"Hey Jamir, how can I make money blogging like you?"
Every now and then I get "make money online" questions from friends and family.
Some want to start a blog and make some secondary income online. Others, to avoid routine traffic jams to work, to expand your business online or to leave your job from 9 to 5, etc.
I really want to help those I know to achieve this. But I can only share so much during meetings in person or WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.
Therefore, I am writing this long article to share the lessons that I have learned as a problogger in the last 15 years.
Table of contents
— Introduction
— How much money do bloggers make?
— How do bloggers make money?
Start Here!
Find profitable niche
Method # 1: Follow the money
Method # 2: Facebook
Method # 3: keyword research
Get targeted traffic
The most effective way to promote a blog.
Guest Post
Crowdsourcing booth
Facebook ad
Blog syndication
Conferences
Blog commenting
Forum post
Google+ Community
Free tools and gifts
Twitter
Blog Monetization Ideas - 3 Smart Ways To Make Money Blogging
Conclusion / Summary
Bloggers are making tons of money online
According to a market study in Blogging Basics 101: 14% of bloggers earn a salary through blogging and earn around $ 2,000 a month.
If you search for 'make money blogging' on Google, one of the relevant search results suggested by Google is "can you really make money blogging?"
This shows that there are many dubious search engines who have no idea how much you can earn from a blog, as Google suggestions are based on how often key phrases are searched.
So how much can you earn from blogging? To answer the question, let's take a look at the internet.
The main conclusions I got from different income reports are:
Can be done! Bloggers are making good money online, and
With the right ideas and strategies, there is literally no limit to how much you can earn online.
This leads to the next question ...
How do bloggers make money?
There are endless ways to make money from your blog.
Advertising banner. Affiliate sales. Creating and selling your own products. Sponsored reviews.
Which is the best option?
Depending on what industry you are in and where your blog is located, there will be a better way to monetize your blog.
Gael Breton from Authority Hacker analyzed how 23 bloggers make money blogging and concluded that selling their own products is generally more profitable.
The services are generally difficult to sell and therefore generate less revenue, but the profit margin is excellent. Many of the best bloggers make a decent living with blogging and sales services.
Selling ads generates a large amount of revenue (2 and better), but since ad marketers need to produce a lot of content and sometimes acquire traffic, profit margins drop quickly.
Affiliate marketing is actually the most profitable monetization tactic, making it great for new bloggers who need to generate income quickly. This site is primarily funded by affiliate income, and we managed to grow from a one-man blog to a team of one editor, six active bloggers, and two social media marketers.
Own product sales generate the most revenue with high profit margins. Margins are slightly lower than affiliate marketing due to costs associated with customer service, payment processing, etc., but the higher conversion rates make up for it and make this # 1 the best source of income. for bloggers.
Starting
If you've read up to this point and don't have a blog yet ... you must be banging your head right now.
Why didn't you start earlier?
Well, it's not too late to jump in yet.
Here is my A step by step guide on how to create a blog here .. Read that first and come back to this guide later.
I will wait!
Good! So now that your blog is ready and we are all set for the gold ...
How do you make money blogging, really?
Some say content is king.
Create good content; money and traffic will continue ”, says the expert.
That's not entirely true, at least not in my experience.
The content is only 50% of the game, if not less.
Yes, as a blogger, it is our duty to create engaging content to keep our readers entertained.
But to make money in the long run, you need to have two other key elements: a profitable niche and specific web traffic.
Profitable niche + targeted traffic = money
Without any of these elements, you will not generate much money from your blog.
We are going to look at each of these two key elements now.
Profitable niche
An inflatable boat.
When I started my career as an internet marketer, I made an affiliate site to sell inflatable boats. Can you imagine how many people would buy an inflatable boat online?
What's worse, this product is a seasonal product and is only sold during the summer, so I was more limited in my sales. The site averaged no more than two sales per year. It was not worth my time to build that site.
