Making money online is always a very popular topic. The general advice for making money from a blog is to clutter it with ads, ruin the user experience by putting the ads within the content and making the ads look like the content itself.
Another suggested way of making money with a blog is to collect e-mail addresses from your readers and spam them with as many affiliate products as possible in hope that they will buy something before they get enough and unsubscribe.
The never ending chase for page views
As you know, I haven’t chosen any of the two above. I don’t like monetizing my blog with banner ads and I do not think you should spam your subscribers. Until now I have monetized my blog content by recommending products that I personally use.
Earning money from ads on your blog is a complicated strategy. You’ve got to publish new material consistently, attract lots of links and readers in hope that after some time you have enough page views to attract advertisers and sell ads.
It is a never ending process. Every day you’re starting from scratch. You mustn’t quit producing new content as you cannot let your page views drop as that will mean less money from advertisements.
Monetizing by selling your own product
The best option for monetizing your blog is to invest your time in creating something that will provide enduring value and bring you continuous revenue. Create the content once, put it in a permanent form and sell it over and over again. Putting your work into a permanent form is very important as it will allow you not to keep recreating your value over and over again.
The best way of putting your content into a permanent form is to create your own product. Your product will provide value even when you are not physically present and it will alow you to take a break from posting new content once in a while. It will basically let you stop trading your hours for dollars.
Next step: To introduce a paid product
This is the first article in a series of monetizing your blog by creating your own product articles. I plan to introduce my first product shortly and this series will explain my thinking behind it, and will show you steps I am taking as I am publishing this product.
My product is an e-book that will show how I use Twitter. It is for anyone interested in getting on and using Twitter to build authority, build traffic to a site and get customers via Twitter.
The next article in the series will explain why I’ve chosen to publish my Twitter advice as an ebook, and not as a membership site. Please subscribe to my RSS / email updates below to stay tuned.
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Really looking forward to seeing the future posts. Bring ‘em on.
Great post! Looking forward to your future posts!
People like Dean Hunt doesn’t monetize his site either. He makes money outside of the blogosphere. He brands himself well, and people pay him to wear t-shirts with ads on it to talk in front of thousands of people.
@Kai Lo – Thanks, it seems interesting, I will check out his site.
a little off topic, but your site is #1 on Google for “how to make my blog”
@Kai Lo – Yeah, that’s my third biggest keyword in terms of how much traffic it brings. “How to make A blog” still brings some 8 times more traffic so I am looking to get Blogger down from spot number one and take the first position myself hehe.
@Miguel Wickert – Stay tuned for the rest of the series hope I will be able to give you some ideas.
Marko,
I like your style, an ebook and not a membership site? You’ve got my attention, especially when high profile bloggers, as of late have been talking about building, growing and monetizing a membership site.
A neat point Babara, realizing what people are most attracted to on your site and then building upon it, well done. I wrote an ebook but haven’t released it yet. I’ll be watching to see how you handle this Marko, watching and learning.
Cheers,
-Mig
Good point on the short-sighted marketeers who just bait & burn their customers/subscribers. I see this being promoted in most places & these idiots wonder what to do next when the money runs dry.
This seems to be the future for websites/blogs in providing a service, i.e paid subscription to a (decent) forum, selling software people need, good quality ebooks etc.
If you’re not to good at writing or software development, there are places you can hire people and let them know what you need. Just research the going rates and quality of service provided. The investment could pay for itself many times over.
Although there are loop-holes that could be exploited by the ne’er-do-wells of the online variety, i.e. uploading your ebook/software to torrent, securing these assets would also be needed.
Excellent post.
I personally hate blogs with full of advertisements and other unnecessary widgets that can easily give readers headaches! and while spamming your subscribers with as many affiliate products as possible i like your approach of recommending products that you personally use, it also helps gaining trust from your readers.
I’ve been thinking about publishing books with my photography. It’s in the early, early planning process.
I think as far as affiliate marketing goes, I agree that you should advertise products that you have or would use only. It maintains your credibility with your readers.
Look forward to hearing more about your ebook!
~ Kristi
I love what you’re advocating here Marko. I try my best to write at least one article per week and have also been planning on putting ads on my site when my traffic grows enough, but this article reminded me of what I should really be focusing on.
I have managed to sell some website templates over at SitePoint and now I’m working on creating a Wordpress theme just like Thesis. I know it’s going to take some time but I’m willing to work through it.
Thank you for this very inspiring article.
@Raymond Selda – …and I believe that creating a great product yourself will be much better for you than just promoting another product via banner ads on your site. Thanks for the nice comment!
The next step to making money online is creating your own product. I am learning as much as I can right now about marketing so when I’m ready I too will have a product of my own to promote.
Great article Marko. I’m looking forward to reading the other in the series. I still love your down-to-earth approach, and I’ll probably by your e-book
I havn’t really focused on making money from my blog as much as just growing it at the moment, but am in the process of creating my first product for sale. It is definately a challenging but fun process!
@Barbra Sundquist – Very nice story Barbra, thanks for sharing! Looking at what attracts people to your site is definitely a great way of knowing what there is demand for and what you may be able to redevelop into a larger series of articles, maybe into a whole new blog, or even into a paid product. Great job!