Julianne Wish, Member Contributions
What’s The Difference and Which One Is Right for You?
Many blog owners blog with the intention of earning money. If you intend on or hope to profit from your blog it pays to understand your options. You can chose direct monetization, indirect monetization or a combination of both.
What is Direct Monetization?
Direct monetization simply means that you directly monetize your blog. You profit directly from your blog. In most cases this means you either:
* Sell products on your blog – for example, socks or supplements.
* Sell information products on your blog – for example ebooks or online courses
* Sell services on your blog – for example, copywriting services
* Sell space for companies to advertise – the more traffic you have the more you can charge to place an ad on your blog.
* Place pay per click ads on your website and earn money each time someone clicks on an advertisement.
* Host a membership site on your blog and profit from selling memberships.
As you can see you can choose several of these profit models for a single blog. For example, you might sell information products, sell advertising space and participate in a PPC program like AdSense.
What is Indirect Monetization?
Indirect monetization is where you profit indirectly on your website. The most common type of indirect monetization may be affiliate sales. With this profit model you earn commissions on products or services that you promote. This is a very common way to profit from your blog and it integrates well with direct monetization methods.
For example, you might sell ad space on your blog as well as include affiliate links in relevant posts.
Another example of indirect monetization is to profit from your email or subscriber list. Many bloggers offer you the opportunity to sign up for other lists. In this case they’re then earning money by renting or selling your name to other relevant companies.
Finally, membership site was mentioned in the direct monetization model however you can also profit from it indirectly. You can offer a free membership but then charge companies for access to your members. A very simple example of this might be if you allowed a gamer to market their products on your gaming membership site/blog.
Through widgets and plug-ins a blog is capable of offering just about any type of online experience. You can simply provide information or you can take it to a different level and offer memberships, an ecommerce store or an online chat room.
Choose your goals and then create a monetization plan to achieve them. Keep in mind, while planning your profit strategy that your visitors are ultimately who you want to consider first. Offer them value and benefit and the profits will come.
Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.
Julianne Wish, Member Contributions
As has been mentioned before on this blog, it’s important that you choose a niche for your blog. What is a niche? It’s a specialized or highly focused topic. The example from a previous blog post had to do with exotic pets…instead of a blog on exotic pets, one could have a blog on sugar gliders…that is a niche blog. There are several reasons why niche blogs are successful.
#1 Loyal Readers
If you choose a niche it will be easier for you to find loyal readers. When people do an online search, they are often searching for very specific information. If you provide that specific information you could be on the top of their list. It is highly likely that they will subscribe to your blog which gives you regular access into their homes and lives. This loyalty provides you with an abundance of opportunity to profit.
#2 More Profits
Niches are more profitable. As a blogger, it is easier in a niche for you to establish some of the key triggers that get people to buy. The most notable triggers are credibility and authority. When you blog about a specific niche, you are establishing yourself as a subject matter expert. You will earn the trust of your readers which means they will be more likely to buy from you or trust your recommendations. This results in profits.
With a niche blog, you will be able to draw very focused traffic. This means you will have a special appeal for targeted advertisers. Back to the sugar glider example…sugar glider advertisers will know that your audience is their target audience and they will pay you so they can advertise on your blog.
#3 More Traffic
It is much easier to compete in the search engines when you have a niche topic. For example entering exotic pets in Bing yields 24,400,000 results! Entering sugar glider yields one tenth of that number…a much smaller field of results! If there is a big demand for your niche topic, you will have much fewer competitors. This means that whenver someone searches for your niche topic, they are more likely to find you easier. The result is more traffic!
Choosing a niche topic also makes it much easier for you to provide value to your readers. More value means more repeat visitors. It also means more inbound links as people will want to share your blog and the information it offers with others. This in turn helps to increase traffic to your blog and raise awareness about your blog. In short, a niche blog makes it easier to market and grow your blog.
Choosing a niche topic means you’ll be able to reach your audience faster. You’ll be able to keep them coming back to your blog and will grow your subscribers more quickly. Ultimately this can lead to more profits from your blog.
Before you choose a niche, be sure there are good numbers behind it…this means be sure there is a good demand and low supply for your niche topic.
When the numbers support it, niche blogs prosper. Choose your niche today and start profiting from your blog!
Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.
Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.
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