But did you know that you can also make money out of managing blogging sites? Yes, you can write about the things you love and earn a little bit extra while you’re at it. You only need to put some work into this project and a little bit of smart strategy to be successful.
Groundwork before you can earn from your blog
Before going into the details of how to make money with a blog, let us look at the list of preparatory works that you must do to make your blog mature enough to pull in revenue. These will help you in attracting enough traffic to your site and establish your brand among your target audience, and eventually, get paid to blog.
- Decide your niche. Your blog is likely to attract more loyal followers when you write about a specific niche rather than a wide range of topics.
- Get a suitable domain name, that will ring a bell to readers of your niche. Put some thought into choosing your domain extension also, to make your blog sound relatable to your audience.
- Select the right hosting partner (read ‘Strikingly’ ;)) that will let you focus on your content rather than the technicalities of building a website. Strikingly offers pre-designed blog themes that will help you gear up and launch your free blog sites to make money.
- Create a list of topics with keywords and points to be discussed, at least two weeks in advance. This way, you can ensure you don't run out of topics suddenly. You need to stay in touch with your audience without breaks.
- Make a schedule, and publish articles regularly, without too much gap between blogs. Your readers should know when to expect your next article. Anything less than two articles per week is inadequate for a professional blog.
- Learn continuously, and keep yourself updated about the latest trends in your niche.
- Send newsletters to your readers with updates about your latest articles, what you are up to next, etc. This will go a long way in creating a strong follower base.
- Be active on social media and promote your content. Be accessible and foster a relationship with your readers.
- Connect with your fellow bloggers, and you can even contribute to their website by jointly writing an article. This will help to increase followers for both of you.
- Creating quality content should always be at the core of your project. It’s good to make money out of something you are passionate about but make sure that this is not the only thing that drives you to create blogging websites. This is how you get visitors to come back to your site and ensure a steady stream of income from blogging.
Tips on how to make money blogging
Once you have an established blog that people turn to when they want any information about your niche, you can start reaping the benefits of your labor. There are numerous ways of making money from blogging sites. Here are a few tips on how you can monetize your free blog website.
- Start creating quality content
The first step in monetizing your blog website is to start building quality content. You need to build traffic to your blog site before you can actually think about earning from it. Regularly creating posts about your niche topic establishes your authority on it. Devote some time in content marketing campaigns. Attract new visitors by building your blog as a go-to for information on the topic you want to cover.
- Build relationships with brands and other bloggers
Relationships with affiliate partners and other bloggers in your niche can help make free blog websites successful. Build relationships with people who can also help you get traffic to your site. Spend some time in forums and social networks where you can interact with these people and introduce your brand to them.
- Monetize with AdSense
One of the most common ways to make money from your free blog site is through Google AdSense. This platform allows you to post ads relevant to your content on your website. You earn money when people see the ad on your page (CPM Ads) or when users click on the ad posted on your website (CPC Ads). With this platform, you don’t need to coordinate with the advertisers directly. Google will determine the type of ads to put up on the space you have allotted on your website based on your content.
To get started, open an account with AdSense, copy your ad code, and insert it into your blog website builder. On Strikingly, you can do this by adding a new section to your site.
- Paid advertisements
Alternatively, you can also host advertisements on your own, without involving a middleman like Google Adsense.
In this method, the first and foremost task is to create a media kit that describes your expertise in your niche, your website traffic, your email subscriptions, your social media following, and past brand collaborations that you have done. Once your media kit is ready, you need to connect with multiple clients, share your media kit with them, pitch your website, negotiate the price and win contracts. You need to make sure the ad banner image is of the right size to fit in the space you have allotted on your website. Also, make sure the links work properly and take the user to the intended product page. After-sale tasks include customer engagement and raising invoices.
This takes more effort to implement, but in this advertising model, you get to set your price and get the full amount without any fee or commission. Also, you can charge your customers for displaying the advertisements on your platform and not worry about the CPM and CPC.
- Promote affiliate brands
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based commission model. You promote a product or service of a brand in your blog and include affiliate links in your content. These links are given by the brand and are unique to you. When a user clicks your link and makes a purchase of the product, you will get a percentage of the transaction value.
A huge part of a blogger’s income can come from affiliate marketing. Look for affiliate products that are related to your content or your niche and build relationships with these partners. Look for products with high payouts but make sure that they are still within your niche so any content you do for them doesn’t seem so out of place in what you have always done on your free blogging sites.
For example, let us say you are a start-up advisor, guiding entrepreneurs through the early years of their ventures. Your blog may contain guidelines and advice for a successful startup. Here, you can become an affiliate of Strikingly, and encourage your readers to host their business website on Strikingly. For each new paid user, you can earn up to $619.20.
- Write sponsored content
The best free blogging sites will regularly get requests and invitations to write sponsored posts and product reviews. It’s a good way for brands to reach their audience in a non-invasive and threatening way. And it can also be a good source of revenue for your blog.
Some brands may wish to pay you in kind. For example, if you are a lifestyle blogger, you may be approached by a home appliance brand to write about them in return for a free appliance. Though this sounds cool, if you want to become a professional blogger, it is better to always get paid to blog in money. And, when you are giving a review about a product or service, be sure to provide an honest review to stay relevant to your audience. These small things will help in the long run and ensure a steady stream of revenue from blogging sites.
- Premium content
Once you have established yourself as an authority in your chosen niche, you can also create premium gated content. This refers to content - ebooks, downloadable guides, whitepapers - that you charge for access. You can also extend your blog site to include webinars and videos.
You create great content and put it behind a paywall.
Strikingly lets you sell digital products and get paid with its integrations with leading payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe.
- Membership based content
You can create subscription-based access to your blog. In this revenue model, you can sell memberships on your site, by creating a username and password for your readers. Once a user pays the membership fee and logs in, they will be able to access premium content. For instance, if you’re writing finance-related content, you can put stock quotes and advice available for members only. Make sure the paid content is better than what is available in the market for free.
You can either offer a single membership plan or provide different levels of memberships with specific add-ons in each plan. With Strikingly, you can sell memberships for your blogging site with just a few clicks.
- Email marketing
Blogging sites are incomplete without email opt-ins. To successfully create a loyal follower base, you need to keep in touch with your readers through regular emails. Encourage your users to sign up for your newsletter and send them updates about your latest posts, and what you are up to next. Once you have a reasonable number of subscribers, you can monetize your following, by adding affiliate links to your emails. Email affiliate marketing is one of the fastest-growing methods of digital marketing. Strikingly makes easy, the process of collecting email ids and sending newsletters through its audience plan.
Strikingly - Your ally in monetizing blogging sites
Strikingly offers all the advanced features that you need to create free blogging sites to make money. Our advanced SEO techniques ensure that you can build the right audience base and monetize your blogging sites. In Strikingly, you can find suitable templates for several blogging niches. This will bootstrap your blog and you can launch your website within 30 minutes, totally free of cost.
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