If you want to make money blogging in 2021 then you need to start now by following a structured process and system to help achieve your goals.You can money from blogging through the following methods.
Table of Contents
2 ways to make money from blog
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the most preferred methods for earning passive income from a blog. Affiliate marketing is a performance marketing in which members earn commission on every sale of products or services that they promote through their website or other digital properties.
A company who wants to promote their product or services through your website will provide an affiliate link to you. When a visitor clicks on the link in your website, then they are directed to the company product or services web pages and if visitor ends up making a purchase then you earn a commission.
One can promote products from consumer market places and earn through their affiliate programs. Amazon Affiliate is one of the most popular referral programs within the category. One can also promote technology products and services from business-to-business technology companies and earn a commission for every sale. Some of the popular referral programs are
Web Hosting: Bluehost Affiliate
SEO Tools: SEMRush Affiliate
43 of the Best Affiliate Programs That Pay the Highest Commission
Advertising
Though advertising affects user experience it is one of the easiest methods to make money from the blog. Google AdSense is an advertising program through which web publishers who are part of Google network makes money by displaying ads on their websites delivered by Google.
Additionally, if you have managed to get good traffic on your website you can display private ads on your website. These private ads can be in the form of banners, links or even a sponsored post in which you write about company products and services. You can determine the pricing and earnings can be high since you are directly dealing with the advertisers instead of some agents.
How to start blogging?
Niche selection to make money from blogging
Many bloggers who want to make money blogging makes the mistake of following individual preference or interest in selecting the blog niche. This is the single most important factor of blog failure in monetization. Another reason is the inability to produce quality content that can engage or interest the audience.
The blogs fail because they cannot be monetized enough to generate a profit. The challenge of blog monetization can be overcome by selecting the right niche, customer segments (audiences), and building blog domain authority which is a ranking score developed by Moz.
Business marketing helps to identify an attractive market based on the size of the market, competition, future potential, and other business-specific factors. Within a market, one or multiple segments are targeted based on the buyer purchase capacity which will determine the profitability.
Market demand (Audience size and budget)
The niche needs to be selected based on audience size which can be assessed through the keywords search volumes. One can further refine the niche to identify the attractive sub-segments based on the willingness of the audience to buy the products and services that you will be promoting and/or selling.
One has to be careful in selecting a niche and specific segments within, based on one’s existing skills, knowledge, and ability to learn. As blogging is competitive, one has to stand out through differentiation to attract audiences. Though you may not be an expert in the selected field you should understand fundamentals to be able to shine.
Customer segments (Early adopters and majority)
Even as you select a niche you should have in mind your target audiences that will drive initial traffic to your blog. The early adopters within your target audience can be accessed by leveraging your existing network. If you select a niche that is not in your area of expertise then create a network through LinkedIn, other online forums, and join offline groups so that you have a ready audience for your content.
Content development and publication
After you finalize the niche and the sub-segment, it is time to select the topic on which you will write your blog. Before you proceed to write a blog, you need to do keywords research to select the focus keywords to optimize your blog for higher google ranking. You can follow a 5-Step keywords selection process to select the most appropriate keywords.
The primary keyword will be used in the blog title and hence keyword selection is an important step before starting content writing.
In addition to selecting right niche, blog topic, appealing content, target keywords, backlinks, some other relevant success factors for the blogs are
- Simple language
- Blog design
- Ease of navigation
- Speed
- Images and graphics
After completion of content writing for the blog, you will publish on one of the many blog platforms which is selected based on niche requirements, budget, and technical competencies.
Blog monetization
Blog publication is the completion of 30% of your work. The key tasks are getting visitors to the blog and converting these visitors into buyers which comprises 70% of the total task. You can get visitors organically or through paid advertisements though the latter is not advisable. We will focus our efforts on organic visitors. The most important organic channel for blog traffic is the Google search engine.
To get traffic from google one needs to get website/web pages rank higher on search engine result pages. On-Page SEO is the preferred method for getting a higher rank. Another equally important method is Off-Page SEO which is about link development or acquiring links from other websites with high domain authority.
Blog Domain Authority
You will have to do an outreach program to build your blog domain authority. Some of the outreach programs are
- Guest posts on other blogs and websites with high domain authority.
- Backlinks request to other blogs and websites with high domain authority. Google search engine algorithm PageRank uses these backlinks among the 200 factors to determine page rank and display order in the search engine result page.
Guest Posts
Before sending a request for guest posts you need to do some groundwork to set the stage for your request getting accepted. First identify the bloggers, influencers through social networking sites, and using google search. Check if they have blogs, sites with high domain authority, and understand the context of their blogs and content on site.
