How to Make $1000 Per Month From Your Blog
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To some people, making a grand a month from a blog seems like a remote and unattainable goal. For some, it was a milestone passed years ago. While the methods and niches differ, the general process is always the same.
- Find a usable niche.
- Create a site and populate it with ongoing content.
- Monetize the site with a lucrative method of choice.
- Boost traffic and income through a combination of paid and organic marketing.
Many bloggers have actually adopted a sort of 80/20 philosophy with their blogs; once it become more effort to grow a site than it does to create a new one, they’ll set up another site and start anew.
Make Sure Your Blog is In Good Standing
If you’re making your blog from scratch right now, it will be a while before you manage anywhere near your $1000 monthly goal, but you have one benefit; a clean slate. If you’re trying to boost an older blog into a higher monetary tier, the first thing you need to do is make sure you’re in good standing.
As the owner of the site, you should know if it has a past history with Google penalties, but it’s occasionally the case where you purchased a site and don’t know its complete history. You have a few ways to check your search rank and history. Using Google Webmaster Tools for the site, dig back into the history and look for any steep traffic drops. Were they later fixed? You can also check for any manual actions or penalties that are listed in the webmaster central.
You can also perform a basic Google search for your brand name or your site name. If it’s not the top ranking site, you may have an issue to address.
Establish a Content Calendar
When it’s time to kick into high gear, you need to plan ahead. How often do you want to post every week? Some successful blogs only post 1-3 times per week, while others post 1-3 times per day. Both approaches are valid; they just require that you stick with them.
If you have a relatively small audience, it’s a good idea to start low and work your way up. You don’t need more than 3 weekly posts if you don’t have enough readers to care about the content. On the other hand, if you have readers clamoring at the gates, you may want to satisfy them with daily posts.
The goal is to create a calendar of content and stick to it. If you’re going to post three times per week, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, do it. If you’re feeling particularly inspired one day, don’t write and post three articles; schedule them out. That way, on bad days where you suffer writer’s block, you don’t have to scramble to pump something out.
You can, of course, outsource all of your writing. You have to be careful to make sure the content you receive matches the tone of your blog, and it can be expensive to maintain
Why You Aren’t Making Any Money with Affiliate Marketing Affiliate marketing is great, because you can…
Start Using Affiliate Links
One of the primary ways you can make money from your niche blog is to set up accounts with various affiliate markets and start using their links. These earn you money when people click through and convert, at various rates depending on the competition, the niche and other factors. They’re also infinitely scalable, so as your traffic grows, so too will your profits.
There’s a lot to learn about affiliates, and it’s an ever-changing world. In general, you need to make sure you’re always being genuine with your recommendations, and that you’re not doing anything underhanded that would jeopardize your enrollment in the programs you use, like buying bot traffic to force fake clicks through.
Reinvest in Basic PPC Ads
Some portion of your profits should be reinvested into advertising to drive more traffic to your blog. PPC through Facebook or Google is typically the best way to go, though you can also use sites like BuySellAds to swap ads on a different scale.
Like with affiliate marketing, there’s a lot to know about PPC before you really dig into it. You need to get involved with your audience so you know who to target and what sort of content appeals to them. You also need to be aware of your competition and what you can do to circumvent them in advertising.
Compile Information and Sell EBooks
If you want to make money in a way that isn’t entirely reliant upon affiliate links, ebooks are a good method. You’re publishing a lot of regular content on a specific niche; why not compile that content and buff it up into deeper, more focused guides and resources? People will gladly pay a few bucks for a good resource, and it costs you very little beyond the cost of a cover.
Ebooks can be very successful, but you can’t forget to market them. Typically, a shift to supplemental ebooks heralds a movement away from pure affiliate marketing.
Optional: Develop and Sell a Product
This method isn’t for everyone. If you have the resources or the skills necessary, you can create a product to sell alongside your affiliate links. Some of the easiest products to make include apps and software, because developing software doesn’t require any physical manufacturing. If you can develop a task-oriented mobile app to help your users in some way, you can make bank.
Reach a Holding Pattern and Do it All Again
This was mentioned at the start, but it’s worth mentioning again. At some point, you might realize that making any improvements to your current site will be expensive and time-consuming. It would be both cheaper, easier and faster to just make a new site and start all over. Maintain your content schedule and your customer service, and make another site in another niche. With a few blogs, you can earn quite a good living.
Written by James Parsons
