Monetizing a blog is the process of turning your website into a source of stable income.
If your goal is to turn your blog into a tool for steady earnings, it's important to understand that no business will bring significant money without meticulous and persistent work. Therefore, when starting your blog with the aim of monetization, remember that the topic should be of interest to you personally. This will help you not to abandon the project, even when the initial enthusiasm starts to fade.
How much can a blog earn?
Let's look at examples from different niches.
Sally's Baking Addiction, a popular culinary blog
https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/
Example of a popular article: Zucchini Bread (145,000 visits per month)
Earning over $25,000 per month, with a traffic of 8.5 million visits per month.
- Affiliate programs with kitchenware manufacturers
- Amazon referral links
- Google AdSense
- Selling own culinary books
- Advertising food products.
Android Authority, a mobile technology blog
https://www.androidauthority.com/
Earning over $100,000 per month, with a traffic of 5.6 million visits per month.
Example of a popular article: The best Android emulators for PC and Mac of 2023 (20,000 visits per month)
- Software advertising
- Affiliate programs with tech companies
- Selling online programming courses.
Nomadic Matt, a renowned travel blogger
https://www.nomadicmatt.com/
Earning around $50,000 per month, with a traffic of 650,000 visits per month.
Example of a popular article: My current list of favorite travel blogs (3,700 visits per month)
- Affiliate programs with travel agencies
- Advertising airlines and hotels
- Selling own travel guides.
The Penny Hoarder, a personal finance blog
https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/
Earning over $1 million per year, with a traffic of 405,000 visits per month.
Example of a popular article: 102 Places That Will Give You Free Stuff on Your Birthday (20,000 visits per month)
- Affiliate programs with banks and financial institutions
- Advertising investment tools
- Selling financial planning courses.
Water Park Guide, a blog about water parks in the Canary Islands
https://waterparktenerife.com/
Started earning 1000 euros per month three months after launch, using affiliate programs to sell amusement park tickets.
How to earn money with a blog?
- Affiliate programs - links and widgets of affiliate programs. From Amazon links to travel bookings. Examples: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/, https://partner.getyourguide.com/en-us/content-creators, https://www.travelpayouts.com/
- Your own products - video courses, books, guides, consultations
- Advertising - ad networks, for example, Google AdSense, paid placement of press releases, guest posts, product reviews
- Subscription/donations - users pay for access to content or donate money to the author altruistically
Monetization methods can be adapted and combined depending on the blog's niche and the interests of the audience. For example, in one article, you can offer to purchase a plane ticket, book a hotel, buy a snorkeling mask, and an entrance ticket to an amusement park.
Register for various programs, try different ones, and track the effectiveness of various tools for your project.
What should a blog be like to generate income for the owner?
For successful blog monetization, it's important to:
- Have a sufficiently broad and solvent potential audience.
- Understand that you are also interested in this topic and that you have the potential to dedicate, perhaps, several years of your life to it.
- Offer readers content that will fill the information gap or present it in a more convenient form than existing resources.
- Receive traffic from 500 - 1000 people per day. In some cases, this is enough to start receiving payments from affiliate programs and begin negotiations with advertisers.
- A multilingual blog can attract a broader audience. This also increases the number of pages in the search engine index, which positively affects SEO.
- The website (domain) should have a history, at least 2-3 months. For many affiliate programs, this is a necessary requirement to start collaborating.
- Regularly add or update content.
- Maintain a balance between useful content that will attract and retain an audience, and organically integrated advertising.
- Have quality traffic. The more engaged the user is, the higher the likelihood that they will take the target action (click on an ad, register, place an order, etc.):
- Time spent on the site: the longer, the better.
- Bounce rate: should be minimal.
- Page depth: how many pages a user visits in one session.
How to attract higher-paying advertisers?
Advertisers are willing to pay more if your site appears more authoritative to them. What do they usually pay attention to?
- Quantity and Quality of Website Traffic. The more traffic, the more expensive the advertisement. Audience Characteristics (gender, age, country) - The parameters should match the advertiser's target audience. Tools like SparkTraffic can help here, as it generates any amount of traffic with the desired characteristics.
- Domain Rating. Metrics like DR (Ahrefs), DA (Moz), etc. are typically looked at by SEO specialists. The higher the numbers and the link weight of your site, the more money you can ask for placing guest publications in your blog. There are tons of sites that offer to quickly increase DR, boost CTR, and increase traffic for just a few dollars.
If you approach the matter wisely, you can earn a good amount on your blog faster than your competitors.