This year and beyond, most of us have plans to achieve better results but the question is how are you going to do that?
If we want better results this year, we must at least double our efforts in what we did last year and if possible, add more to it. We can't expect more results while doing the exact same thing we did in the past.
I decided before the start of this year to double my income and to accomplish this, I laid out a plan of action for myself. In this post, I want to discuss with you those things I'm doing with a little more effort and how they are adding to my income. I'm not asking you to follow the exact steps but if you are willing to see a change in your income, take some of my steps as a prototype.
How to double my income this year!
I have been blogging since August 2013. As a matter of fact, Basic Blog Tips and Ileane Smith are part of the reasons I'm blogging today. I don't want to get into the depth of the story but for the past 2+ years, I have made money online in 3 main ways:
- Selling my own products/Service
- Affiliate Marketing
- Google Adsense
The biggest portion of my earnings has come from the sales of my own products. Affiliate Marketing is second on the list and Google Adsense comes at the bottom. I couldn't have developed a strategy to generate more income this year without first of all knowing what works best so I can focus on and leap to a bigger ground.
Recommended:Â How To Make Money Blogging What we can learn from 21 Blogger's income reports
After considering some rough stats (which I cannot share here because they are not accurate), I have decided to do three things to double my income;
1 – Create at least one product this year
Product creators are the ones that go with a bigger chunk of the income. Though it comes with its challenges (product maintenance and updates), the digital world has made it quite fascinating to author a product and go away with money without tearing your hair out.
All my products I have created so far are digital with the latest being an ebook targeted at all bloggers willing to generate income from their blogs. Looking at how my blog generates income with Affiliate Marketing and studying some hidden things other bloggers are doing, I decided to release a detailed book, revealing my exact methods and what some other top bloggers do in hidings.. The book is 85 pages and has gotten some really impressive feedback
Though the release of Affiliate Marketing For bloggers has not added much to my income (due to lack of necessary promotion), it's a huge step towards achieving my gold.
NB: Celebrating my success, here is unique coupon code ONLY for BasiBlogTips.com readers:Â BBT9 Save up to $18.
2 – Pull more targeted Traffic
To be quite frank here, nothing works without targeted traffic. Â Take note I said Targeted Traffic because that's where conversion lies.There are different ways to draw traffic to blog posts but this year, I'm going to focus mainly on two channels:
a) Search engines: Bloggers have said a lot of things about search engines. Google's constant change has created panic on the blogosphere. Most of us have decided to write and forget about search traffic.
No matter the changes, there is something if you do correctly, you must have traffic. I'm not frightened by all what people say. The simple reason is that Google is the monster and it only goes after its preys. I'm not one of them. On one of my guest posts on Zac Johnson's blog, I discussed four interesting ways you can get to Google page one without a single back link.
This is what has worked for me and I intend to focus on this method, rinse and repeat for more targeted traffic.
b) Emails: One of the most exciting things to do for your blog's growth is create an email list. It's the most stable source of traffic you can ever have for your blog  —  except when you are not building it appropriately!
I have two free reports on my blog I'm giving out to build my list. In the weeks ahead, I'll be adding more freebies and also implement the content upgrade strategy.
What I'm still thinking about is whether to install a popup plugin. Personally, I don't like when a window pops up and ask for my email while I'm reading something.
My position about this has affected my decision to get one setup on my blog. I prefer content upgrades to pop ups.
AWeber is an excellent email marketing platform. While I fully recommend it, I'm using INinbox which has tons of resources to handle any email marketing business.
3 – More Affiliate Marketing on my blog
Like I mentioned above, Affiliate Marketing is my second most active source of income. Naturally, if I want more income from my blog this year, I should focus on things that work already.
I have shared a lot of what I know already in my ebook I mentioned above and one of the things which I discussed in more details is writing Affiliate Product Reviews.
It's by far the best way to empower your blog with huge money making capacity but the problem is most bloggers just go about re-posting information from product page – Error!
