There are a good number of options out there for you if you’re looking for some reliable ways to monetise a blog.
Not everyone is writing for money, but if you are writing a blog, there’s no harm at all in making a business out of it at the same time.
Let’s look at some common ways of monetising a blog and then we’ll talk about affiliate marketing.
Types of Monetisation Suitable for a Blog
We’re going to be talking about using affiliate marketing on your blog since that is generally the best way to monetise it but before we go there, let’s mention some other ways.
These include:
- Affiliate marketing
- Display ads
- Email list building (with the intention of pitching offers to subscribers)
- Selling your own product such as a book you’ve written
- Sponsored ads on your site
- Coaching
Of the various different ways to monetise a blog, affiliate marketing is definitely the best. It is lucrative and doesn’t annoy the website visitor in the way that ugly, blatant ads do.
All affiliate marketing really means for anyone who might be a bit in the dark about it, is that you are promoting products from other companies (in this case to your blog viewers) using a special link that is tracked to you so that when someone clicks on what we call your affiliate link and makes a purchase, you earn a commission.
When you use affiliate marketing on a blog you can keep it very organic and natural. This means not making it look salesy or obvious.
When you write good, informative stuff, it is perfectly acceptable to direct people via an affiliate link to something that you recommend, something that they are looking for information on, or at least something similar.
How to Monetise a Blog Using Affiliate Links
A blog monetised by the use of affiliate links (more commonly people just say ‘affiliate marketing’) is a great business model.
It works very well for those who know how to implement an effective strategy. This often comes down to being able, not only to reach an audience so that you’ve got eyes on your offer(s), but also being able to sell. Or we might say, being able to market.
Now in the case of a blog, you are blogging about an interest you have and are sharing your knowledge and passion about your particular niche with a target audience. That means, people who are interested in what you have to say and potentially, in what you are selling.
Essentially, you are helping your readers/site visitors in two ways:
- By the content and information you provide
- By related products that you believe in and recommend to them
But monetising a blog with affiliate marketing does not mean that you should have too many links all over the place or that every article you write should in some way be a sales pitch.
Rather, what you want to do is have different categories of posts such as:
- Informative posts
- Guides, tutorials or ‘how to’ posts
- Review posts
You could reserve most of your affiliate links to your review posts and have one main review post where you promote what you consider to be your top recommendation within your niche.
You can frequently refer your readers to this post which will be the one that contains the affiliate links.
In this way, not every page has affiliate links but many pages lead to one with said links.
Also, your affiliate links should be in places that look natural and that don’t break up the flow of what you are writing.
For example, you wouldn’t want to suddenly say something like this in the middle of an article about outdoor cooking:
‘Hey! By the way, you should buy this awesome BBQ; it’s amazing! Follow this link to purchase.’
Rather, you could simply say the name of it in passing and point out that it is very effective or that you have used it before and when naming it, you could highlight the text and put your affiliate link in.
The point is, never give too blatant calls to action or tell someone to buy something.
Bear in mind also that you need to have an Affiliate Disclosure at a very visible place at the top of your blog or near the top of every article and in the case of Amazon, right before the first Amazon affiliate link.
This kind of blog will be liked by Google; you will rank higher than if your site is to money focused. Search engines reward websites that provide what people want and let’s face it, people don’t want every site to be a shop of some sort.
Examples of Blogs Monetised by Affiliate Marketing
So for example, maybe you have created a website that is about writing and encouraging writes with the challenges of a novel and you talk about things such as how to write their first book, how to get a front cover sorted out, how to get something published, how to market a self-published book etc.
Now with such a site, there are many things that you could recommend as an affiliate to your readers.
You could talk about the importance of a good writing space and recommend a good quality table from Amazon for example. Or a specific, comfortable and efficient keyboard, mouse and chair, and many other things.
You see, most things now a days can be turned into a niche for an online business in affiliate marketing with a blog.
And I don’t need to tell you that what really leads to the success of a blog is that you enjoy it! You enjoy doing blogging. You like talking about your niche and helping others out in the process, regardless of the money aspect and whether or how much revenue you generate.
In time, a blog with a good use of affiliate links will do well. The more content you get out there, the more traffic you will get.
However, that’s not to say that you don’t need to do a bit of keyword research, but that is getting off topic. If you’re already a blogger and wondering what’s the best way to monetise a blog, then you probably already know about keywords, SEO, etc.
Another example is a blog on gardening. Maybe that’s what you’re into and that’s what you like to blog about.
You share many things about types of plants, equipment, tools and all sorts of other related facts and ideas.
You can easily monetise this kind of blog again by adding review posts on gardening gear and using affiliate links.
Affiliate Programs you can use to Monetise your Blog
There are a huge number of companies out there that have an affiliate program.
The issue is that many of them offer only a small commission.
Clickbank is one you’ve probably heard of that offers big, generous commissions although I’m not the best fan of their actual products.
Most people go for Amazon because of how big and popular it is, but you won’t get big commissions from them. However, if your niche is something tech related, you could sell laptops which would give you quite a good commission considering how expensive they can be.
Other options out there are JVZoo and Digistore24. Or DJI, supposing you were writing about drones.
You’ll usually find that whatever your niche is, you can either go with a big marketplace like Amazon or Clickbank, or you can find a company specific to your niche that has an affiliate program for you to join.
I hope this has been useful and if you’d like to say or ask anything, you’re more than welcome to leave a comment for us below.
Happy blogging!