Tuesday, 31 October 2017

How to make money from Instagram

You’ve probably heard stories of Instagrammers who are cashing in on the pictures they snap and share every day. You might've even looked at your own sizeable following and thought, “Maybe I can do that too”.

Just like bloggers, YouTubers, and anyone who’s amassed an audience around the content they produce, Instagrammers have reach and influence figured out—two things many companies struggle with.

Together, these two things offer the opportunity for Instagram creators to explore multiple streams of potential revenue, whether they want to build an empire or just earn some extra cash and free stuff.

How Many Followers Do You Need?

If by now you're wondering how many followers you need to make it happen, the short answer is “not as many as you think”.

The long answer depends on factors that range from:

What niche you’re in and how easily you can directly tie it to a product category (fashion, food, beauty, and fitness are popular niches, based on top hashtags)
How engaged your followers are (100K fake followers won’t amount to much).
Which revenue channels you explore.

Naturally, the more engaged followers you have, the better

While top Instagrammers make thousands per post on the photo-sharing platform, even those with a smaller-but-engaged following of 1000 have the potential to profit.

How to Make Money on Instagram

Depending on your unique brand of Instagram content, your audience, and your level of commitment, you can make money on Instagram in the following ways:

Doing sponsored posts for brands that want to get in front of your audience.
Becoming an affiliate and making a commission selling other brands’ products .
Creating and selling a physical or digital product, or offering a paid service.
Selling your photography.

The beauty here is that chasing one revenue stream doesn’t necessarily rule out another.

So let’s start with the most common approach to Instagram monetization: partnering with brands as an influencer.

Work With Brands on Sponsored Posts

The term “influencer” gets thrown around a lot these days.

An influencer is basically anyone who’s built themselves an online reputation by doing and sharing awesome things online. To their audiences, influencers are tastemakers, trendsetters and trusted experts whose opinions about certain subjects are respected.

Many brands just can't compete with that and so they partner with influencers instead to do sponsored posts that help get the word out about their products.

1. Sponsored Posts

It’s not always about your follower count, but the number of people who engage with your content and look forward to each one of your posts. A lot of brands are moving away from working with major digital influencers to leveraging smaller bloggers’ audiences.

When you start, reaching out to brands is a great way to secure a few collaborations. As you gain traction, brands will discover you and email you about different opportunities.

Every company has its specific rules for sponsorship, so do not use a one-size-fits-all approach when reaching out. Do your research and interact with them on social before initiating contact.

The key is to only associate with brands that fit your aesthetic. That way, your readers perceive every collaboration as authentic and buy into what you’re trying to sell to them.

Within six months of launching our platform on YouTube and Instagram, we received our first sponsorship opportunity. A jewelry box subscription company found us through a hashtag and reached out. Its reps offered to send us complimentary pieces every month in exchange for a few Instagram features.

We have since received products from Coach, TOMS Shoes, Pura Vida Bracelets and other clothing and accessories brands.

FTC guidelines require you to identify your sponsored posts. We usually include a branded hashtag in our captions (for example, when we collaborated with Coach, it was #CoachHoliday) in addition to the required ones like #ad or #sponsored.

We typically charge at least $75 per sponsored post, but we don’t get paid for all collaborations.Sponsored posts add up to about $600 of our income every month, which we split evenly.

Some brands send their products as gifts — to date, we’ve received $3,000 in merchandise. Because we receive most of our accessories for free from brands, we’ve been able to cut our shopping budgets in half, saving us a combined $500 a month.

This is a free discussion blog for help seekers please drop your suggestion for beginers and also drop queries .

Monday, 30 October 2017

Serious blogging

Tactics I Used to Build Three of the World's Most Popular Blogs, Distilled into Easy to Follow Cheat Sheets and Checklists

Everything you need to know about setting up your blog, getting traffic, developing your blogging skills, and becoming a successful blogger, but without all the “fluff” in most video and audio courses
Step-by-step courses and checklists with easy-to-follow tutorials
The most advanced blog training ever published, diving deep into each topic and teaching you all the intricate details
A look behind the scenes at SmartBlogger.com, where we show you exactly how we get our traffic and earn our revenue

Together, the blogs I helped build have Generated over 200 million page views and over $50 million in revenue

The Biggest Secret to Growing Your Blog to Thousands of Adoring Readers Who Follow Every Word You Publish

Would you like to know?

