Make Money Online

Best 3 Simple Ways To Monetize Your New Blog

November 19, 2018

Last Updated on December 1, 2021 by Nadim Alamuddin

Tell anyone you are a blogger or you have a blog and they’ll probably ask you how you make money with it! In this blog post, I will highlight the best 3 simple ways to monetize your blog. By monetizing, I mean how you can make money with your blog.

While there are a lot of ways you can make money with your blog, the three methods I’ll talk about in this blog post apply for the new blogger. As a new blogger, you’re probably already overwhelmed with the wealth of information and learning you have to do just to keep up with your blogging. Because of this, I want to help by showing you the possibilities, the easy way. This post shows you it is possible to monetize your blog without ads.

Table of Contents

Affiliate Disclosure

This blog post contains links that take you to external sites. Some of these sites are products and services that I recommend, based on my experience with them. If you decide to purchase from them, I may earn a small commission, at no additional cost to you. Thank you in advance for your understanding. For more info, check out the Affiliate Disclosure.

Simple Way #1: WordPress Plugin

Do you ever wish you could have a tool that would just do it all for you? Glad you asked. But, for this to work, you need to have a blog on WordPress. There are WordPress plugins that work for you!

The concept is simple. The WordPress plugin taps into a group of selected merchants that offer products in a particular niche. Some plugins can represent up to 48,000 merchant affiliate programs. Monetizing your blog couldn’t get any simpler!

How Does It Work?

Once you install, activate and setup the plugin, it will redirect any of your external links relating to a product or service into an affiliate link. This way, you don’t have to manage your affiliate links with multiple programs, the plugin does the work for you. Too good to be true? Well, it works!

Of course, each plugin may have its own set of affiliate programs, niches, and features. But, the principle is the same. You set it up and you continue blogging great content. Anytime you put an external link to check out a product you’re blogging about, this gets redirected to maximize your commission, in case your recommendation ends up as a purchase. This is definitely the easiest way to monetize your blog.

Before you go and install this type of plugin, visit their site and check out which merchants they have. You need to make sure that their products correspond to the niche that you’re blogging about. This comes from my own experience. As a new blogger, I installed and setup one plugin, only to later find out that none of the products it has have anything to do with what I’m blogging about.

A Few Plugins To Consider

Skimlinks

Here’s a WordPress plugin that has instant access to over 48,500 merchants from around the world. By joining Skimlinks, you won’t have to sign-up for other networks, go through an approval process or bother with peppering your site with affiliate links.

It’s important to note that Skimlinks has Javascript code that you can install on any website, not just for WordPress sites. You can even use it on your social media platforms and it has a URL shortener feature to make it work on Twitter, where being concise matters.

VigLink

Here’s another WordPress plugin that you can install, activate and setup in a matter of minutes. In the setup, you can specify whether you want VigLink to redirect all your external links or just those that do not have your own affiliate links.

VigLink has a smaller network of merchants than Skimlinks, but is easier to get into, as it doesn’t need prerequisites of engaged visitors on your blog (although that definitely helps!).

VigLink also has a URL shortener and can be used on Social Media platforms without the need of a blog. It also gives you a “bookmarklet” to add to your bookmark bar. Whenever you visit a site that you’d like to promote, you click on the bookmark and will get an affiliate link for it!

YieldKit

Here’s another WordPress plugin that can give you access to over 45,000 merchants! And, if you don’t have a WordPress blog, you can also just copy their code onto your website.

If you like to measure how you’re doing, YieldKit offers an extensive analytics dashboard. You can get up to 75% commission on any purchases from their merchants, same as Viglink or Skimlinks. They also have a URL shortener feature.

YieldKit can automatically convert your external links, keywords, brand and product mentions into monetizable links. You can also create custom affiliate ads for your site.

Simple Way #2: Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the process of recommending someone else’s products and services. If your recommendation results in a sale, you will make a commission. This comes at no additional cost to the buyer. Simply said, it’s the art of putting the right products in front of the right audience at the right time.

