Consider this above all else. The method of monetization that you choose for your blog should not be designed to fill your pockets. It should be designed to fulfil the needs of your visitors. Whether or not this is by fulfilling your visitors desire, or injecting an income stream into your project to better improve it, this is a much better approach than simply wanting a cut of the income pie, and doing it by any means possible. Sure, you earn an income online, or are struggling to make an income, however, your ability to earn an income from your blog will only ever be determined by how well you fulfil the needs of your visitors and your market.
Even though my market is buying and selling websites, this information could not be more relevant to this market and your positioning if I tried.
In the first post in this series about blogging income, you learned about two great methods of monetization that are actually quite common and quite easy to learn. Today, you are going to learn two new methods that will increase your blogging income, however, these are methods that you are going to want to study more about and really perfect.
List Marketing
Have you ever heard anyone tell you that the money is in the list? That statement alone, as over used as it is, is as close to the truth as possible. Consider this. Consider that you have a list of 500 subscribers who all have a need to get their blog indexed. You send out an email to that list and tell them about this great product that will get their site indexed, that you also use, and have proof of this. The product has an affiliate program that pays 50$ per month recurring for the lifetime of the membership. If you convert at a rate of 5% (which is very easy to do), then you will find yourself earning a recurring income of $1250 per month, just from that one email.
Can you see the potential now? The secret here is that the kind of subscribers that you have on your mailing list are much more targeted than any traffic you would ever receive on your website or blog. Why? Because they have put their hand up, given you their name, and their email address, and asked to be notified when you can help them with their desires again. It is that simple.
If you have been considering starting a list for a while, consider joining up with Aweber on their 1$ trial. You will find them much easier to use than most of the alternatives out there.
Paid Advertising
By the time that you can earn blogging income from paid advertising, you will more than likely be receiving around a thousand unique visits per day to your blog, which is a feat in itself, but is also highly sought after by advertisers in your niche.
So the real problem here is how you find advertisers within your niche, right? First step here is to simply place an “advertise here” banner in specific slots above the fold. What do I mean when I say “above the fold“? It is the part of your website that is viewable without having to scroll down, and is the most valuable part of your website for advertisers.
The second step is to contact people within your niche who you have identified as being potential advertisers. Consider if they can benefit from paid advertising, whether not not they have paid other blogs for advertising, and so on. This takes some guts, however, as part of my monthly routine that involves contacting 3 people per month and asking for a result that you aren’t confident in, I can promise you that you will at least get a few interested advertisers.
When setting pricing set a premium price. Lets say that your blog is receiving a thousand uniques per day, charge around $250 for the one month slot. Yes, that is steep, and most people will shoot you down, however, this gives you room to ask them to make an offer. As you have set the mark fairly high, you will be more inclined to get a better return than expected. This will also give advertisers the feeling that they are getting a good deal, and will encourage long term advertisers.
So, there you have it. Over the past few days, you have learned just a few of the ways that you can increase your blogging profits, and the monetization models associated with them. Sure, there are many other methods such as CPA and information products, however, I am not going to stand up and declare myself to be an expert at methods that I do not use myself. That said, if you do have any questions, you can @reply me on Twitter, and you can also enter your details below to be notified when my new free course on how to increase the value of your blog is launched, which includes an in depth session on auto responders as well.
This post was created on my super awesome iPad.
