9 Things You Need To Do To Monetise Your Blog
There are so many different ways you can monetise your blog. Whether your blog is about food, parenting, wealth, fitness, gardening, travel or a whole mixture of topics, you can monetise your blog from the very beginning. If you’re enjoying blogging and want to start earning money from your passion, then you can easily make it happen. To help you get started, I have listed below 10 things you need to do before you can monetise your blog. If you do these things you will be setting your blog up for success and ensuring that it will be profitable.
This page contains affiliate links which means I will receive a small commission if you purchase anything using my link. This is at no extra cost to you.
1. Have a self-hosted blog
If you want to monetise your blog then you need to have a self-hosted blog. When you have a self-hosted blog it means you own your site and can monetise it in any way you wish. You will also have full control of your site, the content and how it looks. If you don’t have a self-hosted blog then the site doesn’t belong to you, making it harder to monetise it. I recommend using SiteGround, I have been using SiteGround to host my blog for years. They have amazing customer support and I’ve always had a great experience with them.
Follow my step-by-step guide on how to start a blog
2. Apply for affiliate programmes
Whatever your blogging niche is, you can earn money using affiliate links. When you’re part of an affiliate programme, you will receive a commission each time someone purchases something using your link. As you helped create the sale you’re rewarded with a percentage of the profit, this is at no extra cost to the buyer.
You should apply for affiliate programmes at beginning of your blogging journey, so you can start earning straight away. Once you’ve joined a few affiliate programs, you can add your affiliate links to your blog posts. Make sure your readers are aware that the post contains affiliate links. You can put a disclaimer at the top of your blog posts.
Popular Affiliate programmes:
3. Apply for an ad network
Even if your blog is brand new you can still apply for an ad Network and start earning a little bit of money for displaying adverts on your blog. The amount you earn will depend on how many pageviews your blog has each month and which ad network you’re a member of. There are a number of different ad networks you can work with, I’ve listed below some popular ones. Some of these require your blog to have a certain number of sessions per month before you can apply.
- Ezoic – no minimum
- Google Adsence – no minimum
- Monumetric – $99 fee to join
- Mediavine – minimum of 50k page views per month
- Adthrive – 100k sessions per month
4. Install an SEO Plugin
To help monetise your blog from the very beginning, you need to install an SEO plugin (Search Engine Optimisation). This will help you understand if your blog posts are SEO-friendly and how you can improve them. When your blog posts have good SEO, that means they will rank higher on Google and therefore bring more traffic to your blog. There are a number of different SEO Plugins you can install. I recommend Yoast SEO or AIO SEO.
5. Ensure your posts have a high SEO Score
If you want to monetise your blog you need to have readers and a great way to attract readers are by focusing on SEO. If you ignore SEO then you’re going to miss out on thousands of people finding your blog every day.
Creating valuable content and publishing content regularly is important but you can reach a wider audience if you optimise your posts with SEO. Once you’ve installed an SEO plugin, it’s super easy to work on your blog’s SEO as it will tell you what you need to improve on within each blog post. After a while, you will understand how SEO works and be able to write a great SEO-friendly blog post from start to finish. Here are a few extra tips to help optimise your blog with SEO.
Install an SEO plugin: AIO SEO or Yoast SEO
Do keyword research: What keywords and phrases are your target audience searching for?
Optimise Your Headings: Your post headings (<h1>, <h2>, or <h3>) is a great place to include keywords.
Optimise your images: The text behind your images should be optimised too. The name of your image (e.g. keyword.jpg) and the “alt text” are two more places you can include your keywords.
6. Focus on traffic and use Google Analytics
You must use Google Analytics when you start your blog. Google Analytics is the industry standard for website and blog traffic reporting. It’s super easy and free to set up and will only take a couple of minutes. By setting up Google Analytics you will be able to see which posts are generating the most traffic, where the traffic is coming from and who your audience is. Google Analytics is amazing as you it allows you to track things like:
- How many visitors your blog has received (daily, weekly, monthly etc.)
- Which pages are the most popular
- How people find your blog
- How long do people stay on your blog for
- Which device do people use to view your blog
7. Create a Pinterest Business account
Pinterest is both a social media platform and a search engine, which makes it the perfect place to promote your blog posts. Blogs get a lot of their traffic from Pinterest, it is truly an amazing platform to grow your blog and reach a wider audience right from the start.
You will need to create a Pinterest Business account and link it to your blog. You will also need to create several pins for your blog posts and start sharing them on your boards. For Pinterest, tips check out my blog post on how to grow your blog using Pinterest.
8. Create an email list and an opt-in
Having your own email list also means you can let your readers know whenever you have a new blog post or if you just want to send an update to them. It also gives you the opportunity to promote your products and services directly to them. To grow your email list quickly, you will want to create an opt-in. Your readers aren’t always going to give you their email addresses for free, but by creating an opt-in that your audience will love, your email list will grow much quicker.
9. Create products to sell
Selling products on your blog is a great way to monetise your blog, you can sell physical products, digital downloads or online courses. You can sell products directly on your blog via WooCommerce, or you can direct your readers to your online shops, such as Amazon, Shopify or Etsy. If you’re planning on selling online courses you can create them on Teachable.
What’s the first way you plan on monetising your blog? Let me know in the comments below!