Let me be blunt: there are very few people in the world who can tell you.

The vast majority of so-called A-listers are bright but otherwise normal people who were in the right place, writing about the right things, at the right time. Many are my clients, paying me as much as $5,000 per month to advise them.

Why would they pay such outrageous fees?

Because they stumbled into popularity. Because they realize they got lucky, and they are desperate to seize the opportunity before it slips away from them.

So, they come to me. Here’s why:

When you do something amazing once, you might know what you’re doing. When you do it twice, you probably know what you’re doing. When you do it three times, you definitely know what you’re doing.

Well, I’ve built wildly successful blogs three separate times.

First, I worked under Brian Clark as we built Copyblogger into a multimillion dollar brand. Next, I worked with Neil Patel and Hiten Shah to launch the KISSmetrics blog, bringing in hundreds of thousands of visitors in just the first few months. After that, I started my own blog, formerly Boost Blog Traffic and now Smart Blogger, and I took it to 40,000 subscribers within two years. Now, Smart Blogger subscribers are more than four times that number.

Could I just be lucky?

Maybe, but it’s far more likely that I’m one of the few people in the world who truly understands how to build successful blogs with droves of adoring readers. And right here, right now, I’ll tell you my biggest “secret:”

Stop messing around with blogs in your spare time. Instead, look at this like a career and get serious about mastering your craft.

“WHAT?! No magic traffic or monetization tricks?”

Nope. Sorry to disappoint you.

The truth is far less appetizing, I’m afraid:

You’ve heard stories about how athletes dedicate their lives to the mastery of their sport. They train for hours upon hours every day until they are the absolute best in the world at what they do.

Well, that’s how I treat blogging.

To me, it’s not just a little hobby I tinker around with on the side. It’s a career, a profession, maybe even a calling.

And I’ve dedicated thousands upon thousands of hours to the mastery of my craft.

Want to be as good as me?

Well, until recently, you only had two options:

Drop everything in your life and think about nothing but blogging for the next decade
Pay me $1,000 an hour to teach you what I’ve learned

If you’re a beginner though, both options are problematic.

First, you have a job and a family, so you can’t just drop everything and become a blogging addict. Second, you probably can’t afford to pay me $1,000 an hour.

The solution?

The Only Training Program Designed Exclusively for Serious Bloggers Who Are Tired of Messing around With Free, Watered-Down Content

From what I’ve seen, there are two types of bloggers:

Hobbyists: people who like the idea of having a place to express their thoughts but have no expectations. They just like writing, and they don’t care if anything comes of it. If they make some money, great, but if nothing ever happens, that's fine too.
Serious Bloggers: people who see their blog as a means to an end. Sure, they love writing, but their real purpose is to create a side income, build a platform for their book, attract clients, or promote their business. In other words, they’re not blogging just for fun. They expect results.

The problem is, most of the blogging advice out there is for Hobbyists. It’s watered-down, extremely simple content that gives you a few tips and tricks but fails to teach you how to get real results from your blog.

And it’s frustrating as hell.

If you’re a serious blogger, you don’t want some stupid list post giving you 100 ways to do something. You want the one strategy that works every single time you try it, and you want to dive deep into that strategy so you can really understand it.

If you’re a serious blogger, you’re sick of listening to interviews where a famous blogger gives you vague advice like “create great content” or “just keep writing.” You want a one-page checklist for everything you have to do, broken down into steps you can actually follow.

If you’re a serious blogger, you’re tired of wading through thousands of articles, reading contradictory advice, and trying to figure out how to piece it all together. You want someone to just tell you what to do, so you can stop wasting time and get some freaking results.

But no one is offering anything like that. Until now.

It's Yours: Everything I Know About Building a Successful Blog

For the first time, I’m publishing everything I know about building a successful blog.

