Ways to monetize a blog

Editor’s note: This article was first published in February 2012. The ad platforms it names (Google AdSense, WordAds, Ad Dynamo, Infolinks and Coguan) and its remark about Google’s algorithm penalising copied content reflect that period; some of these services may have changed or closed since.

Since some people had asked me how you can make money with a blog, here goes. I don’t think I’ll be saying anything that hasn’t been said before, but I’ll try to offer some advice from my own modest experience in this area.

1. Can everyone make money with a blog?

Everyone can make money, as long as they are willing to learn the right and ethical way to do it. In other words, everyone can make money, but not in just any way. You should ask yourself some of the questions that Google itself used to recommend: am I an expert on the subject I write about? Do I offer something different from what already exists? Is my content original?

If your plan is to start a blog and copy articles from other blogs, Google’s algorithm these days won’t let you get anywhere. And if a visitor comes to your site looking for an expert on a subject and doesn’t find one, or finds the content irrelevant, that visitor won’t come back.

At other times you don’t need to be an expert, just to cover an eye-catching subject. You can create a joke blog and be successful.

2. What do you need to be able to monetize a blog?

The answer is simple. You need visitors. You can have great content, but if you don’t get enough visits, there’s little you can do.

3. What is the minimum number of visits you need to make money?

Some might disagree on this point, but I would say that until you reach at least 1,000 visits a day (30,000 a month), I don’t think it’s a good idea even to put up advertising, because at first the goal is for users to visit and browse your blog, not the advertisers’ websites. What many of us agree on is that from 100,000 visits a month you can start earning a worthwhile income.

Once you have enough visitors, how do I monetize the blog?

When we start a blog, we normally do it to offer free content to readers, so the only way to earn money from something we don’t charge for is through advertising (sponsors). We would have the following options:

1. Advertising platforms.

Perhaps the best known is Google AdSense. Google’s programme shows targeted ads based on the visitor’s interests and location (where relevant), so each visitor who comes to your site will see different ads. It’s an excellent way of not having to look for advertisers: the platform serves them by itself.

Those with a blog built on WordPress will also be able to use WordAds, an advertising platform similar to AdSense. There are also similar platforms such as Ad Dynamo, which also works on a pay-per-click basis.

There are a huge number of platforms these days: contextual advertising with Infolinks, whose advantage is that it is compatible with the ones above, Coguan, where you can set a price per 1,000 page impressions, and many more. But as I said in another article, focus on visitors first; once you have them, the money will come by itself.

2. Finding advertisers yourself.

Some advertisers get in touch with you because they want to place a banner ad. At some point, if you already have the necessary traffic and a specific subject, you can contact advertisers and offer them space. The truth is that for an advertiser it isn’t always better to pay what it costs to advertise on very general sites that get millions of visits. Sometimes it can be far more interesting to advertise on more… medium-sized blogs and reach a more specific audience.

3. Sponsored posts.

Another way to earn income is to charge for sponsored posts, that is, writing an article explaining the services a given company offers. At this point, though, you should be selective and not accept just any sponsored post. You need to follow certain principles. In my case, I never write a sponsored post if I don’t find what is being advertised interesting in the first place, or if I think it won’t be of interest to readers.

To be honest, I have turned down advertising bank investment funds, and on the other hand I have agreed to advertise interest-bearing accounts from online banks, because the second product seems interesting to me for someone who wants to save, while the first is for someone who wants to take risks with an investment vehicle I have often criticised. Remember: even advertising requires principles.

4. Selling products.

You can sell your own products or someone else’s. If you have a blog where you are an expert on electricity, at some point, to give an example, you could sell the latest design of energy-saving light bulbs. On the internet there are also affiliate programmes, where you can recommend a product or advertise it on your website, and if a visitor buys the product on the advertiser’s site through your page, you get paid a commission. The products can be books, hotel rooms, trips and so on.

5. Selling yourself as an expert.

A blog can become a great professional shop window for you, so there are indirect ways of making money thanks to your blog:

• Giving talks: many bloggers give talks after showing their professionalism through a blog. It has served them as a way of promoting a paid service.
• Selling your own book: some bloggers have gone on to publish their own book.

These are practically all the known ways to monetize a blog (or at least the ones I know). However, I’ll say it again: don’t make the mistake of focusing only on income, because it would turn into a job, and jobs, when results are slow to arrive, end up wearing you out and demotivating you.

Featured image: liftconferencephotos from Geneva, Switzerland, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.