It’s super simple these days to create a blog. All you need is a few dollars in your wallet and you are done with buying a domain name, hosting and a couple of plugins and themes. Everyone can do this in a matter of minutes. However, blogging doesn’t end there.

If you are very good at writing or you have enough funds to hire writers who pour content daily or weekly to you, it still won’t make your blog popular if you end at that point.

If you really want to own and maintain a popular blog that’s talked about by everyone in your niche, there are two options:

1. Buy a blog that’s popular: The last time I checked, popular blogs ain’t cheap unless  you happen to find one run by a blogger who is in desperate need of funds for some reason.
2. Build it to the top: This doesn’t come in a few months except if you are some popular figure. If Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook starts a new blog today, it will definitely take him weeks to drive it to the top.

How To Start A Blog And Make It Popular

We are not going to be looking at buying a popular blog. I’m going to be giving some tips to help you start a new blog and make it popular in no time. If you’re running a struggling blog, some of these tips are going to come in handy.

#1. Your Domain Name Counts

I have read a few documents on tips to make your blog popular but none have pointed out the fact that your domain name is a factor. Yes it is. Your domain name (Generally a business name) gives identity to your business. Whether it’s long and complex to pronounce or short and easy to read makes a big difference.

Your website address isn’t really the name we read like nopassiveincome.com but the Internet Protocol (IP) address attached to it, something like 170.249.195.43. How easy is it to remember this series of numbers? The human brain finds this a big challenge. To make this easier for you and I to remember, a domain naming system (DNS) was developed to attach readable text to this IP address. It’s easier to remember nopassiveincome.com than 170.249.195.43 (which is similar to its address)

Now, if you do not succeed in giving an easy-to-remember name to your blog, you make the job of memorizing it difficult. The more complex your domain name, the more it plays on your popularity.  Sometimes you remember there is a website you found with interesting information. But you just can’t get back to it because you’ve forgotten the winding, complex and difficult name.

I know it’s hard to come up with short catchy domain names these days. Maybe you should think of using a business name generator or simply put your brain to serious thinking.

I remember some of my friends with domain names I find very difficult to forget. Ryan came up with a crazy name BloggingFromParadise where he blogs from paradise. How about Janice with MostlyBlogging? Alternatively, you may use your real name. I came up with EnstineMuki.com. Others like ZacJohnson.com, JohnChow.com, NeilPatel.com, etc. took the same line and it’s going pretty well.

Your domain name actually has an impact on your blog’s popularity so give it some serious thought before any further move to get it registered.

#2. Prioritize Your Email List

One of the errors I made when I started blogging back in 2012 was that I didn’t start building my list early. Your email list is actually the marketplace owned and controlled by you. Unlike your Social Media outlets, no one has the capacity to decide and freeze your list. If you mess up with your Email Service Provider (ESP),  what they can do is freeze your account and give you access to your property, which is your list.

It’s good to build an active Social Media presence (I will talk about this later) but your list should be a priority. The point here is that you don’t have to start with paying for email marketing tools as there are many commendable free email marketing services out there.

Your list is a very sure source of gaining traffic and sales. Each time I create new content and send an alert to my list, there is always a spike in traffic. I nourish my list with useful content and my subscribers have come to know me almost personally. They buy from me, tweet, share and link back to my content, etc. A list of 20k active subscribers means you have access to a huge marketplace.

Now, you are not going to build a huge list in a matter of a few months. The traffic you drive to your blog and your list building strategy all have a big part to play.

Related: 6 Emailing Tips from the Best Online Marketing Blogs

#3. The Content You Publish

Your content quality definitely plays a big role in determining your popularity. People have often mistaken content length for quality. Long-form doesn’t mean value. It’s what the reader walks away with that determines the quality of your content.

If you want to fill the gaps so as to impress the search engines, your readers will have a way of telling those search scripts that you have just written nonsense. By pogo-sticking, clicking away without any engagement, etc., the search engines will receive negative signals and the consequence is easy to guess at that point.

Any popular blog has something that attracts and causes readers to sign up, stick around and tell others about it.

Here are some simple guidelines to create powerfully attractive content:

• Talk about something your readers won’t easily find elsewhere
• Be the first to let your readers know about something
• Take something your readers already know about and help them discover a new angle
• Make sure your content solves problems
• Add entertainment to your publications
• Make it easy to share
• Make it search engine friendly so Google and other search engines find and rank it

Related: How to Create Quality Content When You Don’t Have Much Time

#4. It’s More Powerfully About You

What makes any blog powerful is the blogger behind the blog. The blog is just the script hosted on a remote server. But the success and popularity of your blog rely heavily on the value in you. If you want to increase productivity as a blogger, you must work on your inside.

