Make Money Blogging Series: How To Make A Monetization Strategy

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“Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.” –Edison

Planning is important when you do anything. And when it comes to something as important as monetizing your blog, planning becomes even more essential.

You can't just randomly stick ads on your blog and hope that people will click them and you will become a millionaire. It doesn't happen that way.

What it takes is a lot of planning and hard work to earn a good amount from your blog.

Most Important Question You Need To Answer

What's my main goal? Do I want to have a big readership or do I just want money?

And while only you can answer it honestly, here is some advice:

If you want to have a big readership and monetize, it is best to stay ad free for some time and monetize later. If you just want money, you can add advertisements right from the beginning but it won't help that much in making money. But you will get experience.  How? By the time you get popular, you will have an idea about the type of ads that work and those which don’t. It will be surely be an advantage to know this rather than learn by making mistakes in front of a big audience.

Let's Get The Plan Ready

OK, so you have the basic question answered. Now, it's time to write your strategy.

1. How am I going to make money blogging?

Now, that's a key question.  Are you going to use ads or affiliate posts or sponsored reviews or sell products? In starting, ads are a good method when you are not ready to launch your own products. However, selling own products is a good idea for later. Make sure to subscribe to Blogging With Success to get all the detailed info about the ways to make money.

2. Should I put ads from beginning?

You can easily put advertisements right from the day one but they will not earn you much. However, one benefit you will get that your readers will get used to ads and won't complain when you put ads upon getting popular. However, a better strategy is to stay ad free in first months. When you start growing, you can try putting banners on some older posts to see effect and maybe one or two in sidebar. However, make sure to never put too much ads in one go. Make the transition smooth so that old readers can get used to it.

3. If I am going to put ads on my blog, should I go for an ad network or direct advertisement?

If you have a relatively small blog, it is best to go for a good ad network like AdSense.

4. What will my readers like and what will be useful for them?

This is something only you can answer. You will have to use a good tracking solution to track your blog traffic and get an idea of what they like and what they want to get.

5. Should I put advertisements on every post or just a few selected ones?

Putting banners on every post can hurt the regular readership. There are some blogs that put a big rectangular AdSense ad below post title which looks annoying. You can also do that to make some extra cash but what's the use? A better strategy would be to put ads only on a few selected posts. For example, we show ads(actually, it's just a single banner) below the title on posts older than 60 days. Since latest posts don't have any ads, regular readers have no problems with the ads and we are able to monetize older posts well.

Implementing The Monetization Strategy

Now, it's time to carry out your monetization strategy. Since you have plan ready, all you need to do is join ad networks or look for advertisers and put ads as you need.

This post was a part of Make Money Blogging Series. Make sure that you subscribe to not miss any future posts in this series.