Normally, I only talk about traffic, and we’ll cover that here too, but I’ll also dive deep into building your email list, technical setup, and the topic everyone wants to know about: how to make your readers fall in love with you and keep coming back. Not just a few vague steps either, but nuts and bolts instruction showing you every single step and detail.

In fact, I’m betting you’ll be staggered at how much I give you. Each course includes:

A 30+ page special report. This isn’t some beginner-level document teaching you a bunch of stuff you already know. We dive deep into advanced tactics and strategies, giving you real-life examples from myself and my clients, breaking it down so you understand exactly what to do.
Screenshots, checklists, and tons of resources – everything you need to take action and get results fast.
Short, to-the-point videos giving you first-hand demonstrations of how to use the blogging tools we use and recommend and put the strategies from the report into action. In other words, no more wondering what to do. Instead of stumbling around by yourself, you'll be able to learn from Marsha, our senior instructor, during her live monthly workshops, or the dozens of video tutorials in the Tool Library.

Here’s Just a Little of What You’ll Discover

What kinds of topics do we cover? Here’s the list of courses that members are currently enjoying:

The Six-Figure Roadmap: A Breakdown of Everything You Have To Do (and When) to Build a Six-Figure Blog
Blog Traffic 101: How to Ask Influencers to Share Your Blog Posts, Even if They Have No Idea Who You Are
Income on Autopilot: How to Use Email Autoresponders to Bring in Consistent Income Every Month
Creating Credibility: How to Win the Trust of Your Audience, Even if You're a Nobody with No Credentials
Finding the Perfect Domain Name: Why Your Domain Name Sucks (and How to Find a Good One at a Reasonable Price)
The List Post Handbook: Everything You Need to Know to Write List Posts That Go Viral
SEO 101: Everything a Beginning Blogger Needs to Know (and Some Advanced Tips)
The Ultimate Blog Design Makeover: How to Look Smart and Get More Traffic Even if You're a Newbie with Tech Stuff
Become a Writing Machine: The System Professional Writers Use to Write Up to 10,000 Words a Day
Traffic on Demand: How to Use Email Teasers to Get Traffic Whenever You Want
Your First $1000 Month: How to Launch a Telephone Coaching Practice, Even if You're a Beginner With No Credentials
The Egobait Handbook: A Nifty Trick for Grabbing the Attention of the Authorities in Your Space
Getting Paid: How to Choose a Payment Solution to Sell the Stuff on Your Blog
The Blogging Breakthrough: Why Your Blog Never Seems to Take Off and What to Do About It
Viral Infographics: How to Outline and Commission an Infographic That Goes Viral (Even if You Don't Have a Single Artistic Bone in Your Body)
How to Create an Irresistible Opt-in Page: Get People Pounding Down Your Door to Join Your Email List
The Foolproof Formula for Attention-Grabbing Headlines: How to Hook Your Readers and Reel Them into Your Posts
Make Mouthwatering Offers: How to Guarantee Your Readers Will Gobble Up Everything You Create
The Product Pricing Formula: Eliminate the Stress and Know Exactly What to Charge
How to Build Your Funnel No Matter Where You're Starting: Three Real-Life Case Studies of Students
Build Your Online Home: The Perfect, Pain-free Setup for Your WordPress Blog

Every day, we make new discoveries about the best ways to do things, and those discoveries will turn into in-depth reports in the future as well.

If you're a new blogger or haven't launched your idea yet, we'll give you the sequence of courses to get you going. And if you've been around longer but have lost traction, we'll show you how to get rockin' again.

How Is All This Different from the
Posts We Publish for Free?

Good question.

At 30+ pages, we’ll go into much greater depth than we can in a typical 2,000 word blog post. We’ll talk a lot more about how to do everything, instead of just telling you what to do. You’ll also receive checklists and any other supplementary materials we think are helpful.

These are also much more advanced topics. On the blog, we’re forced to cater to absolute beginners who haven’t really committed to building a popular blog yet. All they want is a few basic tips, not in-depth material designed to help them achieve mastery.

But if that’s all you needed, you’d already be an uber-successful blogger, right?

That’s why we created Serious Bloggers Only: to help you get to the next level. And yes, that involves giving you more advanced training, but it also means upping your game.