The lesson in this: no matter how well written your content is or how beautiful your blog design is, if you don't choose a profitable niche, you won't be able to turn your effort into money.
How do you find a profitable niche?
There are countless ways to find a profitable niche on the Internet. I will cover three methods that work best for me.
Method # 1: Follow the money
Why do most robberies occur at banks? Because that's where the money is.
The same goes for finding a profitable niche. We simply look for industries where advertisers are spending large amounts of money. It is a basic business sense. Advertisers wouldn't spend that much money unless the ads get a positive ROI.
Here are some tools you can use to find out if advertisers are spending money (and more importantly, how much they are spending).
Search engines
Do a search relevant to your niche on Google or Bing. Are there advertisers on your search results pages?
Generally speaking, if there are more than three advertisers competing for a keyword phrase, money can be made in that area.
You can then use the Google Keyword Planner to estimate the average price of a click for that search term and predict how much you can earn for each Google Adsense click *; and hence how much you can earn by selling ad space.
Note that there are no clear written rules, but a rough estimate, Google pays 30-50% of the cost per click to Adsense publishers.
SpyFu
Another way to determine how much (and more importantly, where) advertisers spend on pay per click (PPC) Ads is through SpyFu.
SpyFu, originally GoogSpy, is a search analysis tool that shows the keywords advertisers are buying from Google Adwords. I use it every time I need to research a niche in depth.
The images below are some examples that I found using Spyfu Free Search. Each of these searches takes less than 5 minutes to complete, and I can learn about the profitability of a niche just by looking at these statistics. There are more valuable details if we go beyond the free search, but for now we'll stick with the free edition. To do your own research, simply enter the domain of your competitors (or the big players in your shortlisted niche) in the search bar.
Niche # 1 - Soft Products, Business Solutions. There are more than 10 companies offering affiliate programs in this industry. Spyfu estimated that this merchant spends $ 64,000 per month on Adwords.
Niche n. # 2: Sportswear - Think sports brands like Adidas, Nike, and New Balance, but on a smaller scale and focus on one type of sport. This company is spending more than $ 100,000 a month on more than 57,000 keywords according to Spyfu.
Niche # 3: $ 60,000 / month in AdWords
Niche n. 3: IT Solution Provider - A global marketplace, most of the people running a site will need them. There are 10 to 15 other great players in this field. This company bids on 3,846 keywords on Google and spends around $ 60,000 per month.
Niche # 4 - Web Service Provider. This company is one of the most interesting startups of a few years ago. (I'm surprised to see them spend almost $ 10,000 a month on Adwords.)
Niche # 5 - Global Financial Products. The screen captured is the analysis of one of the biggest players in this niche. He had two websites in this industry in the 2000s; I wouldn't be surprised to see businesses spend more than $ 100,000 per month on Adwords.
Niche # 6 - Web Service Provider. This website is an affiliate site and does not sell its own products. The site owner is spending over $ 20,000 per month on PPC ads.
Commission Junction
Another method I often use to judge the profitability of a niche is by looking at the numbers in Commission Junction (CJ).
Method # 2: Facebook
You can do much more than share travel photos and post status updates on Facebook.
The world's largest social networks are actually a great tool for understanding the new niche you are getting into. Learn more about your target audience, stalk your competitors, find an angle to tackle your niche, etc.
I will demonstrate these functions using examples.
Using the Facebook page and Facebook group to understand your own fan base
If you already have a Facebook Page (You can create one before starting a blog, it's free), the first place to look is your fan base. Dive into the profile of some of these fans and pay attention to their demographics (male / female, locations, married / single / divorced, age, etc.) and their interests.
Join public Facebook Group - read the conversation of users to understand their problems and needs.
Using Facebook Suggestions to Find Competitors
For those who own a Facebook Page, go to Insights> Overview> Pages to Watch. This is where you can find and compare similar pages suggested by Facebook. You can click on each link to see the popular posts posted on these pages.
