Ways to Make Money With a Blog

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Below are two ways to make money with a blog.

Earn Referral Commission

If you own a blog that is strictly for information purposes and does not sell products directly, you can earn revenue by referring visitors to merchant websites.

If, for instance, you operate a blog about gardening but don't sell gardening products you could form a partnership with a merchant who does sell physical products. When a customer visits the merchant through your referral link, you would earn a commission based on the amount of the purchase.

The key to referral commission is maintaining relevance between your blog, the customer's need, and the merchant's products. It can prove beneficial to "deep link" to a merchant site, meaning you link directly to a specific product instead of sending a customer to a general home page.

Offer Exclusive Content

A growing trend among blog owners is to offer exclusive content to users through a paid membership. Visitors are given the opportunity to access a restricted area of the blog after paying a monthly or yearly fee.

While it's not difficult to build an initial membership list, it can be challenging to maintain returning members. To retain paying visitors, you'll need to provide high quality content that is truly unique. If the material is similar to the free content you provide there will be little incentive to continue paying a membership fee.

A common strategy for membership blogs is to use the paid visitors as a gateway to new revenue. The actual membership fee is viewed as secondary to building a relationship that will yield future purchases and more substantial revenue.