We’re not going to water down the content or hover around and make sure you do the homework. It’s time to put on your big boy (or girl) pants, and get to work.

In some ways, this whole program is a type of graduation.

When you first started, you were probably happy with all the free content on the web. It was all you could handle.

Now though, you might be feeling like a lot of the posts out there are a little… fluffy. They give you a lot of ideas, but they don’t give you step-by-step details on exactly how to do it and get results.

If that’s the case, it’s time for you to “graduate” to Serious Bloggers Only. You’re ready.

HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT FROM OUR THE GUESTBLOGGING CERTIFICATION COURSE?

Guestblogging.com is a masterclass in a single, powerful traffic strategy. It covers everything you could possibly want to know about guest blogging… but nothing else.

Serious Bloggers Only, on the other hand, covers a little bit of everything you need to know. It gives you a couple dozen "mincourses," teaching you just enough to take action and get results without overwhelming you.

It’s kind of like a big, fat recipe book versus attending a French chef school.

Serious Bloggers Only is the recipe book. You’ll get lots of tried-and-true “recipes” for making your blog a raving success, covering every “cuisine” imaginable.

GuestBlogging.com is the French chef school. You’ll become a master of a single “cuisine,” and if you work hard, you might even become world-renowned for your skills.

Which one should you buy?

Well, both of them, of course. Duh. 🙂

If you’re serious, you want all the education you can get. Recipe books are helpful, but at a certain point, you also want to achieve mastery, and to do that, you’ll need a masterclass dedicated to that topic.

You can’t choose one or the other. They both have their place.

How Is This Different from the
Other Membership Programs for Bloggers?

The biggest difference:

Everything I give you in Serious Bloggers Only is compact.

No webinars to attend just to be tempted with a few basic morsels, no interviews listening to people stutter and go on tangents, no sitting in front of your computer for hours and hours on end watching videos. I hate that as much as you do.

So, instead, I give you a report you can read in 30 minutes, teaching you all the important things you need to know and nothing else. You also get checklists to help remind you what to do, making it easier for you to take action without reading the report again and again.

You get resources that tell you what tools to use, with links and recommendations, and tutorials that show you how, step-by-step.

You get a private, hidden Facebook group where you can talk to other bloggers. And you get a private forum, if you don't like stepping foot inside Facebook.

You also get the support and dedication of one of my top team members and proteges, Marsha Stopa, who has coordinated the creation of the courses since Day One, has learned at my side for more than five years and knows this stuff as well as I do.

Another difference:

We have different strengths. None of our competitors can say they make $50,000 per webinar, nor are they as good at autoresponders as us.

But they’re better at other things. Like podcasts, for example. We still haven’t done one of those. We don’t do a lot of affiliate marketing either, so if that’s what you want to learn, you’re better off looking elsewhere.

I only release training on things we actually do. Anything else would be kinda dishonest.

Here’s the Real Proof

I’ve always felt like you can judge a teacher based on the success of their students. Here are just a few words from some of mine:

The hardest part about building a platform on the internet is finding the right consultants to help propel your business forward. I was completely stopped in a few areas not knowing which steps to take next. Just one of his golden nuggets of wisdom had me stop doing something that was taking up an enormous amount of time and start focusing on another area of my business that added $40,000 to my bottom line in just 5 months.

Maria Killam

I landed over 1,000 new subscribers the first month after working with Jon. He literally changed my life: I finally felt confident enough to quit my job and blog full-time. Seriously, Jon is a blogging God. I know it’s over-the-top, but there’s no other way to describe him.

Jennifer Gresham

"Jon is the best teacher you could find on this subject without a doubt. You can find plenty of blogs that teach about blogging, but I guarantee you there isn't another program online that provides the deep, detailed information on how to get ahead in blogging. The best stuff always costs money. This is the best stuff, and worth every freaking penny he charges. It's astoundingly excellent material."

Patrick Garmo

I could list hundreds more, but you get the point, right?

In fact, you might be wondering how much advice from someone like me is going to cost. Let’s talk about that next.

