Several photographers have written to me asking how to supplement their income by monetizing a blog. I can honestly tell you that financial success will not happen overnight. However, if you do plan on making money, a considerable amount of work is required in the beginning. My first suggestion is to read as many of the free articles as you can, such as How to Make Money Blogging: 7 Strategies to Make Money Online. This article provides a good overview at the types of programs available to you.
Before you start slapping ads on your site, I would recommend reviewing your blog for readability and content. I am lucky to have friends willing to review my site and give critical feedback. This is critical. If your blog is not interesting, or easy on the eyes, viewers will not return. So a sharp eye on content is important. Nothing builds traffic more than a site people like. No traffic means no money.
Continuing on the traffic building strategy, you will need to understand the value of keywords in your writing. Keyword use related to your subject matter jumps your Google ranking. Top keywords should be used in your posting title and repeated within the first paragraph for optimum effect.
Link building. Link building is the process of linking to other sites, and having sites link to you. Focus on sites with higher rankings than your own site and these sites should be within your subject matter field. Getting other sites to link to you may take awhile, however, many sites (including ILovePhotoblogs) are more than willing to provide a link, if requested.
Conclusion. Making money with your blog is indeed very possible, if you take the aforementioned steps. Create great content, have a viewer friendly site, build links (incoming and outgoing), and determine the best type of ad affiliate programs that works for you.
If you have more suggestions/questions for making money with your blog, please comment.
The Comments Contest for the month of September, our first blog contest here at ILovePhotoblogs, is underway and buzzing. Thanks to the returning readers that have dropped in to participate, as well as those discovering our site for the first time. The competition is wide open with plenty of time left to compete for the $25 cash prize. I just want to remind all the participants that in addition to leaving comments (thank you so much), you must register for our email subscription to be considered. The process takes about 15 seconds…pretty painless.