility among your target audience and increase traffic.
When your visibility begins to grow, several ways to make money blogging in your niche will automatically open up. You get to find ways to monetize the traffic coming into your blog by studying your target audience, gauging their needs, and monetizing the solutions you offer directly or indirectly.
These routes can include sharing sponsored content, sale of digital products, physical products, services, affiliate marketing, and (or) private advertisements.
If you are still unsure of how to make money blogging, BOOK A FREE 30-MINUTE SESSION WITH ME, AND LET’S FIGURE OUT WAYS YOU CAN MAKE MONEY BLOGGING IN 2022
Misconceptions on blog monetization
There are a lot of online searchers who are doubtful of the possibility of making money online and through blogging. The concept seems far-fetched to them, but it is possible. People have done it and will continue doing so.
According to Blogging Basics 101, 14% of bloggers earn a salary through blogging with average annual earnings of $24,086% . Bringing it home, in 2021, SARMLife recorded a whopping 92% increase in our net profit. We started operating as a business in October 2019, and we were very intentional about our value output. You can do it too!
Another misconception about blog monetization I would address is the idea that blogging is a way to ‘make money quick!’ Over the months, I’ve met people with this idea, and when it doesn’t work out the way they thought, they feel the whole concept is a scam. I’ve had people without valuable content on their website tell me Google Adsense has rejected them, and I’m like, “what’d you expect?”
The first rule of money is VALUE! Before utilizing monetization strategies, create valuable content. Your content ALONE will not bring you the revenue you want, but it acts as a magnet for monetization. Value brings an audience and opens up monetization routes for your niche. Imagine if Adsense wasn’t so strict and your website really gets approved; what audience would click on those links if you have low site visits?
Ways to make money blogging for your niche
As earlier said, all blogging niches can be monetized effectively and profitably.
The FIRST STEP is to know your target audience, refine your content to their taste buds, and improve your SEO skills. That way, you are giving value and enhancing your online visibility. There are various ways to make money blogging with your blog, and sincerely, you probably can invent one.
Money flows where value is!
Below are some monetization strategies that you can implement in your blog.
Sponsored Posts
Sponsored posts are social media or website posts that carry information about a particular brand, its products, services, and reviews. You as the blogger gets paid to publish these content on your website by the respective brand to increase their visibility and get their products to the targeted audience.
A sponsored post can include:
- Sharing infographics.
- Educating your audience on how to use the brand’s products.
- Assessing the products and services offered and their benefits.
For sponsored posts, it has to be related to your target audience. For example, if your target audience are vegetarians, you are not expected to sponsor a post for a meat factory. Not only will there be zero results, but you might also end up losing your audience.
Sponsored posts are often used interchangeably with influencer marketing but are not necessarily the same.
Influencer marketing is a type of sponsored content where the influencers produce the content, unlike sponsored posts where the contents are produced by the publishing entity. What this means is that in influencer marketing, the influencers are the content creators for each brand content.
Depending on your audience base, niche, and client agreement, bloggers can charge up to $750 per sponsored post.
Summarily, the use of sponsored posts is one of the easiest ways to monetize your blog. Still, it takes having a sufficient audience base that is satisfactory to your client and a level of credibility and value. Credibility is crucial because it takes a level of trust you have built with your audience to try out a product/brand based on your review.
If you want to utilize sponsored posts in your niche, you should first check out the products and services in demand. After which you check out brands that other professionals in your niche are sponsoring their posts. You can then approach these brands with your offer.
Keep in mind that you should have a substantial amount of site visits for your website at this point.
A sponsored post is a way to make money blogging for any niche.
Creation and Sale of Digital Products
The profit margin of digital products is relatively higher than physical products, making it a more lucrative monetization strategy. The creation of digital products is at little cost compared to hard products, increasing the profit margin, i.e., the difference between the expenses and profit.
Creating and selling digital products involves having a defined target market and structuring content relevant to them. You can research challenges peculiar to your target market/audience and proffer a solution in the form of digital products. Addressing the needs of your audience makes your product more valuable and gives you a competitive edge even in a crowded market.
Digital products include eBooks, online courses, templates, software, online tools, and resources that are useful to your target audience. You can sell these products at several eCommerce platforms apart from your website.
Recently, SARMLife came up with a plan to create an accountability worksheet for bloggers and a document that contains topic ideas for different blogging niches. We did this to address the lack of accountability and content ideas faced by bloggers and entrepreneurs. And we can proceed to put a price on these tools and get buyers because they add value to our target audience and give them exactly what they need to scale up their brand in 2022.
The drawbacks in creating and selling digital products are the possibilities of theft. The online community has little to no regard for piracy rights and copyrights. The intellectual property law that protects your online assets is not really effective in most countries. VPNs have also made it almost impossible to track specific IP addresses in countries where this law is applied.
If you need this to work for your niche, you need to create a digital product that your audience will need, not want. You can actually tweak most monetization strategies to fit into and be effective for your niche.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a common way to make money blogging similar to sponsored posts and influencer marketing, with the main difference being that affiliate marketing involves a payment-by-commission agreement.