Everything You Need to Know for the Price of a Cheap Dinner

Imagine for a moment that I’m coming to your town. Seeing that you’re a blog subscriber, I call you up and ask if you’d like to go out to dinner.

“Can I ask you a few questions about blogging?” you ask.

“Sure,” I say. “If you’ll pick up the check, I’ll let you ask me anything you want. We can even go somewhere cheap like Chili’s or Applebee’s.”

Would you take me up on it?

Or here’s an even better question:

If I offered to come to your town and have dinner with you every month, teaching you everything I know about building a popular blog, wouldn’t you joyfully continue buying me dinner month after month for as long as it took?

Well, that’s essentially the deal I’m offering you here. Your membership fee to access Serious Bloggers Only and learn everything I know about blogging is just a measly $49 per month – about the same price as a cheap dinner for two.

Why so cheap?

In the past, I’ve charged ultra premium prices for each of my programs. The least expensive course we offered was $591 – a steep price if you’re a newbie blogger. We have intensive programs that cost $2,500. We also had coaching programs going up to $10,000 per year.

And let’s be clear: they sell out. Often, the class is full within a few hours of opening registration. So, there’s no mathematical reason to lower our prices.

But this community isn’t about math. It’s about something else entirely:

Creating a home.

Right now, there isn’t a place on the web for people like us. Sure, the web is overflowing with blogging advice, but nearly all of it is targeted at hobbyists who could care less about mastering their craft.

But you and me? We’re different.

To us, blogging isn’t a hobby. It’s a launchpad for publishing a book, getting clients, selling a product, maybe even becoming a public speaker.

And we’re very, very serious about making it work.

The problem?

Up until now, you might’ve thought you were alone. The truth is though, there are thousands of people like us. We just haven’t had a place to gather.

Until now.

Join A Community of More Than 1,000 Bloggers who are truly serious about building popular blogs

Serious Bloggers Only is the home for people who are serious about blogging.

Over 1,000 members – each and every one of them dedicated to mastering their craft.

Here’s just a small sample of what they have to say about the program:

Just a quick note to let you know that I just registered for Serious Bloggers Only, and I am so psyched. As I read through the sales page, I just kept thinking: this is like an answered prayer.

I've been hoping for a program that offers exactly what you describe (step-by-step how-tos for self-starters who are serious about blogging), without simultaneously requiring a large upfront investment. And the fact that you're offering it means that I can trust that it will be the best of the best.

I've already gleaned a great deal from your posts -- I'm closing in on my first 1,000 subscribers, gaining interest from publishers, and earning more and more from speaking engagements -- and now feels like the right time to take it to the next level.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that the sales page hit the nail on the head for me, and I really appreciate this opportunity to learn from you. Also, I would TOTALLY take you out for a nice dinner if you came to town. 🙂

Caroline

I feel exactly like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when he received his ticket!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you!!!!

Lee

Thank you SO much for putting together Serious Bloggers Only. It is exactly what I need at exactly the right time.

I am so excited that it's real, and it's affordable. I feel like if I'm unclear and scattered on a blog focus right now and that it's not yet a real business, I shouldn't be spending big bucks on something that doesn't exist.

Jan

Will you love Serious Bloggers Only just as much?

I’d like to think so, but there’s no way for me to know for sure. So, that’s why I’m making it easy for you to try it out.

Sign up today, check out the training materials for 30 days, and decide what you think. If you’re not overjoyed with the content, let us know, and we’ll issue you a refund. No questions asked, no delays and you can keep the content. The money goes right back into your account.

You can also cancel your account at any time. You don’t even have to talk to us. You can cancel it within the member’s area with a click of a button, and you’ll never be billed again. Ever.

The bottom line?

There’s absolutely no risk for giving this a try. If you want in, just click the button below.

I'm Serious! Let Me in!

Warning: The Most Expensive Advice Is the Advice You Don’t Take

You might be thinking, “Well, I’m just getting started. Maybe I’ll tinker around by myself for a while, and then I’ll come back to this later. “

But that’s a mistake. Here’s why:

It’ll take you ten times as long. You’ll run into a simple problem, and you’ll waste days or even weeks trying to figure it out. You might also take your blog in the wrong direction and end up having to backtrack or even start over.

