Starting and monetizing an ecommerce blog has never been easier than it is today. Not too long ago, creating an ecommerce website would’ve cost you thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars to set up and maintain. Monetizing an ecommerce website was just as tough. PayPal was in its infancy, email marketing was nowhere near as flexible as it is now and Stripe didn’t exist.
Today however you can start, maintain, and monetize a blog on Builderfly with just a few hundred dollars. But just because it’s simpler to make money with your blog today, doesn’t mean that most bloggers do.
So how do you go from being a beginner to one of the pro bloggers hitting six figures every year? Well, you need a solid marketing plan, this includes content, a profitable niche, and an excellent monetization strategy. You additionally need to do some quick math. Monetization is math, not magic.
This doesn’t mean that the key to monetization is just increasing the prices of what you sell. Instead, it implies that you should pick a monetization strategy that aligns with where your blog is now or where you want it to be in the future.
In this article, we’ll show you how you can monetize an ecommerce blog and make money online whether you get thousands of visitors a month or you’re just starting out.
Start a Podcast
Podcasting is booming right now. As per Paid Insights, there are more than 700,000 active podcasts and nearly 29 million episodes on April 2019.
More people are starting to listen to podcasts worldwide. Here’s the percentage of the population that now listens to podcasts globally.
If you already have a blog, including a podcast can be a smart way to get more traffic by piggybacking off the growth of podcasts.
Podcasts are best particularly when you’re a beginner since most of the established blogs in your niche have more written content than you do.
But how many of them use podcast marketing? Podcasts are what allowed John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur on Fire to go from making $69,879 in revenue in 2012 to $1,545,090 in 2018.
Podcasts are doing so well that even well-known bloggers like Darren Rowse and Noah Kagan now have podcasts alongside their regular blog content.
Podcasts don’t just help you get your name out there and generate more traffic for your blog. It can likewise be another source of revenue for your blog.
Sell Physical Products to Your Audience
Another way you can monetize your blog is by selling products directly to your audience. Some bloggers even move from selling few items to launching full-fledged ecommerce websites along with the blog.
The best example is Beardbrand as they started out as a blog where founder Eric Bandholz wrote about beard grooming before he started selling the beard grooming products Beardbrand is known for today.
Eric turned his beard blog into a business that’s been featured on the Inc, Shark Tank, New York Times, and now makes more than $100k a month.
Generate Revenue with Sponsored Posts/Reviews
Making money with sponsored reviews and posts is one of the least common ways of monetizing a blog, maybe because you’ll need to have a lot of traffic and credibility to drive the audience.
With sponsored posts and reviews, a blogger will charge a fee to write about the company’s product on the blog and give feedback on it. The product gets exposed to the blogger’s audience and the brand gets more exposure and new customers.
When you think about influencer marketing, your mind quickly pulls up images of the influencers you know on Instagram and Youtube.
But writing sponsored posts on your blog is influencer marketing and it’s exploding right now. More than 63% of businesses who already use influencer marketing, plan to increase their spending this year.
When featuring a product on your blog make sure to give your honest feedback about it because it’s not worth losing the trust of your readers for a few bucks.
Companies need to know that paying for a sponsored post will lead to sales to make it worth the investment. So sponsored posts may not be the ideal monetization system for starters but are an excellent strategy for established bloggers.
If your blog is already generating traffic you can start reaching out to businesses in your niche whose products or services you already use and offer to write a sponsored post or review.
Become an Affiliate Marketer
You can’t have an article about monetizing a blog without mentioning affiliate marketing. It’s one of the most common ways bloggers make money online.
In fact, affiliate marketing powers a lot of the web, approximately 15 percent of the digital media industry’s revenue comes from affiliate marketing and in the U.S affiliate marketing drives as many e-commerce orders as email.
With affiliate marketing, you promote the products of other businesses and get a commission for every sale you help bring in.
Affiliate marketers work the same way as most salespeople. They help promote and sell a company’s product and get a commission when someone buys
What attracts people to affiliate marketing is that you can just piggyback on a great product and sell that to your audience.
Offer a Paid Membership Plan
Businesses with subscription models are becoming increasingly popular, so much so that some people have started calling it the Subscription economy.
Everything from Netflix, web hosting providers and membership sites are part of the subscription economy.
A membership site is a gated section of your online business where members subscribe either monthly or annually to receive exclusive benefits.
The people in your community share a common interest and the benefits they pay for can include exclusive articles, advice, reports, webinars, in-person meetups and just being around like-minded people.
Membership sites not only allow you to reach more people, but it also gives everyone a sense of community and belonging.
Summary
While it’s easier than ever to start a blog, most bloggers, as the ConvertKit study shows have trouble monetizing it. Just blogging cannot generate revenue unless you find out a monetization tactic that works best for your blog.
And as most of the examples have proved, you don’t need that much traffic or leads to start generating income from your blog. And while your niche does matter, it’s not the most important factor that determines if you’ll succeed.
We’ve seen people make money with tennis, beards, golf, baby clothes, cars, and even orchids.
What you do need is an understanding of the numbers needed to make your monetization strategy successful and the determination to work hard to promote what you have to offer.
Have any other great tips on how to make money from a blog? If so, share your thoughts with us on Twitter – @Builderfly.
