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MenuIs it possible to monetize an advice column blog?
I have been researching and planning an advice blog for over a year. I have developed a modest following using a closed Facebook group page and am ready to choose a hosting service and get started. My advice is on relationships with questions ranging from a family conflict, step-parenting, out of control teens, and questions from the teen community on relationships, drug use etc. Could a blog like this be monetized? Where do I start?
Answers
Easy starting point.
Run Adsense on your site for a month.
After a month, find top 3 pages (most traffic + on page time).
For each page, visit the page + hit reload 10 times, recording the Ad Google runs on these pages.
Then once you have the most prevalent Ad for each page, trace the Ad back to the originating site. The replace Adsense on each page with the native Ad, which will pay you far more than Adsense.
Check your numbers for a month + if your numbers (income/Ad) begins to drop, this means the Ad has saturated. At this point, turn on Adsense again + let it run for 30 days, then repeat the process.
This is a dirt simple way to monetize your content at optimal levels.
Be sure not to click on the Ad on your site, as this breaks the Adsense TOS + will get you banned from Google's Ad networks.
There are MANY ways you can monetize a column blog. I've created a few in the past and was quite successful. The most basic is ads, but that's probably not what you want to do because it's the lowest monetization. I would reach out to sponsors, sell premium content, courses, books etc.
Great question! It's awesome that you already have some "customers" and validation on the type of content that will work well.
My advice is to form a Customer Advisory Board with a few of the members. Do some exploratory research with them to find out how they'd like to see the community evolve. Do they have unmet needs that you could be serving?
I put this in another question but "Find products for your customers, not customers for your product." (Seth Godin)
There are so many options available to you! You could keep the community as-is, on Facebook, and start recruiting new members for a monthly fee. You could also move to an email list & charge partners for sponsored-content. And, you can also build out the website and try to push traffic to the site, making money off of Ad-Words.
It really depends on what you feel comfortable doing AND what your customers want from you, how you can continue to build value for them.
My philosophy is that you can take the guesswork out of building a business by doing research & asking your customers.
You can monetize your blog for sure. Today however you can start, maintain, and monetize a blog on WordPress with just a few hundred dollars. But just because it is easier to make money with your blog today, does not mean that most bloggers do. This is terrible, especially when you consider that most bloggers start a blog so they can be their own boss and quit their dull 8-to-5 job. Now these two things matter, but primarily, monetizing your blog efficiently is all about the numbers. Rather it means that you should choose a monetization strategy that aligns with where your blog is right now or where you want it to be in the future. One of the easiest ways to make money from your blog is to become a freelance writer for more prominent blogs in your niche.
You can read more here: https://kinsta.com/blog/how-to-monetize-a-blog/
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath
Related Questions
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What are creative ways to monetize an advice / self-help blog with good traffic?
Two things that immediately come to mind would be use of webinars, that allow for audience participation, covering a specific topic of interest to your audience for either a small attendance fee or as part of a premium subscription. I would lean more towards the premium subscription for the recurring income. The second would be to make regular book and audio resource recommendations from Amazon, providing your Amazon affiliate link to pick up the resource.CW
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How I can attract traffic to my site using custom blog posts?
You do not mention whether your site is B2B or B2C, but "corpwriting" suggests the former. In that case, you may wish to write a post on a LinkedIn profile where you are offering an image, a powerful headline, one or two paragraphs, and then a link to your site that the reader can follow to complete the post. You can join relevant groups on LinkedIn (and Facebook as well) and then share your post intro with these groups to reach even more readers. This is one of many strategies that would drive more traffic to your blog, and I can suggest more if you would like to speak with me on a first call.DR
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SEO: Subdomain or subdirectory for blog?
Google's official stance is that they are "roughly equivalent" and recommends to do what is technically simpler to implement (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MswMYk05tk). With that said, I'd recommend a directory over a subdomain. Doing this consolidates signals to a single domain, which should then theoretically build more authority for all pages off of that single domain. This consolidation of authority results in rank increases, which have been documented here: http://moz.com/community/q/moz-s-official-stance-on-subdomain-vs-subfolder-does-it-need-updating. A subdomain would split signals from the blog and the rest of the root domain content. So while Google "says" they're roughly equivalent, SEOs have seen tangible evidence that sticking to a single domain can be beneficial. If you're able to go with www.iconery.com/editorial/, I'd choose that. Hope this helps!KR
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I am in the process of building my blog, podcast & ebook, how can I build a bigger fanbase while in pre-production?
In order to build a bigger fanbase start by creating some anticipation post on social media as well as your blog. You can even release parts of the e-book an an opt-in to email them when it's complete. In the anticipation stage however, I would not recommend going with pay per click or Facebook advertising. Also, share your project on LinkedIn and ask for feedback and suggestions from experts. This is another great way to generate buzz for your upcoming content. Please let me know if you need any help as to how you can execute the following steps.RG
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First newsletter email approach
Definitely send them the poll. If you send an introductory newsletter, most people may never read it. People are lazy and do not like reading much. If you send them a poll, you engage them to take action and they actually get into the fun. Also, I suggest giving your audience a powerful incentive if they answer the poll, like putting them into a drawing to mention their website or Facebook page. People only get engaged these days if there is something in it for them and just answering a poll is not engaging enough. Like, on my blog and on some of the blogs on www.LatestBlogPosts.com, some bloggers will blog their clients to their Twitter followers and that is what I do to my 40,000 Twitter followers. It works wonders. I also have other ideas that I would be willing to share with you on the phone. I have implemented several ideas that work to engage my audience. BruceBC
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