I have been invited on several occasions to speak at blogging events not because of what my blog has but because of what I have to give to the audience. You must train and invest in yourself to fit in at all points.

Create products and help people in your society succeed in your niche or related businesses. My blog does not target my country. But I soon discovered it’s becoming popular among Cameroonians because of some of my products. Being a certified expert in cryptocurrency, my recent book Crypto-monnaise au Cameroun has done a great deal in selling out my blog.

#5. Promotion Strategy

It’s important you have a strategy to promote your blog. Make use of Social Media, Guest posting, blog commenting, offline blogging events, Search Engine Optimization, Content sharing platforms, etc.

Related: How to Promote an Online Meeting with Social Media

Conclusion

If you’ve taken time to read this conclusion, I’m going to mention the last factor here: TIME! Yes, it will take time for your blog to become popular if you are consistent in doing what is right. I advise against anything black hat (Black hat SEO, Black Hat Social Media,etc). You may get quick results with black hat techniques but they are not long-lasting.

Good luck!

We have different traffic channels to trigger an avalanche of readers to our online store or website. While this isn’t something that can be achieved with the click of the mouse, following the channels with patience and consistency will allow you gradually build sustainable sources of targeted readers.

Let’s examine these traffic channels and how you can capitalize on them for your business growth:

1. Search Engine Traffic

Without any iota of doubt, Search Engines are a major part of the Internet world. They drive a huge part of Internet movement through keywords.

Keywords are the basis of Search engines from the point of view of the searcher. But from the perspective of content marketers, it’s completely changing to semantics.

What I mean is that searchers on Google (for instance) will actually key in a short or long tail keyword in the search box. But Google doesn’t just match these keywords against content.  What it tries to do is figure out which content has a fair understanding of the keyword intent.

There are two main branches of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)  you must focus on to see results:

a) Technical SEO: This includes your web server configuration and optimization, mobile friendliness of your site theme, images and other aspects that have to do with your site load speed

b) Content SEO: This is further split into two

• On Page SEO
• Off Page SEO

Let me say something more about these two:

– On Page Search Engine Optimization

In today’s semantic web, the new keyword is topic. That sounds weird but I think marketers should cease optimizing for keyword and rather try to cover topics in details.

I’m of the opinion that most of the LSI SEO tools in the market today should be overhauled. I recently was trying out LSIGraph and I think something should be done about this:

These are simply keyword variations not semantics. Semantic SEO (which is what On Page SEO is all about) is about topical relevant world not seed keyword synonyms . I have this post on Semantic SEO on my blog. You may want to read for a bit more on this.

– Off Page Search Engine Optimization

Off Page SEO is principally about backlinks and mentions. But you really have to be warned.

Tell between building links and earning learns. To earn links, you have to create and publish link-worthy content and wait for free inbound links from your community. Your readers find your article and deliberately link to it without you doing anything.

But if you have to build links, you’ll have to get your fingers wet on outreach marketing. Here are some common link building activities:

• Guest posting on relevant blogs by yourself.
• Hiring SEO experts, Link building agencies or Guest Posting Services.
• Blog commenting on relevant blogs.
• Buying of links from micro job boards like Fiverr (Serious Warning though)
• Etc.

But I’m not fan of buying links from random link sellers. First, Google frowns at this as it’s considered manipulating search results.

Be weary when it comes to working with guest posting firms. I have written this post about guest posting services to study out more.

I worked more closely with Sunil Gupta, one of my good friends who runs the Trafficora guest posting service and came to understand that one has just got to be very careful. Some of these link building services out there may end up completely damaging your SEO marketing campaigns.

2. Email List Traffic

If you are online and not building an email list for your business, you are hurting your business growth. Your list is an asset. It’s the only source of traffic whose terms fully dwell in your pocket.  You decide when and what to send to your list.

Each time I mail my subscribers, there is always a huge leap in clicks on my blog. Everyone else that builds and maintains an active list similarly has a success story.

