One of the most useful and time-efficient ways to create passive income is through creating a blog. There are three main streams of income that can arise through a blog: advertising revenue, affiliate marketing income, and sales of an electronic product. Blogging in the right area can bring in enough money to replace a traditional income, and once the blog gets off the ground, the time investment shrinks to considerably less time than a salaried job. In this post, we will explore the basics of blogging through the lens of the three forms of blogging income. We will also briefly explain how to set up a blog, although this is not a site creation tutorial.
Setting Up A Blog
Creating any site, including a blog, requires two things: a domain and a host. A domain is the name of the site, which people type into their address bars to find it. For example, the domain for Google is “google.com”. You need to purchase a domain from a company called a domain registrar. After that, you will need a host. A host is like the landlord for a website. All of the website’s content will sit on the host’s computers. You need to pay a monthly fee for hosting. If you are using a service like WordPress or Joomla, there are online tutorials to help you get through finding a domain, getting hosting, and installing the software. Web hosting for Joomla is usually straightforward because Joomla is popular.
Advertising Revenue
Assuming you have your blog working, it’s time to start making money from it. The first form of income is advertising revenue. You use a service like Google AdWords to place ads next to your blog posts. Whenever one of your readers clicks on one of these ads, or even if they just view the ad, you make money. It varies depending on the contract between the advertiser and the ad-listing service. The more readers your blog has, the more likely they are to interact with an ad. Furthermore, if you have content that is focused on a particular area, like model trains, then you will place ads that are related to the model train hobby. That is because your readers will want to see ads about things they might buy, which in this case could be model trains and accessories. Generally, you do not make a huge amount of money from advertising. It is very hard to have enough readers clicking enough ads to generate as much income as a regular job. Advertising income is instead a supplementary form of revenue that you can fit into your overall blogging strategy.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing consists of placing links on your blog that go to product pages, such as a link to a model train listed on Amazon. If someone clicks your affiliate link and then buys the train, you get a small percentage of the transaction. In affiliate marketing, you are using your blog posts to convince people to click on the links, which earns you money. There are a few different ways to do this. One is to have a niche site that includes blog posts which are reviews. For example, your model train blog could have reviews of all kinds of new model trains. In every review, include an affiliate link to the item in question. Then, if someone reads the review and decides to buy the item using your link, you make income. The reviews can also attract new readers who want to learn about the item. Or, instead of being a hobby blog, your blog could contain buying guides. These would list important things to know when looking to buy model trains and have links to examples or include mini-reviews. The goal is to include the links naturally and convince readers to buy through them. It should be clear that it is very easy to combine advertising revenue with affiliate marketing.
Sales of Personal Products
Instead of selling other people’s products, you can also use your blog to sell your own product. Create an electronic product and advertise it with your blog’s content. For example, you could write an eBook about the history of model trains. Then write posts about model trains and their history. This will establish you as a knowledgeable writer and introduce readers to your style. Place a link to buy the eBook on the blog’s sidebar. If you are doing web hosting for Joomla and designing with Joomla, this is easy. You will need to create many popular products to make a steady income, but it gives you the chance to build your personal brand. This form of income has the highest potential, but it also comes with a lot of risk. It is not easy to convince people to pay for eBooks, so you need to build a strong reputation and become an authoritative voice on your chosen subject.
Keyword Research
One of the most important things to do when blogging is to choose an area of focus. This article has used the example of a model train blog, but there are blogs for every hobby, profession, habit, product, and way of life. The key to successful blogging is to find an area of focus that has a lot of interest and popularity, but where there are not many competing bloggers. That way, you will a lot of visitors and readers. Use keyword research tools to see how often people search for key words and whether there is a lot of blogging competition for those searchers.
This information gives you the basics for how to make money from a blog. You need to fill in a lot of the details with your own experience and goals for the blog. The most important thing is to be natural. If you try to force ads and marketing on people, they will not read. You need good, organic content to attract a reader