In the last few weeks, I started promoting new products on my blogs. Because I do it the right way, my income is gradually building up;
NB: In product A above with monthly earnings at $0, this shows the clients I sent to this product ended up canceling their subscription. This is one of the things you should consider before putting in more effort in promoting a product.
Conclusion
So these are the three things I will do this year to double my income;
- Create my own products
- Drive more targeted traffic
- Do more affiliate Marketing
What about you? How do you intend to increase your earnings?
Let me hear from you in the comment box. Please share this post on social media if you like it.
Could you please tell me if we can use other publisher ad networks with Adsense?
Hi Mark,
Yes you use other ad networks together with AdSense but please check out google has written about this: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/9728?hl=en
He Muki,
This is awesome and a great revelation. As at this time, I only have one source of income which is AdSense and that doesn’t sound good enough perhaps maybe because of the niche I do operate but this year, it’s in my agenda to diversify my income probably to join suitable affiliate and make good income from it.
Hi bro,
Thanks for taking time to drop this comment after reading.
Yes it’s good to have another source of income. Though Affiliate Marketing is not easy, it’s not also an impossibility. I encourage you get into it and do it rightly.
I’ll be glad to be of any assistance any time so shoot me a mail 😉
Hi Enstine,I want to thank you for your post. This post should serve as an eye opener for some of us bloggers. Currently, I have a new 3 month product review blog with virtually no traffic. no sales and very little activity. I am therefore concentrating on traffic drive and hopefully add adsense as second monitization model. I’ll venture into product creation as the year progresses and I find my bearing online.
In conclusion, I have learnt a lot from your post. If anything at all I know I am on the right track in my online endeavors. That I only need to double my efforts and stay relevant.
Thanks .
Hey George,
Good to know you’ve gotten a product review blog in place
As a matter of fact, if you drive more traffic to that blog, you’ll make money. That’s true!
You must make sure you do content that attracts targeted traffic from search engines. Once you start getting visitors from these SEs, you are sure to generate affiliate income.
Adsense too is great if you have big traffic. It can however be a pain if your site is not really popular. So do your testings and settle for what works best
I hope you are having a wonderful week
Any idea what to do if google doesn’t accept my application for adsense?
Did they reply to the application?
Enstine,
You have a great plan and a solid plan. You are correct, the people making the most money are the people with their own product. I am also into affiliate marketing but have never done google adsense. I just never knew if that was worth it. Please let us know how that works out for you this year. Building that email list is important and glad you are doing it. Glad you like Aweber like I do!
I wish you great success and look forward to reading about it here and elsewhere!
Take Care,
Jupiter Jim
Hi Jupiter,
Thanks for the encouraging comment 😉
Now, I have a product so I’m focusing more on traffic. That’s the backbone of any sales strategy. Without targeted traffic, you may end up being your only buyer 😉
It will be exciting to see you promote my ebook too 😉
Hey Enstine,
Wow this was a real pleasure to read a great piece of content I found a lot of value in this post and I am going to re read it again. I make money with affiliate marketing but I too want to double my income in the coming years.
I love your plan and your desire to take action!!
Good luck!!
Shaun
Hello Enstine! I admit that creating your own product is a great way to increase your income. The best is that you can keep most of the revenue for yourself. The problem however is the maintenance of your product.
I know that most internet marketers create ebooks in which their share their experience, methods and offer step-by-step guide for those who are just starting out. I never created an ebook, but I believe this also requires some updates time-to-time. It might not take much effort but there are other digital products that are very hard to maintain.
For instance, I had the chance to meet a web developer who created a handful of designs (templates) for Joomla. Everything was great and the money was rolling in. The problem with these products started when one important member of his left the company. While these templates needed constant maintenance and updates, and their were unable to handle it, the business started to go down the hill. On top of that Joomla released a new version, which does not supported the old templates. I can continue the story, but I think there is no need, because you already got the point.
