How to Monetize Blog Posts Without Scaring Away Your Readers

I hope you’ve been publishing articles to your blog this week. You have right? How many? 1? 3? 5? Remember in the beginning the more you can publish the better. The more you publish to your blog the more you let the search engine spiders know you are going to be a consistent and frequent source of information on your topic. If you show them that, they will come by more often. The more often they come by the faster your posts get indexed ~ the more traffic you get. So post, post, post!!!

I have debated about talking about how to monetize your blogs because people get so wrapped up in the making money part they forget you can’t make any money until you have people visiting your blog ~ and you can’t get any visitors until you are writing and promoting your blog.

However, I know you’re going to do it anyway so maybe it’s best to have a discussion about it so our blogs don’t start looking like big old billboards on the side of the highway. Those big old billboards are ugly and people really only look at them for a second as they’re whizzing by at 80 miles an hour ~ much the same with blogs.

So how to you monetize blog posts then?

1. In content links get clicked MORE than banner ads.

Ex. I fell in love with this free ebook about using LOA and parenting. I put this big old banner on my site. (The theme I use gives space for this big banner and I wanted to see how it would look but that’s an excuse really lol). Anyway, I put the banner up ~ you can see it on my Everyday Life and Balance site.

So the banner was up for a few days ~ it’s a really nice banner, offers something for free etc. No clicks.

I wrote this post a few days later and low and behold ~ clicks. Plenty of clicks.

It just proved to me again, that people need more information, more incentive, more reason to click through than a banner provides. I’ll be taking the banner down.

2. Make sure whatever you’re using to monetize is EXACTLY matched to what you’re talking about.

If you’re talking about growing tomatoes and your ad shows people how to grow Zinnias ~ you’re not going to make sales. Even if your product told people how to grow potatoes ~ you’re probably not going to see the conversion you’re looking for. The people on that post are looking for how to grow tomatoes ~ you have to give them THAT!!

3. Remember, you’re going to have LOTS of posts on this blog.

This means you’re going to have plenty of opportunities to monetize. You don’t need to put every product related to your topic on every page.

4. Make sure product placement flows with the conversation.

For example, yesterday I did the zoo games to play post I used as an example in the title keywords post earlier this week.  I talked about our trip to the zoo, zoo games, offered free resources to download/print zoo bingo ~ and even showed a video of us feeding the Lemurs. None of that is making me money. I like to monetize my posts so it dawned on me Hanna got this awesome Animal Encyclopedia for Valentine’s Day. It fit perfectly with the topic of the post. At the bottom of the post I talked about taking the learning back home from the zoo, and this book is an excellent resource for learning at home ~ put up a picture with an amazon link. Done. Post Monetized.

You don’t have to shoot for making a million dollars off every post. You want to give yourself the opportunity to make money on MOST posts ~ (it doesn’t have to be every single one ~ some posts just don’t lend themselves well to monetization ~ and that is OK) . You will have many many posts, as they get ranked and you start getting traffic to many of your posts daily  you’ll find you start making a little money from many of them which really adds up.

How to monetize FREE.

This one can be tough. There is lots of free stuff out there and people love free, hell, I love free. When you offer a lot of freebies on your site you need to find a way to solve another problem those people have that you can monetize. You’ll have to get creative.

Here’s my favorite example.

Free recipes. I’m the queen of free recipes I tell you. I love to cook and as much as I love buying cookbooks I love printing free recipes from the internet.

Here’s my problem.

I’m a sloppy cook, and every time I cook from a printed recipe the recipe gets smeared. Sometimes to the point that I can no longer use it again. I also have no filing system for these printed recipes. They get shoved in a drawer or on a bookshelf near the cookbooks ~ yeah, I can never find them again. Luckily I bookmark them all or save them on cooking sites so I can go back and reprint.

Anyway… late last year I found this site called Tastebook. It’s a site that allows you to pull all your favorite FREE recipes from online recipe places/add your own recipes etc to your account. You then create a cookbook of your favorite recipes. They print out a real book and send it to you. The books are really cool because you buy points and you can use points to have more recipes printed and sent to you. The binding of the books open and you can add the recipes to the books. Fantastic.

So this has become my go to monetization for free recipes. I know I can’t be the only sloppy/unorganized cook out there. So I mention the problem I have with printed recipes ~ and I mention the solution that’s worked for me. People resonate with the problem, click and sometimes buy. YAY. I’ve monetized free.

What do you have that’s free? Does it have an inherent problem associated with it? Can you solve the problem? Does the solution have an affiliate program? If it does, then you’re in luck. If you’ve used this solution personally ~ even better.

Let’s review how to monetize blog posts now:

1. Links in content convert better than banner ads (no matter how cool/easy the ad is)

2. Your product has to match your content and the person’s problem exactly.

3. Don’t go for a million bucks in every post.

4. Make your monetization part of the conversation.

5. Monetize free by finding the problem with the free and solving it.

I hope that helps you get some ideas about how to monetize your posts. Remember, the more cluttered your sidebars/headers with ads the more distracted people will be from your content AND

CONTENT MAKES MONEY!!

Here’s a couple  examples of some of my favorite sites that do a great job of monetizing.

Best Organic Fertilizer

Daddy Craft Day

As you make your way around the internet today take a moment to take notice of how the sites you visit are monetizing. See if they’ve got banners everywhere, or if they are monetizing posts. Think about how you feel when you land there. Look at YOUR buying habits online. Do you buy from banner ads? Do you buy from posts? Remember, what you do is likely what many other people do… so keep it in mind.

YES, I love banner ads. They are so pretty and easy to stick in there. However, when I think about the last time I clicked and bought from a banner ad… well… I can’t even think of one time.  I buy from people. People I trust who tell me about the product and get me excited that it’s just what I want/need.

Here is an excellent example of this. I must admit I love to read, love to read to Hanna, but I’m a bit of a cheapskate when it comes to books. However… when I read this post about One Odd Old Owl I HAD to get it. I trust the source, and well hell… it just sounds like an awesome book!  It was more than I usually spend on books BUT IT DIDN’T MATTER ~ I was too amped up about reading the book to worry so much about the price. ** Did you read that? Maybe go back and read it again.  It’s important. Her content got me so excited about owning THAT book  it didn’t matter it cost more than I usually pay for books.

Banner ads, no matter how well written, just don’t do that. How about you? When was the last time you bought from a banner ad? Is that reflected on how much you use them on your site?

*sigh* this post has given me insight that I really don’t want, but will act on anyway. Thanks for letting me talk this out with you guys. I look forward to hearing your comments and thoughts.