There are three simple steps to building an email list for your online business:

1. Choose a cost-effective and reliable email marketing platform.
2. Get a free gift to entice your readers to signup to your list.
3. Place the list building elements on your website (Sidebar forms, Content Upgrades, Pop ups, Light boxes, Pop Unders, etc)

Recommended Read: 12 Action Steps To Build A Profitable Email List From Scratch

3. Social Media Traffic

Social media today has moved considerably from social to business. And if you are not involving social media marketing in your strategies, you really are getting it wrong.

Of course it’s absolutely free to use these platforms – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. However, for purposes of ease, you may want to spend on services that will get more traffic for you.

We are not talking about these paid services though. Let’s maintain the talk within the free sphere. What you must do is to have an active presence on any of these platforms. You may not be active on all the platforms. Chose one or two and be the king.

Depending on your business type, Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc have different approaches. While Pinterest is specifically designed for traffic, others have more emphasis laid on social.

Creating content and spamming social media won’t just help. Successful social media marketers are folks who engage and help others with exposure.

As you share your content, share others’ as well. Engage with them and build solid relationships. Many people will share your content simply because they recognize your brand. They may not have the time to read through. But they know that this coming from you must be worth sharing.

That’s why branding is a strong content marketing factor that must be heavily invested in.

4. Referral Traffic

This is traffic sent to your site by clicks on links on other sites. If you click here ( for instance) to my blog, I’m going to have a referral traffic from nopassiveincome.com.

Getting your website mentioned on other sites for referral traffic is tough. But there are different content marketing practices that can make this easier:

1. Guest posting (like what I’m doing here)
2. Commenting on other sites
3. Posting on Content Curation platforms – Medium, Zest, Scoop.it, etc
4. Forum signatures and active participation
5. Etc

Now, these are things you can do yourself for more referral traffic and it’s just the basics of Content outreach.

If you build healthy relationships with bloggers and publish link-worthy content, you are going to get those links from your content consumers. Of course that will add up to your referral link.

Wrapping Up

You may want to go on and identify many different traffic channels, but most evidently, these are near fetched. Start building up strategies for them and watch as your results grow.

Let me know what you think as you share your thoughts in the comment box.

WordPress is growing rapidly and many more people are excited about it. Starting with WordPress is simple.

Any website can be built with WordPress. Whether it’s a simple blog, an eCommerce website, a news dedicated website, a video streaming website, etc.

WordPress is just the solid foundation that allows for the building of just any structure. Everyone using the tool seems to be happy.

That doesn’t mean that WordPress doesn’t have any pitfalls. It does have areas that sometimes make its users mad at it. But the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. That explains the exponential growth of the WP community.

What’s more fascinating is the ease involved when starting a WordPress blog. Colin Newcomer has written an excellent step-by-step guide on how to start a WordPress blog.

There are many of such guides on the Internet. You are able to completely build your WordPress site without hiring wallet threatening developers.

Some weeks back, my guest Suzan Valez published an ultimate guide for WordPress beginners. An interesting piece to read.

Erik Emanuelli points out some 13 common mistakes that must be avoided by WordPress users. Christopher Jan shows us 5 Ways to Build a Killer WordPress Site for Your Business

I’m not the only one seeing the positives in WordPress. There are thousands of users out there. So I reached out to some of them to find out why they think WordPress is better.

Let’s read their answers.

Q. Why Is WordPress Better Than Other Blogging Platforms?

A. Hughsviewsandnews

In many cases, bigger is best. That’s where WordPress comes in. It’s the biggest and most well-known blogging platform out there that offers a professional service to all writers and bloggers. Their blogging platform is way above the rest, is easy to use, and comes with great customer service and tutorials. It’s easy to not only publish posts but to also leave comments on other blogs and become a part of the many blogging communities, which is an essential part of being a successful blogger. However, it’s not only WordPress that offer support and encouragement, but so does most of its users. I’d never have gone on to publish my first collection of short stories without the support and encouragement I get from those that use WordPress.

A. Donna Duncan (SEO / Content Marketing Consultant)

I use WordPress because I can achieve results faster and less expensively than on other platforms.

The abundance of WordPress themes and plugins makes it fast and easy for WordPress-savvy users to add new features and functionality to their website at potentially much less cost than the competition. This gives WordPress website owners a distinct advantage over others who may have to design, build, test, and deploy custom code to achieve the same outcome.

Similarly, WordPress has a couple of excellent SEO plugins, free and paid, that streamline many of the technical and editorial aspects of an SEO’s job. They help non-technical WordPress users learn and master on-page optimization. These benefits can lead to faster evolving, better-optimized websites that attract the right audiences and result in more or better conversions.

