How to make money blogging

Last week we looked at what you need to know about blogging before you can monetise it. This week, we tackle the juicier part of the two-part series – how to actually turn your online articles into money.

1. Get the clicks

The first and most obvious way bloggers make money from their content is ads. These often come in two forms. The first form is the ‘Pay Per Click’, or PPC, ad. These are banners that you place on your blog for a reader to see and possibly click. They often have catch phrases or designs that entice the reader to click for more details. Some pop up as a reader scrolls down a page or move around a page, making them easy to accidentally click on. As the name suggests, once a reader clicks on the ad, you get paid. The payment is pre-negotiated.

2. Count the eyeballs

The second form of monetising your blog is through the ‘Cost per 1,000 impressions’ (CPM). These types of ads bring in revenue at a constant rate, whether a reader clicks on an ad or not. As long as your page is visited by at least a thousand users, you get paid a pre-negotiated amount.

3. Outsource the dirty work

The most popular method that you can use to maximise on ad revenue is using advertising networks like Medialinks, Chitika and Infolinks. The most popular of these networks, however, is Google Adsense. With Adsense, Google does the dirty work of choosing relevant ads for your content with the highest impact, and also deals with the advertisers. All you have to do is place the ads on the blog, work on your content to bring in and keep users, and wait for your bank balance to grow.

4. DIY-ers

You can also solicit for ads. The allure of this is that there are no middlemen and you have a host of ways you can tailor your ads. One of these ways is by selling space on your blog in the form of banners, links or buttons that carry the advertiser’s message. You can then agree on a payment schedule, such as weekly, monthly or quarterly. The other method is offering sponsorship where at the beginning or end of your content, be it video or text, you add the line, “Brought to you by [the advertiser’s name]”.

A third way you can draw private ads is by overtly mentioning a client’s products in your content. For instance, if you have a cooking blog, you can say you’re using a particular brand of rice, spice or even cooking pot. If you have a makeup blog, you can mention you’re sampling a particular brand of lipstick or foundation. Needless to say, selling private ads is more involving for the blogger and may be more suitable for full-time bloggers.

5. Command a commission

Affiliate marketing is also a good method of herding the money from advertisers’ pockets to yours. Affiliate marketing is when a given seller pays you a commission based on the number of users that you push to their site and who actually buy their products. The advertiser provides you with a link that you place on your site. This link uniquely identifies you and links you to certain sales. As a result, part of the proceeds made as a result of this affiliate link are shared between you and the seller.

6. Go premium

Last but not least, you can charge your audience a fee to access your content. If the information you provide is deemed valuable enough, and the payment system convenient, people may be willing to pay a regular monthly or annual fee. Rather than making it a blanket requirement, you can set aside specific content for premium membership.