MBA1990 Q&A Wednesday: How best can I monetize my blog?

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Visit Dell.com deals. Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA show breaking down business every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is Q and A Wednesday. On Q and A Wednesdays, we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you got a question you want to ask, just email me over at omar100,mba.net Today's question is from Fred and Fred asks. Hey Omar, Love the podcast. I've been running my blog for three years now and been getting decent traffic. I blog about all things tech, smartphones, iPads, even Tesla's. It's been a slog, but now I'm getting over 15,000 visitors a month and I got a lot of engagement in the comment section in each of my blog posts. I've been hesitant to start monetizing my blog because I didn't have the traffic, but now I'm seeing it come in. How best can I monetize my blog so I can start seeing the fruits of my labor? Any advice would be helpful. Thanks Fred. Blogging is actually one of the pioneers or pioneer business models in online business. So many of the people that I looked up to when I started learning about online business were big time bloggers. I myself in a past life ran a pretty successful blog in the clothing industry. So in today's lesson, we're going to explore all the different types of monetization options a successful blog has. Which ones will help you in the short term, which ones will help you in the long term, and which ones I would suggest you avoid altogether. People are actually quite surprised when they learned how lucrative a successful blog can be. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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I love a great content business because it is one of those that really scales really well because you're able to provide different types of monetization strategies to the same content. We're going to explore those monetization strategies in today's lesson. But before that, here is the key to long term success in blogging. All that matters is the quality of your content. Never, ever sacrifice quality to make money. Because the whole reason why you have this traffic, the whole reason why people like your content is because of the quality of the content, right? That's why they're coming to the site. So if you're going to sacrifice that experience in any way that's really intrusive, that's something I would avoid altogether. I can't tell you how many big publications I've been on where I can't even see where the article is with all the ads floating around. There's nothing wrong with advertising, but if it's so overwhelming and so intrusive, you're kind of defeating the purpose. You're kind of not giving people what they came for so they can keep coming back. So put your content first, because that's what got you here in the first place and is what's going to take you to the next level and beyond. So you should really be thinking about how you can invest your advertising dollars or your monetizing dollars that you're going to make from your blog into even better content, more content, even maybe building out a content team, somebody that can produce some pretty snazzy, high quality videos or social media content or, or newsletter. And that brings me to the first way to monetize your content is actually your own products. A lot of people think that, you know, advertising or Google display ads is probably the first thing I would suggest. Actually I think the first thing you should do is actually create your own product for your audience, the audience that's coming to your site. So you say you're a tech review site for it. So you're reviewing all kinds of different tech technology from Teslas to smartphones and all that. There's so much content out there, people are craving brevity and some way to get everything they need in one place. So a short course or even guide that has everything they need to know about one particular thing. Like say for example a Tesla Model 3 buyers and owner's guide that somebody who's buying a Tesla can just pick up, download your book and know everything they need to know when it comes to buying, picking up their car on delivery day, inspecting it and taking care of it for the lifetime of ownership. You can't believe how valuable this type of information is because there is this information, but it's scattered all over the place in several different videos. It's not a concise manual. One place I can go to everything and people are just willing to just have that as a handbook, as a guide in one location and are willing to pay for it. So think about what kind of pieces of content or products you can produce to support your current readership. Another idea is a paid newsletter. Yep, people are happy to pay for really good content if it's given to them on a regular basis. There's a lot of examples out there and there are also examples like the Morning Brew who advertise in in their newsletters and monetize their actual newsletter as well, which is free. Another product idea is just bringing your community together, some sort of membership or community forum or Slack channel or something where people can meet and get to know each other and geek out. People are happy to join a community of like minded people for a nominal fee and with your traffic you're gonna be able to gather lots of people so you got your own products. The other way you can monetize your blog is, is of course advertising, displaying advertising on your blog. If this is done tastefully, it can be done pretty well. The fast and easy way to do this is to do Google Display ads where you pop in some code in one of your sidebars or a banner or something like that, and Google display ads for you. And you can choose what