Before you can move towards monetizing your blog, you need a healthy following. This following needs to be more than the same ten people who visit your site every month. You need to demonstrate thousands of site visitors and an upward tick in growth.
It is hard, but so long as you apply multiple methods to help grow your efforts you can see your dream of monetizing your blog and using it as your own business come true. All you need to start is these four steps to market your blog better:
1. Be on Social Media
One of the best ways to market your content is through social media, and the best part about this platform is that it is most effective when done using free tools. Be organic, be engaging, and talk to your audience.
2. Offer a Unique Selling Point on All Channels
Every social channel you use should be unique. People should have a unique reason to follow you on every medium for the best results. The only cost here should be the time (and marketing materials) you use to maintain healthy channels.
3. Create Great Content for Your Site
Of course, all this depends on whether the content on your site is worth engaging with. Take the time to create in-depth content. You can create shorter fluff pieces that are easier to make, but these should be secondary to the truly engaging, informative pieces that people will visit you for.
Tip: New products would be included in the shorter pieces category. Create larger shopping guides as your mainline content to help inform customers about products and which one is best for them.
4. Invest in PPC Marketing
PPC marketing is a great way to get people to your site and fast. It might be better to do this with a soft sale approach. Instead of making the goal a sale, make it a sign-up. This way you can continue your relationship building efforts and increase the chances of a sale later on. To stay within budget, simply create your budget ahead of time and don’t go over this. AdWords is easy to use and easy to keep to a strict price point.
5. Invest in SEO
As you grow, you are going to want more longstanding methods backing you up. This doesn’t mean this should be the first time that you even hear the word SEO. Try to optimize your site and learn the basics for yourself to monitor your growth and try to rank on the keywords that matter.
Once you start growing and need to focus more of your effort on content creation and visitor/customer retention you need to outsource this step. You can invest in a managed SEO campaign for your business and benefit from a stable subscription price, allowing you to benefit with your budget in mind.
Staying in budget means doing the real legwork (especially with content and social media engagement) and sticking to your budget in the first place. As you grow you will want to outsource a lot of the tasks so that you can focus on growing, rather than just marketing.
