So you have already established your niche blog and now you're looking at ways to start monetizing it. Today I’m going to share some tips to help you make a decent amount of money from your first niche blog. These tips should also be handy for those blog owners who are finding it hard to make any real money from blogging.
If you follow Google search trends you must have noticed niche specific blogs seems to be getting more traffic and generating more business than blogs that cover more general topics.
And if you are still waiting to start your first niche blog, you need to take the following actions immediately:
- Choose a niche for your blog
- Buy web hosting (we use HostGator) and good domain name for your blog
- Select the blogging platform for your first niche blog
- Set up branded social media accounts to help market your blog
- Start writing original and engaging content around your chosen niche
How to Start Making Money from a Niche Blog
Now get back to the topic for the day and let’s discuss some tips to help you make a good amount of money from your niche blog:
Apply for Google Adsense
Google Adsense seems to the obvious choice whether you want to monetize your general web site or niche specific blog. You could make good amount of money for every click especially on a niche specific blog. No doubt you could try several money making programs on your blog, but I recommend testing Google Adsense as just one of the methods you should implement on your blog. I previously blogged about some Google Adsense Alternatives you should check to find a few solid money making alternatives for Google Adsense.
Once you get approved for your AdSense account, use this tutorial to see How to add AdSense to your Blog Posts.
Sell Niche Specific Products
My second recommendation is to sell products that match your blog's niche and the kind of content you write about. The best situation for you would be to create one or two products of your own around the chosen niche. This strategy can provide a huge money making opportunity (click here to see how well known blogger Enstine Muki did this). But if you want a simpler method to earn money from your blog, you should start promoting other people's products through affiliate marketing.
[tweet_box design=”box_03″]What You Need to Know About How to Make Money on Your Niche Blog![/tweet_box]
You should only choose products that are matching your blog niche and you are recommending them to your blog readers because they are very high quality products and will be helping in fixing lots of your reader’s problems. Your only intention behind promoting a product should not be just about getting maximum profit. I have seen some affiliate marketers are able to make a good income just by referring good affiliate products with their target audiences.
Some websites you could actually try to find targeted affiliate products for your niche blogs are Amazon, ClickBank (here's a good tutorial on the topic), Link Share and Commission Junction.
If you have a YouTube channel, sign up for Famebit to get connected with sponsors that will pay for video reviews and mentions. Famebit also let's you connect Instagram, Twitter and other social platforms. Find out more about your potential earnings using a site called Social Blue Book.
Rent Ad Space On Your Blog
As you are producing very high quality content around a particular niche and have already established it as one of best blogs in targeted niche, so there will be lots of advertisers in that niche who would be interested in getting a presence for their product on your blog. They may be interested in placing a banner or text advertisement on your blog in exchange for some monthly fee.
You should set up an advertising page on your blog mentioning all advertising options on your blog. Be sure to include some social proof like Klout scores and Alexa rank. You can also sell banner space on your blog using third party networks like BuySellAds.
Apart from that, there will be some advertisers who want you to review their product based website on your niche blog in exchange for some monetory benefits. Writing reviews about products that are matching your blog niche is going to be very beneficial for you. In this case, you are going to update your blog with a fresh and targeted content and at the same time, going to get paid for your blogging efforts. In long run, you could expect receiving lots of targeted traffic to such posts from search engines.
Sell Your Expertise
So by now, you must have established yourself as an expert in your niche. Now it’s time to use your expertise to make more money. No doubt, you can use your expertise to create more niche blogs and thus end up with more profits. But at the same time, you can make a good amount of money by helping other bloggers and website owners in your niche to set up their blogs. If you have established yourself as a blogging Guru and know how to make huge profits, no doubt you can help other guys as well repeat the same kind of success with their blogs.
With this intention, there will be some people who will be interested in receiving your one on one coaching or training to get answers for their specific questions.
If you ask me personally, I have so far made good earnings from Google Adsense, selling other people’s products and selling ad space on my niche specific blogs. So far I have not created a product of my own. These days, I’m trying to sell my expertise in the blogging niche in the form of guest blogging services and WordPress installation services as a good way of making money.
