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It’s important to establish blog monetization right from Day 1. It takes considerable time to grow a blog and cultivate an audience, and throughout that journey, you need to generate revenue to keep your dream alive.

It’s possible to start a blog without getting paid and keep at it, but if you want your blog to become your full-time work or significantly expand your business, you need to monetize it.

Blog monetization isn’t a one size fits all set-up. There are a variety of blog monetization strategies to choose from, and not all of them will be for you. You’ll have to experiment with some income streams and decide for yourself if you want to proceed with them.

Many bloggers look towards these 5 monetization strategies to get paid for their content.

#1: Affiliate Marketing

The easiest way to monetize your blog is promoting other people’s products with your affiliate links. You don’t have to create the product or have a big audience. Just get your affiliate links and get started.

Amazon offers one of the largest affiliate programs on the planet, but they’re not known for high commissions (most people get 4% commissions for what they sell as Amazon affiliates). 

Depending on your industry, you may find affiliate programs with more attractive affiliate commissions than what Amazon offers. If you don’t know where to look, start with Amazon as their affiliate program primarily serves as the excuses breaker. You’ll find something on Amazon that lines up with your content.

From there, use Google to find affiliate programs. If you talk about Peloton products on your blog often, Google the phrase “Peloton affiliate program” and see what comes up. Replace the word Peloton with your product, service, or company of your interest to see if they too have an affiliate program.

You can write product reviews, include affiliate links when mentioning resources, and stick some links on your blog’s sidebar. Affiliate marketing has no barriers to entry. You just have to find the right affiliate programs and get started.

#2: Google AdSense

Google AdSense is a popular stop for bloggers who want to monetize their content. You can display ads on your blog and earn income as people see and click on the ads. I recently ran ads on this blog and while the AdSense income isn’t life changing, it does add up.

I make more from Google AdSense via YouTube. Some bloggers create YouTube channels to expand their online presences, and it will help your AdSense earnings. To have ads run on your YouTube videos, you must be part of the YouTube Partner program. Becoming part of that program requires that your channel has 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time within the past 365 days.

It may take some time to get the initial set-up right, but practically any blogger can get started with Google AdSense…although you’re likely to earn more money through affiliate marketing.  

#3: Sponsor Placements

As your blog gains momentum, sponsorship placements can become a lucrative income source. Advertisers will pay top dollar to get in front of a targeted audience, and that’s where you come in.

Rather than use Google AdSense, you can invite sponsors to share their messages on your blog. It can be in the form of sponsored posts, giving your sponsors a placement on your blog’s sidebar, a social media shout out, or something else. 

The key to attracting sponsors is to demonstrate solid engagement and that they will get a solid return on investment from their efforts. 

For most bloggers, Google AdSense will make more sense, and you can try both of these monetization strategies. Eventually, it may be a better idea to fully embrace sponsorship placements.

#4: Create Your Own Products

Books, training courses, and Fiverr gigs are some of the many offers you can create for potential customers. You can use your blog to promote all of your new products and drive attention to your existing products.

The great thing about products is that they can continue generating sales even when you sleep. It takes considerable work to reach that point and you’ll have to continue working so you can maintain what you’ve built, but it’s an excellent income stream. 

#5: Ask For Donations

Based on what I’ve seen, entertainment type brands tend to do a better job in this area. I don’t see many digital marketers ask for donations because they promote their products and services instead.

If on the other hand you stream a video game or talk about them, it would make more sense to ask for donations. Some business models rely on donations and sponsorships to keep them running, and early on, you’ll get far more donations than sponsorships. 

Don’t be afraid to ask for some support if it allows you to fully embrace your work. Some people in your audience will be happy to help you. If you want to get more donations, keep showing up and give your audience the content they want. 

Want to learn how to make money with your content? Get your copy of Content Marketing Secrets today.

Self publishing books is a great path to making a full-time income and building your authority. While heightened competition has made it a little more difficult than it was a few years ago, it’s still possible for any new author can build up a full-time income self publishing brand.

A fear of saturation in the self publishing industry is one of the many myths that holds back would-be authors from publishing books and generating royalties. The self publishing journey is time consuming, but that’s true of all efforts worth pursuing. 

It would be very concerning to see someone shy away from a goal solely because it is time consuming.

Some of the most common myths dissuade people from self publishing their own books and entering this business. These are 3 of the common myths that hold writers back.

Myth #1: Writing A Book Is Hard 

When most people think of a book, they think of a 200+ page masterpiece with detailed research. However, that’s not most books. In fact, you can write a book that’s less than 100 pages.

Don’t focus on the amount of pages you have to write. Focus on the word count. For many authors, a 20,000 word book equates to 100 pages. 

Each word you write gets you closer to finishing your book. Seeing quick progress will make it easier for you to continue versus feeling like you have to fill up an entire page to claim a sense of progress.

You also don’t have to write the book in one sitting, and almost no author writes their book in one sitting. Think back to the 20,000 word example. If you write 500 words per day, you’ll complete the 20,000 word book in 40 days. If you decide to write 1,000 words each day, you’ll complete that same book in 20 days.