Serious Bloggers Only can save you from some of that. Not all of it – learning anything is struggle – but what if we save you just a few days of frustration every month? Is that worth $49?

And here’s the real question:

If you’re not willing to commit $49 per month to mastering your craft, you’re not very serious, now are you?

I don’t say that to be mean. It’s just the honest truth.

Think about it this way:

You were willing to spend four years in college, right? Maybe you finished, maybe you didn’t, but the idea of dedicating four years of your life and tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to school didn’t seem ridiculous.

So why should this be any different?

Blogging is just as difficult as any other career, and it requires just as much study. If you’re going to reach the top of your field, you also have to dedicate the time and money necessary to master your craft.

And this is nowhere near as expensive!

At a top university, you might spend $200,000 for a four-year degree. That’s $4,167 per month.

This program, on the other hand, is $49 per month. Granted, we don’t have fancy classrooms or those hats with the little tassels, but stick with it, and do the exercises I give you, and you’ll learn just as much.

Can I promise you’ll become a popular blogger, earning hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars per year?

No. The only person that can make that promise is YOU.

You have to decide how serious you are. You’re either in this to win, or you’re not.

So, what’s it going to be?

How to blog smartly

In “How to be Smart in a World of Dumb Bloggers” Jon Morrow's advice for becoming a smart blogger includes

Replacing your friends
Becoming a Know-it-all
and Doing less.

Advice from a Smart Blogger on How to Become One via Blogging Successfully

I agree with each of those points and here is why:

Smart rubs off on others

When you hang out with smart, inspiring people, your own life and aspirations improve. They become a motivator and an agent of positive change in your life. If your friends are dumber than you or a negative influence, it's time to expand your circle of friends.

Temporary vs. eternal

When you trade the momentary joy of entertainment for the long-lasting joy of education, you are choosing the gold in life. I can't tell you how many movies I have skipped in the last 4 years to read blog posts and books instead. Books like these that challenge my thinking, educate me on some new process or tool, or encourage me to be a better person and leader.

Less is more

To do less, you must first evaluate all you are doing, qualify what is important, and have the courage to take the steps necessary to cut out those things that may be good, but are not the best thing to help you reach your current goals.And as Jon says, sometimes you do just need more time to think, so that your actions become awesome instead of mediocre.

In the end he says being a smart blogger is all about you. Your choices, your time, your work, your faithfulness, because success in blogging is a process, not an overnight occurrence. And it is also not all about you. Your legacy and lasting impact on the world ultimately lies in how your serve and impact others.

Tips to earn through blogging

On this page I want to walk you through the process of how to make money blogging. It’s perfect for those who already have a blog but if you don’t I recommend you check out our guide to starting a blog (it’s step 1).

My Story Of Making Money Blogging

I began to blog one day on impulse after seeing another blog and being fascinated by the medium. I had no idea at the time that what I was doing would ultimately lead to a complete change in my career path and end up being something I’d make a full time income from in several years later.

I had no experience or profile in the online space, no technical ability and while I had done some public speaking had done very little in the way of communicating through the written word.

I did not make any money from my first blogs for almost 18 months (I didn’t even know you could so did not try) and when I did start to try to make money from them the first income was just a few dollars a week – but gradually in time my income grew from a part time income to a full time income and then beyond.

How to make money Blogging?

I’m often asked how to make money blogging so want in this article to lay out some basic steps that I see most bloggers who make a living from blogging go through.

Here is how to make money from a blog:

Set up your blog
Start creating useful content
Get off your blog and start finding readers
Build engagement with the readers that come
Start making money from the readership you have through one or more of a variety of income streams

Sounds easy doesn’t it! On some levels the process is simple – but you need to know up front that there’s a lot to each step and below I’m going to give you some pointers on each including some further reading.

Here’s how to make money from a blog.

1. Start a Blog

In order to make money blogging you’re going to need to have a blog. While this is pretty obvious it is also a stumbling block for many PreBloggers who come to the idea of blogging with little or no technical background.

If that’s you – don’t worry! It was my story too and most bloggers start out feeling a little overwhelmed by the process of starting their blog.

