Confessions of a Six Figure Professional Blogger

Top 10 Blog Monetization Strategies, Ranked In Order

View Comments | Posted In Make Money by David

You want to make money with your blogging efforts. But, how? Which method is the best one?

In this article, I outline what I believe are the top 10 ways to monetize a blog site. And I’m also going to do my best to rank them in order of workability.

1. Membership Programs

The “freemium” model is a huge and growing trend in online income right now. You provide a lot of quality content for free to your audience, and you provide a premium-level program to those willing to pay for it. You charge a monthly membership and that provides continuity and a steady income stream.

Any blog can be turned into a “freemium” business model, and I outline it in more detail in my report, The Future of Blogging Income. Download it for more details.

2. Information Products (Of Your Own)

The selling of knowledge is HUGE. If you build up your position in your market, you can then sell quality information to that market. This can take the form of e-books, audio, videos, or all of the above. You can package them up or just sell them digitally. If you author the product yourself (recommended), then you keep 100% of the profit.

3. Services/Consulting/Coaching

Another great way to make money with a blog is an indirect one. Use the blog to build reputation. Build a brand and build an audience. Then, you make your money by directing that attention into offline services, consulting and/or coaching. This can be quite lucrative. The drawback is that you are, again, trading time for money. So, it is only scalable up to a point.

4. Speaking Gigs

If you become well known as an expert in your niche, you can turn that into speaking gigs which you get paid for. Chris Brogan does this with his blog. Whether he makes money directly with his blog or not (I honestly don’t know), I know he gets paid to speak at various events.

5. Product Sales

If you have a physical product line to offer, you can use the blog as a face for your online store. Sell whatever you want. For example, if you are an artist, you can use an online store to sell art pieces and a blog to build up audience and a following.

6. Affiliate Programs

Affiliate marketing is a great way to build up your income. You offer the products of others to your audience and get paid when they buy it. In fact, any time you recommend a relevant product or service to your audience, check to see if they have an affiliate program. If so, sign up and use your affiliate link. After all, if you’d recommend it to your readers anyway, you might as well make a little cut if they happen to buy.

7. Direct Ad Sales

Banner ads and in-text ads are another popular way to make money. In fact, it is usually the first method you think of. However, if you’re going to go this route, selling the ads directly will result in more cash in your pocket. As I mentioned in my video evaluation of Jim On Light, make a media kit for your blog. As for pricing, I would recommend you shoot for twice your eCPM from Google Adsense. Why twice? Because that’s what Google is charging (they take half).

8. Banner Advertising

OK, if you don’t want to sell your own ads, you can obviously still run network advertising from a variety of different sources. Personally, I am using Adsense, Kontera, IDG and a little bit of Tribal Fusion.

You can also direct sell ads and use network ads as filler for unused inventory. It is done all the time.

9. Paid Posts

Yes, you can get paid to review products and sites on your blog. Sites like PayPerPost and ReviewMe are popular options. I’ve seen some blogs sell this option directly. When doing this, it is important to disclose the fact that it is a paid review. It is also important that you maintain your integrity and never give a positive review unless you’re really feeling it.

10. Job Boards

Some sites (like ProBlogger) have job boards. It does work for some sites, however it probably won’t work for a majority of blogs out there.

11. Build It & Sell It

OK, I’ve thrown in an eleventh one as a bonus. :)

You can build up a blog, build an audience, then turn around and sell the thing. In fact, some people actually buy blogs which are dead or are vastly underutliized by their owners. They’ll then put their marketing skills to work, build the SEO backlinks, build the readership. Then, they turn around and sell it at a profit. It can work. I’ve never done it myself personally, but I’ve read of others who have.

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  • ryan_2
    Which business model do you think will work? Those that offer free access or those that offer free to premium (freemiums)?
    Microsoft should be getting worried about Google’s free stuff:
    http://bit.ly/bc6FBW
  • All are some best blog monetizing option. I prefer google adsense for monetizing my blog .
  • I would agree with that order for the most part. I might switch a couple a around, but that is just based on my experience and obviously people succeed in different areas more than others. I particulary have enjoyed my most sucess and have been most fullfilled with product creation and direct sales.
  • Ivan
    You forgot one approach that I would actually list as #1 in order of priority - it is a Cost Per Deal advertising model which stands out separately from traditional advertising.

    The main supplier of campaigns for this model is IdeaMama Ad Network. It helps blogs with even low, but targeted traffic to make about $5K-$10K per single sale do your math). It works like affiliate marketing, but supported by different tracking technology and different process, for deal that convert offline. It mostly suitable for B2B blogs or B2C with higher end audience. Campaigns that can be picked up from the network are for enterprise software solutions with an order that exceeds $50,000, medical tourism, hospitality industry equipment, business and marketing consulting services, yachts sale etc.

    Why it's my favorite motorization tactic is because all I need is to generate 30-50 leads for each client every month, as a result they close 1-5 deals within 2 months in average, and my writers get fat checks for writing advertorial copies to presell such campaigns. (We develop content to be designed around the offering, but that is relevant to readers and factual. We do as well some off page SEO) I expect that at the end of this year we easily can reach $500K blog revenue milestone, while with any other stuff I hardly could make $20K.
  • Great info. I might suggest that if you choose to sell your own ads, use Google Ad Manager. Ad Manager is a free ad serving platform. You create your own campaigns, traffic ads and creatives and then target the placements to specific ad tags that you then place on your site.

    It's basically a lighter version of DoubleClick DART for Publishers, for example.

    http://www.google.com/admanager/
  • Its amazing the different ways to make money online. Thanks for pointing this list out. There are some great ones there, especially the freemium option.
  • Thanks for the comments, guys, and thanks to the main man, Brogan, for coming by to comment. :)
  • I really like this list. More than just a "top 10 list" that actually offers sound advice. I am really excited about the future of information marketing and personal brands.
  • terababy
    freemium is one good term.
  • To answer your question, I make beer money on the random affiliate links from Amazon, and the old posts that have a bit of adsense stuffed into them. There's no dayjobquitting salary coming from the blog, but that's by design.

    I do run an occasional paid advertisement on my blog that pays 2.5 mortgages per month, but I'm choosy, thus no ad for January or February.

    My money is primarily from my agency (newmarketinglabs.com), my speaking gigs, and then the random thing like my upcoming book.

    Swell list!
  • ps. thanks for the great article, have retweeted it!
  • Hi Dr David. Please advise the twitter link at the beginning of your blog post. Thanks much!
  • Great Post! Thanks for sharing.
  • I think these are appropriately ordered from greatest income to least income potential. The more money that you make from something, the more money it is going to cost you to make it
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