A. David Leonhardt (President, THGM Writers)

For years, I’ve used WordPress on all my blogs. I would hand code the static site, then add a blog with WordPress.

Back in 2014, I built my whole https://THGMwriters.com website on WordPress. How much easier it is! The main reason I swear by WordPress is the size of the developer community. When something needs to be created, somebody creates it. It’s like magic.

A great example is when I finally got around to converting from http to https. I found several plugins to search ad replace the non-secure version with the secure version in blog posts, on pages, in images, etc. I chose Search Rejex, and it worked great. I assume the others would have worked great, too. I could not so easily have done this with hard-coded pages. I might not have been able to do it in Joomla or Drupal. But in WordPress, it was no sweat. If there’s a need, somebody creates it.

A. David James (Digital marketing specialist)

Hi, I’m David.
I use WordPress across all of my websites. For small entrepreneurs that want to get a site up and running with ease, you cannot really beat WordPress. It is inexpensive, it is flexible, it is easy to manage and there are developers that are always working to make things better.
I find that it provides a low cost to enter and test a market, and can generate revenue several fold in the future.

Technically, it is good for SEO and it can be quite lightweight. You can easily add plugins to customise your site the way that you want it to be for your audience.
It’s a great entry-level CMS.

A. Minuca Elena (Minuca creates awesome influencer roundups that provide quality content, brings huge traffic, and helps bloggers connect with influencers.)

WordPress is still the best, even if you have to pay for the hosting

When I built my first site, I didn’t know anything about the technical aspect of managing a site or what are the pros and cons of each platform. I researched online and saw that most internet marketers recommended WordPress.org for a regular site and Shopify for an eCommerce site. So, I choose WordPress.

Since then, I have worked on clients’ sites that are using other platforms like Shopify and Webbly and I must say that I still prefer WordPress. WordPress is easy to use, even if you aren’t techie (like me), there are many great plugins that you can use, free and paid themes that you can customize to make the site look gorgeous and professional.

Stay away from free platforms that give you a limited control on your site and few options. There are many great opportunities for cheap and quality hosting.

A. Justin March (SEO and Chief Buddy)

For me, WordPress is the best platform because its the biggest and the best supported.  It’s also easy to get something started allowing novice users to easily build a blog from scratch. For me, the benefits include:

• Users have loads of control over most areas and aspects of their site.
• There are loads of free plugins and themes make implementation a breeze.  When I think of how awesome WP is I always think Yoast SEO, need I say more.
• Once you have some experience you can grow to add features like forums, membership for SAAS sites and even stores.
• There are impressive premium themes like Genesis (which is super fast and easy to use).

A. Harpreet Munjal (Why WordPress Is Better than Other Blogging Platforms)

WordPress is an Open Source Platform and widely used by Biggest Bloggers to Newbie Bloggers. that’s Why WordPress has more than 30% Share on the Internet. that makes WordPress the most popular blogging platform.

WordPress has some great features & advantages for a newbie blogger to professional bloggers.
First of all, WordPress is very to install & get started with WordPress. now all hostings offer one-click WordPress installation. users have no need to be expert in coding.

WordPress Blog is also affordable

then its also easy to design and customize a WordPress site or blog. anyone who doesn’t know coding can do this on WordPress

Easy to Admin Panel

SEO
Wordpress is not an SEO friendly platform by default but we can make it SEO friendly by using plugins like Yoast SEO. then make changes in SEO settings. which is not possible in any other WordPress alternative.

WordPress has a large library of free to premium WordPress themes & plugins. any Other WordPress Competitor doesn’t offer more choices as WordPress…

WordPress is also a suitable platform to start any type of site or blog. anyone can start a simple blog to fully e-commerce site on WordPress.
Biggest Community to Support.

That’s why WordPress is more advanced and most reliable platform For blogging.

A. Janice Wald (Janice Wald, Blogger at Mostly Blogging)

Why is WordPress the best blogging platform?

1. Resources: WordPress offers more resources than other blogging platforms: For example, many blog posts are written about WordPress in case you need information. Also, Facebook groups and forums that are devoted to WordPress exist you can turn to for help.

2. Plugins: So many plugins are available for WordPress, people have written books about them as well as blog posts. I know; I read one! WordPress has actually been criticized for having too many plugins!

3. Strength in numbers. Since more people use WordPress than any other blogging platform, you know it’s valuable. All these people can’t be wrong.

