Ways to make $$$ from your site

Making money in any business is a function of providing value. The more we help other people solve their problems, the more other people are willing to pay us for our assistance.

For your audience:

Provide engaging, interesting and useful content. The better your content, the more likely someone will subscribe to your blog, recommend you, and share your content.

For an advertiser:

You can provide audiences. You might have a topic or a niche you specialize in; if a company wants to advertise to that market, you can provide them with access to your audience.

For a marketer:

You can provide engagement. If your content is engaging enough — meaning someone clicks, shares, or comments — you can parlay engagement to other people’s products and services.

If your content is so spectacular that your audiences are gigantic and very engaged, you may want to sell directly to your readers. Why? Partnering with other companies often involves giving up a significant share of revenue.

If you have neither audience size nor engagement, defer your moneymaking efforts. Instead, focus on growing your audience, growing your engagement, and creating value for your readers and potential partners.

If you have engagement but not necessarily reach, look at affiliate marketing. Unlike advertising, which typically pays for impressions or clicks, affiliate marketers pay bloggers for concrete actions were taken, such as purchases or form fills. You can write about products and encourage your audience — which might not be huge but is highly engaged and trusting — to do business with your affiliate partner. If you have both reach and audience, you can continue to work with partners and advertisers. When it comes to potential, you may want to sell directly to your audiences, direct to consumer. No matter which route you pursue, it’s unlikely you will be so commercially successful at first that you’ll earn more than beer money. You should expect beer money at first, then perhaps fun money or pay-a-small-bill-monthly money. Over time, as you grow your audience, focus your content and build engagement, you should see revenues increase to car payment money and ideally, mortgage money. That said, you should NOT expect quit-your-day-job money immediately, or even within a couple years.

If you have audience reach, but not necessarily engagement, look at advertising. Think about opening up your blog to advertisers to place ads next to your content.