Got a blog and want to monetize your content? This article focuses on 7 proven ways successful bloggers are turning their blog sites into gold mines. And you can do the exact same thing.
In this article, we’ll show you how the best part of blogging is not just writing articles, but about building yourself a strong and dependable revenue stream. It doesn’t happen overnight, but with strategies we outline here in place and properly set up, you can join the ranks of those enjoying regular income each and every month.
- Table of Contents
- Affiliate Marketing
- Digital Products
- Physical Products
- Ad Revenue
- Membership Sites
- Services and Consulting
- Product Reviews
- FAQ:
- What To Do Next
1. Affiliate Marketing: Proven Track to Monetize Your Content
Affiliate marketing is our first—and favorite–online revenue stream. It pays you to market the products or services of a third party. You’re compensated for each sale that comes through your affiliate link.
You can even be compensated just because your prospect enters his email on a product site.
One of the best resources available to monetize your content is the huge selection of affiliate programs on ClickBank. When you join their program, you can become an affiliate for hundreds of products such as LivPure, a leading diet supplement, Paying Social Media Jobs, The Smoothie Diet, or countless other programs that might be of interest to your audience.
Even better, ClickBank tells you which products are hot, which are starting to catch on, and the kinds of promotional materials (ads, emails, landing pages, etc.) that are provided free to you by the vendor. All you have to do is create content on your site related to the offer, and include your affiliate link.
When visitors to our blog click on our affiliate links to these and similar products, and subsequently make a purchase, we earn a small affiliate commission. It’s not a HUGE amount, but it does add up.
You’ll Need Traffic—The Life’s Blood of your Blog
Naturally, if people don’t visit your blog, your work is for naught. So once you’ve set up your affiliate relationships, start working on ways to bring in traffic. Here are a few starter ideas for you:
- Create High Value Content—Lots of It
Research what your audience demands and supply it through your blog articles. Look at what competitors are posting, and post something better. If they write about “Top 5 Ways to…” You write about “Top 10 Ways to…” Add photos or videos to each post. Find ways to increase engagement, such as adding in calculators or quizzes. Encourage readers to post comments or to share your articles. - Build a Strong Domain Authority:
A higher domain authority means that search engines consider your content valuable to their audiences. For that reasons, they assign your blog a higher domain authority, boost your rankings, and send you more visitors. We like that, right?
You can achieve a higher domain authority through: - Higher Search Engine Rankings
- Ever Growing Credibility and Trust
- Attracting High Numbers of Quality Backlinks
- Long Term Traffic Growth
- Referral Traffic from Related Blogs, Forums or Discussions
Check out our article on Building Domain Authority here.
You’ll Also Need Strong SEO.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) serves as the backbone for establishing a robust online presence. It is crucial for anyone aiming to achieve visibility and success in the digital landscape. Here’s why SEO is paramount:
- Visibility and Ranking: SEO practices determine where you are ranked in search engine results. Rank high, and you get visitors. Rank low, and nobody knows your site even exists. If you want to succeed at affiliate marketing, you need to know your way around SEO.
- User Experience Enhancement: One important part of SEO is the optimizing for a positive user experience. That means making sure your website loads quickly, has intuitive menus and browsing aids such as links within your content to relevant pages inside and outside your site. If your users have a positive experience, they are more likely to stay longer and come back frequently. And that’s what we want, right?
- Content Relevance: Through proper SEO practices, you can align your content with specific topics and keywords that users are searching for in the search engines. That results in better qualified traffic and potentially higher conversion rates.
- Authority and Trust: It’s critical that your visitors have trust in your site’s content—and in you, as well. You can achieve that with a strong SEO strategy, content with high value (meaning it aligns with what the searcher is looking for and satisfies his hunger/need for information. It takes time to achieve this, and you have to make every article you post one that provides serious value. No fluff. Give your audience what they want and your site authority will increase.
In short, SEO is the cornerstone of your online success. It consists of many elements: keyword optimized content, user friendly navigation, and trust-building measures.
2. Digital Products—Creating and Selling eBooks, Courses, etc.
Looking for a one-stop-shop for a variety of affiliate marketing products? These one-stop platforms offer an array of digital and physical products to promote:
- Digistore24: Imagine a place where you can choose from hundreds of quality affiliate products, where getting approved by the vender is easy, and where commissions can rise to 75% or even higher. That’s Digistore24, where you’ll find a wide range of digital products like eBooks, courses, software, and more across multiple niches.