4. Choice: You can use WordPress.com if you’re not ready to invest in your blog. WordPress.com offers live support if you have questions. For more serious bloggers, you can use WordPress.org.

Whatever CMS you use, you should definitely use WordPress.

A. davidrazak (David teach others how to make passive income online through tried and tested strategies)

Why is WordPress better than other blogging platforms?

Ease of use and set up

WordPress is a one-click installation. The dashboard is also very easy to navigate thanks to menus, drop down menus, tags, categories, and widgets.

Real community

There are WordPress communities all around the world (known as WordCamps) where developers, designers or users meet and talk about their experiences and help each other out. Since the community is very localized, you will always find a helping hand within your locality. If you want to see WordPress love, just go to Twitter and search for #wp15.

Customization, customization

There are over 48,000 free plugins that you can use on WordPress. The best part is that the plugins are all validated, whether they are WordPress or third-party plugins. WordPress plugins themselves have been downloaded over 1.5 billion times. One of the most essential plugins, Jetpack, which gives you insights into your blog traffic, and keeps your site secure was installed on over 2 million websites in 2017 alone.

SEO Friendly

When you use WordPress for your blog, you are a step ahead in terms of your SEO. This is because the CMS is already optimized for some SEO aspects like speed and easy adding of title and alt tags to images.

It is open source

The fact that WordPress is open source gives it an edge over other blogging platforms. This is because developers are free to contribute and make the platform better.

Frequent updates

WordPress updates keep being rolled out which points to the efforts being put in to make the CMS the best and get rid of any bugs and security issues. Since its inception, there have been at least 32 major versions released. On average, a major version is released every 152 days.

Design friendly

WordPress has highly optimized and responsive designs that will look great on all devices, thanks to the variety of templates that are easily available on the WordPress theme directory and 3rd party vendors like ThemeForest which has over 11,000 themes.

A. Helvijs Smoteks (seo,digital marketing,growth hacking)

I have over 10 blogs on WordPress and I love it.

But it’s not all rainbows and unicorns when it comes to scaling your blog on this platform.

It can s*ck.

So here’s why WP is the best platform but at the same time why it can be quite challenging:

• If you have set-up WordPress website once – later on it gets super easy. Now I can create a website using WordPress within an hour. But as you might know – first time hurts the most and I remember when I made my first WordPress blog it took me almost an entire day.
• Themes –  uploading a new design or re-doing the old design is as easy as shopping on Amazon. Go to Themeforest, find a WordPress design you love, buy it and upload it through the WordPress dashboard. Done!
• Plugins –  You can find a plugin for literally anything. So customizing your website, adding new features, etc. with WP is a walk in the park.
• SEO – Thanks to Yoast WP plugin – getting organic traffic from Google couldn’t be easier. We usually create a new website and build several marketing funnels and after awhile at least one of the funnels turns into a nice source of revenue.
• Connecting Apps –  If you want connect Google Analytics, Mailchimp, Facebook pixel or any other tool – everything can be done with the help of plugins.
• Scaling WordPress – More plugins, more traffic, more articles, more pictures eventually will slow down your site and making changes on WordPress when you have a ton of content and traffic can be a pain in the a*s.

So to sum-up, if you are starting out – WordPress is the best platform but if you are planning to grow to one million visitors per month very quickly then WordPress might not be the best fit. But of course, less than 1% of all sites ever see that many visitors.

A. Adam Connell (Founder of Blogging Wizard) 

I’ve used WordPress (the self-hosted version), since 2009. And during that time I have dabbled with other platforms but I’ve always preferred WordPress.

There are a few reasons why:

1) The community – WordPress has a huge community, particularly of developers. This community helps to keep pushing WordPress forward, and they contribute code to the core. And a number of them create free tutorials. So, even though I’m not a coder, I can usually find the answer to any challenge I might face.
2) The themes – There are no shortage of themes. This means we’re not all limited to like 10-20 different themes. We have access to thousands – this helps out websites stand out from the crowd.
3) The plugins – Plugins offer the ability to add endless functionality. Whether you want a plugin that makes CSS tweaks easier, you want to add an opt-in form, or improve your website’s security – there’s a plugin that can help you. Some plugins even go so far as to allow you to build more complex websites such as job sites or even dating sites.

While WordPress isn’t perfect (no CMS is), it makes so much possible.

Conclusion

So that’s it from experienced WordPress users. If you are a WP user, let me know why you think it’s better in the comment box.