Pages to view: based on Facebook suggestion on one of the pages I manage.
How to make use of Facebook intelligence
There's a lot you can do with the list of competitors and fan details you have on hand.
Here are some ideas to get started:
Stop the big players on Facebook and learn their marketing strategies.
Find out the trending topics in your niche - what's the hottest in town? Can you find a new angle for your blog by looking at these trends?
Expanding into a new niche by observing the activities of other players - This is how I discovered the typography niche when I studied web design blogs (CSS / jQuery / HTML5).
Understand your target audience: where do they spend time online? What are your problems? Can you provide a solution?
See why people buy from your competitors - can you offer something similar and make money?
See Why People Don't Buy From Your Competitors - Are Your Products Too Boring? They may not be marketing it properly. Can you do better and win over your visitors?
Write Better Headlines and Content - Find out which Facebook posts get the most engagement, write similar headlines.
Method # 3: Old School Keyword Research
I'm sure you've heard of keyword research by now.
Or wait ... haven't you? Well, I'm not going to beat a dead horse again, so here's a good read for beginners.
Why Keyword Research?
Long tail vs. short tail keywords (credit: Send in the fox).
Keyword research is usually done at the beginning of an SEO campaign. Your goal, most of the time, is to identify frequently searched keywords (either short or long tail) and set directions for the campaign.
What's more in the keyword data?
But, as seasoned marketers know, there is more to take advantage of this keyword data. With the right set of keywords, we can also better understand the following (and we can also spot new business opportunities):
Level of competition
More searches = higher demand; More results returned on a search results page = higher bid.
Relevant brands and names
Examples: for cameras: Nikon, Canon, Sony; for a honeymoon getaway: Bali, Maldives, Hawaii; for web hosting: iPage, BlueHost, Hostgator; for celebrities: Taylor Swift, Linkin Park, Bruno Mars.
Search engine intentions
Generally speaking, purchase intent is higher when there are many searches on 'widget review', 'widget model number and name', 'top 10 widget brands', 'buy widget online'. Conversely, searches for "widget history", "complaint widget", or "creating a widget" are less likely to turn into business transactions.
Commercial value
The more advertisers bidding on a particular search term, the higher the business value for that search term.
Using Keyword Research to Study a Niche - Quick Demo
When I started, many webmasters (note: "blogger" was not yet a popular term at the time) relied on a tool called "Overture", where you can simply enter a search term and the system will give you a ballpark figure of what This term is often searched for, free of charge. Then we will compare these numbers with the amount of results obtained and judge the competitiveness (and profitability) of a niche.
Now that Overture is no more, we can hardly get reliable keyword data for free.
Google Keyword Planner is one of the very few keyword tools that I still use today (if you can afford the paid tools, I highly recommend AHREFS and SEM fever).
In the following images, I will demonstrate how I use these tools to study a niche and interpret the data obtained. This process can take a very short time (less than 30 minutes) or it can take days to complete. It depends on the size of your keyword list and how deep you want to dive into understanding the business landscape.
Movie posters have always been one of my favorite collectibles. I don't really collect them, but I appreciate the art and the sentimental value they have. Let's see if we can turn my interest into a profitable blogging idea. Note that I haven't done any research before writing this guide, which is why I'm just as curious as you are now.
Google Trends
Let's take a look at Google Trends first.
Looking at the graph, it seems like the topic is losing traction on the internet, which is absolutely logical if you look at how much time people spend on YouTube these days.
Scrolling down, we can also see that most of the search engines are in the United States, Kenya, India, Australia, and Canada.
To better understand the graph, I often compare an unknown search trend to something I am familiar with. In this example, I have added the search term "hosting review". You can see that there are relatively more people searching for "movie posters".
Google keyword planner
Next, we will go to Google Keyword Planner for more ideas.
Type "movie poster" in the search box and hit "Get idea".