- ClickBank: As mentioned above, ClickBank is another of the most respected leaders in digital affiliate products. They offer a huge range of products, mostly distinct from what you’ll find on other sites, with easy approval processes for each item. ClickBank’s vendors pay out millions of dollars in commissions every year—act now to get your share.
- OfferVault: This is another of the leading places you can check for affiliate products. They specialize in a diverse collection of affiliate offers, including both digital and physical products, from different affiliate networks.
- Skillshare: Join Skillshare’s affiliate program to promote online courses covering various subjects like design, business, technology, and more.
- Commission Junction (CJ Affiliate): CJ Affiliate houses numerous brands offering physical products, providing a vast array of options for affiliate marketers.
- JVzoo: Venture into JVzoo for digital products like software, courses, plugins, and more, catering to various audiences and niches. New product launches are a major feature here, so if you have an email list of previous customers, you’ll want to see which of their new products you can be among the first to marketing.
3. Physical Products: Selling Tangible Goods
Would you prefer to sell physical goods on your website? No problem! There are plenty of affiliate marketing specializing in physical products (see below). They cater to many product categories and demographics.
By using resources such as those in the list below, you don’t have to bother with inventory, billing, customer service or more. It’s all done for you!
- Amazon Associates: The giant! Join the Amazon Associates program to promote an almost endless variety of physical products across many categories. Commissions tend to be low, but the volume can be extremely high due to Amazon’s huge international market.
- CJ Affiliate: We already listed CJ in our digital products list, but they’re also major players in physical products you can sell as an affiliate. Plus, these are not unknown brands: CJ lets you make money off top companies like Walmart, Best Buy, or Home Depot. And again, you don’t have to store a single product or answer a single customer service call. They do it all for you.
- ShareASale: These guys are one of the fastest growing affiliate platforms in North America, so they’re doing lots of things right. Not only do they have an impressive list of physical products you can promote, but they have awesome marketing tools you can use as well. From fashion to home goods, some of their major vendors include well-respected vendors like Wayfair, ModCloth, and Reebok. It would be well worth your time to check them out.
- Rakuten Advertising: Rakuten is another popular resource you’ll want to check out. They brand themselves as the “#1 Global Affiliate Marketing Network & Platform, and we don’t doubt them. Explore Rakuten for partnerships with brands like Macy’s, Kohl’s, or Sephora, all brands with a diverse range of products in high demand by multiple demographics.
4. Ad Revenue: Making Money With Ads on Your Website
If you own a website, you could potentially make money by displaying ads from various companies and advertising organizations. This is often one of the first income streams small website owners utilize. The money’s not great at first, but as your site grows, so does the income.
- Degree of Difficulty: Beginners can start with ad networks like Google AdSense, which is relatively easy to set up. Just keep in mind that, to generate worthwhile income, you’ll have to provide both consistent traffic and high quality content—both of which are vary doable.
- Competition and Approval: Getting approval from a large ad network like AdSense is not excessively difficult, but you do have to adhere to their guidelines. A good tip is to make your content very niche-focused so that, during the approval process, your site stands out.
- Skills Needed: You’ll need to be able to create a basic website, a skill you can either farm out or provide yourself. There are lots of good training courses on how to set up simple WordPress sites—check out courses offered by companies like Teachable and Udemy.
Everything you can learn about setting up a course, managing it, generating traffic and understanding ad placement will be most helpful..
5. Membership Sites: Exclusive Access for Income
Membership sites are great revenue sources when you can offer an exclusive collection of content, tools or community interaction around a specific topic—such as affiliate marketing. Your first step should be to identify a need, a demand in the marketing place that is not being sufficiently filled. You could offer your own content, hire it out, or purchase things like Private Label Rights courses, eBooks or reports.
- Degree of Difficulty: I’d label this as moderately challenging, simply because you’ll need great content, an engaging website, and traffic to your offers.
- Software Assistance: Many online marketers have found success using platforms like Member Press, Teachable, or Kajabi to take the pain out of setting up and managing a good membership site. assist in creating and managing membership sites. We suggest you join a few Facebook groups formed around this topic and find out what others are doing and benefit from their advice.