If you also have something against WP, do comment and let us know.

Let’s examine some of these widely used money making methods and see which of these is the best fit for your blog.

From one niche to the other, things are different and we must understand it. People in different industries and different age groups have different approaches. If we know this, it will help us in our effort to make money blogging.

There are however methods that will work across the board. Though this is an indisputable fact, doing things differently is bound to generate different results.

What Are The Different Ways Bloggers Make Money?

I have written an exhaustive article on 15 different ways bloggers make money. While you may want to check the post out, we will be dwelling on the most common of these methods.

Remember the essence of this post is to demonstrate that bloggers make money in different ways. And at the same time, not every method works for everyone.

So here are the most used channels:

1. Affiliate Marketing
2. Banner space sales
3. Sponsored posts
4. Link sales
5. Selling own products/services
6. Contextual Ads

Basically, without taking it far, these are some of the ways you see around and each of these can be a whole book to write.

Doing All At Once On A Single Blog

Now, I just listed 6 different ways to monetize a blog. Well, did I leave out Adsense? No because that falls within Contextual advertising. Chances are that anything else you think of is embodied in these broad topics.

Doing all of these on your website at once may sound crazy at some point but my problem is really not about how many of these methods should be used at once. You may also appear desperate if every space on your blog is taken up by some money making element.

Most of the top blogs you can think of, especially those classed on the list of top earning blogs limit themselves to a few monetizing strategies. They identify what works best for them, focus on it and become experts.

But Which Of These Works Best For You?

There is no one-size-fit-all method I can recommend. However, these 6 are just some of the methods I know can work for everyone. We will look into some details hoping this will guide you in picking the best choice.

Before diving into it, allow me quickly say something about Google Adsense, which is the best Contextual Ads platform recommended by many out there.

I have tried this on several different blogs. But at the moment I’m writing this post, it is not found on any of my sites. Meaning I have completely gotten rid of it for the following reasons:

• I blog in the Make money online niche. Adsense is relatively poor in this niche
• My blogs don’t get 50k page views per day yet
• Most of my traffic is from India where PPC amount is miserably small
• Etc

If we look at income reports for most of our blogging friends, Adsense is at the bottom if classed in other of amounts. I know the Google’s new AutoAds feature has remarkably improved earnings for most of us. That notwithstanding, it still remains a percentage of their initial earnings.

This means a 50% increase in earnings doesn’t instantly mean a $500 increase. It could be 50% of $10 which just takes you $5 up.

The best way to know what works for you is to try out different methods

6 Money Making Methods To  Chose From

1. Affiliate Marketing

Sometimes I get scared to think that Affiliate Marketing works well for everyone. But I really think it should because every industry has products for us to promote and earn commissions.

The only problem here is the fact that some bloggers have deliberately refused to think. All they do is copy banner scripts and paste on their blogs and hope for clicks to convert to commissions.

Competition is becoming more fierce. People are becoming more inundated with information. Banner blindness is getting more widespread. This means folks these days really need help to find and purchase what they want.

Yes! You need to help your readers beyond pasting banners on your blog and simply writing affiliate review posts or creating links. If you help your readers see the need for the product you promote, you bring them closer to a buying decision. That’s making you closer to earning a commission as well.

Affiliate marketing must be done differently. You need to think and add things that make your strategies stand out. The products you promote are being promoted by others. Why should someone buy from your link?

Well, before you move on, I recommend you check out this article I wrote on a new approach to affiliate marketing. You may find it helpful at some point.

So many bloggers are making it big with Affiliate Marketing

I’m not going to go too far. Take a look at Matthew’s income reports here. Affiliate Marketing is the master. If you need more evidence, step over to Pat Flynn’s income report. The examples are just every where. Affiliate Marketing works for almost every marketer.

Will this also work for you? Have you given it a try?

2. Selling Ad Space

Advertisers still buy space on active websites today . Take a look at buysellads.com and other similar sites. You will understand there is a big market for this model. But how much money you make with this will hugely depend on two factors:

1. The quantity of targeted traffic you get
2. The Geo location of your readers.

I have sold space on different websites. But the best property that generated the most earnings has not been the one with the most traffic.

Advertisers do their research and as it’s said, stats don’t lie. Once you are able to pull targeted traffic from areas with high purchasing power, you can always sell space on your blog.

If you get traffic from the United States, Canada and some European countries, you could be standing a chance to make some good earnings selling space on your blog.