After identifying bloggers, start sending them requests for Guest on a topic that aligns with their focus area. Alternatively, you should also give links to their sites from your blogs for appropriate content. In the introduction, mail provides a summary of the content that you would like to cover in your blog posts which will also include links to your own blog or site. Ensure that you don’t provide links exclusive to your site but also to some other sites otherwise Google may penalize you.
In terms of the number of links, though there is no benchmark you should have 2 to 5 links for 2,000 to 3,000 words content.
Back Links
The bloggers, influencers will link to your blog or sites if they find relevant content that enhances the value of their own blog. When creating content you should include relevant data on your blog because bloggers usually find data meaningful to create links.
There are two types of links, Do-follow and No-follow. Do follow links helps to improve page ranking but No-follow does not count in google page ranking. If you plan to put links to your blog in the comment sections of other websites then these are mostly No-follow links and don’t carry much weightage.
Google search engine is constantly improving and hence recognizes black hat techniques used by people to get better ranks in the search engine result page. When such websites are detected by Google then it penalizes by banning the site from search engines or preventing the site from getting organic traffic.
Social media platforms
You can post on the LinkedIn and Facebook about your blogs and also create a form for people to sign up to get notified for new blog posting and update. Leverage your network on LinkedIn and identify new people to whom you can send information on your blog. The third option is to create a channel on YouTube and Instagram and post relevant videos. Add links to your blogs so that interested people can find more information by reading content on the blog.
Plan an email list for sending blog updates. First start the list your existing contacts and develop the list constantly from blog visitors and other social media channels.
In future you can leverage email lists for generating revenue by selling your digital products and services.
As you start getting traffic and expands your audience it is now time to direct efforts on monetization for which you can follow a gradual approach.
Blog monetization timeline
The following monetization initiative should be targeted in the first six months after blog first post publication.
- Advertising– In the initial phase you can become part of the Google Ad network and get a commission from ads displayed on your blog. You should not look at this as a long-term revenue source because ads impact experience and hence it will be advisable to discontinue AdSense after some time. If you are patient then you can skip this method of monetizing blog traffic and move on to the next method outlined.
- Affiliate marketing – After drawing visitors and generating sustainable traffic you should start applying to the affiliate network of the company whose product you would like to promote. In the initial stages please restrict affiliate marketing to two to three product categories. You need to focus your efforts on building backlinks to improve your blog authority, visitor engagement, and writing content to meet the additional information needs of your audiences. As the blog traffic gradually builds up then you can expand the product categories.
The following monetization initiative should be targeted after one year of the blog publication.
- Digital consulting services – – In the process of creating your blog you have perfected the art of generating organic traffic through Content and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). You can package your expertise as Content Marketing and SEO Services. You can offer your services to both B2B and B2C companies but the primary focus should be on enterprise businesses so that you can generate good revenue.
- Sell digital products – You may see the market demand for new digital products that you can create or acquire from some other company to sell through your blog platform.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Do bloggers make money?
Yes, bloggers make money and good money but not all bloggers make money. As in any profession, one requires efforts and patience to make money blogging.
How do bloggers make money?
Bloggers make money in different ways but we can classify making money from blogging into three main categories.
1. Affiliate Income
Bloggers promote products/services of other companies through their blogs. Blogger earns a commission or every sale that is referred from his / her blog.
2. Advertisement Income
Bloggers can earn money by displaying advertisements on his/her website. Blogger can join an ad network such as Google AdSense, Media.net, and earn income from ads that are displayed in the website through these networks. Bloggers can make money from the private placement of banner ads or promotional posts on their blogs.
3. Consulting & Training Services
Bloggers can offer consulting services for consulting and SEO to the corporates. They can also conduct workshops for the marketing team of corporates. Additionally, bloggers can create online training programs on digital marketing for students, entrepreneurs, and professionals.
How much money can bloggers make?
Bloggers can make from $1 to more than a million-dollar per month. The earning potential from blogging depends on the niche, income category, content quality, and ability to get a page ranked among the top 10 pages in search engine page ranking.
If you are focussing on affiliate income and your selected niche has high priced products and services then your income will be high. If the services are recurring in nature then your income will be even higher. If you have created your own digital products/services then the potential to earn money increases further.
How to start blogging?
Blogging efforts can be classified into three stages.
Stage I – Pre Launch
1. Niche selection
2. Domain name selection
3. Hosting service provider selection
Stage II – Launch
1. WordPress installation
2. Keyword research
3. Content writing and publication
Stage III – Post Launch
1. Blog promotion
2. Blog performance monitoring
3. Visitors engagement