As you might know, I run a blogging membership and community called Fearless Bloggers. It’s where I share with you my best strategies so you can grow your blog traffic and income sooner. It’s where I publish a detailed monthly income report from my blogging business every month, where I update you on what’s going on in the blogging industry, where you can ask any question at any time and where you can get support for anything blogging related so you can overcome those limiting beliefs and get to action sooner.
A good reason to join now is to be there on time for what’s happening next month. That’s the start of the two week Blog Monetization Challenge, the first ever challenge of this kind that I’m doing for members.
Over the course of two weeks, I’ll be posting a new blog monetization strategy that you can implement right away if you feel like and I’m going to do that every day aside from weekends. So that’s 10 strategies total.
Regardless of what stage of your blogging journey you’re in, even if one of these is new to you and you decide to give it a try, it can be a game changer, either right away, after a few weeks or months, or you can even turn it into new recurring revenue for years to come.
We begin on September 9th and I’d love for you to join us.
After those two weeks, I will also create an ebook for you with all the strategies in one place so you can refer to them easily.
It’s a no brainer offer because you can just join us for a month, be part of the challenge and monetize your blog more strategically and in new ways, as well as get the bonus material, browse the existing resources inside, engage with the community and decide whether you want to stay there or not.
It doesn’t get easier than that. Here’s the link again.
These weeks, I want to go through some myths you might believe around monetizing your blog. These are basically limiting beliefs that are stopping you from taking action and they’re keeping you stuck in a loop of never making money from your blog or not growing your income if you’re already earning a bit.
Let’s do something about them so you can stop waiting for the right time, the right strategy, for having more traffic or for any other conditions to be perfect before you give yourself permission to increase your revenue.
The myth that I want to debunk today is that you think you can’t monetize from day one, that you might be saying it’s too early to even think about making money as a blogger, that you think you need more traffic first or anything else.
But these are excuses you make that allow you to keep playing small, to procrastinate and to stay in your comfort zone.
I’m definitely guilty of that. I waited two or even three years before even assuming I can be a full-time blogger one day.
First, I was freelancing, not even having a self-hosted blog. I had to read countless income reports from others to believe it’s possible for me too, which by the way, is one of the main reasons why I share my earnings. Now it’s only happening inside the membership, but I’ve done it openly on my blog and on the podcast before.
If it’s possible for me, of course it’s possible for you too. But it’s the mindset block that stopped me from monetizing sooner.
I had a million excuses as to why I couldn’t do it yet. English wasn’t my first language. I didn’t know how to set up a business legally and get paid and pay taxes for that income. I thought I won’t be taken seriously in the industry. I thought I need a lot of traffic first. I also didn’t know in which way to monetize first.
Then I started testing some things such as ads. First, it was Google ads, I think, and even some WordPress plugins. There were some very small earnings.
I wouldn’t recommend those ways to monetize. If you go with ads, you should go with an actual ad network, but some of them have higher requirements and not everyone can be accepted early on.
Also, to go back to when I was just starting out and monetizing my blog, one day, someone from a company that works with publishers contacted me, offering me to publish a paid guest post on my site.
I didn’t even know that was a thing, let alone getting paid a 3-digit number to publish a new article on my site, which was such a win-win situation, right? I get new content, it’s quick and easy, I get paid, and I form a relationship with a client.
That was the beginning of what has been my main income stream, blog sponsorships, and what led to creating The Blog Sponsorship Boss. That’s my program that covers all you need to know about making money from sponsored content as a blogger and working with brands. But my point here is…
I could have monetized earlier.
I just wasn’t ready to do it. I didn’t believe it could happen and I didn’t take action. So this is totally a mindset problem, not a strategy problem.
Regardless of how new your blog is and how much traffic you get, you can set the foundation for a profitable platform from day one. The easiest way is with affiliate marketing, I would say. You can start adding affiliate links even in your first articles.
Of course, make sure you link to products you believe in and you don’t overdo it. It takes time for the articles to rank, but they’re probably always going to stay on your blog and people can find them once you have some traffic. You can set it and forget it.
You can also add affiliate reviews. One potential mistake here that many new bloggers are guilty of, even if they monetize early on with affiliate links, is that they don’t see any income from that even a few months later and they give up on their blog. Or they go back to those articles, remove the affiliate links and decide that this monetization method is just not for them, which is not the case.
They might not have an email list yet or they might not engage their subscribers in the right way. They might never promote that old content, never update it, never interlink it from new posts and so on.
That’s why I advise you to have your affiliate links inside articles and to keep producing new content, but you can also include affiliate marketing using social media. You can also do it on Pinterest. You can do it inside your email list.
There are many ways. Just make sure that you are still recommending quality products and services, stuff you believe in. That it’s not all about the money, it’s about helping people. And that you still create quality content, not just for the sake of the affiliate links in it, but for the sake of the impact it’s going to create.
Another way to monetize early on is to create a small digital product and have it ready for when you have your first readers and email subscribers. Because why wait till you have a big platform? There are many ways to monetize from day one.
So I hope you don’t let any excuses stop you from doing it. You can even go all in. You can create a media kit and page for sponsors and start looking for brand partnerships.
There is little to no chance to land them if you have a brand new blog, but you are setting the foundation because you will have to take those actions 6 or 12 months from now. So why not do it now? Why not set that intention? And when a brand approaches you, when you least expect it, you’re already going to have all those elements in place.
The next way is with ads.
For this you need traffic, but even when you have 1,000 page views, you can earn very little, but that could be your first revenue, first official revenue, which can motivate you to keep going.
That’s the case with a second blog that I’m running. It has around 4,000 page views a month, and I’m monetizing it with another ad network, Ezoic, which I don’t use for my main website.
It’s not my first choice, but it allows even new bloggers to join, and I am earning a little bit from it. I also had two paid collaborations for that blog, but that was thanks to the relationships I’ve already formed with clients, thanks to my main platform.
But still, there are different ways to monetize even a brand new platform.
And if you’re looking for specific ways to monetize your blog, and more than just ads, and want support along the way, and to ask all your questions, definitely join us for the Blog Monetization Challenge inside Fearless Bloggers.
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