I started this blog on 13th June, 2012. Now, when I am writing this blog, the age of my blog is 3 Years 9 months 26 days. You must be thinking, I am blogging for such a long time and I did not even sell the first affiliate product from my blog! This is natural. Because a lot of people start a blogging to sell their affiliate products from blog. But for my case, I started blogging out of passion and then I tried to monetize my blog. Now, I have realized, the best way to earn money from blog is affiliate marketing. If you want to earn a handsome amount of money from blog, affiliate marketing is the only option. I always allowed guest post in my blog (Rules For Guest Posting). At first, I had monetized my blog with Google Adsense. (Boost Up Blog Earning With (Chitika + Google Adsense)!). Below I am going to describe the other ways through which I have monetized my blog.
Read: How to Show Chitika Ads Just Below Post Title in Blogspot?
Selling Ad Space Directly From Blog:
Then I tried to get some extra money from direct advertising. At first I was not aware about how to sell my ad space on web and what are the right marketplace to do so. Then I had found BuySellAds, but as the number of visitors were not that high, BuySellAds did not approve my blog in their marketplace. So, I was looking for alternative sources. I had created some html image and started to advertise my blog ad space directly from blog.I was not getting that much response as the number of visitors were not that high. In the mean time, I became a member of Digital Point Forum and there is an advertising market place in that forum. I have advertised my blog there and got some positive response. I have sold my first ad space after displaying my ad for one month.
Read: Route 66 to Start Blogging: Which Platform to Choose?
Then I got to know about Fiverr which is an online marketplace for buyers and sellers to do some small or medium size project. This is a 5$ marketplace. Which means if you want to do something in Fiverr, the lowest rate is 5$. I got to know about this site cause I was trying to do one small project in Microsoft Access and I have done it in Fiverr. So, I was thinking why don’t I create a gig in Fiverr to sell my ad space. Then I started to create one gig using a nice video explaining the service. I had created the video and put a nice description of my service and uploaded it in Fiverr. If you want to check my gig, you can get it over here I will advertise for 1 week in my PR4 tech blog .I started selling the ad space with a good rate from Fiverr and also from other sources like direct contact and also from Digital Point Forum. Then I tried to customize my offer, like I have added :
- I will also advertise this ad in my social media pages
- I will advertise another two weeks with a lower rate etc.
So, the direct selling of my Ad space was going smoothly.
Paid Product Review in My blog:
When I had already posted more than 100 posts in my blog and the page rank of my blog became high, people asked for paid review in my blog. At first they asked for dofollow link inside the article but inserting dofollow link which are not related to the topic or not related to the blog topic are not legal in terms of Google SEO policy. So, I have offered them a nofollow link. The buyers who were really looking for a product review, agreed with the nofollow link condition, but those who were looking for black hat SEO, did not contact after that.
For paid review also, I have made two rates. If I write the article, then the rate is bit higher! In these 3 years 9 months and 26 days, I have posted more than 100 paid reviews in my blog. Some of them were permanent and some of them were just for one month or couple of months. The rate in which I sold the articles are maximum 100$ and minimum 20$.
Some buyers also asked to add just one paragraph in my existing article. That was an easy job for me and I did this a lot of times but always kept the quality of the article so that it does not become unworthy to my visitors.
About Google Adsense Earning:
The main cause to search for other source of income from my blog was, the earning from Google adsense was not that high. It was really difficult for me to withdraw a 100 dollar payment from Google in every month. So, I had to search for other options of earning money from blog. One day I have received one email from a company named Ezoic. They are Google Adsense Affiliated partner and they manage your blog and Google adsense account. Ezoic tries different layout of your blog and according to the data, they show your viewers the best possible layout of your blog. After joining with Ezoic, I have found my Adsense earning increased and also my blog visitors increased. The bounce rate was also getting decreased.
Challenge to Sell the First Affiliate Product:
I was checking my last months blog earning and it was not what I expected. I earn from Google adsense, Paid post, Direct advertising etc.
From Google Adsense = 232.75 $
From Paid Post = 40$
Ezoic = 30.75 $
Direct advertising = 25$
So, in total my earning for the month of March, 2016 was 328.5$ which is not what I expected. After almost 4 years of blogging I want at least 500$ income per month.
So, I was really looking for the missing links. The points I have found out, I am not getting enough traffic from my blog post. Which means my blog posts are not well optimized and that is one of the main reasons Google is not sending me enough organic traffic. What I have found, I am getting constant traffic only from 15-20 posts. Other posts are not generating any organic traffic. To recover from this stage, I have pointed out I need to do the below things:
- SEO optimize my article
- Interlink my articles to reduce bounce rate
- Post new quality articles
- Share my articles in social media
As I have more than 1500 articles, this is not an one day job to do so. So, I still working on this. While doing this I have realized that if I still make only around 300$ per month after all these hard work, my hard work will not get well paid off. I have tried almost all the possible ways to monetize my blog. The only popular thing which was missing from my blog is affiliate marketing. I tried to use it in my blog earlier but I had found it really difficult. So, I had removed all the affiliate links from my blog. But now I have understood, I will have to do something out of the box!
What is the Affiliate Marketing Challenge for Me?
I have started affiliate marketing challenge with a web hosting company as my blog is related to blogging, SEO and technology. I have chosen Hostgator web hosting as my affiliate product. Now, I have inserted the affiliate links in the posts related to web hosting and my challenge is to sell one affiliate product within one year of my affiliate marketing. I have started affiliate marketing on 5th April, 2016 and within 5th April, 2017 I want to sell at least one product from Hostgator from my blog.
Finally I have Made it! I Have Own the Challenge!!
I am very happy today! I was checking my Impact Radius dashboard and I have found that I have made a HostGator hosting sale and the commission is 66.93$. This is awesome! I have made it within 6 months!! To read the full story, you can read I have made my first HostGator affiliate sale!
If you have any affiliate trick which you want to share with me, I will be more than happy to adopt your trick.