– Using a 3rd party platform

There are platform like BSA, adclerks.com, etc, that make it easy to manage ads on your blog and collect payment from advertisers easily. What generally happens is that these platforms provide some code snippet for you to paste on your blog:

One downside of these platforms is that some cut a reasonable share of your sales. Though they have the market where your property could be found easily, they also decide how much fees you pay per sale.

In the past, I sold space on Adclerks. My first sale of $50 landed $37 in my Paypal account. That was a $13 charge on that sale. Are you comfortable with that? Please drop a comment.

Some of the platforms too are so demanding in terms of minimum requirements. Generally, you will need 20k monthly pageviews to be approved. For the most part, if your blog is less popular, you won’t be able to find your way on them.

– Using self-hosted solutions

If you don’t want your earnings shared with any third party platform, you may want to manage your ads on your blog. This isn’t something you can easily handle without the help of dedicated ad management scripts. Oiopublisher is a commonly used script that makes it easy for WordPress users.

This helps you manage you ads and collect payment from advertisers. If you use a script to run ads, your property may not get the exposure you would get as being on a popular marketplace. Whatever the case, you have to decide.

3. Sponsored Articles

I have seen many big blogs do well with this form of advertisement. Generally, there are two approaches to this method:

• The advertiser does the writing and you just publish.
• The advertiser provides the keyword or product details for you the blog owner to write the content.

Again, the price per article will depend on your blog’s popularity, who does the content and of course your power to bargain.

Advertisers have principally three reasons to sponsor content on your blog:

• To get access to your community with the hope to make some sales.
• To promote their brands to your market.
• To get some link  juice for SEO benefits.

Advertisers who want the backlink for SEO ranking boost would always insist on having a dofollow link from your content. While the pay package may be interesting, it is at the same time a danger if you rely on Google for some amount of organic traffic. If the search giant finds out (by some means) you were paid for the dofollow link, your site may get penalized.

What about disclaiming paid advertising on your blog?

Some advertisers frown on disclaimers. They want the endorsement to be “natural”. You know when the motivation behind an article is financial, it may compromise the value of the product and the FTC is adamant on that.

4. Selling Your Own Products

Everyone online can own a product these days.  It doesn’t matter the level of your expertise.  If you can only have a profitable product idea, the next step would be to hire the required skills to get your product developed.

Once your product is consumable, you can sell it on your blog and other marketplaces. This just tells you selling your own product on your blog is a pretty nice way to monetize your blog.

5. Contextual Ads

There is a lot of money to be made with this method. However, it doesn’t simply flow as some paint it to be. Monetizing your blog this way has some intricacies. Whether you are Google Adsense, Media.net  or any other platform, you need to give yourself to a learning curve.

I vehemently discourage this especially if your blog is new. Focus on building an audience and think affiliate marketing as you grow. However, this may depend on the niche you are in.

6. Link Sales

People are still making money selling links on their blogs.

I regularly get mails from some backlink mongers who offer to pay me $XX,X just to link to their website from within my blog. This looks like incredible source of quick money. Oh Yes it is. But it could also be a rope around your neck if the links are meant to pass PageRank.

Of course no one is ready to pay for a backlink if it’s not a dofollow link for some SEO ranking benefits. But Google frowns at this and considers it part of a link scheme, a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Which Of This Is The Best Way To Monetize Your Blog?

I highly recommend testing these methods out to find which of them gets the best results for you. Once you’ve found out your biggest earner, rinse it and repeat.

Don’t forget the implications of any method you settle on. For instance, selling links may be very profitable but this can land your blog into trouble with the search giant.

I know of blogs on which you are never going to find any form of advertising. Probably, they know what works for them the most. It’s not a weakness that they don’t accept sponsored posts or sell banner space. It’s a manner of strategy. Find yours and make it work for you.

Do Things Differently

Once you’ve found out what works for you, do it differently. Adding a special tough is likely to generate more results.

Some bloggers copy & paste. Of course that’s why their results are mediocre. In this post on Sue Dunlevie’s blog, I discuss how to do things differently and stand out. You may want to check that out for more tips on how to grow your blogging income.

Let me know what you think in the comment box.

First, I won’t recommend you jump into making money if you are just starting a blog. You may not get any reasonable results and this may lead to discouragement and abandonment. The first thing every newbie blogger should do is focus on building flourishing community.

