About a month ago over at Basic Blog Tips, Ann Smarty of MyBlogU wrote an impressive article on how to monetize a blog, in which she gave 6 methods you can definitely monetize your blog for big consistent checks.
I strongly recommend you read that article if you're struggling with making headway with earning your living online and most especially if you're one of those who haven't find an answer to this question, how do I monetize my blog?
But before you do, especially before you start experimenting with any of the tactics mentioned in the post, and any other one for that matter you might have come across online while reading other people's content on blog monetization tactics.
I want to share with you in this post the fundamental basis of making money online; without the knowledge, skills, or acquisition of this fundamental truth.....no recommendations, affiliates products, banners ads, or whatsoever monetization tactics in this world will result in anything meaningful for you.
This fundamental truth is called - Attention Grabbing!
Without attention - targeted one for that matter - the best services or products in this world will fail miserably to generate any income.
Trust me when I say this, am talking from experience and not fiction - I have promoted a hot in-demand affiliate product in the past but never earn a dime from it.
Why?
I failed to grab the attention of the targeted audience, and as a result, I couldn't make anything meaningful from my effort. I don't want you to go the same route, that's why I wrote this piece of information for you personally.
Here is the simple but harsh truth about how to make money from blogging -
Find a group of people having a particular problem, listen to their complains, understand their situation; find or develop a solution to their problem, then market it to them in the best possible simple and convenient delivery format.
Is as simple as that!
But here is the truth, what I just wrap up in 38 words above can take you years to figure out how to perfectly execute every step of it, each aspect of it takes diligent and smart work to do in other to achieve great success.
Let's start from finding your audience - an audience with a similar problem.
If you Google the word how to discover your audience, you'll be bombarded with 55 million, 100 thousand results. Each page giving some bright insight into the topic.
But am pretty sure you're not interested in reading 55 million-plus pages just to discover your audience, right?
Most advice you'll find in those competing pages will go something like this:
- Do Keyword research - Which is a good option.
- Join forum discussions and find popular/consistent threads.
- Check best seller on amazon.
- Start a blog base on your passion......etc.
All the above advice are pretty good and worth listening to, but sometimes and in my opinion........your experience count best.
If you run a WordPress blog, you need a cache plugin to make it fast, boost its performance, and optimized the images for faster page speed and response time.
How to Monetize a Blog: Case Study - Finding Your Targeted Audience
When I started CyberNaira some 3 and 1/2 years ago, I started with publishing more blogging tips and tutorials - My focus was on beginners who are about starting their blog.
I started a blog on Blogging tips and tutorials for beginners because I had initially carried out extensive keyword research which shows the blogging niche market is big enough for anyone to start a blog around the topic.
After about two years into this, and analyzing things as they are.......I discover something about my published posts. My blogging tips and tutorial posts don't do more than average, shares and traffic-wise. But my search engine optimization posts always pull in better traffic, and a new audience each time I publish something on SEO/traffic.
There is this pattern I noticed too from speaking, chatting, or email message with these beginners bloggers, most of them are well interested in my services, but they're kind of broke and can't afford to pay for my blogging services.
They will read my contents, digest every piece of advice, even reply to my weekly newsletter in some cases but when it comes to opening their wallet and pay for services, they're like "am broke, please can you help me out? I'll pay you later".
Maybe this has to do with the behavior or demographical location of this audience.
That was when I said to myself, am not going to continue with this, I have to shift focus, I have to start attracting a different audience who are more likely and ready to pay for something when it's time to do so in other to achieve success.
The income I was generating from these beginners bloggers is not even enough to pay for hosting and domain annual renewal fees.
So I just have to change directions and start attracting different audiences.
At this stage, I just wanted to start bringing in new visitors, new readers and new potentials mean of making money online. So I started writing more consistently on search engine optimizations and traffic-related topics.
Over time, my traffic increase and not just increase in traffic, but the targeted audience start reading my blog and my content is getting better at speaking to one audience that has a better potential of becoming a paying customer.
There is one BIG challenge - am not an SEO expert!
To get over this hurdle, I started reading top SEO authority blogs in the industry and implementing relevant tactics, strategies, and tips I learned while reading. I focus on using my blog CyberNaira and one other as an experimental tools.
Something valuable is important to note here - while I was writing about search engine optimization and traffic tips on the blog, I was also improving the search visibility of my blog in the process - implementing whatever I learned on the blog.
At this stage, I knew it will be somehow difficult to get the client for SEO services, and honestly, am not so qualified to be called one. So I choose to promote search engine optimization products.
Finding Products/services that solve my audience problem.
Since I have managed to attract a decent size audience interested in one topic, I knew I could do a lot better with promoting relevant affiliate products to them.
So I head over to Google keyword planner and plug in my search term - SEO tools.
Google returns some promising results, I started analyzing each search term carefully and dig deeper into it by typing each one into Google search engines to see what the search result page for each keyword looks like.
One particular search term caught my attention, at the time it was having a suggested bid of $23 per AdWord advertising click. So I taught of, if advertisers could bid $23 per advertising click for such keyword, there has to be a viable market for it.
My search digs up some SEO software already making waves in the market relevant to the search term - SEO powersuite, WEB CEO, Raven tools, etc...
After researching the SEO tools market, and going through what others have written on these SEO tools, I settled down with SEO Powersuite. But before I head over to register as an affiliate, I downloaded the free version of it to see what the SEO software is up to.
I was impressed with the SEO tools, so I registered as an affiliate and start promoting the SEO product to my already attention-grabbing audience.
Delivering the product in Best Convenient Format.
This aspect isn't my concern, since am promoting an affiliate product, the merchant takes care of every other necessary stage of the deal. My business is to find paying customers.
The Results.
My marketing reach is not that of a big-time marketer. In fact, I have a very small size of email subscribers interested in my SEO and traffic tips as at the time.
So far I have managed to earn affiliate commissions of about $1,000 from promoting SEO Powersuite. The figure isn't significant here, other marketers can make twice, triple, or even six times better than that within the same space of time.
The most important thing here is, you need to analyze your best potential paying audience carefully, discover what works and what's not working for you based on your own in-house data gathering.
No matter your monetization method, if your audiences are not the praying type, you've targeted the wrong audience.
What brings me joy the most is that while I have strived to attract a targeted audience, I have had the privilege of owning some premium SEO and Outreach tools without paying a dime for them.
David Schneider of Ninja Outreach gave me an exclusive free lifetime pass to use his Outreach tools for free after he guest post on the blog. Alexandra also gave me six months' access to use SERPstats (an SEO tool similar to SEMrush) for free after reading some of my articles on SEP tools.
These are something I never enjoy while writing on blogging tips and tutorials.
There is one month of free access to SERPstat on the way for the CyberNaira audience, am in the process of playing around with the SEO tools to get a feel of how it works and its effectiveness, as soon as this is confirmed.......you'll get a notification from me.
The takeaways.
- Don't trust your instincts - analyze data carefully, find out what's working and not working for you at the moment.
- Your personal experiences count the most.
- If you don't have a product to sell, look for other people's products and sell them.
- Everything about making money online is based on relevancy - if it is not relevant to your business, don't bother yourself.
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