How to monetize your blog

Posted on

September 8, 2017

Earning money from your blog isn’t a difficult issue. As I have been asked many times about this, I’m summarizing some points in this regard.

Ads

If you’re a premium user of WordPress.com, you can run their ads. Unless you have good traffic, this might not generate a lot of revenue. Please refer to my previous post “Do you display ads on your blog?”. Users of Blogger, WordPress.org and other platforms have more options of ads to run – such as Google ads or Amazon’s. Just be careful that a lot of ads might have negative impact.

You can also sell advertising spaces on your blog. For example, you can add an image in one of the widget areas letting people know that this space is available for ad slot. This image can be linked to your contact page – and those interested in purchasing this ad slot can settle things with you. They’ll need to provide you with the required banner image for ads, which you can place in the widget areas. I’m doing the same – check here for details.

Referrals

There are a lot of affiliate programs that pay good commission (cash or non-cash). For example, Amazon, WordPress, Dropbox, … You can easily display the referring links on your website or use them within your posts.

Re-blogging

You can also sell a reblog or a post about a product/service. However, this depends on the numbers of readers your blog has and their interests. Again, be careful, too much of reblogging might have negative affect on the reputation of your blog.

Other

Your blog is the best place to sell your own products or services. For example, writing, programming, translation, …

Don’t forget that with time and more traffic, your domain name could worth a fortune. I sold one of my websites once for a good amount of money due to the reputation of its name!

—

If this resonated with you, let’s stay in touch. No spam.

Join 3,701 other subscribers

Filed under category:

Blogging & Digital Life

Tagged with:

publishing

Comments

47 responses to “How to monetize your blog”

September 8, 2017

Pooja Thapliyal

Quite informative. Thankyou for posting this.

Reply
1. September 9, 2017
  
  Mohamad Al Karbi
  
  You’re most welcome, Pooja. Glad it was of a help
  
  Reply
September 8, 2017

chiomaokoyeakpawusi

This is a nice post. I sell ad space on my blog which has improved my blog earnings.
Thanks for sharing!

Reply
1. September 9, 2017
  
  Mohamad Al Karbi
  
  You’re most welcome, Chiomaokoye. Glad to know that it’s working fine for you. Good luck. Hope it’ll for me too!
  
  Reply
September 8, 2017

lovetocook101

Initially when I began with my cooking blog https://lovetocook101.wordpress.com my goal was to make money. Since then it has become more of a blogging passion, trying my best to get my readers, traditional, and new recipes each week. It is a time consuming full time job! And yes why shouldn’t our hard work be profitable. The hardest steps when becoming a blogger is generating traffic, so I joined discussion groups on Facebook. Such as promote your blog, another time consuming effort to generate traffic, this did increase my stats, but again did not effect or help in any way to make $$. So I ventured out into the wild web… and searched on how to make some extra $$ I found sights that help you integrate ads. These are called affiliates. I said why not! Even though I am aware I do not generate much traffic I crossed my fingers that these companies would approve me. And so I began to apply to companies which I felt would go good with a cooking blog. In response to my requests to become an affiliate I was happy to be approved by 5 on 10. You can find my affiliates on the bottom of each of my blog posts. Yes I had to put them in myself this was a great challenge through widgets seeing that I’m no computer genius. So in response to your post Mohammad, there is much homework to be done a lot of time to invest, and Hellas maybe one day I will have 5000 followers, and eventually become profitable. For the moment I do my best to get out there continuing with my cooking passion! All efforts, all input, is much appreciated!

Reply
1. September 9, 2017
  
  Listen to your Heart
  
  Hi I am also struggling to promote my blog as I want more and more readers to come and read what I write my main concern is to help people deal with real life situations and what will eventually make them happy so your reply was very informative and will try out what you have advised Thanks a lot
  
  Reply
2. September 9, 2017
  
  Mohamad Al Karbi
  
  I’m really enjoying reading your experience here. It’s very helpful. Thank you, Anastasia. Yes, it’s not an easy thing to build a blog reputation at the beginning. But I believe things will be easier after some time. For the advice, most of WordPress users check posts through WP reader not through the website itself. So, unless you have good traffic from outside WordPress, I think you should put the affiliate links within your posts themselves every now and then. P.S., you have very wonderful site…
  
  Reply
  1. September 9, 2017
    
    lovetocook101
    
    Thank you Mohammad
September 8, 2017

williamrablan

Definitely something to think about. Thanks for the post.