Recommended Resources:
- How to Find a Profitable Blog Topic Idea (Better Blog Booklets)
- Free Yourself, Leave Your Job and Be Your Own Boss: A Guide for Entrepreneurs (Freedom of Thoughts, Finance, Time and Location Book 2)
- 38 Experts Reveal The Content Tools Every Blogger Needs
Nice tips Anil!
I followed some of your posts and think it’s very valuable to those bloggers. BTW, what would you think if a blogger is not too smart to write?
Perhaps the answer is to learn to write well, but I do not want to ask for it.
Do you think it’s a good idea to hire a writer with some investment?
Is that pretty risky?
Deny there is no harm in hiring a writer for content purpose. But you should be able to edit those contents as per your requirement. Most of time, we don’t use content writers content as such. We try to mold them as per our writing style.
The blogger can also use audio and video to share their information and sell their products, services and expertise.
And moreover, you need to be careful when choosing the writer. I hired a guy from Freelancer some time back for one of my niche site and the result turned to be unfortunate. Finally the dispute was filed and the damn site simply distributed the money between we two. Its pretty ridiculous. I never visit that site anymore for freelancers.
If you are going to hire anybody for content of your blog, you must provide the most detailed and clear specification of your requirement. Simply giving the title and keywords may turn into unacceptable outcome and would be harder to resolve disputes if any ensues.
So, Danie, first learn a bit about outsourcing the content writing, learn how to get the right guy on your board and there is no harm to find some helping hands to improve your blog.
Selling your own expertise is the best way to make money from blogging (at least that’s what I personally think).
Writing services, developing plugins, logos or themes, theme customization etc are the best ways to start with. Once if we dig into it, we can make more money from the experience.
I think GA is not the easiest way to get approved Anil (especially for the starters!). What do you think?
That’s true Rahul. These days it become really difficult to get an account on Google Adsense. That’s why we need to look out for other ways to make money from our blogs.
Anil this sounds really easy but actually its a very difficult task right from the beginning till the end for a newbie. What you have shown is absolutely right and its a outer-cover/overview for making a earning site.
Good tips. I like the idea of selling your services from your site. Once you have become an expert in a niche then people are bound to come back for more and more and here’s your chance to advertise your services. I think creating your own product is a great although it might seem harder in the beginning but in the long run, its more profitable.
You are right Shalu. Initially it may be a bit difficult in developing a money making product of your own. But once you have done the initial hard work, most of the time you have to just site, collect cash and give support to your customers.
Hi Anil all your tips are really good, can u please suggest what are the criteria to get approved in BuySellAds?
Right now, they seem to be focusing more on technology related blogs. So if you have a technology blog on your own hosting and updating it at regular intervals, you should get approved in BSA
Anil
Renting your adspace, and selling your services is a solid way to start. I’m currently generating cashflow from adspace
For the last two years type, I was making most of my earnings from selling ad space on my blogs. But now, I’m promoting some affiliate products on my blogs with decent success.
if you are finding it hard to get an account approval from GA, you should check this help page from Google Support http://support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=75109
Hello Anil,
All pointers are useful. Google AdSense is a viable money making venture, likewise with ad spaces. Infolinks and Chitika are also good sources of income. A must read for bloggers.
Selling niche specific products is always the better idea. Since your readers may be interested in them. And goggle adsense, currently I am thinking to replace it with some banners advertisements, since I am not making good income with it.
Vivek, you should be able to make more money selling banner ads and niche specific products on your blog. You would not get much success with Adsense keeping in mind the kind of readers you have on your blog.
Done done and done.
Thank heavens I’m doing SOMETHING right. I’m considering doing local seminars for small business about social networking and charging people a small rate to attend. Many people have shown an interest so I’m now doing the research on how I can make this happen.
That’s a great idea Kimberly. Surely, you will be able to good money if people are finding your seminars interesting and you continue with them for long.
Anil,
This is amazing. Thanks for sharing this. I am in the process of setting my blog up to be able to sell auto detailing products. Hopefully one day I’ll be selling my own products.
Thanks for sharing!
Great post Anil, I am using Adsense and CJ to monetize most of my sites. I haven’t had much luck selling ad space yet but hopefully when my blog is bigger I will have some interested clients!