The average person types at 40 words per minute, and you will end up typing faster over time. At 40 words per minute, it will take you roughly 12.5 minutes to write 500 words and 25 minutes to write 1,000 words.

To avoid getting stuck in the writing process, create a detailed outline of your book before you start writing. This will help you maintain 40 wpm as your lower threshold and possible accelerate to 50-60 wpm. This acceleration becomes more realistic as you write more often.

Myth #2: I Have To Sell Many Copies To Make A Full-Time Income

The most common path for new self publishers is to publish $2.99 Kindle books on Kindle Direct Publishing. Although this is a common path for beginners, it’s also a common path the pros stick with. Why break something that’s working just fine?

For a $2.99 Kindle book, you’ll make roughly $2 in royalties for each sale. It will vary slightly based on the size of your book file, but most people will end up with a $2 royalty.

To make 6-figures, you’d have to sell 50,000 books each year. That adds up to 4,167 books each month. When you think of this scenario, it’s easy to see why Myth #2 dominates the conversation. However, there are three workarounds.

The first workaround is publishing more books. Let’s say you publish 10 books. Now, each book has to sell an average of 417 copies each month for you to hit 6-figures. Your odds significantly increase with this approach versus having to sell 4,167 copies of a single book each month. You can also publish book series to lead readers from one book to the other.

The second workaround is to also offer paperback and audiobook editions of your books. Authors typically earn higher commissions on paperbacks and audiobooks, but you’d still have to sell thousands of copies each month to hit 6-figures.

The third workaround is to offer services within your book. You can use a book to drive customers to your existing business rather than solely rely on the book royalties. If someone reads your book and proceeds to buy your $1,000 service, you didn’t make a $2 royalty from that book. You made $1,002, and someone who spends $1,000 for one of your services is likely to return in the future whether it be for a different service or to buy your next book.

You don’t have to sell as many copies as you think if you incorporate your book with your existing business or build a business around your book.

Myth #3: I’m Not A Good Writer

This is where self-doubt enters the conversation. No one starts as a good writer. Look at anyone’s first bunch of blog posts and you’ll see they’re very different from their current blog posts.

The only way you become a good writer is through practice, and why not get paid to practice? You can write books, blog posts, Medium articles, and other content that allows you to get paid to practice writing. 

Furthermore, not every reader looks for great writing. Some readers care far more about the takeaways from a nonfiction book or the plot of a fiction book. If those are good, some of your readers may overlook when your writing isn’t perfect. No writer is perfect, and it’s a skill you refine over time. 

Want to learn how to become a full-time author? Get your lifetime pass to the Wealthy Author Summit where you’ll get access to over 50 sessions. Use the coupon code AUTHOR to save $50.

Getting your first 5,000 YouTube subscribers is an incredible accomplishment. It’s the next milestone many YouTubers set their eyes on once they reach 1,000 subscribers.

The path to 5,000 YouTube subscribers is different from the path to 1,000 YouTube subscribers. It’s during these stages where you’ll start to take YouTube seriously and start experiencing accelerated momentum for your channel.

Each milestone will become easier to achieve than the last. Generating the momentum to hit 5,000 YouTube subscribers requires a different work ethic and set of priorities. Incorporating these 3 YouTube growth strategies into the mix will help you reach the 5,000 subscriber milestone.

#1: Publish Videos More Often

Each video you publish gives you another chance at ranking in the algorithm and gaining visibility. Not only do these videos give your channel the potential for an immediate boost, but some of your videos can continue gaining traction years after they were published.

One of my best YouTube videos about trading options on Fidelity gets 100s of views each day…months after I published it. I don’t promote the video on any of my platforms. YouTube continues to push this video in their algorithm and attracting new viewers to my channel. 

Not all of my videos are that successful. In fact, most of my videos get a few hundred views within the first 24 hours but then die out. The options trading video is an exception to the rule.

You don’t get exceptions to the rule unless you keep cranking out videos. And even if you only average 1 view per day for each of your videos, if you have 500 videos, you’re getting 500 views per day. There’s strength in numbers.

#2: Conduct Keyword Research For Each Video

I didn’t randomly decide to create the Fidelity options trading video. It was an intentional choice based on what the data told me. 

Rather than create videos on any topic, let the YouTube algorithm guide you. Tools like Vid IQ allow you to see which keywords have greater potential. Focus on creating topics for the YouTube algorithm (i.e. topics with keywords that have high scores on Vid IQ. The higher the better). 

Keyword research is the main reason I shifted to talk about stocks and investing more often on my main channel. People are searching for real-time information on a variety of stocks, and I wasn’t getting the same traction when I exclusively focused on digital marketing related content. 

I still talk about digital marketing from time to time, but the data told me to shift my focus to investing, and my YouTube growth has rapidly accelerated since then.

It won’t make sense for everyone to pivot. I started my Beat The Market YouTube channel before committing to investing videos on my main channel. Once I saw how well that channel was doing, I made the switch.

#3: Collaborate With Other YouTubers

As you grow your YouTube channel, it becomes easier to collaborate with fellow YouTubers. That’s because YouTubers will look at your audience size before collaborating with you. If a YouTuber has 10,000 subscribers and you only have 100 subscribers, they won’t want to collaborate with you. YouTubers prefer to collaborate with fellow creators who have similarly sized audiences.

