In order to create blogs that make money, you need to have certain principles and methods to keep in your mind. If done properly blogging could make you money.
However, the reality is different for many bloggers out there. Most bloggers who aspire to make, barely make one. Most even waste a lot of time curating content, and tweaking their theme, and they don’t even see a penny.
What is the problem? Is it because blogs have no chance to make money or is there something wrong with the bloggers? Although it seems hard to create blogs that make money, it is still possible. There are a lot of bloggers who have blogs that make money, who use blogs as a way of primary income source. Others make a few hundred and thousands of dollars every month.
Therefore, Creating blogs that make money is still possible.
There are certain things to keep in mind when thinking about blogs that make money. Here, I will show you the principles of blogs that make money.
Principles of Blogs That Make Money
- Blogs That Make Money Have a Focus
First, for a blog to make money, it has to be focused. This means you can not blog about everything in a single blog. Many beginners want to write about everything. Technology, science, coding, travel…all these are very huge markets. And you alone cannot talk about them in a single blog.
Websites like thoughtcatalog are beginner than a beginner and they can afford to pay writers to produce 10 or more articles a day.
You need to choose a single market and even go down in a smaller niche to base your blogs that make money on.
- Blogs That Make Money Have Focus on Them, not I
It is not about you. Many bloggers want to focus on themselves. They want to act as a celebrity and they demand the audience to follow their life through their writings.
This is wrongs. People are interested about how you lost that 30 pounds but that does not mean they like you.
The audience is on what you offer. Then, if you don’t have something to say, it is better to stop blogging. With the idea of being a celebrity in mind you cannot build blogs that make money.
- Blogs That Make Money Solve a Problem.
Blogs are not for entertainment purposes only. Blogs should be a solution to an existing problem. Top blogs actually have a certain group of problems with a perceived single problem in mind. Some help you become successful at education, others at dating, others help you lose weight.
The most successful in fact are very small in niche market.
Instead of talking bout health, they write good content that solve problems of a smaller group of patients have. For example, diabetes, or other disease.
You can not build blogs that make money in a single night. Any great business passes through many challenges, ups and downs and experiences before becoming successful. If you are a beginner even and experienced blogger, you need to remind your self that nothings can become reality in a single night and stay great.
- Blogs That Make Money Have a Vision
Then you need to envision your progress and future at least 2 years in the future.
Then you need to work atheist for three or four months continuously on your blog. You probably see a difference in your traffic or rank in google from 7 months to a year time, if your content is really interesting. Before that you are alone with your small blog.
- Blogs That Make Money Write Well
Blogging should be something that you enjoy. You don’t need to be here if you don’t enjoy writing 3000 words or more blog posts every two days or less. You need to be someone with faith and discipline to stay for a long time even without seeing any change on your blog.
Life is short to do something that you don’t enjoy.
On the other hand, you may need to do what you don’t enjoy until you make a life that you enjoy. Of course, if that something is legal and ethical.
You may need to train your mind to be a good blogger.
In either case, what you blog should be what you enjoy or what you are capable of conveying a good content.
Then think of what to blog about in three ways: what I like, what I want to learn and what I know.
What you like is a hobby. And that is something that you want to teach people. You may like cooking once a week and you may write on that topic.
What you want to learn is what you don’t know. You can share your experience by going through with your plan to learn. Learning how to type, or learning how to lose weight.
What you know could be your profession. If you are a nurse, then you have a better chance of attention than a kid blogger or even an adult blogger with a computer science degree.
SO, what do you want to blog about? Just write roughly.
Blogs That Make Money: The Process
Blogs that make money are familiar and believable. These are brands as well. For someone to buy from you, they need to believe your first.
For example, would you buy from Apple or some unknown brand from Asia? You probably buy the same product with a wide price gap. You are able to sacrifice financial benefits for a brand. You know some products from known brands don’t deserve the price they are attached to buy you buy them.
This is because brands waste millions of dollars to create brand association so that you will believe in them and you would have a second thought while purchasing.
The process is similar to blogging. First, you need to stand out. You need to be so good that your audience uses your post and profit from it. They also need to believe you. Once you solve their problem through your post, they need to be able to believe you that you will be there and won’t take advantage of them. Because many bloggers have done and will do.
How many courses that cost thousands are out there? A lot. Most even is not that useful.
Once the audience believes you, the second process is to create the connection that will last longs time. It is like getting a business card from another office.
That card will help you connect at any time in the futures.
You need to collect emails.
The audience that you have helped won’t say no to give you their email. Because the trust you.
Then this is the time you ask them to buy your product. That product is very useful and high quality. Even you would pay more to use it. You have helped them long for free with your blog posts, and you have created a strong relationship, now you can ask them to purchase.
Blogs That Make Money: The How
How can you make money though blogs? There are severaldjdyu ways of making money on your blogs. Some are beginner friendly, and others need more traffic.
- Ads
Ads are one of the top ways to make your first penny on your blog. Ads are easy to integrate into your content and don’t disturb the process of the website. Some ads include AdSense or media.net and more.
These two platforms give you a small code that you put on your website, and soon, based on your traffic, you can make up to thousands of dollars.
Others like Adthrive and mediavine demand thousands of traffic every month. And they pay more.
The challenge with Ads is that if you don’t have traffic, then it is a garbage that you carry around.
Even though, Ads are a way to blogs that make money, they are not that useful.
- Sponsored Posts
Most blogs used to make money from side bar ads from advertisers and through sponsored posts, as a primary income source.
