Make Money with Your Blog

Monetize Your Blog or Website

What does it even mean to monetize a blog or website? Simply put, it means making money directly from the blog or websites. There are many ways to make money with your site, and you should use all of them to your best advantage.

1. Sell your Product and Services: First and foremost, you can offer your products and services for sale directly from your site. You can put a "book an appointment" feature to increase bookings for services. You can place "buy now" buttons anywhere you want on your site or blog for whatever you're selling. You can create a store/shopping page with an "add to the cart" button so they can buy multiple products. Shopping cart technology used to cost an arm and a leg for the code; now it's offered freely through PayPal and other money handling sites or through some professional hosting companies. You just copy and paste the code into the right spot, and you're in business - literally.
   
   
2. Ad Services: You can sign up with a service like Google Ad Sense who sells ads that can be posted all over the web. You can put code copied from Ad Sense that automatically monitors your content and matches advertisers wih your content and posts ads on your page. Ads rotate as your content changes.
   
   The problem I have encountered with this is that some of the ads are for the same thing I do, and it's not apparent that it's not me the person clicking on the ad is getting. If you're using Ad Sense to monetize a site, it's better if it's a generic site where you're promoting, but not selling a product or service.
   
   
3. Monetized Blogs: A money-making trend right now is to set up a blog where you just post content from other sites, like videos from You Tube, and have ads on your landing page. If anyone watching the video you posted clicks an ad, you get paid for the click. This is pay per click, and you have to be careful not to click the ads yourself, or you'll get booted out of Ad Sense. 
   
   You have to build up a lot of traffic for your site to make this pay. And you can also solicit and post ads from companies that are good companions for your content interest. For instance, a friend of mine loves dogs, he has a dog blog with funny, informative and interesting dog videos, and he not only uses Ad Sense ads, but dog food ads, Pet Smart ads, and coupons for dog friendly products and services. He's not selling anything of his own, but he's offering links to other people's products and services. The challenge is to choose a popular subject and build up enough traffic to make the time investment worthwhile. It takes time and ongoing effort to build a business this way.
   
   
4. Affiliate Programs: You can join free affiliate programs that provide you with code that can be placed on your site. Advertising offers products and services that you choose, so you are in charge of what gets posted. The ads have your tracking number built into the code. In these programs, you only get paid when someone clicks your ad and buys a product or service. It's pay for purchase, and the percent you get paid depends on the advertiser and the affiliate programs. Some examples are: Amazon associates, Click Bank, Commission Junction, Hub Spot and many others. Rate of pay varies drastically, so investigate.

There are other ways to monetize your passion, and this is part of the new business model on the web. You can take the time to get your own learning curve, or you can hire someone to help you launch so you can live where you want, do what you want and get paid for it.

Contact me.