Face it, the reason you want to be a great blogger is to grow your business and make more money, right? Of course, you do. In order to make money from your blog you will need to find ways to monetize your blog. If you do not offer anything for sale on your blog the money fairies will not automatically you give you money just because you’re an excellent blogger.
You have to do things that enable you to earn money. You have many options but let’s just talk about three of them.
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Your Own Products / Services
One of the best ways to make the most money is to offer your own products and / or services. In order to know what type of products or services to sell to your audience you must know who your audience is, what problems they have that you can solve, and how much they can afford to pay. This requires a lot of market study, thought and consideration, but it’s the most profitable way to make money from your self-hosted blog. With your own products you can even get affiliates to help you sell them.
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Advertising
You can earn money placing advertising on your blog. You can work with a company, or you can work on getting the sponsors yourself. There are many options when it comes to placing advertisements on your site. The drawback to going with a company is that you are not usually in charge of which ads appear on your website and there could be cases where competitors’ ads appear. If you are in control of which ads appear, you’ll be better off. You want to be careful about sending your visitors off to other sites. Some ad networks do allow you to block some ads, and some don’t. Therefore check out each solution before signing up.
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Affiliate Marketing
Another really great way to make money from your blog is to find products and services that solve problems for your audience that someone else made. Once you find the product or service you market it on your site via textual ads, graphic ads, and by blogging about the product or service so that your audience understands what’s in it for them if they purchase what you are recommending. You can’t just put the link on your blog and expect them to click it and buy it; you need to talk about it in multiple ways: blog about it, promote it on social media, mention the product in a webinar or podcast, and so forth.
As you see, there really isn’t just one way to make money. In fact you should choose more than one type of money making activity for your blog. You want to create multiple streams of income so that you are not just relying on one thing to make money. Within each category there are also multiple ideas from very low cost entry products, to very high cost one-on-one coaching and personal services that you can offer. Be very focused on the type of products you will offer your audience and you will earn money and become a profitable blogger.