These days these are considered a waste of space, and ads are better income sources.
At the same time sponsored posts are good, as these are based on negotiation and would pay fast. This works when advertisers contact you to post on your blogs. This could be ads or a post. This is similar to guest post but with money. You probably put their content on first page, and their post will take your readers to advertiser’s’ sign up page.
- Selling Personal Products
Selling your own products is definitely the best way to make a lot of money. A blog that makes money surely should consider a personal product. You should also consider a way to help others to sell your product as well.
Products in health niche are priced lower due to a competition. Many people are also doubtful of buying health products although they are loyal followers. The market is said to be full of fraud. Money and financial market products are priced higher. It seems that this market needs knowledge and it might show if you don’t know what you are doing.
And some of the people in this blog market are with good experience in the industry.
- Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is being a broker that connects potential buyers to the seller. It is the seller who will finish the selling process and once the purchase is completed, you will get share of the sale.
Most of the time the seller will inform you the percentage of your commission. There are products that also pay you a certain amount of money.
Affiliate marketing is a good alternative to make money if you are not interested to make your own. Often, you may find a known course or product that is better known than yours. And in that case, it makes sense to sell other’s product than your own.
Many bloggers started with affiliate marketing before creating their products. Only by following the results, they create personal products that the market needs.
I have come across affiliate products with 100 percent commission. Some sellers only want to advertise their products.
Most products will give you up to 60 percent or more commission.
Blogs That Make Money: Important
There are things that matter in affiliate marketing.
- Cookie
a cookie saves some information for later use. For example, let’s assume the cookie period from the affiliate is 10 days. If Mr. x clicks your product and didn’t buy it until next month, then you will lose the sale. Only you will get paid for purchases in the 10 days period. This is an issue for affiliates from amazon.
This is also useful to know from whose link Mr. x bought. For example, if Mr x click the Amazon product though the affiliate link on your website but decided to go look another website and click affiliate link of amazon then you may lose your sale.
In order to get paid on affiliate sites, then you need to find products that pay well.
There are thins that you need to do before being an affiliate.
- Buy it first. This is a hard thing to do. But this is ethical. Many blogs lose trust in selling bad products that they barely tested. You at least should get it for free from the company before you tell someone to buy it.
- Don’t trick and confuse- many blogs break this rule. Tricking people to buy something that they don’t need is bad. Knowing the product doesn’t solve their problems but it only makes you money is a bad idea.
How to Find Affiliate Products to Promote for blogs that make money?
Click bank is a good place to begin. Register and go directly to marketplace link on the top. Click your market on the left. In the example below I chose green products. You can choose marketing, health or Art or any other niche.
- Next use the settings to identify the best products for you to promote.
- The first criteria are gravity. Gravity shows how well the product is selling. 100 could be competitive and o could be hard to sell. So, I go between 20 and 100.
- Next choose the geography of buyers. I chose English
- Make sure that your product has tools that will help you promote.
- The easiest way to find is to search your niche+ the word affiliate. For example, health affiliate or fashion affiliate.
Then you register and get a special affiliate link. You put the link on your blog. And for anyone who buys through that link, you get paid.
How to Help People to Buy to Create Blogs that Make Money
- Review
Since marketing becomes deceiving, people chose to believe other’s experience and product review to decide to buy or not.
It is similar in amazon. How many times you saw amazon comments and decided to buy. Or how many times you went to the comments section? Probably few times more than you could imagine.
People believe reviews.
Problem: Articulate the problem. Why would one need a new product?
Story: After testing the product, you can start from how the product helped you change your conditions. This means you need to illustrate your problems before you purchased the product. And you need to show how the product changed your life.
Action: After you interest people into trying the product, the next step is to ask people to take action. ‘Click the link below to learn more.’
The recommendation page should be a guide on the menu. Instead of linking on every page or finding links every time you need to link affiliate, it is easy to create your recommendation page with sub categories.
For example, if you are in the health market, you could create products for yoga, weight loss, and diet. You can include at least 2 products that your recommend in each sub category.
Write a short review and description and link for each product.
How to Identify Products That People Need
There are many ways you can know where people like it or not.
- Check search engine auto suggestions. This are keywords that google, or Pinterest or amazon suggest you when you enter a single keyword.
- Amazon best seller and clickbank are also best place to start.
- Look in to groups such as Facebook groups and forums.
- Create questioners and surveys. Ask people on line.
A blog that Makes Money: Where Do You Sell
- On your blog
Selling on your blog includes writing a review or a blog post and Include an affiliate link. You need to add links at places that seems necessary. You need to make a different colour or underline the link to make it distinguishable.
Once you collect email, it is easy to send email to your audience.
- Opt-in
Opt-in is where the money is. You probably have seen register here or enter email to claim eBook. That is a way to acquire your email to send you products for you to purchase later.
That way you also can sell products.
Opt-ins start with some free stuff and gift with it. Once the reader enters their email, then they will automatically get the free stuff. A consequential email will follow every day. At least half of the email will be a sales email about your affiliate or personal product.
Summary, Blogs that make money
Blogs that make money appeal to the audience. they solve problems. These also create a relationship with the audience. They create continuous value for free. and they ask for people to purchase their premium products.
Blogs that make money don’t throw products and wait for people to buy. They work on it.
Blogs that make money first create value. They are a brand, not a business. They give before they receive it.
Blogs that make money necessarily don’t have a lot of audience. They use the list that they have.