So to sum it up: you have to really plan ahead when creating a digital product and always have alternative income, because market can change very quickly and all your hard work can vanish from one day to another.
Hi David,
Good to see you here and thanks for the comment and for sharing your experience.
You know sometimes, Affiliate Marketing is better because you don’t have to deal with anything maintenance, upgrade, delivery or customer service.
Ebooks can be better than software of any type. Like you said, it takes a few hours to update an ebook but having to maintain software than runs on another platform is complex.
Themes or plugins for Joomla, WordPress, etc make it quite difficult if your team members get dispersed. That’s why it’s important important to properly document software so that any developer can continue from any where. I think that’s the point the developer missed and I can understand the direction of his business in the situation he found himself.
One more thing is if he was in good terms with his developers, they could help pass over to the next before quitting.
I was a developer in a wood company here too. I solely developed their software (web application too) but when leaving, I worked closely with the new developer to hand things over to him. The reason is that I maintain good terms before and after I left. The boss of that company settled my bills and I think he was wise 😉
Well, thanks for your time in sharing this with us so do have a wonderful week
I think you are right about generating your own product is always beneficial but one thing I wanna ask you where i can find your ebook.
In between the post there is a image in which someone described your ebook is so worth, that’s why asking for you ebook.
I also want to know what price should be there so that it sells.
Hi Gaurav,
The link to the ebook is just below the image you mentioned and the price is $27 but you can use this unique coupon BBT9 to save up to $18
Let me know if there is anything I can do to help
Good luck, I would suggest aiming to build at least 3 products this year, then plan next year to turn one of them into a Core product with a recurring pricing model. I’ve be doing this for several years and it works incredibly well.
Sounds a great suggestion Mark 😉
You know product creation is not easy but the best model is that which pays recurring income.
I’ll work on your suggestions and thanks once more for the inspiration
Thanks for the tips. My Adsense revenues have been going downhill lately, so I’ve started concentrating more on affiliate marketing. I like the idea of generating your own product and I’m thinking of creating a good app.
Hey Darron,
Thanks for the comment and yes, creating your own product is an awesome method to make sales.
Affiliate Marketing done right too can give you a lot of earnings. Work hard, work smart 😉
A very helpful post Enstine,
What every blogger is looking for is ways to make more money this year and always and this is really a good roadmap towards getting there.
I’m glad you’ve created your own product and I’m sure it will be a success.
I trust you and i trust that the book will be superb like every other thing you about you :).
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the comment Theodore 😉
The book is getting popular though not as I wanted because I’m having little time to promote it.
I’ll be on it for more promotion in no time and I’m working my brain out on creating another thing.
Do have a wonderful week bro and thanks for being part of this post
Nice post, Nowadays Adsense is not giving much, So we can’t earn more with adsense. Affiliate Marketing is big source of online Income for bloggers and If you have good traffic then you can earn more with Affiliate Marketing.
Great article! I’ve been looking for other sources of income. It isn’t so much that I want to make a large amount of money. I just want to cover my costs of running the site. I’ve experimented with amazon affiliates, but so far that hasn’t been working out for me. I think I’ll give clickbank a whirl. Maybe this will allow for better results. Thanks for the post.
Hi Enstine,
This post is an inspiring source of some of us bloggers. I have a 6 month financial blog with virtually no traffic. no sales and very little activity. I am therefore concentrating on traffic drive. I’ll venture into product creation as the year progresses and I find my bearing online. I have learnt a lot from your post.
Thanks a lot for great post.
Hello Muki, your method is indeed worth copying. I wish I saw this post some months ago. However, I still have two months to go for this year. I will do my best. In fact, I will get more serious in driving targeted traffic to my business blog and my affiliate marketing.
I think I made a very silly mistake by not considering selling something from the day one I built this second blog of mine. Who knows how much I would have made recommending products.
I hope yo hang you with you someday on our Twitter chat.