Most blogs start as a hobby with no financial intent, the site gets traffic after a few years and the owners start getting offers to host ads and other monetization options open up.
Top blogs like Gizmodo, TechCrunch and Huffington Post all share similar stories. They weren’t successful on day one.
What Is Monetization And Why You Should Monetize Your Blog Too?
Monetization is simply converting your blog into a platform that generates revenue. Monetizing your blog gives you the resources to expand it and cater to a wider audience and that’s why you should do it.
Types Of Blogs With Types Of Monetization Methods
Blog Type #1: Personal Finance Blog
Personal finance blogs provide information on saving tips, investment advice while working and during retirement, and other money management advice.
There are different ways to make money running a personal finance blog.
The first thing you can do as a blogger is to write a book. The audience is always looking for tips they can use to increase returns on their investment so reading financial books is something a lot of them do.
It’s even better if the story is a personal one and not a generic book of tips, people will be more attracted to a book that contains advice you’ve actually worked with.
When you’ve built a bit of an authority on your blog, the next thing will be to publish a “hire me to speak” page on your site.
There are several conferences on investment and paying off loans held yearly so this is an area you can fit into.
The trick with getting public speaking gigs is to have no problem taking up the low-paying jobs initially and networking your way into more financially-rewarding offers at each conference.
Sponsored post listing for banks and other financial institutions is another lucrative area. These companies are always taking in customers and have no problem with paying authority figures to drive leads to them.
Examples of good personal finance blogs are I Will Teach You To Be Rich and The Dough Roller.
Blog Type #2: Niche Blogs
Some bloggers prefer to run generic blogs covering every topic while some choose a niche and run with it. Niche bloggers also make money and here are some of these niches:
– Travel Blog
A travel blog is one that highlights the experiences of a blogger before, during and after traveling. Many people visit travel blogs to check out the cool places to visit when they get to those locations.
You can monetize a travel blog by offering links to discounted travel tickets (where you earn a commission) to your visitors.
– Gaming Blog
A gaming blog is one that introduces gamers to new exciting games they can try out and secret tricks of existing games.
You can monetize this blog by offering to unpack and review game consoles to your visitors or getting paid to play at large competitions if you’re good enough.
– Sports Blog
There are different sporting competitions taking place at every time of the year, different leagues and massive competitions like the Olympic games have a large following.
It can be difficult to keep up, especially for people who follow different sports and you can monetize sites like this by selling branded gear like your running shoes, gloves, and even hats.
– Health and Fitness Blog
A good health and fitness blog delivers information on the latest ways to stay healthy but in a conversational, non-scientific tone.
You can monetize this blog by creating and selling a fitness regimen as many people struggle with following theirs.
– Food Blog
A food blog will contain information on the latest recipes readers can use to prepare a particular dish and the latest trends in food processing.
You can monetize a food blog by selling recipes, this can even be done when you don’t have many visitors yet.
– Education/School Blogs
Most people will go to a school at some point in their life so an education/school blog usually has posts centered on navigating school life and dealing with the resultant stress.
You can monetize this blog by selling speed-reading techniques, note-taking techniques or other tips that make people do better in school.
– Tech Blog
A tech blog is one that highlights the latest technology being used in different fields and how people can get familiar with them.
You can monetize this blog by reviewing and comparing different tech products, advising people on a particular product to buy and earn a commission on sales.
Nerd Fitness is a good niche fitness blog and TechCrunch is a good tech blog.
Blog Type #3: Professional Blog
A digital marketing blog is a perfect example. It teaches visitors the different ways they can market products or services through the internet.
Some of these blogs focus on a particular area like search engine optimization, social media marketing and paid advertising while others cover the entire topic.
The first and most common way to monetize a site like this is with Ad networks. You don’t even need to have so many visitors, publish a few posts and you can apply to the largest Ad network, Google Adsense.
Affiliate marketing is the second way to monetize a site like this. You can’t do without tools in today’s marketing world.