Your community is your market and I want to underline the word flourishing. There is no successful blogger with a thriving community. That’s what makes the excitement. So before you start thinking of your firs $1000 as a blogger, make sure you are getting targeted traffic and engaging readers.

That’s what I get on my blog. I see the results so I decided to share with you some of the things I do to get this income coming.

The Three Top Ways I Make Money Blogging

1 – Banner Advertising

There is a disease around that makes people think banner advertiser is dead. This sickness called Banner Blindness has made some bloggers to completely ignore banners. But the truth is, out of every 10 sites you visit, you are still going to see some banner advertising elements. If it no longer works, people won’t keep investing in it.

Erik for instance is making money with this blog through BuySellAds (BSA). That may not be your case because getting approved by them is like hitting a hard rock. To make things more difficult, once your application is rejected, they won’t even tell you where you are wrong.

A good BuySellAds alternative I recently came across is AdClerks (PC). Though I have more than the minimum impressions required by BSA, and my blog is premium with a great community of readers, my last application was turned down. I still think there an error though

I have sold banners in the past, managing everything by myself through a plugin. But this time, I decided I was going to use a platform so as to raise my chances of being located by many more advertisers.

The rejection by BSA got me surprised but not discouraged. After a few keystrokes in Google, I found over five ad networks and decided to go with PC. My friend here, Erik is doing well with BSA but if you want something quick, give PC a try.

2 – Affiliate Marketing

This is what makes blogging even more exciting. Everyone with a blog can do affiliate marketing and see results.

Though this is not as simple and easy as it used to be, Affiliate Marketing is still a flourishing business. You don’t need any investment. If you have a blog already, what you need is promote targeted affiliate products, generate sales and earn commissions.

I wrote an ebook Affiliate Marketing For Bloggers where I share my working methods and steps taken by other successful bloggers to make real money with Affiliate Marketing.

Most of the things you need to succeed are inside. But briefly, I’m going to give you some very powerful tips to help you succeed with Affiliate Marketing as a blogger:

1. Make sure you promote products that are targeted to your niche. Don’t try to sell anything because your cousin or grand ma is the author.
2. Focus more on products that pay recurring commission. That way, you are sure of a steady source of passive income.

Now, this is the killer method that constantly generate my income:

1. Get a copy of the product you want to promote and use it. There are different ways to get a copy: Generally, you may buy or ask for review copy from owner.
2. Once you’ve used it and gotten some results, share those results with your audience. Man has been programmed to copy things that are working for others. Therefore, if your readers see something working great for you, chances are high for them to buy that same stuff.
3. Finally, teach them how to use that product and get the same results. These tutorial posts are the triggers. If people don’t make the buying decision after reading your results, a majority will do after you teach them how to get your results.

3 – Sell My Own Products

There is nothing as rewarding as selling your own products but I know some folks are going to complain about this.

The truth is, creating and selling your own products is even more complicated but the income is a huge compensation.

Product creators have to deal with a lot of other things that eat up time and money. These are things like updates, upgrades, maintenance, shipping, customer service, etc. As an affiliate, you are never going to deal with all these.

But the truth is, once you’ve created a product that’s a big success, you will make more money than any affiliate and that income will help you handle any extra responsibilities.

In the past, I have created different products for bloggers and these all summed up are making the greatest share of my income online. And as a serial entrepreneur, each time I sell any of these products, my income doubles.

What if I can’t create a product Enstine?

I saw that question coming and I’m ready to answer!

I know I have worked hard, developed my skills so I can create digital products any time without hiring or outsourcing part of the job.

But I still have that strong believe that anyone else can create a product. Even if you are just from under a bridge and you know absolutely nothing, you can still create a successful product.

Today, PLR products are a fast way to go. As a matter of fact, my first ever product was a PLR ebook which I sold on Clickbank and make much more money than I ever invested. You can read more about it here

So it is no excuse that you can’t create a product. If you ain’t able to do it yourself and you feel PLR products are all crap, there are thousands of talented freelance developers and writers in any industry. You can fine them on Freelancer, Upwork, etc.

All you should do is put up your thinking cap and come up with a hot product idea. It could be an ebook or software. Digital products are doing well now so you won’t be wrong creating one.

Once you’ve brainstormed and arrived at something, you should hire talents from these job boards and before you know it, you are a product owner.

Conclusion

Those are the three main ways I make money blogging. I know many of you use Adsense and other methods.

I want you to share with us in the comment what’s working for you and how we can benefit from your experience.