Once you have your blog, there’s bound to be a point where you want to start earning from it. There are loads of ways you can do it, but usually people opt to sell advertising space or use a program to monetise their visitors such as Adsense.
Now, whilst there’s nothing wrong with these, there are loads of ways to monetise your blog that shouldn’t be overlooked. I’ve given some examples of these below:
Sell a theme…
If you run a blog, I’m assuming you’re running it on Wordpress. If this is the case, then I’m going to hope that, as I suggested in the ‘Tips for a Unique Design’ post, you have a custom theme, or at least one that is premium.
If this is the case, then you could consider selling the theme you use. If you’re using a premium theme, then it’s probable the company will have an affiliate scheme. I know WooThemes and Thesis do anyway! I can understand that if you have a custom theme, you may not want to start selling this, and if so then you could always make a new theme ‘inspired’ by yours. That way you retain a unique theme, whilst your customers get a cool looking theme!
Review Posts
Another way to get some decent income is to do paid reviews. Personally, I’ve done two paid reviews and both have gone pretty well. It basically consists of you doing a post on your blog, telling your readers about a product or service.
Now, whilst this may be a cool way to make money, you must remember not to overdo it. If you start posting too many reviews then your readers will undoubtedly get bored and stop visiting. This is the 70th post on Teenius, and only two of those have been reviews, so that gives you some idea of how infrequently you should be posting them!
Membership Sites
Now, this one is a bit different. What I’m saying is to actually make a membership based section of your website. People would pay a certain amount to get access, and then you would award them with bonuses. These bonuses could be anything from eBooks to personal blogging lessons to extra posts!
This isn’t a method used by too many people, but even so it’s important to get it right. The bonuses you offer must actually be valuable and exclusive, and as well as this you need to set the initial pricing right. That said, if you get it all right you could be in for some serious cash!
Get Creative!
How about taking an old idea and putting a creative twist on it to create a new way to monetise your blog?! Due to the vagueness of this point (as it really could be just about anything!), I can’t really tell you what to do, but I’ll give you an example…
Michael Dunlop’s ‘IncomeDiary.com’ has a brilliant page on it called ‘Blogging Resources’. This page is just full of Michael’s affiliate links, but he’s created a page that will undoubtedly help many people find new products, and especially help newbies to set up their first website. It’s this kind of innovation that is bound to aid you in making money!
What about you?
How do you monetise your websites? Have I missed anything off that you could add to the list? Do you want to leave some criticism? Whatever you want to say, I’m always happy to see people leave comments, so feel free to do so!
Attention!
If you are participating in my recent contest, this is of interest to you. Due to a slight misunderstanding, LabTweets are no longer sponsors of the ‘Best Comment’ part of the contest. That said, I have replaced the prize with $20 via Paypal, so there’s still plenty of incentive! Good luck!
Apart from selling ads, I would like to use clickbank products to sell on my blog. However,I prefer to build readership before selling something on my blog.
Yeah – it’s always best to focus on traffic more than revenue. As for clickbank, isn’t that just affiliate? Do you do anything to make your selling techniques different and creative? It could really help!
At the moment, I don’t really sell anything apart from displaying adsense. However, I was using clickbank before (which is really good, if you don’t have any product to sell, so you can choose one from there). To promote products, I used PPC campaigns and writting and submiting articles to article directories.
Clickbank is definately a good program to use – did you find yourself making a decent amount of sales?
I don’t have Adsense account. I never experienced it.
But money sometimes matters, so I started to monetize my blog a bit.. then I started writing paid reviews.. but I was afraid .. whether my readers will accept this kind of article.. but outputs were positive .. kudos to them..
I also prefer selling ebooks and themes! Gonna try’em.. cheers! Nice article..
Glad you found the article useful!
As you say, paid reviews can annoy the reader as they usually aren’t very interesting to read. I think readers will react well to one or two, but if you start posting them weekly or something then they’ll probably get bored!
Exactly Simon.. I leave lot of gap between two paid reviews.. my goal is to make a paid review look like a normal review.. though it is difficult to make readers believe!
Yeah, true. I think the best possible thing to do is to try and make it look like a normal post, but that is really, really hard. :p
Your readers would accept the reviews, as long as the reviews are honest. As well as putting the good sites in your reviews, concentrate on disadvantages as well. Also, make sure to use the product yourself, so you can produce better reviews.