From content analysis to site analysis tools, most of them require you provide an amount of money to get a subscription and you can earn affiliate commissions when your visitors sign up.
You can also sell services like freelance writing services on your blogs. Many of your visitors will require writers to handle the content marketing aspect of their campaigns so you can add this to your services page.
The Moz Blog and Marketing Land are top digital marketing blogs.
They teach the core concepts but you can also get help with implementing them on your site from a full service digital marketing agency like Infinity Digital.
Blog Type #4: Micro Niche Blog
A niche blog can talk about a specific thing like gaming, a micro niche blog will only consider Fortnite gaming.
If food is the main niche, a micro niche blog will only cover coffee or paleo diet.
A micro niche blog can be a better option because the visitors are targeted. On a food niche blog, your coffee post can be ignored by the section that doesn’t care about coffee but that can’t happen on a coffee micro niche site.
There are different ways to monetize these sites and you can start with selling your writing, either as a freelance writer or in a book.
This makes sense because while there may be many food bloggers so competition for book sales will be tougher, there are only a few coffee bloggers so your marketing budget will be reduced.
You can also sell Ad placements on your sidebar, your conversion rate will be higher because most of those looking at your ads will be people interested in the topic on display.
Paleo Leap is a good micro niche blog.
Blog Type #5: Review Blog
A review blog is one that’s set up to compare different products in different industries or a specific industry.
Reviews could be on anything, household appliances, software, games, movies and services are some of the popular items that can be reviewed.
A good thing about running a review blog is that if you’re popular enough, brands can contact you offering their products free for you to review.
There are two common ways to monetize sites like this.
The first is of course by reviewing products, depending on the network you’re signed up on, you’ll receive a commission on each sale and also on recurring sales if it’s a subscription service.
The second option is one you can only do if you’ve built a large following. A lot of the products you’re reviewing would be private label products so you can attach your brand name on it and sell the product as yours.
You can only do this after you’ve built a following and that’s why it’s a path taken only after doing traditional reviews for a while.
Bikerumor and The Awesomer are great product review sites.
Blog Type #6: Affiliate Blog
There are a lot of affiliate networks on the internet, the Amazon affiliate program and Rakuten LinkShare are two of the largest ones.
There’s a reason affiliate blogs exist, brands have discovered the power of influencer marketing and affiliate networks only harness this power.
People are very comfortable with buying when they receive recommendations from people they trust.
Trust can be built over the internet and you can do this by sharing stories or case studies of your satisfaction with using a particular product and direct people to buy with your affiliate links.
You should sign up with affiliate networks that have the products your audience will find interesting and try to negotiate custom commissions from the company for yourself.
If you can prove that you’ll be able to deliver the kind of conversions they need, you’ll earn higher than other affiliates.
The Shoemoney blog is one you should check out if you’re interested in affiliate blogging.
Blog Type #7: Vlogging
A vlog is just a video blog so content can only be watched by visitors and not read. You can self-host your vlogs on your site or publish them on YouTube (which is a popular option).
Publishing your vlogs on YouTube has so many advantages because you’re exposed to the millions of people who watch videos daily.
The first and most popular way to monetize your vlogs is by signing up on the YouTube Ad network. Ads will be displayed before, during and after your videos and you keep 55% of Ad revenue.
You can also get sponsors willing to pay to get featured on your videos, you need to be strategic about this though, accepting only brands that are relevant to your audience.
Thirdly, you can create a PayPal.me link and get people to pay you if they liked your content.
The YouTube description section for your videos allows room for links so you can include affiliate links in there if you’re reviewing a product in your video.
Finally, you should embed a link to your signup page or your list in the video description. When people signup and are redirected to your blog, you can then monetize that audience through the other tips in this post.
Logan Paul and PewDiePie are examples of top vloggers using these techniques.
CONCLUSION
There are many ways to monetize your blog today but the techniques that work for one blog may not work for another, use the tips in this post to know or choose your blog type and apply the monetization techniques in the post.