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25 Ways to Monetize Your Blog

Posted on September 7, 2010 Written by 15 Comments

Blog monetization is a a funny thing. First it was taboo, bloggers were only supposed to do this for the feel good sharing vibe. Then it was widespread and accepted and everyone did it, now it’s back to being sort of taboo unless you do it in a way that no one knows you’re doing it.

My blog network (the one I just sold) was heavily monetized with advertising and earned several thousands dollars each month. This blog has a few ads at the bottom of the sidebar but is nothing like the aggressive effort from my past endeavor.

The thing is, it’s entirely possible to earn a living entire as a blogger on your own blog.  There are so many ways to earn, that there’s something for every type of niche and genre. Some programs are bold, some are quiet and some are ambitious.

What follows are some of the ways you can earn money from your blog. If I use/d any of these methods, I noted my experience. However, be advised that everyone has a different experience with blogging and monetization. Take the time to get to know your community before making any decisions about earning from your blog.  You’ll want to gauge their wants and needs to tell the types of products that will most interest them and whether or not they’re clickers or buyers.

25 Ways to Monetize Your Blog

  1. Adsense and other click type ads: Yes, Adsense is ugly. Yes, it’s not fashionable to be seen wearing Adsense anymore. But you know what? Before I sold my writing blog I pulled in a few thousand dollars each month from Adsense, so I can’t complain too much.
  2. Contextual link advertisers: Chitika and Kontera are two of the more popular Contextual link programs. When I used either one of these options I brought in $300 – $500 each month. However, my community didn’t like being confused by the different set of links, and it really slowed down the loading time. Still, not a bad way to go if you’re into it.
  3. Become an Amazon affiliate: Amazon has a variety of programs for bloggers and webmasters. Sign on as an affiliate and earn every time someone buys a product through your site. I’ve had very good luck using Amazon as an affiliate. When I had the search box on my blog network, I brought in between $300 & $500 during the holidays, and upwards of $50 during the other times of the year. Selling individual projects, especially books, is also working for me.
  4. Text Link Ads: Before all the Broohaha over whether or not Google penalized folks who sold text links, I earned a couple of hundred each month with text links. I have nothing against them, to be honest. I mostly removed them because the links provided weren’t relative to my blog.
  5. Join an ad network: Buy Sell Ads, Performancing Ads, and iSocket are just a few of the options available. Simply sign up for the network, give them all your pertinent details and they will sell ads for a split of the commission. (Except iSocket – pay them a monthly fee and they’ll do all the work and they won’t take a commission.) Ad networks are hit and miss. I did awful with Buy Sell Ads – there were no sales made there at all. My tenure with Performancing ads and iSocket were both very successful. I’m not familiar with any of the other similar programs but reviews abound on the web, so read up if this is the route you want to go.
  6. Sell ads privately:  Here’s where I earned the bulk of my coin. It took a while for me to get the guts to contact potential advertisers directly but it worked very well.  I simply contacted them, provided details regarding my stats and community and negotiated a price. When I sold ads this way, I earned more than via the networks.
  7. Write an ebook: Surely you’re successful at something, otherwise, why are you blogging? What are you sharing? Take your expertise to a whole new level by writing an ebook.
  8. Write a workbook: Instead of giving readers something to, well, read, give them something to do. Create a workbook that helps them put what they learn to use. Sell it on your blog and even offer an affiliate program so other bloggers can earn while they sell your stuff.
  9. Write a course: Like a workbook, create courses to teach what you know.  Offer up exercises for putting this knowledge to use.