- Skills Needed: If you’re interested in creating a membership site, your job will be easier if you yourself can provide (or hire out) content creation, community management, and knowledge of membership site administration.
And lest we forget: you’ll have to get really good at attracting visitors to your site in order to monetize your content. Use places like YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram to publicize your site and educate potential customers.
6. Services & Consulting: Sell Your Expertise
If you’re not into affiliate marketing or membership sites, then look no further than yourself.
What special skills or experience do you have that others might want to hire? You could build a strong online business as a consultant or even as a freelancer. If you’re a beginner, look for ways to build your authority first by offering free ebooks or reports, conducting surveys or quizzes, etc.
- Services to Offer: Do a self-assessment. Can you offer a service like consulting, coaching, graphic design, writing, marketing, or niche-specific expertise? There’s a huge market for every one of these specialties! Check out platforms like Upwork, Freelancer, or Fiverr and see how other people just like you are making great incomes by selling their personal skills. You can do the same.
- Selling Courses: If you can create a course around your skills, you could find yourself with a financial goldmine. Turn your skills into a course and offer them to a worldwide market on a platform like Skillshare or Udemy.
- Approval and Competition: To get your services sold, you’ll need to convince customers or platforms that you’re as qualified as you say you are. Build a portfolio and showcase your skills. Add testimonials (if you have them), and stand out from your competitors. Don’t have any testimonials? Ask your former employers, co-workers or clients to write you a short description of how you’ve been of value to them.
TIP: Write the testimonials yourself and send them over to your contacts. They’re likely very busy, and so will simply say, “Sure, let’s go with that. Put my name on it.” This works!
Each of these ways to monetize your content offers its own challenges, but these can be overcome if you are persistent and dedicated. Find the best content out there, and improve on it! Your skill set and experience can help you set up lucrative revenue streams for years to come. So get started, OK?
7. Product Reviews: Capitalizing on Reviews
The Internet loves product reviews. They’re what so many people check out first before making a purchase. So what better way to make money online than to write up great reviews and attach your affiliate links to one or more products included in your review!
Naturally, you need to know what you’re talking about. The better you are at writing the reviews, analyzing the competition and relating to your target audience needs, the better your reviews will be.
Is a Review Website a good way to monetize your content?
Absolutely! Building an entire website centered around reviews has worked extremely well for many online marketers. You’ll need a basic understanding about how to build a website (or you can farm it out), how to come up with hot and trending products for review, how to optimize keywords for the search engines, and a user-friendly interface. Taking it one step further, think about converting each review into a YouTube video to attract more views and visitor engagement.
Monetizing Your Reviews:
OK, let’s see if you can make money with these reviews.
First, the more traffic you generate to each review, the better your chances of having someone follow through the affiliate link and make a purchase.
Second, surround your review with additional digital products (that you can create yourself or purchase through PLR sites). Make it easy for your visitors to link to eBooks, affiliate sites such as Amazon or DigiStore24, or to a product website for which you’re already an approved affiliate. Keep hammering away at building traffic to your review page, and you’ll inevitably begin to see sales.
8. FAQ—Frequently Asked Questions
Question 1: How can I start a successful membership site or affiliate marketing platform?
Answer: If you’re thinking about starting an affiliate marketing site, identify the niche you want to join and research that niche thoroughly. Check out the competition to see what kind of content seems to be working for them. Visit social media sites and join groups for the niche. Note what the conversations are about—do they reveal unmet needs, successful content themes, etc.? Where do you see your site fitting into this niche? What can you do differently or better?
If you’re thinking of starting a membership site as a side hustle or full time business, get familiar with sites like MemberPress.com or Kajabi and see what works for them, and how you might benefit from their offerings.
Question 2: What skills do I need to excel in product reviews?
Answer: Reviews are always a good strategy for an affiliate marketing business. You’ll want to have skills like being able to write engaging copy, analyzing strengths and weaknesses, and connecting you’re your audience while understanding their needs. And finally, you have to be able to build trust and authority.
Question 3: Can I create an entire website focused on product reviews?
