More traffic, more money? Wrong!
There was a story about the fake Steve Jobs blogger who revealed his
real identity in 2007. The New York Times wrote about him. Almost every
news outlet wrote about him.The New York Times article sent him half a million visitors in a single day.
Do you know how much he made from that traffic?
Just a hundred dollars!
He made $1,039.81 for the entire month from Google AdSense. Disappointed! Daniel Lyons the fake Steve Jobs became a celebrity blogger and all he could show for it is $1,039.81.
Lyons wrote in the Newsweek two years later:
I learned the hard way: while blogs can do many wonderful things, making huge amounts of money isn’t one of them.I disagree with Lyon.
Blogging can make huge amounts of money. I know bloggers who are making thousands of hundred dollars from their blogs every month. Pat Flynn is one of them. Darren Rowse is one of them. Neil Patel is one of them. These guys do the right thing, monetizing the right ways.
Please, forget about AdSense. Forget about building a site and populating it with ads. There are different and better ways to do it.
Johnny B. Truant described his experience with AdSense in this blog post on Copyblogger:
Right around a year ago now, I made my first cent online. It was literally a cent — $0.01 — and it showed up in my Google AdSense account after a certain number of people had viewed an ad for dog food or a shiatsu massager or whatever on my old humor blog.That first cent was exciting, because it proved that you really could make money online in the way it seemed that everyone said you could — by creating sites populated with ads, and then sitting back and letting the earnings pile up. Then, if the gurus were to be believed, it was only a matter of time before I would be living in Hawaii, while bikini girls used the Mona Lisa to wax my Lamborghini.
But that dream never came true with AdSense. It was only an illusion that never materialize with AdSense. In fact, Truant was disappointed with AdSense.
Then he changed course.
Truant built a funny blog where he writes funny blog posts. He offered website development service on the funny site. This felt like a real business.
Nine months passed. He was building his 180th website for a client when his first ever AdSense check came in from Google. It was $111.
Imagine $111 for a whole year? Isn’t that crazy?
Maybe he could have done better. But even if he made $888, it still doesn’t worth the effort.
Let’s assume he charged $1,000 for each website he built. He would have made $180,000 at the end of the year. Or, maybe he charged $500, he would have made $90,000 at the end of the year. Compare that to $111, you’ll see that it looks idiotic to stick with AdSense.
I’m not criticizing AdSense. I still see AdSense as one of the quickest ways to make money online. But not a huge money your living can depend upon.
The problem with AdSense has nothing to do with its ability to make money. So many people have made a bunch with it. Zac Johnson is an example.
The problem with AdSense is you have no control over your earnings. You can increase your site’s traffic by 1,000% and still be making the same amount you were making before. You may even make lower than that.
You need something you can call a business. Blogging can surely give you that. But monetizing your site with AdSense isn’t a business model. It doesn’t add value to your blog. You can do 500 times better than AdSense.
There are five best ways to monetize your site. Whether it’s a low or high traffic site, you can monetize it and build a source of income you can depend upon through your blog.
I will like to say that it’s always good to have a high traffic site that’s getting at least 500, 1,000 to 2,000 visitors per day. If you have this kind of site, then congratulations to you. But if your site isn’t getting that much traffic, then you can learn how to build a high-traffic blog here.
So, what are the five best ways to make money from your blog?
1. Create Membership Sites
A regular monthly income, nonstop. How would that feel like?You’ll feel good, of course. You can travel the world, see different amazing places and still have enough time to be with your loved ones. That’s the kind of life I wish for you. Creating your own membership site can give you that.
Copyblogger is doing it with their Authority membership program where they teach people how to become better content marketers. Ali Luke is doing it with Writers’ Huddle, a membership program where she teaches writers new writing techniques, help them get inspired to write and share their work with the world.
The membership fee for Writers’ Huddle is $19.99 per month. That may not sound a lot for each member, but when you calculate that by 1,000 members, she could be earning $20,000 just from that membership site alone.
Imagine your membership site only has 500 members each paying you $10 per month, how much is that at the end of each month?
$5,000! Easy.
This is better than having over a million of web users hit your site, and you have less than $500 to show for it at the end of the month.