This commission is for every sale you bring to the brand through your link.
An affiliate marketer promotes a brand’s product with the goal of making a sale. It goes beyond increasing visibility into converting the audience, unlike sponsored posts. For sponsored posts, the brand is literally renting the audience base of the blogger to reach their audience, while for affiliate, the blogger needs to make a sale to be profitable. For example, your commission as an affiliate marketer for a winter jacket might be $5. To make a $100 income, you need 20 people to buy that jacket from your audience.
Although affiliate marketing is one of the common ways to make money, you need to be selective in your choice of brand or product you wish to promote. It has to be a high-demand product and one that will be valuable to your audience, so you don’t become the selfish blogger who only wants to make a sale.
The requirements to select affiliate marketing as your monetization strategy are almost the same as sponsored posts. You need to know the high-demand products your audience is more likely to pay for and approach the brand with an offer you can meet up with. Don’t give ridiculous offers just to make a deal, and make sure it is one you can meet.
Coaching/Mentoring Services
Coaching services are beneficial to both you and your clients; you make money from the services, and your clients achieve their goals through those services. As much as there can be information about any topic, many people are still interested in personalized plans and private sessions.
Venturing into coaching means establishing yourself as an expert in that field. It means: you are telling your audience you have answers to their questions; you have foolproof plans for them to be effective in their niche; you can give them the time and attention they need to walk on their own.
There is a daily increase in the number of emerging coaches, and one thing that will set you apart is your Unique Selling Point (USP). It answers the question of ‘why‘ your clients should choose you instead of your competition. What can they get from you that they cannot get out there?
Ruth Adeyemi as a blogging coach has a USP visible to all her clients; they all attest to the fact that she gives her all in coaching and makes sure to push them till they attain their desired heights and even exceed it.
Making a stable income in blogging takes time, and if you are selecting coaching services as your monetization strategy, your first step should be to invest in knowledge.
Investing in knowledge will help you create valuable and quality content for your audience while self-developing and increasing your expertise in that niche. My life mentor and CEO of Prominence Concepts says to me, “You need to SKILL UP to SCALE-UP.”
Freelancing
Freelancing is another sure and easy monetization strategy for your blog, irrespective of your niche. You can blog/write for other prominent blogs in your niche or even those not in your niche.
You are already a blogger with experience; you have your blog, and you are familiar with blogging terms and technicalities; all these skills will make you highly in demand if you decide to become a freelancer. Being a freelancer doesn’t mean your personal blog will have to be on pause. You can freelance as a side job to earn you more money while increasing your network.
As a freelance writer or blogger, It means you will have to create and write articles, blog posts, etc., in various or specific niches. B2B and B2C companies have become more invested in content creation, as seen in a survey done in 2019 by the content marketing institute. This indicates an increased demand for content creators, writers, and marketers.
You can also identify the things you love to write about or a niche that interests you (even if it is different from your blog niche) and seek out brands that are constantly creating content around these niches/topics.
You can also use search engines on several platforms like Google, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and others to search out niches that are more in demand and pay more using keywords.
You can use freelancing platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, Peopleperhour, Freelancer, and any other you may know to market your freelancing services. These freelancing platforms have their standard rates, and charging rates can also depend on experience, reviews, and recommendations. Because of the competition on these platforms, most freelancers charge a low rate for their services to increase the possibility of landing clients.
You can also use your blog site for marketing and directly reach out to these brands you want to write for. This option means that you get to set your standard rates depending on how you value your services.
Benefits of monetizing your blog
I would say that the advantage of monetization is that it will bring you money, but on a more serious note, blog monetization offers more.
- Blogging can be a costly ‘hobby‘ especially when you want to do it right. Monetizing your blog will help you get the necessary capital to purchase hosting services, plug-ins, scheduling software, and other essential resources a professional blogger needs.
- The singular fact that you are making an income from what you love doing while still giving value will give you a sense of fulfillment and contentment. You are a valuable entrepreneur.
- Becoming a full-time blogger comes with its down-days. You sometimes almost want to quit. The income blogging brings to you might be the motivation you will need to hold on to it.
- Some monetization strategies can also help you increase your online reach. For instance, when you sell your digital products on other platforms, freelancing, and even coaching services, these strategies will also help to introduce you to a broader audience and increase your network.
Your blog is a necessary platform to connect with people, share ideas, and be a reliable go-to for information and updates in your field. Beyond this, however, it can also be a way to be self-employed with a decent income, but it doesn’t happen instantly. It requires patience, value, and intentionality.
BONUS OFFER: BOOK a 1:1 Session with Ruth for your blog management and monetization strategies.
Which of these monetization strategies do you think will be effective for your niche?
Are there other monetization strategies you’ve implemented and are effective besides these?
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It was really insightful
I am glad
Very helpful. More of this pls. Thanks
Of course! You are welcome
Blogging has become a common way for people to make some side money, so great job detailing ways that people can do the same. Ad placements are common in this respect, though there are other strategies to consider.