Last Updated on April 23, 2020 by Sunny Staff
According to recent stats, WordPress users are collectively publishing 70 million blog posts each month. These stats also show that one blog post takes approximately 3.5 hours to write.
If you are one of these bloggers—and wish to generate some income from your hard work—then you need to know how to monetize a WordPress blog.
Want to monetize your WordPress blog? There are a number of strategies that you can implement, and it is best to know which are in line with the direction of your site before you set out on a monetization strategy. Otherwise, you may waste time and resources on an avenue that does not meet your site’s goals.
With this guide, you’ll be able to compare some of the top methods for monetizing your blog. Read on to discover which monetization strategies are for you.
1. Sell a Product or Service
One of the best paths to blog monetization is through the sale of products or services. This is a particularly effective strategy for sites that experience low to medium levels of traffic.
Many sites are started from the get-go to promote a product or service. However, you can also do this the other way around. By picking a product or service that ties into your blog’s niche, you can monetize your WordPress blog through the sales of these offerings.
The key to success for this strategy is to optimize your blog’s content around the products or services you wish to sell.
For example, if you run a blog that features posts on writing skills, you could leverage this to promote things like writing courses or ebooks. To draw in sales, you should aim to create content that serves a need, such as free writing guides and tips. Within that content, you can then position links and calls-to-action leading to writing-related products or services.
To get started selling a product or service, you will need to set up a shopping page. You can do this through a service such as WooCommerce. Once you have a functional shopping page, you can also look into other optimizations such as integrating WooCommerce and Quickbooks.
2. Monetize Your WordPress Blog Through Paid Ads
Another strategy for monetizing your blog is display ads. Display ads are a popular monetization method as they are easy to activate. If your blog qualifies for one of the ad revenue services such as Google Adsense, you can start monetizing almost immediately.
However, the one drawback to running paid ads on your site is that they do not generate high amounts of revenue unless your blog has a ton of traffic (1,000’s each day). At the same time, this does not mean that paid ads should be overlooked. Many blog owners use them in conjunction with other revenue streams to maximize their site’s monetization potential.
Before you install paid ads on your site, here are a few things you need to know to get started.
Firstly, you will need to apply to an ad publisher. There are thousands out there; however, some of the most popular ones are Adsense, Chitika, Infolinks, and Revenuehits. Most publishers will require a minimum level of traffic for you to be approved.
Once approved, you will need to set the ads up on your site. During this step, you will need to decide on things like ad placement (where on your site you want the ads displayed) and ad type.
The two main ad types are CPC (cost per click) and CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions).
Besides working with an ad network, you can also choose to work directly with companies to display their ads in exchange for ad revenue. This avenue can be more lucrative; however, it will take time to build up the necessary relationships for this.
3. Investigate Affiliate Revenue
Another income stream that you can look at for monetizing your blog is affiliate revenue.
If you sign up for an affiliate program, you will receive a reward based on how many sales the affiliate generates through your promotion of their product or service.
For example, WordPress itself has an affiliate program. If you sign up for the referral program, and WordPress makes a sale through one of your links, you will get a portion of the proceeds.
One of the benefits of affiliate programs is that, generally, you can sign up for as many as you want. This means that you could potentially promote WordPress’s products, as well as products on Amazon, or online services such as Grammarly.
The advantage of this is that you can insert your affiliate links wherever they make sense contextually.
Speaking of contextual—be aware that affiliate marketing is most successful when done in a natural way that is helpful to your audience. Blasting readers with random affiliate ads is generally not a good idea. Therefore, try to find affiliate programs that tie into your niche.
4. Leverage Paywalls for High-Value Content
Is your WordPress site mostly content focussed? Is some of this content of high-value?
If so, you may want to look into leveraging paywalls. Paywalls are access barriers that sites such as the New York Times and Medium put in place to limit free access to content and to encourage readers to subscribe for premium content.
If you do not wish to sell a product or service, promote affiliate links, or run ads, then implementing a paywall might be one of the best ways to monetize your blog. This method works particularly well for sites that plan to focus solely on premium level content.
5. Look Into Sponsored Content
Another blog monetization avenue you can look at is sponsored content.
Sponsored content usually works best if you are an influencer, or your blog has a devoted following. If a brand feels that your audience is of value to them, they may offer you payment for promoting their product or service within your content.
For example, if you run a DIY blog, a hardware company might be interested in paying you to publish a post that recommends them within the content. Most sponsored content does not need to be solely about the sponsor. Instead, the sponsor should be recommended as naturally as possible.
For this reason, it is important that you look into brand relationships that are relevant to your niche. Once again, you don’t want to blast your audience with random content that is geared solely towards promoting a brand that is paying you money for a mention.
Ready to Monetize Your WordPress Blog?
If you are looking to monetize your WordPress blog, you now know some of the top ways to do it.
If you are looking to customize your WordPress site to implement monetization—give us a call. We specialize in all things WordPress, from site construction to e-commerce functions, to maintenance and SEO, we do it all!
With the right monetization strategy and a team of WordPress gurus behind you, you can’t go wrong!