kind of ads will be displayed and you get paid for views and clicks. But of course, you can do the same on your own. You can actually reach out to companies that would be interested in getting in front of your audience, like mobile phone cases and companies that sell them, right? Or if you view Apple products, people that sell Apple accessories, you get the point. They can create their own ads and display them on your site. And you can charge a flat monthly fee, for example. Another way to advertise is through affiliate links. And the most common one you'll see on are affiliate links for Amazon, for the Amazon Associates program, which is an affiliate program. So when you recommend a product or you mention a product, you hyperlink in it. Of course, you mention that these are affiliate links throughout the post. Or you can say this in the beginning of the post or at the end of the post, up to you. But the point here is that whenever somebody clicks on this link, you get an affiliate commission. And most businesses, most products out there, whether they're sold on Amazon or on other sites, have some sort of affiliate program that you can sign up for. It's pretty simple, it's pretty straightforward. And you can use affiliate links so that when people buy through your recommendation on the site, you get a kickback. Now, let me mention a couple ways that I don't recommend you should monetize your blog. You're going to get approached a lot once your blog starts rolling and you get traffic and you're recognized in the industry from people that say, hey, I'd love to write an article on your blog, guest post. I'll even pay you for a post. And the whole reason why they're doing this is because they want a backlink. You have a somewhat authoritative site, this gets a lot of traffic, and a backlink on that site would be beneficial to their site, so they're willing to pay for it. The problem is that often these articles are really poorly written. They don't really match the voice of the blog or cater to your audience specifically. And again, this is doing something that we talked about earlier. It's damaging your content. It is devaluing your content. Your content is the reason why you exist, right? It's your product. So you need to make sure you don't fall into those traps. By the way, the opposite could happen too. Where another blog that is similar to yours say, hey, would you like to post on our site and we'll give you a backlink. This is how much it costs. You gotta be very careful about these sites, especially it's not an authoritative site because it actually can hurt you in the long run SEO wise and it can be a total waste of money.

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To wrap up today's Q and A Wednesday's question from Fred how do I monetize my blog? Well, I mentioned a few I talked about creating your own products and selling them to your audience. I talked about doing display ads, advertising, we talked about affiliate marketing and we talked about even creating a virtual community. But also, you know, I know we're in Covid time, but things are starting to ease up and things are getting better over time. And really what you're doing with your blog is you're creating a movement, you're creating a community. And that community is going to love to unite and meet. Yep. That means in person meetups and events. You can run these events and people would love to be a part of them. I've seen so many successful blogs in different niches charge 200, 300, 500, $1,000 for a two or three day event where they get to meet all those people they've been chatting with and seeing them comment on your post and giving recommendations and all that. They would love to be at a place in person to meet up and you could facilitate that for them with an annual event or even a quarterly event or even a local meetup. Blogs are actually one of those businesses that people don't talk about when it comes to acquisitions. They're one of the most easiest types of businesses that get acquired because the proof is in the pudding. They're getting the traffic. They have the audience, the content's there, they know it works. People that are interested in buying businesses, it's super simple. Even competitors or people that are in the same industry are happy to buy your site just for the traffic, just for the authority. I mentioned a few episodes ago, my buddy Brian Dean from Backlinko.com, which is an SEO blog, just got sold to Semrush and this happens every day. So while you're building and monetizing your blog, you're also building an asset. Thanks so much for listening, and thanks Fred, for asking today's question on Q and A Wednesday. If you've got a question you want to ask, just go ahead and email me over@omar mba.net make sure you smash that subscribe button on whatever podcast app you like using, whether it's Stitcher or Spotify or Apple Podcasts or Himalaya. We're on every single platform. Hit, subscribe or follow to make sure you don't miss an episode. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I want to commend Fred for building and maintaining and growing his blog for the last three years. This is no easy feat. I know this firsthand because it requires dedication and discipline to continually write content and create unique content for their audience. And do it even when you don't feel like it, right? And do it even when people don't comment on it. Or maybe it didn't get that many views. And to keep at it every single day, every single month, every single year. And he's proof that you can build a successful business if you have the drive. If you're willing to be consistent. Thanks so much, Fred for the question, and thank you for listening. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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