How to monetize your blog and social media?

How to monetise your blog: effective ways to monetise content?

Social networks have long been an integral part of our lives. But for entrepreneurs, they are also a powerful tool for making money. Does everyone know how to make money from a blog and monetise their account? In this article, I’ll share my experience and why social media monetisation is not just about making money, but about building relationships with customers and creating trust in your brand.

What is monetization?

The word ‘monetisation’ sounds a bit dirty, doesn’t it? It sounds like you’re planning to somehow exploit the users of your product to trick them into paying for something they don’t need. But of course, this is not the case.

Of course, there are many examples of companies that have gone too far in monetising their product, invaded customers’ privacy, and ruined the user experience, but these are examples of poorly implemented monetisation and sales.

In fact, monetisation is simply a way to get rewarded for the value you provide to people.

If your product is really useful, it brings something meaningful to users. So it’s only logical to expect that you’ll get something in return, including revenue. It may come directly from users, or it may come from other sources. But if you provide value, it’s only fair to expect some kind of reward in return. ☝️

How to monetise your blog: basic principles of earning money

Product managers are constantly balancing a fine line between achieving business goals and creating genuine user satisfaction. Their main challenge is to find that balance where both results are achieved and users are happy.

There are several guidelines that are useful to consider when generating ideas on how to monetise a blog:

• Complementing the user experience

If you’ve ever worked in an organisation that has a product sales team and an advertising team (or other department) that are interdependent, you know that their goal is the most important thing to them.

– Bad salespeople strive to hit revenue targets at all costs, without thinking about how this might affect the user experience.

– Good salespeople understand that the key to long-term revenue generation lies in the delicate balance between hitting quarterly targets and building a product that people want to use.

Whenever possible, monetisation should at best complement the user experience and at worst not negatively impact it.

Incentivise your users to provide the assets needed for monetisation by giving them a choice.

 

For example, if your product is an app, don’t force users to share contacts and personal data upfront so you can sell sponsorships. Instead, create a product that your users will want to share with other contacts and be honest and upfront about your business needs.

• Think about the long term

It’s easy to chase short-term deals and revenue targets to achieve growth, but ? the key to smart monetisation strategies is to force yourself to think long-term.

Of course, this can be difficult for startups. If you have the opportunity to commercialise a part of your product, it may make sense to take the money and continue growing. However, keep in mind that your decisions can have a long-term impact on your product’s key metrics.

• Be creative

Monetising a product can be a fun, creative process. Forget the traditional nonsense about advertising as the only way to monetise your product. There are many creative, innovative ways to generate revenue from your product. Read about them below.

Now, in order...

Whether you work for a startup or a large corporation, the ability to quickly come up with monetisation strategies is a powerful skill.

Here are some suggestions for practical ways to monetise your product, along with a few examples for each:

Online courses

Start collecting all the content you’ve created on the topics you’re most frequently asked about. Use your audience’s questions and concerns as a basis for creating an online course and build on it. There are different methods for doing this: presentations, consultations, video content, eBook series, etc.

Creating and selling online courses is easier when you have a loyal and active social media following.

Affiliate marketing

You can use affiliate marketing to make money by selling other people’s products. Earn a commission every time someone uses your affiliate link or code to buy something you promote.

Select affiliate program partners that fit your chosen niche, and then choose their products and/or services that best meet the needs of your audience.

Tip: Don’t scatter your affiliate links everywhere. Instead, use your content to drive traffic to your social media site, where people can then click on your affiliate links.

Paid influencer marketing

If you publish information on social media, why not get paid for it? It’s a real job to get paid for posting content about other brands’ products and offers.

If you have a fairly active social network (engagement is more important than a huge crowd), you can also allow brands to reach out to you or actively seek out suitable partners. Compensation is usually a payment for an advertising post or a free product or a commission on sales made through your posts. This type of social media monetization is possible in any niche.

Paid membership

Another popular social media monetization strategy is to create exclusive content that subscribers have to pay for access to.

For example, WOW Mentor is your business partner by subscription, no one forbids you to continue to receive support in doing business ?.

Subscription-based content is effective if you have already proven that you create useful texts and your audience keeps asking for more. Experiment with the features that are most effective for you and your audience, and then show them everything you can do.

In addition to engaging with your audience in a more concrete way, it will also help you balance the time you spend creating content with the revenue you generate.

Promotional posts and videos

If you already have a good level of engagement, creating sponsored content and video content will be one of the easiest ways to generate income in the creator economy (yes, it’s all the rage right now). It’s when a brand pays you to post posts promoting their products and services.

1️⃣ The sponsor usually defines the structure of the post, but you decide whether to publish it or not, so make sure you both agree before you do anything.

2️⃣ If things are going well, consider creating a series of sponsored videos using Instagram’s Stories feature and make even more money, depending on the number of times your content is shared.

Sell using built-in social media stores

If you sell physical products, create a store on Instagram/Facebook. Convert your personal account to a business account, connect your Instagram account to your Facebook page, then create a product catalog or connect it to an e-commerce platform.

Once approved, activate purchases and use shopping tags to drive traffic. Now customers don’t need to visit your website, they can buy right where they are browsing social media! Track metrics and optimize what works and sells best.

The key is to have a community on social media. Don’t open a store and expect to sell until you have built your audience.

Generate niche sales

It’s about using your social media platform to drive sales on your website, landing page, or booking calendar instead of monetizing your real Instagram or Facebook followers. In other words, it’s website monetization.

What does it mean?

Post regularly (daily or weekly) on social media, telling people about your services or products, sharing information, tips, and relevant news. Your main goal is to start a conversation.

This will help people think of you when they need you, and they can send you a personal message or follow a link in your bio.

Don’t forget to keep track of which social media platforms are driving the most digital engagement and traffic to your site.

Organizing events

You can organize both online and offline events (with the option to stream offline events to an online audience during the event or later). Set a reasonable fee depending on the format of the event, whether it’s a Q&A session or a seminar, and additionally offer your other services.

The key to effective social media event monetization is to connect with your target audience. Give them the opportunity to get to know you better as a person, and you’ll get to know them better as well.

Use chatbots

People have come to value the privacy of their online communication more, so they are less willing to participate in comments. Instead, they prefer to send emails to your inbox, and that’s where you can use a little marketing automation as a powerful sales tool.

Chatbots allow you to set up an automated chat sequence to initially engage with prospects.

After that, you can invite customers to take a test and receive a special coupon or sign up for a newsletter to receive more information about special offers.

For example: A Czech startup has created an AI chatbot called yaki that helps to overcome depression by evaluating messages for toxicity %.

Write posts that sell

So, you’re on your way to growing your social media following, building trust, learning their pain points and the problems you can best solve.

Monetizing content is great when your audience is ready, but regardless of the marketing strategy you choose, you need to think through every promotional post and piece of text you create.

Keep your finger on the pulse of change

The biggest challenge of social media monetization is getting heard in the midst of all the noise. The constant flow of content and algorithms that change almost daily pose serious challenges. It is important to remember that you are also completely at the mercy of the platform. They can change the rules of the game at any time, and what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow.

Therefore, success in monetization is not only a matter of good content, but also of flexibility, adaptation, and readiness for change. Stay attentive, keep learning, and don’t be afraid to experiment – what works for me will work for you!