Ways To Monetize Your WordPress Blog

Compare to a few years back when blogging is still in its infancy, there are more ways to monetize a blog nowadays. People love blogs as the content get updated regularly and as a result blogs started to attract and retain loyal audiences. As such, many companies began to see blogs as a channel to advertise and market their products and services to specific targeted audience giving way to bloggers to earn a slice of the advertising revenue enjoyed by traditional advertising channels such as TV, radio and newspaper in the past.

Blogs are also becoming more and more popular due to their versatility as a platform for marketing intent. A WordPress blog besides being a conventional blog can also be customize to become an e-commerce store, landing site, membership site and a conventional content website and more. Now you can understand why I advocate using WordPress as a blogging platform compared to other blogging platforms.

I have listed down below some of the best ways to monetize a blog for a beginner blogger.

Affiliate Marketing
This is one of the best ways to monetize a blog especially if your blog is in a niche market that always used to purchasing stuff. Once you build up a loyal list of readers, promoting and recommending products and services becomes a breeze. The key is not to abuse your list and only recommend and promote products and services that are giving real value to your list. You can check out my post on “The Best Affiliate Networks For Newbie Affiliate Marketers” for a list affiliate networks that you can join and start making money.

Contextual Advertisements
There are many contextual advertising programs out there; most notable are Google Adsense, Yahoo! Publisher Network and Mircrosoft Adcenter. Adbrite, Kontera and ItelliTxt are others that spring to mind. Ever since Google has lift the restriction on other types of contextual ads, webmasters has more selection when it comes to monetization through contextual advertisements. The key is to find out which type of contextual ads works best for your blog.

Google Adsense
Google Adsense is a form of contextual advertisements but I have choose to separate Google Adsense because Google Adsense is in a class of its own when it comes to generating revenue for webmasters. Application to the Google Adsense program is very simple and best of all sticking up Adsense ads on your site is so straightforward and easy. The best thing about the Google Adsense program is that Google serves targeted ads that are highly relevant to your site as compared to other contextual advertising programs making it easier for you make money.

Own Products And Services
If you have a skill or product that is not readily available elsewhere or you can provide it at a very competitive rate, then offering your own products and services is the way to go. For example, if you are a freelance graphic designer, what you can do with a WordPress blog is to offer tips and tricks through your blog to showcase your skill and knowledge and also at the same time offer graphic web design services through your blog. Many bloggers are in fact going along this route to make a full time income online.

Paid Reviews
Paid reviews are still one of the easiest ways to monetize a blog. How much you earn is dependent on a number of factors such as the niche your blog is in, page rank, Alexa ranking etc. The higher your traffic level and Page Rank, the higher amount you can get for each paid review. The highest amount I get for a single review is USD $140 for a review written in half an hour. You can check out my previous post on “Paid Reviews Programs” to find a list of paid reviews networks to sign up with.

Text Links
Selling text links is another way for bloggers to monetize their blogs. Similarly, the higher your Page Rank and Alexa ranking, the more money you can make off selling of text links. You can either sell text links by yourself or through a text link network. I highly recommend signing up for TextLinkAds. Another network that you can check out is TNX.net. However, please note that Google frown upon blogs that sell text links and you may find your blogs being penalize by Google down the road.

There are probably more ways to monetize such as a membership site which is more applicable for someone who has clocked some experiences using WordPress. You can either choose to focus on one monetization method first or use a variety of methods to monetize your blog initially. The key is to test and track which monetization method is best suit for your blog and earn you the most income. Remember to diversify your income channels and do not put all your eggs in one basket.