Make Your Blog A Business (and Earn Lots Of Money)
Are you a professional blogger? I mean, are you a blogger who blog with the sole intention of earning money for living?
Lots of bloggers do this. Of course with a passion. And if you’re falling in this category, this post is exclusively for you.
I’m going to tell you – How to turn your blog in to a thriving business, and earn good money to lead a decent life. In this post I’m referring to bloggers who offer free content in the form of blog posts on their blogs and earn from pure blogging activities like selling Ad spaces & affiliate marketing. Not from selling/offering own products and services. So, let’s start the journey…
1. Your blog is a store
Treat your blog like a store and your content (blog posts) like your products. How you showcase your quality products in your well designed store front matters the most.
Like a real store, you’ve to take care of each pixel of real estate on your blog; be it your LOGO (Sign Board), or side bar (shelfs), or the main content area (center area); everything should be tidy and clean.
Invest some money for a custom logo and a premium WordPress theme. Make your theme absolutely unique by changing the colors and layouts. The looks and feel of your blog should not match any other blog in the blogosphere. People easily remember custom made things because it leaves an imprint in their minds. Make your store ‘talk of the tinsel town’ called blogosphere.
2. Increase page views
Page views play the most important role in your earnings if you’re a pure blogger who distribute free content in the form of blog posts and articles to the web-readers.
I recommend – selling ad space via Google AdSense and BuySellAds.com like services. Whether it is AdSense or selling Ad spaces to publishers (directly or via 3rd party); page views is the main deciding factor how much you earn. The valuation of your ad space is directly proportional to the page views. Publishers want wide exposure or publicity of their products and services. So, they ready to pay more for blogs with more number of page views.
## Below are the measures you should take to increase your page views.
1# Increase your article bank by publishing blog posts regularly. 5 posts per week is considered as the minimum number of blog posts for professional bloggers.
2# Social media marketing is the next important step to increase your page views. Promote your blog posts in your social networks like Facebook, Twitter & Google Plus. Add social media icons on your blog & blog posts for easy sharing of content by your readers. You can use Slick Social Share ButtonsWordPress Plugin for this.
And don’t forget to contribute other interesting and valuable content in the form of text and images with your community. Because frequently (and only) pushing your blog posts in your social circle is considered as spamming, and affect your social media marketing in a –Ve way.
3# Search engine traffic from Google constitutes more than 50% of your entire traffic. So, follow and implement at least the basic and latest in SEO. You can use the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin to meet your daily SEO needs.
4# Display more number of blog posts in your side bar and below your blog post (related posts). Offering more posts with easy navigation increases page views in a great way. You can use the Related Posts WordPress Plugin to achieve this.
5# Interlink your blog posts. Readers always want to know in-depth about a topic and usually click on the hyper linked related articles on the blog post.
6# Guest blogging is a great way to build authority and acquiring other people’s audience. When done correctly, you get new readers and more sign-ups for Email Newsletter.
7# Use an Email Subscription form on your blog for notification of new blog posts to your subscribers. A better article heading usually increases Email click through rate (email opening rate), leading to more page views. I useJetPack Email Subscription on my sidebar (and it’s FREE!).
8# Increase page loading speed by using a CDN (Content Delivery Network). It increases user experience and people surf more when pages load fast. You can use WordPress Plugins like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache (both are free).
9# Improve user experience of your blog by improving readability, contrast, use of images, videos etc., and even premium WordPress Plugins for better user engagement.
If you know or use any other methods to increase page views of your blog; please add your tips in the comments below.
3. Increase affiliate sales
Most of the bloggers don’t know how to do affiliate marketing. If done correctly you can earn lot of money from affiliate sales.
Always remember – Your affiliate ads should be niche specific and content (blog post) specific for better conversion. If your niche is blogging and you promote beauty products; there is extremely less chances of conversion of your affiliate sales.
Firstly – find out which posts on your blog are getting maximum visitors or page views irrespective of sources like search engines, social media or direct visits. Then promote your affiliate products on blog posts which complement each other. I mean, if your blog post is about ‘web hosting review’ which receives good traffic; then promoting an affiliate product about ‘web hosting service provider’ like BlueHost or JustHost will be a good choice. If your blog post is about Premium WordPress Themes; then promoting WordPress Themes on that post will be a better choice.
Just imagine – if a single blog post of your blog receives 50 visits/day, then in a month total number of visits will be 1,500 (50×30). And if it converts once or twice in a month; it can easily earn 10 US$. And if your blog contains 100 such articles, then you can easily earn 1,000 US$ (100×10) every month.
In case, your entire blog theme (niche) compliments products from a certain company; then you can promote their affiliate products in your blog side bar & header area. Finally, your aim should be to match the theme of your blog posts or blog to the affiliate products you’re promoting for higher conversions.