If you need a little help I would highly recommend you check out my article How to Start a Blog in which I run through the steps you need to take to get up and running. It’s really not as hard as you might think!

2. Start Creating Useful Content

A blog is not a blog without content so once you’ve set your blog up you need to focus your attention upon creating useful content. What you choose to create will depend a little on the topic that you choose to write about (on that note, most successful bloggers have some focus to their blogging whether that be a niche or a demographicthat they write for).

The key with creating content is to make it as useful as possible. Focus upon creating content that changes people’s lives in some way will be the type of content that people will value the most and it will help people to feel like they know, like and trust you – which is really important if you later want to make money from your blog.

3. Get off your blog and start finding readers

As you create the most useful content that you possibly can it is easy to get very insular with your focus and spend most of your time looking at building your blog. Many bloggers have a ‘build it and they will come mentality’ with their blogging but this is a bit of a trap.

If you want to make money from your blog you need to not only focus upon building a great blog but it is also necessary to get off your blog and to start promoting it.

There are many ways to experiment with growing your blog’s audience that I’ve written in previous blog posts and talked about in podcasts (I’ll share some further reading and listening below) but it is important to enter into all these strategies remembering that you should not just be looking for ‘traffic’ but ‘readers’.

Start by thinking carefully about the type of reader you’d like to have read your blog. You might like to create an avatar of that reader(sometimes called a reader persona or profile) to help you work out who you’re trying to attract.

Once you know who you’re hoping to have read your blog ask yourself where that type of person might already be gathering online. Begin to list where they might be gathering:

Are they reading certain blogs? List the top 3
Are they participating in certain forums? List the top 3
Are they listening to podcasts? List the top 3
Are they engaging on certain social networks? List the top 3
Which accounts are they following on each of these social networks? List the top 3

Each of these places that you reader might already be gathering has opportunities to develop a presence whether that be by leaving good comments, offering to create guest posts or simply by being helpful and answering questions.

With this list of blogs, focus, podcasts, social media accounts in hand you will have some good spots to begin to hang out and create value.

The key is to build a presence, to add value, to foster relationships – not to engage in spammy practices.

Further Reading/Listening on the topic of Finding Readers for your Blog:

See our latest posts and podcasts on finding readers in the finding readers section of the podcast and here on the blog. Here are a few other links to check out on the topic:

4. Build engagement with the readers that come

With sustained focus upon creating great content and finding readers for your blog you’ll begin to notice people visiting your blog and engaging with your content.

At this point you need to switch your focus to engaging with those readers and building community.

Respond to comments, reach out to those readers personally and do everything that you can to keep them coming back again and again by building a ‘sticky blog’.

Look after the readers you already have well and you’ll find they spread the word of your blog for you and help make your blog even more widely read.

Having an engaged reader is also much easier to make money from.

Further Reading on deepening reader engagement on your blog:

5. Start making money from the readership you have through one or more of a variety of income streams

OK – the first four steps of starting a blog, creating content, finding readers and building engagement with those readers are important foundations that you really do need to get in place before you’ll be able to build long term income for your blog.

There’s no avoiding that what we’ve covered is a lot of work but if you do it well you’ll be setting yourself up well and giving yourself every chance of being able to make money from your blog.

With these foundations in place you’re now ready to start attempting to make money from your blog but you do need to be aware that just because you have set up your blog, have content and have engaged readers that the money won’t just automatically flow.

It takes continued work and experimentation to make money from your blog.

I’ve written many articles here on ProBlogger on the topic of making money blogging and will link to some suggested further reading on the topic below but let me share a few introductory words on the topic first.

There are Many Ways to Make Money Blogging

One of the biggest misconceptions that I see bloggers having about monetising blogs is that they have to do it in one of a handful of ways. The reality is that there are many ways to make money from blogs.

A few years ago I decided to sit down and list all the ways that I saw bloggers making money from their blogs and created this ‘money map’ (click to enlarge).

Note: this money map was updated in September 2016.

As you’ll see there are quite a few options that bloggers have to derive income from their blogs.

Don’t worry though – while this map is quite overwhelming at a first glance there are a few main ‘clusters’ of income streams that you might want to focus upon rather than all the specific ones.

