Blogging for Money
While Blogging to make website income is a path that takes hard work and great topics, it can still be a fantastic source of income for your website. There are a couple main ways a blog post can help your income, which we will briefly outline.
Blogging for Website Traffic
If you sell a product or service online then blogging for more site traffic could be a game changer for your online business. Let’s go a bit more in detail. Anytime you make a post to your blog area you are potentially driving additional traffic to your web presence. More traffic means more sales in the long run. You could also use your blog posts as an opportunity to increase “targeted” keywords throughout your website to help with Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Keep in mind that search engines often prefer blogs with regular updates.
Affiliate Blogging
Affiliate blogging is another great way to tackle making extra income with your website. For those unfamiliar with affiliate relationships, it’s usually a quick set up and allows you to earn commission from sales or leads. You can many times find affiliate opportunities at the bottom of websites or join a large network with a search for “affiliate network.” Networks allow you to select from large pools of businesses eager to throw you commission in exchange for helping market their business. Networks also give you the chance to easily shop around and find the best products or services coupled with the highest commission. Something to note, using affiliate relationships for your own discount is almost always a violation of their terms of service or TOS.
A simple post or review on a product or service with a concise sales pitch for reader action is a good place to start. You should always disclose affiliate relationships when reviewing products online. Not giving the reader notice, especially in product or service reviews, is something that will cause you to lose their trust.
Blogging with Ads
Blogging in hopes of visitors viewing or clicking ads is another way to make additional money from your website. If you don’t have the time or expertise to network and find advertisers there are many companies that handle that for you. The larger options being Google Adwords and inline text ads.
They have different ways of displaying ads. Adwords is commonly in an ad block form in the sidebar or content. Inline text ads are displayed as linked words within your writing. The word “insurance” could be selected from one of your sentences to link to an insurance agency. You might find in content style ads or Google Adwords to be damaging to the feel and flow of your website. It’s important to take a long look at your website and content after incorporating any advertising options to make sure it’s right for you.
Website Experiment
These methods can be mixed and matched across your spectrum of content. Be sure to experiment with your ads to see what works best in your niche. Certain topics can thrive on one type of website income and fail miserably with another. Keep in mind blogging takes time. You have to take the time to write, but more importantly the time to build a strong reader base. Good traffic is king in all areas of online income.