Answer: Sure—we already showed you that in our content above! I would recommend you begin by looking at your competition to see how they go about creating reviews. Search for “Top (Your Niche) Review Sites” on Google. Find the best and use it as a template for success. As to reviews themselves, save time by using AI to write the initial draft of our review, then edit it completely to fit your personal style and knowledge.
Question 4: How can I monetize product reviews effectively?
Answer: Set up affiliate relationships within your niche, start punching out reviews, and offer related digital products like PLR eBooks and courses—or those you have created yourself. Most importantly, make the capture of email addresses the Number One goal of your content. If you have use a report or article as a lead magnet, deliver it only through email. Then, set up a sequential email followup campaign that builds your relationship with the prospect and, upon occasion, even shares Special Offers with them.
Your email sales could one day out-perform your direct sales, so do not neglect this critical component of your affiliate website.
Question 5: What are the challenges and rewards of licensing and syndication for beginners?
Answer: If you’re thinking about licensing or syndicating your content, the challenges include navigating legal complexities, negotiation skills, and establishing relationships. However, the rewards are also potentially significant—additional revenue streams, increased visibility, and broader audience reach.
Question 6: As a beginner, how can I improve my chances of success in licensing and syndication?
Answer: Do your homework. Get up to speed with copyright laws, network constantly within the industry, and start with smaller-scale agreements to build experience and credibility. The key will always be the quality of your content, so don’t overlook the importance of producing original, high value content.
Question 7: How do I enhance my chances of success in online marketing?
Answer: Make “consistency” your mantra. Treat this as a real business, not as a hobby. Set your content values high, learn to spot and take advantage of industry trends, engage with your audience, and be open to change. Remember, the site you create today will not look like your site 5 years from now. Stay on top of what’s happening, and adapt as necessary.
Question 8: What are some effective strategies for growing a membership site’s audience?
Answer: It’s simple, really. Give your members what they need to feel comfortable paying you $X/mo. Stay engaged, keep your content fresh and always up-to-date, offer exclusive content where you can, , collaborate with influencers, and seek feedback for continuous improvement. And 3 last things: Promote, promote, promote.
Question 9: How can I enhance my product review content for better engagement?
Answer: Use AI to keep fresh new ideas coming. Get up to speed and incorporate the latest video or photo techniques and services, offer the latest product comparisons, provide practical examples, and always be transparent and honest. Finally, keep those emails going on a regular basis—provide genuinely helpful content in them so that your constantly remind your customers what a great resource you are for them.
Question 10: Are there tools or software to aid in membership site creation?
Answer: Yes, platforms like Teachable, Thinkific, or Podia offer tools to build membership sites with features for course creation, community engagement, and payment processing.
Question 11: How can I increase my chances of getting approval for Google AdSense?
Answer: In short, prove to Google that you’re are a great place for their ads because you have so many happy visitors who come back again and again. Follow AdSense policies meticulously, create original and valuable content, ensure a user-friendly website design, and avoid prohibited content types or practices.
Question 12: Is it possible to sell courses on platforms like Skillshare or Udemy as a beginner?
Answer: Sure, those are all great platforms to use for creating and selling courses, even if you’re new in the business. The key to your success will be how good your content is and how well you use the many tools these platforms provide to you. Be sure you’re ready for their close scrutiny before you submit your application. If you pass their criteria, a profitable new marketplace is yours to conquer.
Question 13: What are some effective methods to retain members on a membership site?
Answer: That’s easy—make their membership well worth the price! We find that things like exclusive and unexpected perks or bonuses are very popular, as are things like engaging with other members in a private Facebook group, or even your offer to spend a few minutes with them to offer advice and feedback on their sites. Time-consuming, but members love it!
Question 15: How do I know if my product review website is succeeding?
Answer: The obvious criterion is how much profit are you making? And if you have not yet made a profit (or even no sales at all), what can you do to get things turned around. Pay special attention to metrics like monthly traffic, the number of comments or shares you’re getting, conversion rates, abandoned carts, etc. If you still don’t see any progress, try running an anonymous quiz that asks your audience directly how you’re doing and where you can improve.
Nothing is more valuable than honest feedback from the people you’re trying to sell. Quizzes of this nature can also be useful for semi-anonymous testimonials (citing “B.P., California,” for example). You’ll find a basketful of quotes to sprinkle throughout your site and boost your social affirmation.