1. Advertising Income

This is where many bloggers start. In many ways this model of making money from blogs is not dissimilar to how a magazine or newspaper sells ads. As your traffic and brand grows you’ll find advertisers will be willing to pay to get exposure to your audience.

While you need decent traffic to do a direct deal with an advertisers there are ad networks (like Google AdSense) that act as a middleman and enable smaller publishers to run ads on their blogs. This is where many bloggers start (I did too).

2. Affiliate Income

A recent survey of ProBlogger readers found that affiliate promotions was the most common type of income that our readers have.

To put it most simply – affiliate income is when you link to a product that is for sale on another site (take Amazon for example) and if someone follows your link and ends up buying that product you earn a commission on that sale.

There’s more to it than that but this is another great place to start with monetising your blog as affiliate programs are easy to sign up for and if you have an engaged audience you will find they follow the recommendations that you make on products.

3. Events

While not something most bloggers do I have noticed an increase in the number of bloggers making money by running events.

These range from big conferences and events like our ProBlogger Conferencewhich hosts hundreds of bloggers every year right down to smaller meet-ups for a blogger’s readers where money is made either through charging readers to attend or by finding a sponsor for the event.

Alternatively online events or summits are getting more popular.

4. Recurring Income

Another growing category of income that I’m seeing more and more bloggers are experimenting is recurring income streams (sometimes called continuity programs or membership programs).

This is where readers pay a regular recurring amount (usually on a monthly or annual basis) for access to either premium content, a community area, some kind of service, tools, coaching (or some combination of these things).

6. Promoting a Business

Many brick and mortar businesses indirectly make money from their blogs by using their blogs to grow their profile and direct readers to their business.

7. Services

A common way that many bloggers make money is through offering services to their readers. These might be anything from coaching and consulting, to writing or copywriting, to design, training or other freelance services.

8. Products

While I started out making money from my blogs through advertising and affiliate promotions today my #1 source of income is through selling eBooks and courses on my blogs. These ‘virtual products’ take work to create but have been lucrative for me and many other bloggers.

Products can of course take many forms and income virtual information products like eBooks or courses but also other virtual products like software, reports etc.

The other type of product some bloggers sell is physical products. This is most common when the blogger has a business but sometimes bloggers also create merchandise (T-shirts etc) or other physical products to sell.

Other Income Streams

There are of course other forms of income that bloggers experiment with. Some include asking for donations, syndicating content to other sites and lastly selling their blogs.

Multiple Income Streams

Most full time bloggers make money more than one way and end up with multiple income streams.

Diversifying your income in this way not only is smart and helps you spread the risk from having all your eggs in one basket but it also speeds up the journey to going full time.

I learned this lesson the hard way after having most of my income coming from one source in the early days but after a bit of a bad experience began to diversify my income streams (read about that here) – it was one of the best things I ever did!

Today I make money from around 12 different streams.

This didn’t just happen overnight though – read about how I added them one at a time here.

Update: I more recently reported on how I made money blogging in this income report.

Direct or Indirect Income?

One last little distinction in terms of income streams…. Some bloggers make money directly ‘from’ their blog while others make money indirectly ‘because’ of their blog.

Direct Income – when I started making money from my blogs it was through ‘direct’ income streams. I put AdSense ads on my blog and promoted some products on Amazon as an affiliate and the more readers I had the more income began to trickle in (it really was a trickle at first). In time as my traffic grew this income grew and I was also able to experiment with other direct forms of income such as selling advertising directly to advertisers.

Indirect Income – later on in my blogging journey opportunity has come for ‘indirect’ income streams. As my blogs and profile grew as a result of my blogging I was able to sell my services as a speaker and consultant and was offered the opportunity to author a book with the publisher Wiley. Later I was able to start an event for bloggers which also made money. None of this income came directly from the blog – but rather it came ‘because’ of my blog.

While the way that I make money blogging is a combination of direct and indirect income many bloggers focus upon one or the other.

Let’s Share the Journey to Make Money from Your Blog

I hope that this article has helped you on your journey to make money from a blog.