What do you think about selling affiliate products on your blog? Thanks…
Lisa, you will have great success selling affiliate products on a niche based product. Before promoting a product on your blog, you must be sure about its quality. It would be great if buy and use the product at your end before promoting it on your blog.
Hi Anil,
Excellent article. I guess there are many methods by which we can earn from our blog. we can place buy sell ads on our website, If we have a good traffic then we can also use many other ads for our website.
Thank you
mark
Aghosh!
Most of the time I find that friends are hurried to the extreme to fetch that Google codes 🙂
The truth is, displaying Ads will not earn you any money, believe me. What is happening in our part of the world is:
1. Create a blog (most commonly on free blogging platforms)
2. Paste 3 – 10 posts with the mercy of Wikipedia or some other sites and blogs
3. Fill up the Google form expecting Adsense codes 🙂
4. Adsense declines the application
[even if you got Adsense account from any other means (people really use some awesome tricks to get Adsense account)]
5. Paste Ad codes everywhere in page
6. Check stats every couple of hours
[No clicks, no money 🙁 ]
7. Check stats again
[No clicks, no money 🙁 ]
8. Start looking ways to find clicks on their Ads.
9. Send links, requests, click exchange
10. Certainly, they find somebody who agree to click exchange
11. Check Stats
[Wow! clicks and there’s money! Yummy 🙂 😀 ]
12. Inspired! Excited! Aspire to grow more 🙂
13. Check Stats
[Wow1 Clicks and there’s money! Yahoo! ]
14. Earning reaches to some level
15. There’s no Ads in site. Try to log in to Adsense to learn that you are banned!
16. Curse Google. Grumble that Adsense unfairly banned the account ‘for doing nothing’.
Thus this long list of steps is worthless. Rather follow the simple steps:
1. Establish a blog with your clearer purpose and intentions (forget about Adsense and any other advertising for now)
2. Promote your blog, connect with other bloggers, learn to improve and make your blog popular, learn to use networks, tools and servicies
3. When your blog reaches to some level of popularity, when you reach to traffic stats something like 500/day, Apply for Google Adsense
Your blog will be approved for sure and the clicks will fall naturally [No doubt about that, you never need to ask for clicks]
So, why not to take a shortcut? 🙂
Really helpful tips Suresh specially for newbies. You cannot really survive if you are using click exchange type of practices for making money from GA.
Hira, why not try finding some good music related products from ClickBank or Amazon.com type of websites.
Hi Anil!
i think making the money can be done by many way because to found niche blog can be hard task to the blogger and every blogger need to this blog.i like adsense or ppc tips to making money.i like it.
Hi Anil,
Definitely once you have established your niche blog, you can help others to repeat your success. This way you can make some big money yourself too by selling ebooks or like you mentioned one to one coaching . But at the end everyhting depends how well you choose your niche and work for it.
Thanks for this awesome article…:-D
Too many times I see newbie bloggers pick the wrong niche just because they know that other people make money in it! Pick a niche that you know and love!
Nice, simple and succinct guide to how to succeed with a niche blog. Thanks Agarwal. Just to add to that, i think some form of marketing whether it be SEO, SEM, etc could help bolster one’s blog
Better ways to earn money through niche sites. but i think Google Ad-sense is much better way to earn money than the niche sites. Its my personal opinion.
I would suggest you check this thread http://support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=75109. I’m soon going to create a post to help newbies with their google adsense account approval.
I have got 5-6 years of experience while using Google Adsense on my websites and blogs. So you can assume good amount of experience about making money with Google Adsense. Right now, I’m not aware about such training course. If you have any specific question, you can share here or can email me at info@bloggerspassion.com. With Adsense, you should make lots of tests and stick with the one which gives you maximum revenue.
I love this article. Simple and to the point. Adsense (of course without exaggerating) should be choice no. one for anyone who thinks about monetizing their blog. The truth is that if you have huge amounts of traffic you can live only off your AdSense earnings…but usually when your site grows other opportunities present themselves and we don’t want to miss anything. Thanks!
Please check this post http://bloggerspassion.com/banner-ads-advertising-how-to-make-money-selling-banner-ads-on-your-blog/
I hope it will help you with making more money with your blog through selling banner ads.