  10. Sell someone else’s products or services: Other bloggers have stuff to sell. Find the ones that work well in your niche and sell them on your blog.
  11. Create a webinar: Webinar’s are another way to teach what you know, and you can even enlist the help of your friends. Most involve the use of a webinar tool such as GoToMeeting and a Power Point presentation. I haven’t created my own yet, but I’ve participated in several and giving my presentation couldn’t have been easier.
  12. Become an affiliate for someone else’s webinar: Last year, I earned over $1000 as an affiliate for one of Mike Stelzner’s webinars. If you choose the right event for your community, you can sell enough tickets to make a one time post (about the webinar) well worth the effort. Really, it didn’t take more than that. I talked about the seminar once and placed and ad in the sidebar. My community did the rest.
  13. Speak: Get paid to speak about your topic at conferences, seminars, lectures and local business and community events. Start small such as with a local group in your niche. Once you’re more polished, take it to larger events. Not all events pay, but just about all are good opportunities.
  14. Put up a donation button: A few years ago plenty of bloggers (including some very big names)  had PayPal and “buy me a cup of coffee” donation buttons and it worked out well for a while. Then someone decided it was tacky and everyone took down their donation buttons.
  15. Cafe Press: Cafe Press allows you to design your own shirts, hats, mugs and more. It’s a way to get some branding going, for sure. However, it never worked for me. People wanted to visit my blog, not wear it.
  16. Put up a job board: Jobamatic, Beyond.com and Indeed.com all offer bloggers and webmasters the ability to earn money every time someone clicks on a job ad. If a job search is relevant to your blog, consider adding one of these puppies. For the record,  I brought in between $100 and $300 per month with the Indeed search engine on my blog. You can also use one of the several WordPress plugins that allow others to post jobs on your blog in exchange for a fee.
  17. Consult: Do a little coaching and teach others how to be a success doing what you do.
  18. RSS ads: Place Adsense or other clicky ads on your blog’s RSS feed. Feed ads weren’t my biggest money maker but they were good for about $50 per month.
  19. Do paid reviews and sponsored posts: I did two sponsored posts in ten years. To be honest, I’m not a huge fan. I didn’t choose all the opportunities available and preferred to wait until they offered products or services I knew and believed in, then I had to jump through about 20 hoops to get those posts approved. They were lucrative though. One netted $500 and one netted $300.
  20. Do sponsored tweets: Yes, there are those who will pay you to tweet. I don’t know how you work out the disclosure thing PLUS the ad in 140 characters. I’d also be worried about losing followers. Still, there are those who do it and do well.
  21. Widget advertising: Pulse 360 and Chitika are just two of the advertisers who will give you widgets to install on your blog. Every time someone clicks on one of the links in the widget, you earn. They look busy and clunky and you can’t always blend in the colors like you can with Adsense. Also, not all ads are relevant to your community. When I used widgets I earned about $300 per month with Pulse 360 and maybe $30  per month with Chitika (which didn’t last long because they’re ugly). Not my favorite way to bring in money because they make the blog look too busy.
  22. Make and sell products: If you have a talent, exploit it with a blog. For example, if you make jewelry, you can start a jewelry blog and sell your products there.
  23. Kindle subscription: Allow your blog to be sold on Kindle. Amazon charges .99 to $1.99 for a monthly blog subscription and the blogger earns 30%.
  24. Grow a private membership community: Third Tribe and the ProBlogger community are just two examples of successful private membership communities. People are willing to pay to receive good advice and have a troll/spam free environment. You can also become affiliates for these communities.
  25. Sell your blog: If your blog is doing well, brings in money and has become a lucrative business – but has run its course – consider selling it. I did, and received a very nice amount of money in return.

