Top 15 top-bloggers’ rules. The best blog monetization strategies and new alternatives. How to monetize your blog fast.

There are almost 100 million blogs on the net with about 20% of active blogs. The blogging growth continues, and bloggers are not hobbyists anymore.  Blogging became a profession, and in many cases is more financially lucrative and enjoyable than many others. Top bloggers are paid more than corporate executives while working flexible hours in non-stress environment. If you write for living, your dream is to monetize your blog fast and with the highest return on the time investment.

In this article I would like to discuss the best blog monetization strategies to satisfy both parameters:

• quick monetization of any info site
• monetizing blogs in such manner that it generates stable six or seven figure annual revenue

I placed them in order of my personal opinion on what works to suit 2 mentioned criteria. In this post I will mostly focus on B2B blogs.

# 1. Cost Per Deal on-line advertising / affiliate model.

Yes, IdeaMama Ad Network is the sole supplier of such campaigns and holder of the patented technology to support the unique process behind this new model, but it’s not the reason why it is listed as #1 choice.

It’s rather exactly opposite: we have invented this model to outbid all other existing models, as they all seem to lack something for mentioned criteria to be satisfied – they all rely on very high traffic volume that young blogs simply can not generate.

Contrary to this common deficiency, with CPD you can generate quite significant revenue even with low traffic, as long as it is targeted. We offer very high pay out to publishers – $1,000-50,000 per single sale (deal).

Cost Per Deal online advertising model that have been launched this year, is a must-have blog monetization option.

This model is different from traditional Pay Per Sale or per acquisition affiliate models, as it is designed for completely different verticals of advertisers that market high ticket products. The deal is usually not closed online, therefore publishers’ performance tracking is different than in PPS affiliate program tracking; with PPD no pixel is fired on exit (Thank you) page, because payment is usually processed off-line via checks and wire transfer. Nevertheless publishers / bloggers still have access to very detailed Predictive Reporting System™ about the status of each B2B / B2C sales lead that they have generated to the advertiser.

The benefit of monetizing blogs with CPD vs CPM / CPC / CPL / CPA is that traffic can be low, but targeted, to successfully sell the campaigns.

If one has some basic understanding of the SEO, new blogs can be created for each group of selected campaigns. As soon as a blog can drive to advertisers at least 500 targeted clicks per month, they can convert to at least 10+ qualified leads. In this scenario $10K+ monthly check is practically guaranteed since qualified leads usually get closed at the rate of 10%-30% by any company with inside sales reps that know their business.

#2. Producing and selling information products

If you posses any know-how, you can design a series of e-books, audio-books, webinars, workshops, podcasts and other information product that can be sold in volume directly to your readers.  The beauty of this approach is that it not only adds a quality revenue-generating content to your site, but also can drive traffic to your blog. Simple partner with our affiliate network or any other affiliate marketing company and they will drive potential buyers to your product.

#3. Services

Approach #2 will help you to establish credibility and offer your services to your audience – consulting, coaching or any others.

#4. Online shop

Depending on the topic around which you build your blog, you always can select 10-20 products from various suppliers to sell in your mini-shop. Even thou it might not become your get-rich-quick solution, once again you can use the approach similar to one described in #2 – affiliates can drive traffic to your store to earn commission from sales, and it’s up to you to convert visitors into loyal readers.

#5. Traditional affiliate programs

Weather you work with us or any other network, traditional CPA/CPS models always work. Pick the offer and market products relevant to your readers. Get paid commission without carrying inventory. It’s plain and straightforward.

$6. Banner ad sales and #7 in-text ads sales with CPM

Banner ads and in-text ads are another popular way to generate income for your blog. Selling advertising directly requires time and expertise. You might want to consider CPM networks as an alternative. We do neither of it as we believe these models will be less and less preferred by advertisers who rely on more measurable ways to spend their marketing budget when every dollar counts.

#8. Lead generation

Either you develop direct relationship with advertisers or work with affiliate networks that run CPL offers (yes, we do as well), you have to create a vehicle to drive leads. Banner and text links can be sufficient, but you can get more creative. I will touch upon it in more details in my other blog posts.

$9.  AdSence and other CPC

Monetization with Pay Per Click ads require high traffic, and content selection in such way that your keywords’ price can justify the effort. In most cases I would say – it’s not, unless your traffic volume is rather impressive.

#10. Premium membership programs

Upgraded membership to access more detailed, therefore more valuable information to your audience is another way to monetize your knowledge and some times – create the community.

#11. Content reselling

If the content of your blog is truly original, well thought and researched, you can sell it to other publishers.  Many other small publishers that are looking for SEO optimized and somewhat unique content can pay you some nominal fee for minor rewriting of your materials to have acceptable by search engines ratio of content duplication. It might take only few hours to repackage all your archive materials and sell to few publishers that might have a lack of resources to write original content. But of course, this source of income would be far down on my suggested list of actions.

#12. Build to sell

Build to sell approach works better with information sites, directories, and theme portals. Nevertheless a blog as any business can be built for the purpose of selling with a profit. The important thing to understand about any business that if it’s to closely branded under author’s name, the person, blog owner becomes an asset. Unless you are looking to sell your soul, bring on board other writers to make it a topical blog rather than a personal or expert blog.

# 13. Partnering with domain developers

There are thousands of premium domain owners who are looking to develop their properties but don’t have neither time nor skills to do so. You can locate domains that match your content theme and repackage your archive materials with text links with built in monetization sources.

While with approach #9 your only sell your content for some nominal fees, in the case of partnership with domain developers you can offer to them a turn-key solution and ask for profit sharing or equity in the domain. If over 2-3 years you help to develop 100 domains by repackaging your content for each, and only 10 of them will generate at least $100K annually, you still can sell them for at least $200K each. If your share in the deal is 50%, upon sale of these 10 domains you have just earned your first million by offering a search engine optimized content plus embedded in it monetization options as your seed investment in the venture. Our CPD model will be of great help to you here as you can demonstrate significant earning potentials to your partners and support it by historical data.

#14. Paid reviews

You can also choose to get paid to review products and sites on your blog. Sites like PayPerPost and ReviewMe are popular options. Unfortunately it is not a way to earn a passive income that you most probably prefer.

#15. Job boards and classified ads

This option is not easy to succeed at, but it is still worth of mentioning. Some bloggers might get creative with this monetization strategy.

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by Olga Kostrova, CEO of IdeaMama Group | IdeaMama Ad Network | IdeaMamaClub.com |