Reply
1. September 9, 2017
  
  Mohamad Al Karbi
  
  Thank you William. I believe earning money here isn’t difficult and good idea as much as it’s not bothering readers
  
  Reply
September 8, 2017

-Eugenia

Excellent information and thank you for sharing, Mohamad. Are there any guidelines for displaying these ads, meaning those where you’re selling spaces?

Reply
1. September 9, 2017
  
  Mohamad Al Karbi
  
  Thank you, Franci. Do you mean my own spaces? Nothing special. I only mentioned the size of banners on the Offers page. But in general, it depends on your preferences. That’s, you might prefer a specific type of sites to be displayed on yours – not gambling’s for example. Also, the dimension and size of the banner you want to display. The less in size the better for loading…
  
  Reply
  1. September 10, 2017
    
    -Eugenia
    
    Thank you!
September 9, 2017

Listen to your Heart

Very informative Thank you for posting this

Reply
1. September 9, 2017
  
  Mohamad Al Karbi
  
  Thank you, Sonia. Very glad that you found it useful. You may also like to check my other post: How to drive traffic to your website
  
  Reply
  1. September 9, 2017
    
    Listen to your Heart
    
    Ya I will check on that I seriously need to start working on that Thanks for letting me know about that Take care Have a wonderful day
  2. September 9, 2017
    
    Mohamad Al Karbi
    
    You’re most welcome. If I can be of any assistance, please don’t hesitate…
  3. September 9, 2017
    
    Listen to your Heart
    
    Thank you so much Its always so nice to meet such wonderful people like you Any day if I can be of any help to you please shout
September 9, 2017

mainepaperpusher

Mohamad, how timely this post is! A friend of mine who is just starting on WordPress asked if it’s possible to make money by selling things on her blog. I will pass this on to her! All the best to you, my friend!

Reply
1. September 11, 2017
  
  Mohamad Al Karbi
  
  Thank you very much Linda for your support. I’m very glad it was helpful. I confirmed it with WordPress so that every thing mentioned above is in line with their policies and terms
  
  Reply
  1. September 11, 2017
    
    mainepaperpusher
    
    Perfect! When we have a bit of time, I’d like to ask you about WordPress themes that actually show the featured image correctly. Apparently, my theme has been cutting them off since I started and I never realized it!
  2. September 11, 2017
    
    Mohamad Al Karbi
    
    They are many. I’ll be glad to help. I’ll check and send you some by email. Any time, at your service.
  3. September 11, 2017
    
    mainepaperpusher
    
    You are too good to me, my friend. No hurry at all. I wonder why WP would have themes that would cut off featured pics in the first place. Silly WP!!! ❤️
  4. September 11, 2017
    
    Mohamad Al Karbi
    
    Cropping featured image is preferred by some. Personally, I prefer they make it optional and on specific pages only 🙂
September 10, 2017

Melissa A.

For now, I’m just trying to get back into the writing groove I used to have. This was a great post, but personally, I don’t think it’s worth trying to monetize a blog until you have a decent amount of daily visitors. I think this is one of the first things advertisers look at – your stats. I’ve tried affiliate marketing in the past, but again, a person won’t make any money unless they have enough traffic to see the ads. And are using the correct ads for their target audience. Just my two-cents! 🙂

Reply
1. September 11, 2017
  
  Mohamad Al Karbi
  
  I totally agree, Melissa. I believe the key is to have good traffic from outside WordPress too. Blogs on WordPress have two types of visitors: WordPress users and Outsiders. WordPress users mostly read your posts only – affiliate links within the posts could do it here. Outsiders are visiting your main website – banner ads could be better here.
  
  Reply
September 11, 2017

shatterthefourthwall

Very helpful – nice and simply put for us to research the parts that we might just consider. Would you recommend wordpress premium or would you go for an alternative?

Reply
1. September 11, 2017
  
  Mohamad Al Karbi
  
  Thank you, Maddie. With paid subscription, you get a domain name and extra storage. With premium’s, you get some more features… So, it depends on your needs. However, I usually recommend the upgrade after some time of testing. The best alternative to WordPress as I know is Blogger. Some argue that Tumblr is the one. You may check my other post: https://mohamadkarbi.com/blogger-vs-wordpress/
  
  Reply
  1. September 11, 2017
    
    shatterthefourthwall
    
    Great – thank you! Really appreciate it.
September 14, 2017

dawnwairimu

This is good advice, thank you!

Reply
1. September 14, 2017
  
  Mohamad Al Karbi
  
  You’re most welcome, Dawn. Glad it was useful.
  
  Reply