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to profit from blogging.

What are some of the ways you’re monetizing your blog? How is it working out for you? Also, are you afraid to put ads on your blog because you’re worried you’ll be written off as some sort of money-grubbing amateur?

Discuss….

Filed Under: General Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

10 Publishing Options for Your Blog

Posted on July 11, 2010 Written by 15 Comments

A common mistake made among bloggers is in not exploring alternative publishing options for their blogs. Your blog could explode beyond that of a web page if you’d only take the time to check out the choices available. As much as we’d like to think we have a loyal community who visits our blogs each day, the truth is, we’d have even more readers, beyond that of physical traffic, if we’d think beyond our URLs.

We bloggers like to think everyone is like us, that they’re online all the time and have time to read blogs all day. Truthfully, very few people have that kind of time. However, we can offer them the convenience of reading our blogs via less traditional methods so they can enjoy our posts during their commutes, trips to the beach, or afternoons by the pool.

Below are the various publishing options available. Some add a new revenue source, some will drive traffic and some will simply bring convenience to readers.

10 Publishing Options for Your Blog

  1. Kindle: Did you know that you can subscribe to blogs to read on your Kindle? Yes, it costs money, but many readers agree it’s worth the convenience. After you sign up for a publishing account, you and Amazon will split the profit from subscribers and Kindle owners can read your blog without having to stoke up their machines. Here’s Kommein’s Kindle page.( Credit where it’s due: The inspiration for this entire post was Denise Wakeman’s post on publishing your blog on Kindle. Thanks, Denise!)
  2. Smart Phone Apps: I read blogs, newspapers and sometimes ebooks using my Droid. It’s not my favorite way to read, to be honest, because my aging eyes like a big space. However, it works like a charm when I’m a plane or train, or waitng in line somewhere. There are a variety of ways to have create smart phone apps. Many bloggers will contact developers, but this can get pricey – up to thousands of dollars. You can also use a free service such as MotherApp. The MotherApp team will create your smart phone app and split any revenue from ads.
  3. iPad: I didn’t find too many tried and true ways to publish a blog for iPad. In researching how to publish a blog to iPad, I came across Publisha, a service allowing writers and bloggers to publish blogs to Facebook, and create iPhone and iPad apps. I don’t know much about Publisha or how it works. However, if you have experience with this service or any other iPad app or blog publisher, I do hope you’ll share in the comments. I’ll probably test it out myself and offer up a review. Also, Kindle has an app for the iPad so iPad users with this app can view still view your blog.
  4. RSS: Through owning a blog network I learned that most of my blog’s readers read via their RSS readers and not by physically landing on my blog.  In fact, a good chunk of my revenue came from Adsense on my Feedburner account. Just before I sold, I had between 3000 & 4000 daily visitors to the network and almost 11,000 readers via the feed.
  5. Traditional book: More and more bloggers are turning their blogs into books or “blooks.” Some repurpose or create brand new content, while others package up all their blog posts. You can bypass the traditional publishing “find an agent and shop it around” route by self publishing.
  6. Newsletter: A weekly newsletter will enable readers to receive news and updates in their mailbox to read at their convenience. I used AWeber for my former blog and it converted many newsletter readers to blog readers. It’s a paying service but well worth it. You’ll also find many free services if you choose to go the newsletter route. The beautiful thing about newsletters is that they also grow your mailing list so if you have something to promote such as a book, you already have a list of people to contact.
  7. Facebook: I was a Facebook late bloomer. It’s not that I didn’t like or trust it, but that I didn’t want to get sucked into another social network. Guess what? Facebook turned out to be an amazing tool. For my last blog, I had over 3,000 Facebook subscribers who I interacted with each day. Also, subscribers were able to receive updates via their Face book statuses. If they didn’t want to come to the blog to comment, they could stay on Facebook and comment on the page. The Facebook fan page sent up to a few hundred readers directly to the blog each day. Hopefully I can achieve the same results with Kommein’s Facebook page.
  8. Ebook: If you have a large blog with many pages, you can repurpose the best of your content into an ebook. Many new readers don’t have time to go through an entire blog but would enjoy the convenience of an entire book of posts to read at their leisure. There are many types of ebook publishing programs and affiliate programs so others can sell your books as well. Plus, interested parties can buy the ebooks to upload to their Kindles and iPads to read offline.
  9. Email subscription: Many of your readers might prefer to receive updates via email to read on thier smart phones, laptops or to print out for later. If you don’t have an email subscription option available already, get thee to Feedburner or newsletter program and make plans for a daily mailing.
  10. Traditional blog platform: Don’t forget to encourage folks to visit your blog anyway. It’s through your blog that they become a community as they chat about the issues and topics. This is also how they’ll support your advertisers and the best way to interact with you. Advertisers and potential buyers care most about your physical traffic, so don’t neglect the actual blog while building communities elsewhere.

Do you know of other ways to publish a blog? Will you be checking out any of these tips? Please share in the comments.

Filed Under: blogging, Monetization Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How to Sell a Blog Part 2: Prepping for Sale & Determining a Price

Posted on July 5, 2010 Written by Leave a Comment


I make the real estate analogy often when I describe how to sell a blog. When a blogger sells a blog it can be just as personal as putting the family home on the market. You’ll also have to do some upkeep and make reparations in order to have a blog worth selling. Just as you would with a house, you’ll have to make sure your blog is staged properly, and also, that you have an asking price in mind.

