If you have a knack for writing and are looking for ways to earn extra income, you can try your hand at blogging. A blog is a website that contains diary-style content. Initially, it consisted of pure text but included pictures and videos as technology evolved.
You may be wondering how you can earn money from a blog. Monetizing your website comes in many forms. One way is to sell your products and services directly to your followers while you also do affiliate marketing, which is promoting a brand’s merchandise in exchange for a commission when customers buy using the link you displayed on your site.
Another method is by putting a price on sponsored content. With this practice, site owners pay you to promote their blog on your website. They create a blog post with a link or two that directs visitors to their content in the hopes that your readers will become their subscribers, too.
If you’re planning to make money by selling guest blog spots on your website, here are the steps you can take to accomplish this goal:
1. Create High-Quality Content
Before you can entice other bloggers to pay you to promote their websites, you need to establish a steady following. The best way to do that is to create high-quality content that’s relevant to your chosen niche. You need to cement your place as an authority in your industry so that people turn to you first when they have a query about something in your area of expertise.
The content you produce should increase brand awareness, rank well on search engines through relevant keywords, boost click-through rates, and generate leads. High-quality blog posts and videos also get a lot of social shares, which is beneficial for making your blog known to your target audience.
Some tips on how to create high-quality content:
- Research – While some blog posts you make come from your personal experiences, you still need to research and ensure that everything you post is factual. This is especially true if you’re dispensing advice to your readers. Having a secure foundation for your claims can help boost your authority.
- Put a Personal Twist – The Internet is brimming with content. Stand out from the crowd by infusing your personality in your writing and sharing to others your opinion on a particular topic. Don’t just mimic what others are writing or saying.
- Find Subtopics – If looking for content ideas is a challenge for you, you can try to search for subtopics in your niche that aren’t discussed regularly. Of course, you have to find out what subject matters pique the interest of your readers and work on those.
- Mix Up Your Media – Boost the attractiveness of your blog post by complementing your written content with related images, infographics, memes, charts, and even videos.
2. Boost Your Blog’s SEO
High-quality content can only get you so far. Search engine optimization or SEO is your key to reaching your target audience and potential clients. In selling guest blog spots, you’ll need quantifiable proof that you have amassed a steady following, which increases the chances that your readers will trust your opinion enough to go and check out a contributor’s website because you said so.
You can boost your blog’s SEO by:
- Updating Your Content Regularly – Set a schedule on when you can do a regular website audit to check whether your content is still relevant. For instance, if your blog posts are themed around celebrities, you may want to update your article on an actor who recently got married and the like. This is one way to boost the page’s relevance.
- Improving Page Load Speed – Page load speed is another crucial SEO factor because of the experience that it brings to searchers. If your website tortures visitors with an excruciatingly slow retrieval of data from the servers, it’s highly likely that users will end up abandoning your blog post to look for another one. This increases your site’s bounce rate and hurts your ranking.
- Maximizing Header Tags – Take advantage of headers to improve the readability of your blog posts by separating it into bite-sized sections. Moreover, you can insert relevant keywords in these tags to boost searchability; just make sure that you don’t overdo it else you’ll be penalized for spamming.
- Linking to Authority Sites – When you quote a piece of statistic from a study and the like, it’s recommended that you include a link to the article. This way, you’ll show readers that you did your research while providing them with evidence that your claims aren’t made up.
3. Know the Market Price for Guest Posts
You cannot sell something without doing your research on the market price. The same goes for guest posts. You have to understand what influences its cost and what determines its value.
One reason why some websites can charge more for sponsored posts is because of how they’re perceived as a key authority in their niche and the number of people visiting their blog daily. Check out this Guest Posting Pricing Guide to see the metrics that influence guest post publishing rates, which include domain authority, domain rating, trust flow, and traffic.
4. Have a Guest Posting Guideline
To ensure that your blog continues to provide high-quality content to your readers even with contributors who pay for the promotion of their brand, you should create guest posting guidelines. Some site owners in this business exercise full editorial control over the guest blogs by setting a minimum number of words and limiting the number of links that you can include in the article.
Others are more lenient and allow a bit of freedom for the client regarding the topics that can be posted aside from the word count and links. Nonetheless, you reserve the right to send the article back to the creator if you feel that it doesn’t match with your blog’s tone of voice and personality.
These are some tips for your guest posting guidelines:
- Check the Contributor’s Writing Style – There’s immense competition for web traffic these days; even just one crappy blog post can put off your readers and make them stay away from your blog for good. This is why you must check the previous content they produced to ensure that they know what they’re doing. They shouldn’t be publishing spammy content or links online, and must be proficient in churning out at least a thousand words on a single topic.
- Inspect Outgoing Links – Some websites opt to remove all links or add a nofollow tag to each one, while others keep the original hyperlinks. Regardless of your stance, you should ensure that everything you publish on your blog is beneficial to your readers’ quest for answers. Generally, the author’s bio contains around one to two links while the blog post itself may have at least two to four links.
- Reject Spun and Unoriginal Content – Just because they’re paying for a spot on your website doesn’t mean that you should throw quality out of the window. You have the power to reject content that’s not up to your standards. They must put a lot of thought into their blog posts in the same way that you did when you built your blog from scratch. Remember, losing followers through uninspiring content will cost you more.
- Be Meticulous with Your Approval – Moreover, don’t just settle for good. The content they submit must be exemplary. Be clear about your standards from day one, which is during the planning phase when you’re communicating with potential clients. Never accept posts with grammatical, typographical, and syntax errors, as well as plagiarism. Also, the article must be related to your industry to stay in line with your website’s theme.
- Avoid Creating Author Accounts – One major mistake that most blogs that accept guest posts make is that they immediately create author accounts to first-time contributors. These profiles have a certain level of access to your website, which means that they can post anything they want even without turning to you for approval. Watch out for those who insist on getting an author account because it’s less stressful to submit a text file to you rather than having to format the post and publish it on your platform.
- Clarify Full Ownership of the Content – Anything posted on your website should undoubtedly be yours. You should have full ownership of the rights so that they can’t reuse and publish the same material on multiple sites because this can affect that page’s ranking.
5. Look for Blogs in Your Niche
When you’ve reached a particular milestone concerning your traffic and domain authority, you will be a recipient of multiple guest posting offers. However, you can still make money while you’re still building your blog by reaching out to other websites in your industry or niche. Contact them and provide the numbers on why it’ll be beneficial for them to partner with you in promoting their brand.
Conclusion
Starting a blog can be an excellent source of extra income. One way to make money out of it is by selling guest blog spots and promoting other brands. To start, you must create high-quality content and ensure that you have established a steady following through proper SEO techniques to entice potential clients to publish on your website.
Next, study the market price of guest posts and make guest posting guidelines to keep everyone on the same page regarding the quality of content you’ll publish. Lastly, reach out to blogs in your niche to promote your services and start making money from your blog.