OK, so how does this work? On a blog post, you do this through what is called an affiliate link. This is a link to the product that contains within it a reference to your account number with the merchant. Here are a couple of examples of affiliate links:

yourcompany.org/?ref=1234
asupplier.org/?affid=9876

Note the ref or affid at the end of the link. This tells the merchant to credit you as the affiliate once a purchase has been made.

To make affiliate marketing work successfully for you, you will need to look for the right products to promote and know how you will promote them.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Depending on your chosen niche that you are blogging on, there are thousands of companies with products that may have affiliate programs to sign up on. The easiest way to find whether a certain company has an affiliate program is to Google it. In the search results, you will probably get a direct link to the affiliate program page.

My recommendation is to always read the prerequisites required for you to be accepted as an affiliate, as not all companies will accept you right away. There are programs that require a certain number of visitors to your site, while others which have no requirements.

Once you sign up to an affiliate program and you’re approved, you can then access their marketplace. There, you can choose the products that correspond to your niche.

I highly recommend that you only market products and services that you have used and can recommend. You also need to assess whether these products would be useful or of value to your prospects.

So, what if you sign up to an affiliate program where you’re unfamiliar with their products? I would recommend you buy a product, use it and only promote it if it works as it’s advertised.

An Example of Affiliate Marketing

As a concrete example, in my blog post “From Zero To Blog In 5 Steps”, I wrote about how you can host a blog on Bluehost. I happen to host my blog on Bluehost and find it a great service provider. I have been with them for about 3 years and had my share of issues on my blog. However, their support has been outstanding and their service fantastic. So, on my post, I recommended Bluehost and have affiliate links to it. Should anyone decide to purchase hosting from Bluehost through my links, I receive a small commission from Bluehost. It’s a way to thank me for referring my readers to them and a way for me to monetize my blog.

In a nutshell, this is what affiliate marketing is all about. I will definitely go into a lot more detail about affiliate marketing in future posts. Consider this as an introduction of what affiliate marketing is. Furthermore, it is the preferred method to monetize a blog, especially for starting bloggers and entrepreneurs.

Simple Way #3: Email Marketing

In a previous post “Best 3 Benefits Of Email Marketing To Your Business”, I went over why email marketing is so important. But, how does email marketing help you in monetizing your blog? We’ll get to that soon…

As a recap from the email marketing post, you build your list by inviting your readers to opt-in to subscribe to your blog and/or for a product or service you’re promoting.

As a new blogger, do not make the mistake of thinking that your readers will just click and buy directly from your posts. On average, a prospect may view a product about 7 times before deciding to buy it (the rule of seven). Having said that, you use email marketing with follow up messages to continually nurture the relationship with the prospect until they’re ready to buy.

How Does It Work?

Ideally, you set up your autoresponder for a 7 day run. By that, I mean that on day one, you welcome them and remind them of the product they liked on the blog – the one they opted in on. On the second day, you ask them if they have reviewed the product and provide them more information about it. You do this for seven days straight, always linking back to more information about the same product.

What I have found that works well is to send your prospect 2 messages a day. The first message is one of value. Give them a short tutorial, tips & tricks, a link to a blog post or maybe an e-book. The second message is one to remind them of the product offer you want them to look at and eventually buy. This way, you are providing value while reminding them of the product you’re promoting, not scaring them off with just selling emails.

By the following week, day 8, if they have not bought, you start promoting a new product and offering more value. Ideally, you would have a blog post review on that product and you provide that link in the email, so that you’re informing your prospect about it.

And, as we covered in the email marketing post, if they do buy the product being promoted, you may move the prospect onto your buyers’ list and send them different sets of offers.

Conclusion – Well, What Are You Waiting For?

So, there you have them, the best 3 simple ways to monetize your blog. I believe you can now apply this knowledge and start making some money!

Thank you for your visit today. Please leave me a comment at the bottom of this post. Have you tried any other plugins? Do you have other recommendations? If you liked this post, please share it on your social media platforms.

In order for you to properly apply the above simple ways to your blog, be sure to have read the following posts:

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