Of course, the strategies that I have mentioned this week are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to making money from your blog. The next step that many bloggers choose is to add downloadable products that they have created, such as e-books, graphics, website templates, software, courses and much more.
Downloadable products can be one of the most powerful ways to make money, earning you a real purchase price from every single conversion, rather than a tiny pay-per-click amount or a smaller share of someone else's sale. You do, of course, have to make sure that your products are high quality, value for money, and packaged well. Make sure that you are offering something that people will genuinely want, and will use. You also need to ensure that your purchasing and delivery system is robust.
Unless it is the sole purpose of your site, be careful not turn your blog into a selling platform with little else other than a sales pitch. Here is a short story of two blogs selling a set of wordpress templates:
Blog 2 also talks about why their templates are so wonderful, but they also update their blog with useful and interesting posts that readers looking for wordpress templates will enjoy. These readers may subscribe to the RSS feed, bookmark the blog and come back later to get more tips on blogging or ideas on how to use wordpress and may purchase the template pack.
Blog 2 also cleverly realizes that while their templates are indeed the best thing since Twitter, that they might not be right for 100% of their visitors, so they carefully implement affiliate links, adsense blocks and other monetization strategies to their blog in order to have a better chance of turning every visitors into a potential source of income.
I normally advise bloggers to use at least two monetization strategies on their blogs for the maximum income potential, implementing them one at a time in order to make sure that they are done carefully and correctly.
Experiment with various advertising networks and ad positions and monitor the results as you make changes to find the optimum combination.
Caveats for earning money from your blog:
- In the wise words of Tim Ferriss, remember that "money isn't the only currency." Consider the value of link exchanges, guest posts, blogroll links and other features which can bring you traffic, page rank and credibility. These things will positively affect your income in the future.
- Never let advertising rule your blog. If you started out writing about photography because it is your passion, don't suddenly fill your blog with information about web hosting just because there are more advertising opportunities.
- Don't try too much at once. It is easy to get overwhelmed. Better to do one thing right than lots of things badly.
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