You can learn how membership site works from sites like Copyblogger and Writers’ Huddle. Join them! Learn how they deliver their contents, how they treat each member. Learn what makes them good, what makes people like them and keep paying each month. Learn how they market their membership program.
Steal their strategies. You can use it in a different niche your blog is about. You can even do it better than them.
One thing is certain:
You’ll have a reliable income source that allows you to work from anywhere in the world.
2. Create And Sell Information Products
Information products are hot cakes online, especially ebooks.In the comment section of this post on his personal blog, Joe Konrath said he made $14,000 within 5 weeks from selling ebooks on Amazon through their Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform.
Nathan Barry made $12,000 within 24 hours of launching his ebook. In fact, Barry’s blog was only receiving around 100 visitors per day. He only had 100 RSS subscribers.
Barry went on to make $85,000 that year from selling just two ebooks. 2012, that was his first year of being self-employed.
You can sell your own information products on your blog. And you can make thousands of dollars doing just that. You don’t even have to quit your job to get started. If you can write in your spare time, then you can do this.
Your blog is a good place to start from. You don’t need to have thousands of monthly readers before you can begin making money selling information products like ebooks and video tutorials. As you can see from above, Nathan Barry only receives around 100 daily visitors on his blog.
You have to create something people can’t wait to buy. How do you know what people can’t wait to buy on your blog?
If your blog has a decent traffic, you should look for the most popular articles on your blog. What are they about?
If people are reading a particular blog post on your blog, it means they are interested in that topic. You can turn that blog post into an information product like an ebook. It has to be a high-quality resource that people will be willing to pay for. Release your ebook on your blog, reference it in your popular blog posts and others, and watch the sales roll in.
You just have to write, create that information product.
You can also self-publish your ebook on Amazon through their KDP program.
Even if an ebook generates $400 per month and you have like 10 ebooks, that would produce $4,000 per month.
3. Promote Affiliate Products On Your Blog
Long ago back in September 2007, Yaro Starak reported he made $10,899.83 in that month alone. $4,400 of that came from affiliate sales.Take a look at the image of that income report:
Today, affiliate marketing still remains one of the lucrative ways to make money from blogs.
Pat Flynn reported he made $144, 777.37 in the month of September 2015, and $101,998.49 of that came from affiliate marketing.
He made $70,350 as an affiliate of Bluehost.
You can see the full details of his affiliate income in the image below:
You can do it!
4. Sponsorship: Make Money From Brands
Brands are always willing to work with bloggers who have a relevant and an engaged audience.Whether you’re popular on Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, many brands will want to do business with you. The same is true for Blogging and Podcasting.
In the month of September 2015, John Lee Dumas had a gross income of $271,612.50. $110,402 came from sponsorships. Though this is podcast sponsorships, but it applies to blogging too.
You have to build an audience. Brands don’t work with bloggers that have zero or little audience. So you need a relevant and an engaged audience if you want to make money through sponsorships.
Helen made $7,360.10 from her blog in the month of September. And as you’ll see below, $1,275 of that came from writing sponsored posts.
Doesn’t look too interesting, but it tells you that you can make money from writing sponsored posts on your blog.
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing has an ROI of 4,300% according to a study conducted by Direct Marketing Association.You’ll often hear internet marketers say that “the money is in the list”. It is true.
Your email list is your most valuable asset as a blogger. The biggest mistake you can make as a blogger is not building your own email list.
Email helps you connect deeper with your blog readers. But people won’t just give you their email address for nothing. You have to bribe them. You have to give them something valuable for free. I mean something they can’t get for free elsewhere.
Just putting your opt-in form on the sidebar of your blog and asking people to subscribe for nothing won’t work.
Imagine you have like 10,000 people on your email list and you decide to release a product, and 200 people ended up buying the product at $50 each. That would net you $10,000 at the time of launch.
With your an email list, you can sell again and again.
Email marketing isn’t a product or a service itself. It only gives you the privilege of marketing to your readers anytime you want.
No doubt, blogging can help you quit your boring job and become self-employed. You have to do the right thing by monetizing the right way.
These five methods are great ways to monetize a blog that makes over $5,000 per month.
Don’t wait to get started! Get started today. Right now!
Have you been making money with your blog? What are you doing right?
Tell me your answers in the comment.
0 comments:
Post a Comment