There are many creative ways to make money online, and starting a blog is one of them. If you love to blog and are seeking methods to generate income from doing so, fortunately, there are ways to achieve this. Of course, if you want to make money, you should be passionate about blogging and passionate about your subject matter. You should also do your best to focus on a niche, and preferably one that’s proven profitable.
Furthermore, you need to make sure all your digital housekeeping is taken care of. This means everything from using a mobile responsive theme to make it easy to view your content, to using a CDN to make it easy for people around the world to actually access your content. If you’re intent on moving forward with your blogging efforts, here are three solid ways to make money:
Insert Affiliate Links
Affiliate marketing is one of the easier ways to make money from your blog. Affiliate links are tracked links that allow you to make a commission income off of products and services you recommend in your blog posts. Unbeknownst to you, many of the websites you visit today use affiliate links in their copy. These links have tracking codes that store digital “cookies” on your site to remember what you’ve purchased.
For example, let’s say you visit a travel blog and are reading a roundup of best travel backpacks to use on a long-term journey. Each of those backpacks has a tracked link. If you click on one and make a purchase, that travel blogger will make a commission. Many cookies stay on your site for several months, which means it doesn’t matter if the purchase is made now, or a few weeks from now.
Your content will be the driving force behind every affiliate link, so it’s important that you focus on creating written value to complement your links well. Reviews are always a great way to place links organically.
One of the best things about affiliate links is that it creates passive income. Once you set up an affiliate link, you don’t have to do much work. It sits there, and generates income as it comes. Another solid benefit is that there are affiliate programs for many businesses out there, including Amazon—which means there’s no shortage of products for you to recommend. Be sure to disclose on your blog that you use a affiliate links; it’s good ethics, and helps establish trust between you and your readers.
Create an Ebook
If you have believe yourself to be a thought leader on a particular topic, and have a lot to say, why not create an ebook? An ebook is a great way to better establish your authority on a subject, as well as generate revenue. Another good reason to write an ebook is that overhead costs are very low. Once the ebook is written, and you’ve turned it into a well-designed digital format, you can publish on your website, as well as sites like Amazon. Your money will be a one-time fee goes into book design (if necessary) and marketing costs (like Facebook Ads).
You should also take a look at other ebooks that are being published in your industry. For starters, this allows you to create positional value. If you want to stand out from the competition, you have to understand how you’ll be able to do so. By doing early competitor research, you’ll also see how other ebooks are being priced.
Create Premium Content
If you are a great writer—or know someone who is—you can use premium content to make money from your blog. However, this is a little more difficult to achieve because today’s readers have access to free content everywhere. Why would they want to pay for yours?
This is a question you have to ask yourself, and have a plan to answer. Premium content should be approached highly strategically. First and foremost, premium content has to be original content, focused on a topic that’s most valuable to your readers. It should also be much more in-depth than a traditional blog post, and should be branded well with powerful visuals.
One of the most important pieces of premium content is that your reader can’t get it anywhere else. This is why you should use a combination of real-life personal stories, and interviews with relevant subjects. For example, if you’re writing an ebook about affiliate marketing, you might interview affiliate marketers who are actually making great money with affiliate links, have the screenshots to prove it, and are open to discussing some of their money-making secrets.