Before we move forward, let me tell you that the cornerstone of every successful blog is its—evergreen content. Monetizing a blog filled with sub-standard content is only going to backfire.Now, let us explore the various monetization options available to a professional blogger. Broadly, monetization options can be divided into the following categories.
- Advertising
- Affiliate Marketing
- Sponsored Ads/Reviews
- Selling In-House Products/Services
- Donations
1. Advertising
The most common method that first comes to mind to monetize a blog is image and text advertisements. There are plenty of good advertising networks with different types of offers and commission structure.The most popular among them are Google Adsense and Yahoo! Bing Network Contextual Ads which are used by millions of professional web publishers across the globe.
Both these programs offer CPC, CPA, and CPM contextual ads through their rich inventory having a wide array of options for almost every niche. Most experts recommend them because of the highly relevant ads which get served ensuring you get the maximum possible revenue.
Other popular CPC advertising programs like Chitika is also available to try on your blog. Several text ads programs are also good options for medium to high traffic blogs.
With the explosion of high-end mobile devices, bloggers can also try out ad networks solely dedicated to the audience—accessing your content on smaller devices.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Blogs—focusing on a narrow niche—with a limited market and visibility can try this option. Almost every affiliate marketing advertisement is based on a CPA model i.e., you only get paid, if a user performs the desired action after reaching the target website.Amazon Associates, CJ Affiliate, and ShareASale are some of the most trusted and highly-rated affiliate programs. They have a huge inventory of products and services to choose from, which you can promote or sell on your blog.
If your blog is powered by WordPress, you can use one of these powerful plugins to run and manage your affiliate marketing system.
3. Sponsored Ads/Reviews
Getting sponsors for your blog is yet another monetization option, provided your blog is recieving enough traffic (at least 1000 unique visitors/day) to grab the attention of the potential sponsers.Once your niche blog's popularity reaches a certain level, you will automatically get offers from relevant companies for the sponsorship. If you're just starting out, this may not be a viable option for monetizing your brand new blog.
If you've decided to go ahead with direct ads, make sure you have a media kit page on your blog to let the sponsors know about available inventory, blog statistics, and the approximate rates.
4. Selling In-House Products/Services
This is one of the most effective and fruitful monetization options for a professional blog. If you're an expert in a specific domain, consider creating a product or service associated with it.Thereafter, you can sell it right on the blog—leveraging the existing traffic—where the incoming visitors may be interested in your offerings. A product can be a digital asset or a tangible entity. No matter what, there are several good solutions to sell your services and products directly on a blog.
Bloggers who're using Google's Blogger platform can try out these powerful solutions to directly sell products, on their blogs.
5. Donations
If you're offering top-notch content on your blog, do not hesitate in asking for donations in return. The more useful is your content, the more is the probability that you'll receive a decent amount of donations—every month.You can use one of these plugins to accept donations on your WordPress blog.
If you're going to ask for donations on your blog, apart from giving few fixed amount options, also let the visitor choose a custom amount he or she may want to donate. This can help in increasing the number of donations you may receive on the blog.
Conclusion
Once you decide to monetize your blog, do it aggressively. Just make sure you do not flood your posts with loud and colorful banner ads. It's going to make your visitors—run away—to never return back.Provide high-quality content consistently and use all the available options—at your disposal. Good luck!