Prepping Your Blog for Sale

When you’re ready to sell, you want to be sure your blog appeals to potential buyers. Though there are several ways to do this, there are three areas a potential buyer looks into the most.

1. Traffic: Obviously, the more traffic your blog has, the higher price you will receive when you sell. Most buyers will ask for proof of traffic so if you’re on a downward spiral, it won’t bode well in your favor. When I made the decision to sell, I worked hard at building traffic for several months in order to appeal to buyers. I studied search terms, gauged the needs of my community,posted content two to three times a day and promoted the heck out of my blog and its content.

2. SEO: If your blog reaches the top of the search engines, you’ll attract potential buyers. Though my blog had been at the top of many important search terms for several years, I continued to use those keywords and phrases to stay at the top. This doesn’t men that I wrote spammy SEO copy, because I didn’t – my community always came first. However, freelance writing blogs are a dime a dozen and I knew it was only a matter of time before I was dethroned from Google’s top spots.

3. Revenue: If you want top dollar, you’ll have to be taking in a decent amount of revenue. Serious buyers want ROI action. I had a heavily monetized blog which helped my bottom line. If you’re selling a blog or website, revenue is the single most important factor in determining a price.  To prep for sale I built relationships with several private advertisers and now the new owner has continued those relationships. I also worked on other revenue streams.  If I didn’t earn at least several thousand per month in revenue, my blog would not have been as attractive to potential buyers.

Everything else such as community, subscribers, and bells ans whistles are gravy on the proverbial potatoes, but it’s those big three details that matter the most.

Determining a Price for Your Blog

My biggest dilemma in selling my blog was in asking for and receiving a fair price. I did a little research on the subject and while there are a few links available, truthfully there’s not much out there that gives step by step details in regard to how to sell a blog. Fortunately, I have a friend who flips blogs and web properties on a regular basis and he was able to advise me through the process.

I learned:

  • Private sale is better than a public auction for a blog the size of mine. The folks who buy and sell websites at auction or mostly doing so with smaller properties or domain names and the bids are lowballs. So, I reached out to the people who have inquired about buying my blog in the past. I also reached out to a few webmasters and network owners who might be interested.
  • A rule of thumb is a year’s income times two or three, plus monetary consideration for search engine rankings and daily traffic.
  • The amount of money spent on the blog each year is also a factor. For example, I paid ten bloggers and a webmaster, plus various guest bloggers. This amount doesn’t figure favorably into the bottom line.
  • I had a price in mind, but also asked for two appraisals. The appraisals put the blog at a lower price than I originally intended, but a lot more than I expected to receive – if that makes any sense. I sold my blog at two years income, plus extra consideration for the search engine rankings and other amenities including a large Facebook group, 11,000+ RSS readers, a newsletter and more.

Next up…

When we continue this series, we’ll discuss how to reach out and what to present to potential buyers. Thanks to all who have reached out via email, Twitter, or comments – I hope you continue to find this series useful. In the upcoming weeks we’ll discuss everything I went through in selling my blog. I hope it helps you when it comes time to sell your own.

If you found this helpful, please see the other posts in this series:

Filed Under: General Tagged: , , , , , ,

Why Your Company Should Have a Blog

Posted on January 6, 2009 Written by 1 Comment

I found a great post today about why companies should invest in having a blog, and who better to take charge of such a product than a Community Manager, and so the post written on Fast Wonder with the same title, is really a great post about what a Community Manager could do for a medium to large company.

For those of us who regularly consume information from blogs, we expect to be able to grab an RSS feed of your company’s blog to keep up with news and information relevant to your industry. The research above shows that the number of people who read blogs in growing, and these people expect you to have a blog. Not only are more people reading blogs, these blogs are influencing purchasing decisions, which is important for every company.

What it comes down to is branding, thought leadership, and interaction, and if companies aren’t looking to expand their efforts online regarding these three things, then I feel like they will have issues in the coming years competing against other companies offering the same products, services while also catering to the numerous people digesting content daily online.

In the end, the hardest thing going forward will be to prove value to the companies in the world that are interested in expanding their efforts online with a blog and/or a Community Manager.

What do you think, should medium sized companies and larger have their own blog, and if so, who would you like to see write it?

Filed Under: Business Tagged: , , ,