Most people think making money from a blog is really hard. But the truth is it’s not. Anyone who knows how to sell can make a decent income online. If you have ever wondered how to make money blogging, this is the RIGHT place for you. I’m not only going to share you few incredible ways to make money from a blog but also going to show you few insider strategies to drive huge traffic to your sites. Let’s dive into the details.
#1. Create a money making online course
Ramit Sethi, Derek Halpern, Brian Clark – these big players have one thing in common. They are making huge income by selling online courses. They have built million-dollar online businesses by selling courses to their audience. Online courses are the new craze now. Every top marketer or guru in your industry has an online course (or going to start one soon). Did you know why?
They give you passive income with less or zero investment. All you need is to have some experience around your niche to create a profitable online course for your audience. So how can you create a successful online course that actually makes money?
– The difference between a profitable online course and the mediocre one is the “authority”. No one likes to spend their money on a stranger especially if they don’t have any authority. If you are popular in your industry, people are going to pay you no matter how high your prices are.
– Promotion is everything while making more money from online courses. Every profitable online course is well promoted via Facebook ads, affiliates; email lists, PPC ads etc. The more exposure you give to selling your courses the more people you can attract.
– Answer “why should anyone buy from me”. If you don’t have convincing answers for why people should pay you for your online courses instead of your competitors, you will fail miserably to make money.
#2. Offer Consulting Services
Did you know that consulting is a whopping $500 billion industry? Consultants worldwide are getting paid to teach. Neil Patel is a well-known consultant who teaches first at his blog QuickSprout and uses his audience to convert into his clients.
People love to pay him more for his consulting services not only because he delivers but he has worked with Fortune 500 companies. Not everyone can repeat the same but you can definitely learn some of the lessons from other successful consultants to start making money from your blogging efforts.
Here are few important steps you need to follow to make more money by offering consulting services from your blog.
– Produce highly informative content and get massive exposure to it. The simple truth about making more from online consulting through blogs is to share highly valuable content with your target audience first then giving them premium content in return of “one on one” coaching. This always works because people trust you if they see you offering huge value through your blog posts.
– Learn how to turn normal website visitors into loyal readers. If you want others to pay you for your consulting services, you need to create a friendly blog where people love to read and share your stuff.
– Make sure to improve your portfolio. Work with the authorities in your industry. If you have a sounding portfolio, it makes easier for people to take decisions to work with you. You can offer free services to the big guys in your niche so you can get some great testimonials from them later.
#3. Become a Go to Guy in a Small Niche
Becoming an expert is really the key to growing your own hungry audience who are ready to pay you. It’s almost impossible to dominate a niche where there’s too much overloaded crowd. And people don’t pay you if you are not an expert.
The best way to gain people’s attention is to pick a small niche and dominate it. Become the go to guy in that small niche. And people will come back more for you. The idea here is to establish yourself as an expert in a very small niche where you can easily dominate. See, you can’t beat Google if you are creating another search engines. But you can definitely make your own mark by staying focused at one thing.
A niche market doesn’t mean small, it’s a focused market where even beginners can become sharks by providing more value. Bigger brands like Tech Crunch, Mashable use mass marketing where they post tons of articles every single week to drive more traffic and increase their ad revenue. The same thing doesn’t work for you if you are a single blog owner who has a limited budget and time. You can’t spend most of your time creating content for your blogs, right? You need to be laser focused while defining your target audience. Only then, you can create a blog that builds business for you in the long run.
Also make sure to note that, it takes time to make money online. Making money from blogging is not a get rich quick scheme. It takes consistent efforts and lots of trial and errors to finally start making money from your blogs.
#4. Build a Sales Funnel
A sales funnel is where the money is. A sales funnel is where the paying customers are. A sales funnel is what you really need to make more money from your sites. If your blog doesn’t have a sales funnel yet, you need to create one. If you are struggling to make money blogging, it’s probably because you don’t have a sales funnel put in place. If you want to create a profitable website sales funnel, try the following tips.
