MN Interactive

Monetize Your Blog For Wealth And Success

Setting up a blog is easy enough with sites like Wordpress and Blogger, which guide you through the process. It’s becoming a rich and successful blogger, which takes time and effort. This is one instance where you need to get proactive and take things into your own hands. After all, 99% of the time, blogging is an individual choice, as is building wealth around it.

According to the 2009 State of the Blogosphere, 60% of bloggers are between 18-44, with a large percentage being under 30. 86% have been blogging for almost one year. The demographics, motivational reasons and the how’s and why’s of bloggers are interesting, and more can be learnt here.

Yet, according to a survey entitled Perseus’ The Blogging Iceberg, studies indicate most blogs are abandoned soon after creation, and between 60%-80% within one month. And according to Technorati , the higher authority bloggers create more content, posting nearly 300 times more than the lower ranked bloggers!

If you’ve set up a blog or are considering setting up one, building a strong audience following is imperative, and one way to do this is to provide consistent valuable content for free. When you’ve built a high traffic site, the next step you may want to consider is monetizing your blog for a steady stream of income. Once again, it’s not a simple- sign up for some banners and links- routine, and does take time and effort to see results. But with a bit of hard work and patience, this route can allow you to bring in a targeted audience, have a lot of fun, and make money while doing so.

Before you begin, you need to be web savvy to a certain extent. If not, hire someone who has a basic understanding of blog publishing software, RSS syndication, Pings, Tagging, and Contextual advertising to name a few; to handle it for you. If you are considering selling products and services through your blog, familiarize yourself with shopping carts, affiliate marketing, podcasting, and online databases. Don’t forget to add SEO and SEM knowledge to the list. While all this might seem intimidating, it takes less than a week to gather and learn all this information, and then it’s only a question of putting it to use to work for you. If you’ve already built up a following, chances are you already have some basic knowledge of the above. You’ll also find that you don’t need a deep understanding of how these programs are technically put together, you just need to understand how to apply them to your own business.

What also works is joining blogging communities. Two of the highly recommended communities to join are Problogger and Blog Catalog. On both these sites, you’ll find advice, tips, and forums which allow you to learn of the latest tools to help you advance your blogging skills. Blogging technologies and opportunities disappear as rapidly as they appear. The trick is to keep on top of things, and you can do this only by being an active member of the blogosphere.

Once you’ve got yourself set up, it’s time to focus on two important things: continued traffic building and an income generating strategy. The former is what’s going to be bringing the income in. Your visitors have to grow at a continuous pace and comprise of 90% of your target audience. The rest of the 10% will be those who click on your links in the hope you’ll click on theirs back, or friends and family members who are doing you a favor.

You also need an income generating strategy, and a simple one-page sheet works well. In it, mark out your plans to monetize your blog. It makes sense to create multiple streams of income, at least to start out with. Once you’ve found out what works for you, narrow your plan to focus on the income generating streams only. These may include some or all of the following:

PPC or Pay Per Click networks: Google Adsense is one of the more popular PPC networks, but using them makes sense if you generate more than 100 unique visitors per day. The returns are not worth it for lower figures. Others popular ones are Chitika and Clicksor . In all these networks, you make money only if your audience clicks on the links or ads displayed.

Pay Per Post: Payperpost is a site which allows you to post reviews on your blog, and get paid for doing so. However, it’s wise to disclose that the reviews are paid for, otherwise you might find your audience annoyed at having being ‘scammed’. Other review sites include Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe.

Direct Banner advertising: In this, you sell ‘banner’ space on your blog. It can be extremely lucrative, but your blog needs to have a high audience flow for advertisers to invest in a banner on it.

Affiliate Programs: One of the most popular affiliate programs is offered via Amazon, but you can find affiliate marketing sites to suit just about any niche.

Sales of your own products and services: You can create your own products like eBooks, courses, and reports, to sell on your blog.

Other methods include Pay Per View, Monetization widgets, and Text Link ads. It may take a while to decide which of these options work for you, but once you hone in on what’s right for your particular blog, you can use this knowledge to optimize your earnings. Don’t hesitate to cut loose those programs which don’t work for you rather than hanging on to them and making a few meager pennies.

On an average, expect to spend between 10-20 hours per week to build up your content, market your blog, and draw in enough traffic to monetize it. You could also outsource your writing and marketing needs to professional sites like Elance and Freelance Writing Jobs, and your blog design to a professional web design company.

Is it worth your time and investment? That’s for you to decide, but, remember as with any business, the more effort you put into optimizing your blogs, the more you’ll receive from them.