Thursday, March 28, 2024

How to Monetize Your WordPress Blog

WordPress is one of the most popular Content Management Systems (CMS) due to its ease of use and flexibility. One of the many uses for WordPress is with eCommerce, where you set up the software to sell products and services. In this article we look at several ways you can make earn income using your blog, sometimes known as “monetizing.”

 

Sell advertising: One simple way to earn income on your site is to sell advertising. This could be in the form of banners, text links and articles. As an example, I wrote several articles on my travel blog about income tax. I was contacted by company that produced income tax software and they paid for a text link on my site. Another company wanted an article about hostels. A third company wanted to advertise casinos.

 

Use Adsense: One simple way of earning income off of your site is by using Google Adsense. With Adsense you can determine the type and style of ads to fit on your blog. This is a type of advertising known as pay-per-click, meaning that when a user clicks on an ad, you just made money. If you have a lot of people coming to your site, those clicks can add up, quickly.

 

Another way of using content on your site (and again with Adsense) is to create a Youtube channel and post that content on your blog. One of the options available to you as a Youtube user is to monetize your channel with Adsense ads on your videos. Like Adsense on your blog, Adsense ads are overlaid on your videos. By using those videos on your blog you create another opportunity to create income, because if people click on the ads in the videos you earn income from that in addition to the Adsense ads on your blog.

 

Create and Sell Your Own Products: One excellent way to make money from your site is to create and sell digital products. These can be in the form of videos, audio recordings, books, a combination of the three or creating a membership site.

 

One way this can work is where you build a sales process which begins with a squeeze page. The purpose of the squeeze page is twofold, to gain the email address of your prospect and to give that person something in exchange, which could be a report, video, audio, a combination of those, a coupon, a free trial or something else of value to the prospect.

 

After the prospect signs up they receive an email with confirmation asking them if they want to join your list. Once they confirm, they receive another email message with instructions on how to use your offer. This process is known as a double opt-in and is recommended to reduce spam complaints.

 

After that, the prospect is directed to your sales pages of the site where they are presented with your main offer. You can set the process up so if the prospect purchases that offer, they are then signed up to another list, but this one is for paid customers only. Now you have two lists and you would use different forms of marketing for each.

 

Creating a membership site can be a complex process. In past articles I have written about the process of building an online business and the program I used was OptimizePress, which was used for squeeze pages, sales pages, download pages and blog posts. It’s not the best for blog posts, though. Using another theme is a better option. One way of keeping both OptimizePress and the blog separate is to create two installations of WordPress. As an example, you would install OptimizePress in the root directory and the blog in a subdirectory of the same domain then link the two installations with links within OptimizePress.

 

To take care of payments, you need a payment processor. Some options are: PayPal, ClickBank or to set up credit card processing through your bank. Another option for managing transactions and content (if you run a membership site) is to use Wishlist Member. And if you sell digital content you can protect your downloads from theft by using Download Guard, which limits the number of downloads which can take place over a period of time. After that, the link expires.

 

Market Affiliate Products: These are products created by a third party which you promote on your site. These goods could be digital, physical or a combination of both. Some examples are: ClickBank, Linkshare, Commission Junction, Amazon, and Associate Programs. All of these companies will pay you a commission for products sold, however, the process is different for each one, so be sure to read their terms and conditions.

 

In addition to the opportunities presented here, Amazon allows you to create and sell both digital and physical products. Some examples include Kindle books, print books and other types of physical goods. You can add links to these products on your web page. Amazon takes care of all the payment processing, saving you a great deal of time.

 

 

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many different ways to monetize your blog. For more information, check out the various links in this article. Of these, Associate Programs offers a number of courses on Internet marketing to get you up to speed.

 

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