One of the goals of some bloggers is to make money. Whether their aim is to build a profitable business, or they are merely looking to cover their blogs operational costs, it is definitely possible to make money from blogging. And it does make a lot of sense to get something back from all the work and time you spend on your blog, and monetizing is your best way to do this.
Once you make the decision to monetize your blog, you will have to determine which method, strategy, and way you are going to do this. Generally it is a good idea to use a variety of methods. It is important that you choose what works for you theoretically, that is suitable for your blog, and the visitors you get.
Do you monetize your blog? Are you over selling just a little bit there? Or are you selling nothing at all from your blog. Getting the balance right between an underselling blog and an overselling blog is of utmost importance.
You have to stay within sensible boundaries. You will find in the blogosphere a large number of blogs which have a very limited amount of informative content, but are massed with loads of advertising. In my mind these aren’t proper blogs, and will never attract proper visitors. These blogs offer nothing of value to readers. There is no helpful content. Eventually a blog such as this will eventually fall away and disappear into the deep black hole at the bottom of the blogosphere.
From your perspective if you want people to see you as a serious blogger with a proper quality blog you need to avoid making your blog appear to be an advertisement channel. You also have to avoid upsetting your existing readers when you make the move to monetizing a blog.
If you go over board with the number of adverts you put on your blog, you will detract attention away from the content of the site, which is what your readers are interested in. If attention is deflected from the content, your readers may not get what they came to your site for, and then they may never return. Your blog has to stand up as being a place that provides free and useful content.
Alternatively, you may decide not to try and make money from your blog. You stay away from ads, and don’t promote any products on your blog. You steer away from creating your own product, and you don’t get involved with affiliate companies.
But even if you are doing everything right, providing great articles, and marketing it well, getting traffic in, increasing your subscribers, building the number of comments you get on every post, you will not make money, and therefore how can you survive? This way it stays a very personal blog, and every day you are committing time to it, only because it is your hobby. In my mind, if what you provide is of a good quality, useful to your readers, then you are entitled to earn some money from it. This way you reap no reward for blogging, apart from personal satisfaction.
Overselling and underselling both lead eventually to the end of a blog. Figuring out a way to strike a balance is what’s needed. It’s a fine balancing act, that’s for sure. But if you’re not sure whether you have too much advertising or not, you can always ask for honest and brutal feedback from your readers.
I suppose to key rule is that the focus of the blog should not be lost to advertising. Your readers read your blog because the content covers topics they are interested in. They don’t read your blog because they are looking for advertisements.
Most readers will be perfectly understanding of the fact that bloggers putting time and effort into maintaining a site want to generate some sort of revenue. Just don’t overdo it!
Have you found something that is great for monetizing your blog that you care to share with us? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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