– Offer a freebie (such as eBook, theme or plugin) to turn your website random visitors into subscribers. Then, find ways to add more value to your email list by sending educating emails about the products you promote.
– The more you nurture your email list the more qualified leads you can generate.
– The money you make from your sales funnel is directly proportional to the people you help. The more people you help with massive value the more you can make out of them.
#5. Affiliate Marketing is EVERGREEN
I know, it’s easier and faster to make money from Google AdSense. And there are a ton of other alternatives to AdSense if you are not happy with it. All you need is to drive more traffic and make your visitors click on random ads on your sites to make more cents. The problem with it is, you are just turning off your visitors.
Instead of sending your hard earned website visitors to random links, it’s a smart strategy to send to your own product links or affiliate links. It gives you more money whenever someone makes a purchase from your affiliate links. Affiliate marketing is one the proven ways to make passive income online. If done right, within a year, you will be building a blog that makes you money on autopilot (even while you sleep!).
If you are wondering how to make more money by promoting affiliate products, here are 2 simple tips for you.
1. Write in-depth case studies about the products you use. Use affiliate links. If people find your reviews genuine, you will get a lot of sales.
2. Recommend less products. Most people recommend a lot of affiliate products and that’s a plain wrong approach to increasing your affiliate sales. If you give too many options to your readers, they choose nothing. Recommend as less products as possible but put your best efforts in getting more links and traffic to them to increase sales.
How to Grow Your Website Traffic?
Getting more visitors to your blog or website is a BIG deal especially if you are new to online and know nothing about SEO. Here are 3 simple yet most effective ideas to bring more visitors to your sites.
#1. Give Your BEST Posts to Others
One of the biggest mistakes most bloggers and marketers make is they publish the BEST stuff on their own blogs. This isn’t a smart strategy to grow your audience especially when you have no prior online connections or readership.
I know how hard it is to refrain yourself from giving your best posts to other blogs. But what’s the point in writing great content to a smaller audience when you can get more exposure to it when you give it away as guest posts?
You will get more visitors and loyal audience if you have highly informational and valuable guest posts. As Matt Cutts said, guest blogging isn’t dead. It is still one of the most effective ways to build your audience from scratch.
#2. Be Active on Social Media
Social media is the new SEO. Did you know that your social shares increase your overall visibility in search engines? Google gives high priority to the pages that get more social shares including tweets, G+ shares, Facebook shares etc. If you get hundreds of social shares on every post you publish, you will eventually start ranking higher in search engines even if you don’t have thousands of backlinks.
But getting more social shares is hard if no one knows you. You should be active on social media. You need to interact with the social media active users and influencers in your niche. If you get mentions from them, in no time, your traffic will explode.
#3. Use Skyscraper Technique to Create Viral Content
Most people create content on random topics. They create content on the topics they think that could go viral. But the reality is 99% of the time it won’t create any buzz. That’s why you need to focus on creating content that is proven to go viral. Brian Dean originally coined Skyscraper technique in which you create content that attracts more buzz. Here’s how you can use it to create content.
Find popular content in your niche using Buzzsumo. Then make it even better and promote it to the right people to get more exposure to your content.
Final Thoughts About Monetizing Your Blog
The concept of “making money blogging” may sound strange to you if you are completely new to online world. But there are thousands of people who are using their blogs to make a living. If done right, with the right efforts, you can turn your blog into a money making machine. In order to do that, you need to build a sales funnel that turns normal visitors into subscribers into sales. You also need to find out the right monetization strategy for your blog audience to make money.
Let me know what you think about monetizing blogs. Do you have any more tips to drive more traffic and increase sales from blogs? Share your thoughts in the comments.
The post 5 Most Powerful Ways to Monetize Your Blog and Increase Traffic appeared first on iBlog magazine.