How to Monetize Your Blog

You’ve decided you’re going to set up a blog, right? So, one of the key decisions you need to make is how to monetize it, because that’s going to determine (in part) what sort of content you create for your blog.

How to Monetize Your Blog

Step 1: Choose your blog monetization method(s).

The first step in picking a method is to get an overview of the most popular methods. That way, you can select the best one to meet your needs. The list includes:

• Selling your own product.
• Selling your own service.
• Selling an affiliate offer (product or service).
• Using your blog to build a list (where you follow up and sell your offers or affiliate offers).
• Selling advertising space on the blog.
• Placing other ads on your blog (such as Google AdSense ads or other cost-per-acquisition offers).
• Compiling the best content on your blog into a book and selling the book (eBook, Kindle book and/or physical book).
• Using your blog as a place to establish your expertise, and then promoting offers.

Note that selling your own offers is almost always the most profitable method. If you don’t have your own offers yet, you can promote affiliate offers (and then exchange them for your own offers as you create them).

You may use multiple methods. The key is to pick your PRIMARY method to focus on, and then decide on secondary methods.

For example, you might pick building a list as your primary method, followed by selling your own offers directly from the blog, followed by selling affiliate offers.

• Write down your primary method:
• And then write down your secondary method(s):

Step 2: Plan and implement your blog monetization method(s).

Now that you’ve decided on your monetization methods, you need to plan a content strategy that supports this goal. Let’s walk through the steps to take:

What does your audience want? Do your market research to find out what topics and formats they want to read and record your findings.

NOTE: This step is important not only in terms of what sort of content you should be posting on your blog, but also what sort of offers you might promote.

What sort of content will best help you achieve your goal? Remember to be specific.

Examples:

• How to/tutorials.
• Tips articles.
• Lists.
• Checklists.
• Worksheets.
• Planners.
• Swipes.
• Cheat sheets.
• Infographics.
• Mind maps.
• Videos.
• Audios (podcasting).
• Quizzes.
• Product reviews.
• Product comparisons.
• Direct-response ads.
• Case studies.

Note: if you’re selling products (your own or affiliate offers), one key is to provide “useful yet incomplete” content. The content is useful in that it solves part of the reader’s problem, but it’s incomplete so that the reader needs to purchase a product from you to solve the rest of their problem.

Here’s a couple of examples:

1. If you’re selling a dog-training course, you might create a how-to article that explains how to teach a dog to sit. Readers then need to purchase your course to learn how to do the rest of the training with their dog.
2. If you’re selling an autoresponder, you can create an in-depth tutorial of how to set up a mailing list, and then promote the autoresponder as the missing piece they need to achieve their goal of building a list.

How often will you post to your blog? Again, remember to be specific.

NOTE: Plan on posting at least once per week, although posting more frequently is preferable.

• Will you bring in any guest bloggers? If so, how often and what sort of content do you expect they’ll contribute?
• Create a publishing schedule for the next three to six months. Detail exactly what sort of content you’ll post and when.
• Will you optimize your content for the search engines? If so, provide details of what you intend to do to optimize not only individual pieces of content, but also your blog as a whole.

NOTE: While this checklist guide does not focus on promotional methods, you do need to think about some of these issues upfront. For example, you need to know whether you’re going to use SEO (search engine optimization) on your blog, because that obviously affects how you create/structure your content.

Will you promote your content on social media? If so, write down details of what you intend to do.

NOTE: Same thing here as above. While generating traffic isn’t the focus of the checklist, you do need to consider whether you intend to share your content on social media. That way, you can have a plan in place for doing this (such as using a tool like HootSuite.com to publish across platforms, putting social media buttons next to your content so visitors can share it, etc.

Step 3: Make a plan to test and track.

While all the planning steps you take now will help you create content that serves your monetization goals, you still need to test and track to figure out what’s working. Here are items you may potentially test:

• The overall design of your blog.
• Placement of ads (sidebar, footer, header, within and between content).
• Size and overall look of the ads.
• Type of content you post.
• Headlines/titles of content.
• Calls to action.
• The offers you’re promoting.

For this step, you’ll need to:

• Get a tool to start testing (such as SplitTestMonkey.com).
• Decide what to test first.
• Test ONE thing, while holding all other variables constant.
• Put your winner up against another variation.
• Once you reach the point of diminishing returns, move on and test something else.

I hope that you found value in my How to Monetize Your Blog post. Now that you have a proven 3-step Blog Monetization checklist completed and, in your hand, your next step is to put it to work for you.

Want some more help with setting up a profitable blog? Then be sure to take a look at this Blogging Action Plan which provides you with 20 critical action plans to help make your blogging faster, easier and more profitable.

So go ahead and get started, because the sooner you do, the sooner you can reap the rewards of hosting a profitable webinar!

To Your Success!