Most people try to overcomplicate monetizing their blogs when they are just starting out.
If you are just starting out, it’s not the time to test out a dozen monetization techniques to find the perfect one. It’s time to start building your audience.
Once your blog starts receiving a good amount of readership, you will have all the time to perfect your monetization strategy.
Every time I talk about monetization, the first question I hear is:
What is the best way to monetize my blog?
The answer is simple:
It depends on how much traffic you get on your blog.
Here are some suggestions for when deciding which of the following monetization techniques to go with:
- Ads: This is the strategy I recommend most beginners to start out with. It is the easiest to set up and takes up next to no maintenance every month. It is perfect if you are looking for a set and forget option.
- Affiliate Marketing: You can start promoting affiliate products right from the start but I don’t recommend doing so. Most beginners who start with affiliate marketing soon get greedy and start publishing content that doesn’t add any value to the reader. That is the surefire way to making sure no one reads your blog.
- Selling Your Own Courses: Only start working on this when you have a big enough audience and you know what your audience really wants. You don’t need thousands of email subscribers or social media followers for this to work. But having a few hundred people on your email list who frequently visit your blog will make sure that your first course doesn’t fail.
Although I recommend starting with advertising if you are a beginner, read this article through the end to build a vision in your mind of what you need to do on every stage of the journey.