True, but I still feel that if you post too many reviews (even if they are honest AND of a good product), your readers will get bored eventually and leave.
i have done paid reviews earlier and they definitely do well and Infolinks pays me well enough to buy Vanilla Ice cream
Glad to hear your paid reviews go well; it’s definately not like that for everyone
You have given very effective idea for have money from blog in other ways. We can earn money by following these tips.
Nice post.
I think if you have a high traffic you can do quite well by selling affiliate products. As you listed the review posts method, that also is a good way to get some money rolling in. Of course you need a good PR and high traffic blog for anyone to even consider buying reviews posts.
Yeah, I think if you have high traffic then it’s possible to earn most ways, especially if it’s quality traffic you have that’s likely to convert in to sales.
These days, the membership sites idea inspired many bloggers because of it’s huge success.
There is one more interesting thing to earn. Writing and selling ebooks is one of the best alternative since many top bloggers are following that.
Selling eBooks and themes is definately a good way of making money online, but I think the market for ebooks is reducing as most the books people write nowadays seem to be useless
As for the membership, personally I think it’s a really good idea. Not to give anything away here, but you should definately stay tuned here at Teenius as there might be some changes soon!
I am a regular visitor of this blog. But I am not a frequent commentator here. Surely will put my feedback from now on.
And there are still some ppl who are earning a lot by selling course materials. But we need to spend more time for doing that.
Yeah – I personally feel it’s a great way of earning, and hopefully should be trying something similar here on Teenius pretty soon!
To be honest, I haven’t done any of them till now. But I really have plans for selling a theme and review posts.. foh sure, Selling a theme really works.. as far as i know.
Really informative article for new bees, good work Simon !
Thanks Enk! Let me know how the theme selling goes… I really love some of your designs so would love to know how you get on!
Hmm.. Nice Article!
How about winning a contest?
That is a good way of earning extra income!!
True, but I’m not going to include that in the list as you’re never certain when a contest will come up. At least with the above you have slight control over when you earn, but with a contest it’s dependant on other people holding the contests AND you actually winning them!
I use my blogs to promote my services. They drive in work and act as my portfolio. It’s not passive income, but I generate a lot.
Ah, another great point, Corey! Thanks for the comment!
I have not tried selling the theme, that is really a good idea.but i ave done paid reviews occasionally. Excellent post.
I am first time visitor to your blog, your blog is really good.
Hi Ruchi!
Firstly, welcome to Teenius and thanks for leaving a comment, as well as the compliment. It’s greatly apprecited!
Glad you found the post helpful and I hope that you give a couple of these a try and that they make you some nice money!
As you can see, I have just started with banner advertising. Come the new year, I will be breaking put much more….some quite unique I think.
Brilliant, I look forward to those.
By the way, have you tried selling your adverts via BuySellAds.com? I’ve recently signed up and plan to start using it soon: it looks really effective!
Nope, but I my look into them.
You need the subscribe to comments plugin.
yeah, I agree I need to get it, but at the moment I’m unable to due to hosting issues! That said, the support is brilliant so I’m hoping there’ll be a solution very soon!
You have shown really some better external ways to making money. I will think about that soon.
Awesome, glad to hear it helped!
Can You Plz Tell Me How to Review or where Can i Review for something to get paid???
A great place to find people who want reviews is the DigitalPoint forums!
but in paid reveiws hw they pay us nd is there any gurantee they will pay for the reviews
i just saw the forum there is no gurantee that they will pay me it is just a forum not a site which tell u that it is a paid review nd will get money???
You go in to the ‘Buy, Sell and Trade’, then go on ‘Link Sales’. You should see some threads advertising paid reviews that you can use for examples.
And, yes, you are guaranteed to get paid. When I did one from there, I asked for the money before I published the post.
If you are being paid to write a review then be sure to let your visitors know that during the post!
Your follows will trust what you tell them so don’t betray that trust by trying to deceive them.
Every one want to earn money. Its icing on the cake for them that they are having money by blogging.
Haha, nice comparison Kamal!
many of the top MMO blogs are now more a paid review blogs, lastly getting bored and visit those blogs rarely if there is something useful post to read.
i personally dont like to visit blogs with many paid reviews. Adsense, affiliate links are ok but less reviews plz
Very true! I agree with what you’re saying, and like I say you should always moderate how many paid reviews you do on your blog, as it could really annoy your readers if you do it too much!
I used to do a lot of paid reviews on my old blog, but I don’t think they would fit with the new site. I am not sure yet what methods I will use to make money on it, will have to see how it goes.
I myself really feel the post was very useful