Relevant keyword statistics from Google Keyword Planner.
To go a step deeper, we can click on the keyword to get more details. This is where we can better understand the intent of search engines. Pay attention to what kind of information search engines were looking for.
Can we detect purchase intentions in these searches (if our plan is to sell movie posters directly)? Also, these key phrases can be our blogging topics.
Key phrases containing "Make Movie Poster" - These users are most likely looking for tutorials and printing accessories.
Ubersugggest
For an even broader look at our topic, let's head over to Ubersuggest for more keyword ideas.
What if we prefer not to sell physical products? You know, it's no fun handling inventory and logistics. Can we just blog and sell ad space? To answer this question, let's try some relevant searches on Google and see if we can spot any advertisers or affiliate programs.
Also, you can take a closer look at the advertisers' marketing approach - do they advertise on blogs in addition to search ads? If so, what kind of blog? Can you sell ads directly to these merchants? To estimate the profitability of this theme, we can apply this keyword data to Spyfu to determine how much advertisers are spending.
To dig deeper, we may want to dig into organic search results (website links, on-page optimizations, social media shares, etc.) to see how difficult / easy it is to compete in terms of SEO.
Money!
Making decisions: small vs big pond?
Seo competition
Now that we have all the necessary knowledge about the market, it is time to decide. Should we skip? Is this a good niche? What would be a good angle to tackle this niche? I will let you draw the conclusion.
However, one thing I want to make clear before we finish this section is how you decide on a niche.
A large number of experts advise newbies to avoid SEO competition and choose a smaller playing field when choosing a niche.
"Be a big fish in a little pond," they say.
I believe exactly the opposite. You should try the big pond (target search terms with high demand and lots of big competitors) because that's where the audience and the money is.
The destination of the traffic
Still with me?
Now we will move on to the key factor n. # 2: targeted traffic
To make decent money from your blog, you need to attract enough targeted traffic.
Obtaining a target audience (and serving the information they want) has always been the key to success online.
The more targeted traffic your blog receives, the more money you can earn.
It's simple math - let's say you run a DIY blog and sell handmade art. The average conversion rate of your blog is 3% and the average conversion value is $ 25. On average, for every 100 visitors, you will make 3 sales and earn $ 75. If the number of target visitors increases to 200, then In theory, there will be six sales and a profit of $ 150 in the future.
The most effective ways to promote your blog.
Before we dive into specific traffic strategies and tactics, let's talk about the grand general strategy.
The most effective way to promote a blog is to focus on things that are already working for your blog.
To do this, you need:
Constantly collect the correct data from your blog.
Invest more money and effort in tactics.
The correct data
We know that data is crucial for the growth of your blog.
But which?
If you're not using the correct web metrics to track progress and fine-tune your site, then you may be taking two steps back instead of moving forward.
Depending on the nature of your niche and level of understanding, you may look at different types of statistical data.
At first glance, the Google Analytics report can be overwhelming. How many numbers! And you may not be familiar with some of the metrics or concepts.
But fortunately, the truth is:
The numbers / concepts are not that complicated, and
Honestly, I don't think bloggers should spend too much time grinding up Google Analytic reports.
Go Simple Your goal is to create a better blog for your users, not spend hours and hours learning the technicalities behind Google Analytic numbers.
Here are the four Google Analytics numbers to keep track of:
Sessions / Acquired Users
Channel / referral traffic.
The percentage of dropouts
Average time on page
I've discussed these metrics in detail in my blog improvement guide, so let's skip that for now.
Suppose you now have the data at hand ... what do you do?
Well, you invest more effort and money in tactics that work.
Real life example
Google Analytics (Acquisition> All traffic> Source / Medium)
(To see this number, log into Google Analytics Control Panel> Behavior> Site Content> All Pages.)
As you can see, users spend more time on some of these pages (underlined numbers) compared to my site average.
More time on the page means:
Users find your content / tool useful
Greater chances of being shared on social networks.
