If you are going to build a successful blog, you need to know the exact purpose of your blog. What are you trying to accomplish with your blog?
The Purpose Of Your Blog
A blog serves many purposes:
- A blog to share what you do regularly, the events in your life, your thoughts, and your lifestyle. You may just blog without ever considering earning any money from it. Your blog may be a hobby that you enjoy.
- A blog that shares news related to a specific niche.
- A blog that shares news related to a celebrity or sports team.
- A blog that shares news related to a neighborhood or country.
- A lifestyle blog that eventually grows into one that generates revenue from advertising programs like AdSense.
- A blog specific to a hobby or niche that you are interested in that generates revenue from affiliate marketing and also revenue from advertising programs like AdSense.
- A blog that recommends products and services within a specific niche to earn commission as an affiliate.
- A blog that promotes your services as a business owner.
- A blog that promotes your digital products like eBooks and online courses.
- Your blog is either a hobby (free), a hobby that earns you money or a blog that is a business (earns you income).
Your blog is either created for sharing information for free or it is used to earn you an income. If your blog is not used to earn an income, it can be constructed without much consideration for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). We will look at how to monetize your blog in this post.
Are You Trying To Earn Money From Your Blog?
If your goal is to earn money from your blog, you will have to pick a niche that is most likely to generate a high income. Some of the highest income-generating niches for bloggers are personal finance, health and wellness, technology and gadgets, travel and adventure, home improvement and DIY, food and cooking, and sustainable living.
Select a sub-niche (niche down) from the above niches that you are interested in or have the most knowledge of. You may select travel and adventure and niche down to exotic beach holidays.
Let me stress the point that you need to be passionate about the niche that you are blogging about. It will take you a few months to see results, so your will need to stay motivated and consistent with your blogging.
If you are not passionate about the niche you are blogging about, you will lose interest and give up before you start to see any significate earnings.
Your blog posts need to offer value to the reader. You need to offer them what they are looking for, you need to provide a solution to their problem!
The problem a visitor to your blog may have is “I Need A Package Holiday To Bali For Under $1,500”. Once click through to your post and you offer a package holiday to Bali for under $1,500 as an affiliate, they will have found the solution to their problem and you will have earned your commission.
It will be a win, win, win situation. The visitor to your blog gets his package holiday to Bali for under $1,500, they are happy 🙂
The package holiday company makes a sale, they are happy 🙂
You earn a commission, you are happy 🙂
How To Set Up Your Blog
In my opinion, the best blogging platform is WordPress. It’s free but you still need to pay for web hosting to get your blog live on the internet.
WordPress allows you to customize your blog to your requirements using themes and plugins. You can have your blog up and running using free themes and plugins.
If you need to add extra functionality and visual appeal, you can use premium themes and plugins.
I have set up my blog using Wealthy Affiliate. This program enables you to easily create a self-hosted WordPress blog and teaches you how to monetize it using affiliate marketing.
How Long Does It Take To Monetize Your Blog?
You can monetize your blog using affiliate marketing within days. The amount of money you will earn will depend on the traffic to your blog and on the affiliate programs that you are using.
Let’s say that your blog is about “Exotic Beach Holidays”….
You will need to carry out keyword research to create suitable articles to bring in visitors to your post from searches carried out on Google.
It may take a few months for your articles (posts) to get indexed and ranked by Google. I would say that it would take a minimum of 3 months for you to start getting targeted visitors from Google.
You can write articles about Exotic Beach Holidays to Bali, The Maldives, Mauritius, Hawaii, Sri Lanka, Goa, Thailand, The Philippines…
You would monetize these posts by using affiliate programs from package holiday sites, flights, hotels, car rentals, luggage outlets, holiday essentials….
You can also put holiday search boxes from sites like Booking.com, Kayak.com, Hotels.com, and many others.
It is best to stick to a select number of well-established affiliate programs and build your blog content around the products they offer.
How Much Money Can I Make From Affiliate Marketing?
You can earn from $0 to over $100,000 monthly from your blog using affiliate marketing. The amount you can earn will depend on how consistent you are with your blogging and also on your SEO implementation.
If you manage to get a large number of highly targeted visitors to your blog, some of them will end up purchasing something via your affiliate links.
When I say highly targeted, I mean the visitors who are interested in the content of your blog post (article).
Let’s say that someone was interested in a holiday to Bali… they searched the term “Cheap Bali Holiday Packages” and a link to your post showed up. They clicked through to your post and found a suitable package holiday to Bali that you are promoting as an affiliate. They would be interested in looking at it.
When you get a large number of highly targeted visitors clicking on your affiliate links, some of them will end up making a purchase and earning you a commission.
Affiliate marketing is a game of numbers, your goal is to get a large number of highly targeted visitors to your posts and click on your affiliate links.
If you are consistent with your blogging and carry out extensive keyword research, you will eventually start to generate sales and earn commissions.
It takes time and effort to earn commissions from affiliate marketing. Once you have a large number of high quality posts that bring in highly targeted visitors, you will be in a position of earning a monthly passive income from your blog.
You will need to put in a lot of effort during the initial 6 to 12 months. Wealthy Affiliate offer extensive training and support to get your affiliate marketing blog set up.
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“I may earn commissions as an affiliate from sponsored links within this post”
