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Question: “How Can I Begin To Earn Revenue From My Blog” – Jia
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4 Ways to Earn Revenue From Blogging
There’s a lot of misconception about blogging and whether you can make an income from it and how long it will actually take. It takes a long time and you can’t just plan to earn you money the next month. Instead, you have to be very strategic. There are a lot of ways to make money on your blog. But, to get enough money to quit your day job from your blog income is going to take a lot of work. Are you ready to put a ton of work into your blog? I’m talking mornings, weeekends and nights? That’s what I did. And I am not talking about studying and learning. I am talking about actually taking action. That’s the ground rule. You have to work really hard to make an income from your blog.
If you are ready to work hard, keep on reading. Here are four ways you can make an income from your blog. I have made income doing each of these, so I’ll give you my behind the scenes and also share with you my #1 suggestion at the end.
1. Sponsored Posts
If you have a lot of traffic, other people will offer to pay you to link to their site in a blog post. Companies will come to you and pay you to write reviews, hold contests or write sponsored content. Just remember you have to have a lot of traffic for this to happen. This was the first way I made money through blogging. A company emailed me out of the blue and asked if I could write a post with their link in it. The content had to match the content I was already writing and I enforced rules and full disclosure so readers knew that it was a sponsored piece of content. Nowadays, this is also being done throughout social media, especially Instagram if you have enough followers and engagement.
2. Banner Advertising
Companies will also pay you to advertise their image on your sidebar or underneath their posts. Of course, it’s great if they can pay you by month for this type of advertisement but you have to make sure it doesn’t take away from the quality of your site. You don’t want people clicking away from your site and this is what happens when you put banner advertising on your site. An easy way to get started with this is by using Google Adsense. Be prepared to only make pennies in the beginning though. I can’t emphasize how much traffic you need. Building your audience needs to be the #1 priority if banner advertising is going to be your main business model.
3. Affiliate Marketing
You can also promote other people’s products on your website. One of the products we are affiliates for is Leadpages.net because we I recommend it to build an email list in our Corporate Rescue Plan program. Any time anyone purchases it through my link, I automatically get a commission for it. I am up front about this and when they purchase it, they know that I get a commission to use my affiliate. You can write a review on your blog and you can include an affiliate link but you have to be honest. I hardly ever promote other people’s products because I have to be a raving fan. It has to be something I would be recommending no matter what. I am not going to go out of my way to do something special to promote someone else’s product.
You also have to have a lot of traffic to really make this worth it (notice a theme here yet)?
4. Sell Your Own Product or Service
This is the #1 way that I recommend that you earn an income from blogging. Creating your own programs or products puts YOU in control. You don’t have to worry about someone else failing to meet a client’s expectations with affiliate marketing and you don’t have to worry about an advertiser deciding not to work with you again next month.
We have so much stuff in our heads waiting to come out! Get it out and make an offer rather than waiting for other business owners and advertisers to support you. I want to be in control as a business owner. I don’t want to rely on someone else to pay me next month. I am not reliant on someone else’s funding to put food on the table and pay me bills.
You can do this by creating your own course, membership site or service. You can provide consulting. You can create a product like a book or a piece of clothing. What happens is that as you start to write your blog, you’ll build a relationship with your readers. They will get to know you really well and read every post. They will start trusting you and just can’t get enough of your content! They are excited for your journey they have taken with you and when you come out with your product or service, they will bemore likely to purchase it and that is the real way you can earn a living through having a blog while being 100% in control.
[RELATED: How to Create Your First Sales Funnel]