Really agree with your thoughts Ehsan. With the niche that you mentioned, we can make more with affiliate products than Google Adsense. But still there will be lots of niches you will find it it difficult to get a money making product and lots of website owners does not know much about affiliate marketing and all. For lots of guys, Google Adsense is the only way to earn money as they know about it only.
niche marketing is a very good way of making money but as it has been flooded in last few years, it’s a bit more complicated for new bloggers to establish their niche blog. Thanks for sharing these tips
We all know how to make money from a site,
The Good’ole Adsense from Google 🙂
Plus, that is not the only way to make money. Selling places on your blog is such a fine way to make some cold, hard cash.
Good write up!
Alden, are you able to make more money through ClickBank affiliate products than you were able to make with Google Adsense?
Harshit, surely we can make decent amount of money from Amazon associate program if we have a product based website and we are able to get thousands of hits from search engines on it on daily basis.
Hendry, this is not your own story. Lots of bloggers feel the same kind of heat when they start depending too heavily on Google Adsense. To be on safer side, you should use 3-4 monetization methods at least on your website so that you can switch to another if any of them stops giving you earnings for any reason.
Surely infolinks could be a good earner for you if majority of traffic on your website is coming from US. Apart from infolinks, one can give a try to buysellads type of ads buying and selling networks.
For Google nowdays? I would wait at least 6 months and make sure you have some decent traffic before even trying to apply.
There are a ton of other options though – clickbank, skim or viglinks, infolinks, kotera … you just need to look for “advertising” and you’ll see a ton out there.
Another option is affiliate advertising in your niche using CJ.com (Commission Junction) where you can list specific ads relevant to your site.
All of this is moot though as you should really work on your content and getting your blog known BEFORE you try and do any type of advertising. I would recommend having at least 50 high quality articles and have at least 250 visitors a day before you start introducing advertising to your site. This way you can focus not on making money but your writing chops, social media, networking with other bloggers etc.
Lay down a good foundation and the money will come! It has taken me just about a year of part-time blogging to start seeing any type of rewards. It is a ton of hard work – but it is completely worth it!
Well said Jason. Our website should have some age, traffic and decent amount of contents before we think of applying or implementing any advertising program on our website.
My favorite part of this is, “Sell niche specific products” You can find free ebook downloads with resell rights everywhere on the internet. What’s better than downloading something for free (About your niche of coarse) and turning it around to make a profit!
Great blog!
Rohan, first of all I don’t see a niche where you cannot guest post. Secondly I would not recommend doing guest blogging on blogs that are based in your niche. You can find the list of 200 plus blogs from different niche’s that accept guest posts here http://bloggerspassion.com/list-of-100-plus-blogs-that-allows-guest-blogging/.
If you still unable to find some blogs in your niche that accept guest posts, do let me know I’m going to help you. You can also contact me at my id info@bloggerspassion.com as well
Great article Anil and thank you so much for sharing this info. I opine that building reputation takes time. I hope your list helps me.
Hi Anil,
I think it all depends on what niche you choose, some work better with Adsense and others work great with affiliate programs.
But for affiliate programs I think it takes longer to earn money than with Adsense.
Thanks for posting this, cheers.
~Philip
Hi Anil,
My blog is 1 month old, so far I’ve only promoted some affiliate links, but my traffic is still very low.
How much time I should wait till I apply for Adsense, maybe you can give me some advice for the minimum number of posts published and something like that.
Thanks for sharing this information with us, have a great day.
~Philip
I would suggest you wait for three months at least before giving a try to Google Adsense account.
Hi Anil,
Great post. My biggest advice to new bloggers is always around figuring out what their niche should be early doors. I think that is the fastest way to capture leads, build a targeted audience, share valuable content and sell relevant products.
Thanks for sharing,
Beth 🙂
That’s true John, lots of competition is there in the money making niche’s at least. As a newbie, one should target long tail keywords from niches of their interest.
Now it is difficult to run a niche blogs as competition has increased and lot of people are targeting same niche.
Incredible post. My greatest guidance to new bloggers is dependably around making sense of what their specialty ought to be early entryways. I imagine that is the speediest approach to catching drives, manufacture a focused on a gathering of people, offer significant substance and offer pertinent items.