Higher likelihood of ranking better on Google (How website engagement rates affect Google rankings)
Based on this data, I now have several pages that offer the best participation rates.
Questions I asked myself in this scenario:
What topics seem to be the most popular with my users?
Can I add more information in the publication?
Can I get someone to be my interview guest and add value to the post?
Is there new data that I can add to the article?
Should I make a video of this content?
The key is to focus on the winners and get the best out of them.
Doing so might not give your blog traffic an instant boost. But as this increases, the magnitude would be greater than many tactics.
Now that we're done with the general strategy, it's time to take a look at some specific blog traffic tactics.
1. Guest post
Regardless of how Google criticizes guest posting practices, this strategy works. Writing quality guest posts on others' blogs is simply the most efficient way to reach your target audience and generate blog readership.
If you're new to guest posting, Lori wrote a detailed how-to post guide in the past, take a look.
The key to success, as I see it, is finding the right blogs, those with real readers and followers on social media. You can use Topsy or Buzz Sumo to spot popular blogs and influencers in your industry. Or you can just take a closer look at the comment section to see if readers are engaging with bloggers. Always keep in mind that you are blogging for real readers (therefore the quality of your content is crucial). Forget blogging with high Google PR but no readers; this practice simply no longer works in 2015.
Real life examples
Here are some of my guest posts in the past.
3 things you can do right now to improve your blog
Blogging habits to increase your chances of success.
Jumping Into Affiliate Marketing: The Beginner's Guide
2. Crowdsourcing stand
Crowdsourcing posts are a great way to network with other bloggers in your niche and share the attention of others' social media followers.
I have received (and seen many others receive) some good results through this strategy. This Crowdsourcing Post on Triberr Marketing. I recently came across over 1,000 tweets in a very short period of time.
Real life examples
Crowdsourced posts with good results.
20 social media marketing tips from experts
30 expert tips to get more Twitter followers
The best SEO tools recommended by industry experts.
3. Facebook ad
Facebook is a cost-effective way (it costs as little as $ 0.06 / web click in certain industries) to attract targeted new visitors. The challenging part of advertising on Facebook is that you need to test a lot (different versions of ads, different countries, different interests, etc.) to be successful.
Real life examples
Here are some sample ads I made on Facebook recently.
Also Read - 20 Interest-Based Targeting Ideas For Your Next FB Ad Campaign.
4. Syndicate blog posts to other popular sites.
Promote your blog to sites that syndicate the content of others; self-promotes, begs, bribes, or blackmails (okay, I'm kidding) the publisher into accepting your blog posts in their syndication.
Make sure your new posts link to your old content to drive traffic. The WHSR blog is syndicated to several popular sites, including Social Media Today and 2 Business Community.
Effect of content syndication.
In an example featured on Entice HQ's blog promotion guide, the author's article traffic increased steadily after he began publishing (syndicating) his post on SteamFeed.
5. Attend conferences
Make new blogger friends and promote each other's blogs online. I don't particularly like talking to strangers (honestly, I'm very bad at that).
However, my previous visit to WebSummit 2014 in Dublin brought me a new experience, and I agree that it is an effective way to promote a blog.
6. Blog comments
Leave constructive comments on others' blogs (don't spam!). Write in a way that makes people want to know more about you.
Here's a great example of someone who has done well.
For starters, Mr. Miller goes into some detail, offering a unique perspective relevant to the original post, while also letting readers know about him and his relevance to the topic. By sharing his own experience, he shows his own experience in the search field, grabbing my attention and calling me to learn more about him ... so much so that I clicked on his Moz profile and now I'm following him on Twitter.
7. Posting in the forum
Find relevant forums in your niche (Google Search "keyword" + inurl: forum), post helpful content / responses, promote your site on signature links, or drop links in your forum posts, but only when appropriate.
( This BlogPost is Written by Jamir Hossain, My Pen Friend )
