It’s Friday and time for another little installment of Angel’s Bits.
This week, Scott and I have been talking about a subject that might be new to some of you and concerning which some of you will be old and experienced hands – monetizing your blog.
Sounds like an odd bit of corporate market-speak, I know, but it boils down to how your blog can make money for you. Tons of money? Probably not, unless you have a wildly well-visited site. But you know what? All those nickles and dimes add up. Little bits can help you fund marketing and trips to conferences.
There are tons of ways to do this, but as authors we want to be careful not to detract from our own content and, more importantly, not annoy our readers and potential readers. But there are some relatively non-intrusive ways your blog can make a little bit of mad money for you.
Just a few possibilities:
1. Pay Per Click – programs like GoogleAdsense will give you a code to place on your website which will allow the provider to send ads through the code. When people click on the ad on your site, you get a little bit of compensation. Most people won’t click, so this is best for high-traffic sites.
2. Amazon Associate program – where you earn percentages for certain products purchased plus advertising fees, again by agreeing to host ad content from Amazon on your site.
3. Merchandise offers – there are a couple of sites to go with here (we use Redbubble) but the idea is when you have original art that you own, you can upload it to these sites. Redbubble etc. will then offer your art on a variety of fun items (mugs, notebooks, pillows, etc. etc.) and when people purchase, you get a percentage of the sale. (Small after manufacturing costs, but again, this stuff adds up and listings are free.)
What other things are people doing out there to monetize their blogs? Let us know!
I use my blogs as the venue for crowdfunding, primarily the Poetry Fishbowl which is my biggest project at present. Once a month I host a session where people give me prompts, and I write poetry based on whatever I get. Then I post one for free in thanks for the inspiration, and the rest are available for sponsorship.
Lots of people use a similar model for everything from serial fiction to artwork. If you have an audience and you make stuff, then you can probably find a crowdfunding method that will work for you.