Blogging is tough as it is, but generating income is what we can call that light in the tunnel that everyone is aiming for. Sometimes, blogging feels like you are stuck in the dark, but its potential to earn is that ray of light that should keep you going.
Once you have built traffic around your website, it is time to monetize it and make sure that the income is consistent.
But how?
Here are the ways on how to generate consistent income with niche websites:
- Memberships
- Info Products
- Affiliate Marketing
- Advertisements
Let us review each one and help you decide which among them applies best to your blog.
Memberships
Memberships are the most consistent source of income for niche websites. On a membership monetization platform, you are asking people to subscribe to your blog to be able to get content.
You can offer different tiers of membership, and each tier would have access to more content.
In many cases, what bloggers do is to force membership from readers. In this approach, a reader can only access more content from the blog.
After that, he has to subscribe for free. Once the reader is subscribed, the blogger can now market the other subscription tiers to this potential customer.
A membership type of monetization is a highly active means to generate income. Your subscribers are going to leave if you do not produce new content on a regular basis.
To introduce membership to niche websites, you need a plug-in that can facilitate this type of transaction. You can use WooCommerce or other free plug-ins from your platform.
The steps are:
- Choose a membership plug-in
- Create membership levels and price them
- Choose the restricted content
Different plug-ins have different capabilities, so choose one that fits the way you want to run your membership. For example, some plug-ins can allow you to restrict content to only five free blog posts per month, and some cannot do this.
You also need a membership plug-in that has a payment processing system. If it does not have one, you may find it hard to integrate your payment processor with the membership tool as it will require APIs.
Info Products
An info product is anything that offers a learning experience.
The most common info products are:
- eBooks
- Online courses
- Mini-digital courses
- Course outlines (digital tool)
- Audiobooks
You do not have to release all types of info products. You have to select the one that best resonates with your audience and one that you can easily do according to your skills.
While bloggers are great writers, some find it easier to build an online video course than writing it. An info product is a consistent way to earn money from niche websites because once it is up there, the product is there for everyone to see.
To make your info products earn money consistently, you need to actively market them. You can use youtube or make sure that all your blog posts are linking to the info product. Your goal is to make new site visitors aware of the course you built and to persuade them to buy it.
Info products sell the best if you already have a massive following. You must build your credibility for a long time. Once you have a lot of traffic and a lot of supporters, it would be easy for you to sell your info product to your followers.
Buying from you becomes easy if your followers already trust you. After all, you gave them free content for a long while, and then it is time for them to see what you have cooked up for them. Just make sure that your content is unique and not a rehash of your free content.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a passive way to monetize niche websites. All you need to do is to carefully select a program that you can join, and then leave the links to these products or services in strategic locations on your website.
Affiliate marketing works best if you do not want to be on a schedule in providing content on a regular basis.
The benefits of affiliate marketing are:
- It is a passive income
- You can earn recurring commissions
- No need to actively market the blog posts once they are posted
While affiliate marketing is great, one disadvantage is that you are not in control of how much you will earn.
The size of the commission depends on the company you joined. Sometimes, commissions can change. In the worst-case scenario, some companies totally remove the affiliate program.
In that case, you have no other choice but to look for new companies. All the product reviews you made on your blog cannot be monetized from that former affiliate program anymore.
To succeed in affiliate marketing, take note of these tips:
- Choose a product you love and can support—you must be passionate about it
- Choose affiliate programs that offer recurring commissions
- If no recurring commission is available, choose those that have at least 40% one-time commission
- Market the products from an angle and not just through reviews
Companies that have great affiliate marketing programs have a support system, not just with marketing banners but with actual lessons to help you succeed in promoting their products.
Advertisements
The last most effective way to generate consistent income with niche websites is through advertising. Most of the time, bloggers depend on Google for advertising. While Google is certainly the largest advertising syndicate in the world, it is not the one that pays the most.
What you can do is to find advertising syndicates that pay more money per 1,000 page views. An example of this is Ezoic.
The thing is, the higher an ad company pays, the higher the traffic it needs from you on a regular basis. If your niche website is new, your only real option is Google AdSense. Google does not require heavy traffic from your website. All it needs is that you comply with its technical and legal specifications.
Once you have built significant traffic, you can move forward and register at other club syndicates. Do not expect to get approved right away. These companies pay big, but they would also put you through investigation.
What this means is that they would check your website’s performance, check if the content of your website can serve their advertising interests, and more.
If you pass this test, you can now upload and use the advertising network’s plug-in, or install their code in your blog HTML headers manually.
Summary
Monetizing a niche site can only come after traffic has been consistent for a while. The key is to provide your audience with consistent and high-quality content, and the money would come. Any blog that has reached a certain level of traffic is ready to be monetized.
But what you have to remember is that as your traffic grows, the more you need to produce quality content. blogging is a business where scaling up is the only way to grow.
You do not have to choose one out of the four recommendations, you can do all four, but choose one and master one at a time before moving on to the next.
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