10 Tips for Better Blog Monetization & Profit
With more online marketers making the move to blogging to build their brand and product base, it’s important to make sure you are staying above the curve with your blog and making the most of it. Besides the obvious importance of having a memorable domain name and a unique blog design, it’s also important to make sure visitors can quickly navigate through your site while hitting they key spots and returning for future visits.
Today I will be focusing on ten (5 today, 5 tomorrow) ways for the new, average or advanced blogger to better monetize their blog for profit. How many of these methods are you currently practicing?
Direct Ad Sales
Yes, we hear it all the time…”I hate banner ads and never click on them!“… sure, as marketers we can see banner ads a mile away and if we click on them, it’s because we clearly want to. From within the affiliate marketing industry, ad networks and product launches love banners, and they are proven to work very well. However, selling direct banner advertising may not be as successful in other blogging niches, such as a sports related site or cooking. You have to test your audience and find relevant advertising and what they are looking for.
Selling direct advertising on your site can be frustrating at first as you will need to establish your site and grow your traffic before placing ads on your site. During my first 9 months of this blog, I focused on my content, growth and readership and had no banner advertising… now ad spots are in demand month after month.
I go into how I setup my direct advertising and my preferred sites for outsourcing advertising, in my free Six Figure Affiliate Blogging guide.
Referral Marketing
The affiliate marketing industry is very unique in how it operates. Not only is “ok” to talk about how much we as individuals/affiliates make, but we like to talk about how and who (what networks) we are using. With so much talk about new campaigns and what ad networks have the best performing offers, it’s only fitting that our readers and other affiliates would follow our advice and join these networks. Fortunately, someone thought of the genius idea to create residual referral program within these ad networks. If you refer a new affiliate to an ad network using your referral url, you will earn 2-5% bonus commission on that referrals earnings.
Having a very tight niche blog on affiliate marketing and how to make money online, it’s not hard to send a decent amount of referrals to a network. Though compared to years past, we are seeing a much lower success rate for new affiliate applications being accepted at networks. Many networks have also lowered their referral program percentages, limited “lifetime earnings” to just a few months, or have even removed their referral program all together.
Build That List!
The success of a blog is all about growth and bringing your readera back on a daily/weekly basis. As important as quality content is, it just isn’t enough. How many of your visitors will simply forget the name of your site, or just to busy to ever return. Building a list is one of the best ways to keep your readers coming back for more.
At some point you probably visit this blog for the first time and you may have remembered some type of popup to grab your email. I’ve used both a lightbox method through Aweber, and my new solution through Popup Domination. Both of these solutions will display a popup like window in your browser after visiting a blog. I set my subscribe form to fade in and display after a user is on the site for 3 seconds. I also limited the subscribe form to display once every two weeks per visitor, so it doesn’t get annoying.
The bottom line here is that lightbox type forms dominate and convert your potential one time traffic to long term subscribers. Many bloggers have seen increases of 100-300% from just adding either a lightbox through Aweber or using Popup Domination.
Create a Free eBook / Bonus
Once someone starts a blog, it’s almost inevitable that they will create their own product or at least a free ebook or guide for their readers. Creating a free ebook is very effective and if you already have an established blog with a lot of content, you can easily go through and collect your best posts, rewrite and update the content, then pull everything together for a free ebook to offer your readers.
Being able to offer a free quality product ties back into having a lightbox subscribe form for your site. What’s the incentive if you visit a site and they just have a form that says “Join our mailing list!”?… almost no one will. Instead, come up with a value for your ebook (or product), then offer it for free to your readers as an incentive to subscribe. You will drastically see your blog numbers climb, while providing a valuable product to your readers.
Guest Posting & Time Management
For anyone that is already running a blog, we all can relate to the dilemma of not having anything to write about. As much as you may want to write a post everyday, it’s better to post nothing then to post crap. One way to relieve the stress of having to come up with a new post every day (or how ever often you post), is to bring in a weekly or monthly guest post. Not only will you provide your readers with an article for the day, but it may come as a new and refreshing source as it won’t be your own.
Guest posting can work in many different ways. I personally receive emails all the time for guest posts, but am selective on which I will post. If you would like to have your guest posts published on another blog, be sure to send the full post in an email, and not just ask if you can write a future post. Many well known bloggers receive hundreds of emails daily and your requests can easily get lost among the madness. If you are looking to spread awareness for your own blog, or bring in new content, guest posting is a win-win situation.
This was Part 1 of my 10 Quick Tips for Better Blog Monetization. Read up on Part 2 of the series now.
For more tips on blogging and how you can make money with your own blog, download my free guide at SixFigureAffiliateBlogging.com.
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Nothing can beat good old referral marketing since all you do is to refer someone to the site and then you will get some money.
True, referral marketing can be a good way to make money, last month I think it accounted for 10% of the total revenue I made on my sites. This month so far it is only working out at about 1% though, partly because the people I referred have made less money and I have made more money, so overall, all is good 🙂
Hi Zac, thanks for the great post. Sometimes a little reminder of the well converting methods is in order! Especially like the pop-up domination lightbox. I'll be getting that running on my site soon I think!
In essence then, Referral Marketing is a bit like a pyramid scheme? Guest posting seems very big of late, can you see this continuing to be effective for the medium to long term?
Not at all, it's a percentage based commission. There are no levels and paid signups like regular mlm/pyramid schemes.
I like referrals
I'm not a fan of the pop up lightboxes, but I assume they work or people wouldn't use them. However, one thing I noticed is that when viewing a site such as yours on a netbook set to 1024 x 768 resolution, the corner X to close it does not display, there are no scrollbars, and after waiting for it to fade out (didn't happen in 3 seconds) I finally gave up and went somewhere else. And didn't come back till I was on a larger sized screen.
If that makes a difference to you, you might want to do some testing.
Thanks Zac. I am trying to monetize my blog and these suggestion are very helpful.
@Zac Johnson:
Oh ok, my mistake just sounded like a pyramid scheme at first glance!
Thanks Zac for the article. Direct ad sales work only for established blogs. Small bloggers like me have to stuck with CPC ads. Guest posting and ebooks will bring a lot of traffic. But it is very hard to get a guest post published in a established blog.
@Paul/ Entertainment tonight:
I notice a lot of people echoing your sentiments here. Agreed on the referrals!
Awesome article, I agree in regards to ad space, it took me a while for people to start asking about my ad space. About a year or so.
This is a really great blog optimization and monetization resource! I really enjoyed the advanced tips in parts 1 and 2 and included them in a recent blog post of mine entitled "Essential WordPress Installation, Optimization & Security Resources". Keep up the killer posts!
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Hello, This is jackson. This is awesome blog. Really I like it. Ebook
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nice post sir,,I really liked your blog
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Thanks for the post zac ..Was kinda looking for this.. Would you mind elaborating some more methods ?? 🙂
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It is a privilege to be able to have a look at the ideas and views of someone that has made a success of the Internet Marketing business. I really appreciate your sharing from your experience. Happy Holidays.!
Great idea.
I haven't thought of creating an eBook till now. Thanks a lot Zac.
And you got a mistake there under the Build That List. You spelled "Readera". Think that's Readers/
Good luck.
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