On the path from 1,000 subscribers to 5,000 subscribers, start doing more outreach to YouTubers who have a few thousand subscribers. Invite them to do a video on your channel in exchange for you doing a video on your channel.

You can also interview other YouTubers and encourage them to share the interview with their audiences. You can only go so far with your own efforts, but when you join forces with other creators, you can move mountains. 

Want to learn how to use YouTube to grow your business? Grab your copy of YouTube Decoded today

Full-time writers have one thing in common…they constantly show up. Content output is the name of the game. As you write more content, you’ll learn from your mistakes and your writing will get refined over time.

Publishing more blog posts will help you expand your audience and better serve your followers. While there are many writing strategies you can use to crank out additional content, daily writing has worked the best for me and many full-time writers.

Daily writing allows you to fully embrace your craft and ensure you’re constantly making progress. I’m also a big fan of batching, but if you miss your batching day due to an unforeseen circumstance, it can dent your entire workflow.

Figure Out How Long It Takes For You To Write 1,000 Words

Writing 1,000 words doesn’t take as much time as people think. If it took an hour a day for you to write 1,000 words, you would be writing at a rate of 16 words per minute (WPM) which is far lower than the average 40 WPM.

If you can maintain 40 WPM, you can write 1,000 words in 25 minutes. For rounding purposes, we’ll assume it takes 30 minutes for the average person to write 1,000 words. You can take an online writing test to discover your average WPM. While you likely won’t hit this WPM as you’re typing and coming up with ideas, you can use it as a guide for your potential.

Plan Out Your Writing

Some writers don’t hit that output rate because they spend too much time wondering where to proceed with their writing. If you write a paragraph and are not sure how to proceed, you will never enter the flow.

The flow is a state of writing where productivity feels natural and you can easily write paragraph after paragraph. You can get lucky and think on the fly, but great writing takes place when you lay out your ideas before you start writing.

Creating a brief outline will go a long way for any article or book. The longer the outline, the easier it will be for you to pursue your writing in a deeper way. I see it as 1 minute of preparation saving you 5-10 minutes of thinking how to proceed.

List the different strategies you’ll cover in a how-to article or the different events that will take place in your novel. The more time you put into your outline, the sooner you’ll enter the flow.

Have An “Idea Day” 

It’s difficult to stay on track if you constantly shift between planning out your writing and the actual writing process. If you finish an article and don’t know your next article’s topic, you’ll shift from writing to planning.

These shifts don’t happen naturally. It’s like hitting the brakes on your car. It takes some time to achieve the same speed you had before hitting the brakes. Rather than taking a few seconds to adjust in the case of a car, it will take a few minutes to adjust in the case of transitioning from writing to planning and back to writing.

Instead of dealing with these mental shifts each day, select 1-2 days each month where you have an “Idea Day.” On this day, don’t write. Just spend the entire day writing article ideas and fleshing out the outlines.

That way, when you return to your writing routine, you have a wide range of ready-to-go ideas waiting for you. This advantage allows you to solely focus on writing rather than getting stuck because you can’t think of how to proceed with your current article or the topic for your next article.

Set A Time To Write

The final step to writing 1,000 words each day is to set a time to write. I personally prefer to write in the morning and get my 1,000 words done then. Mornings and evenings are the best time of day as there are fewer distractions.

You can set reminders on your smartphone or allocate time on your calendar to start writing. Picking the same day to write each day makes it easier to turn daily writing into a habit.

Once you write daily, you’ll crank out more content that can help you grow your audience, boost your income, and establish your online presence. Then it’s a matter of continuing the routine and letting the results compound over time.

Want to make money as a writer? Grab your copy of How To Become A Full-Time Writer today.

Did you know that it’s possible to make money from your podcast on its launch date? While most people see podcast monetization as a long-term game that requires multiple years of build up, you can make money from your podcast starting on Day 1.

This mindset shift will turn podcasting into an integral part of your business rather than a hobby with the same time commitment as a part-time business. If you want to start earning from your podcast now rather than wait for years of build up, follow these strategies.

#1: Present Offers In Each Episode

Most people see podcasting as a long-term monetization strategy because they think sponsorships are the primary way to make money with a podcast.

While sponsorships are a great way to make money with a podcast, you can kick things off by becoming your own sponsor. If you have a book, promote it in your intro. If you have multiple books, promote different books in each of your intros and eventually focus your efforts on your top performing books.

You can also promote a strategy call link for prospects, a training course, or anything else. Work your plugs into the beginning, middle, and end of your episodes. It’s better if you can fit these plugs into the conversation because that means less post-production work and allows you to capitalize on the second podcast monetization strategy you can start using from Day 1.

Just don’t turn your podcast into a sales fest because listeners will then turn away. Mention your offers and include them in the show notes. You can expand on one of them, but remember that listeners want a great conversation, not the feeling that they’re a fly on the wall during a sales call.

#2: Podcast Prospecting

Not only will your audience listen to your episode, but so will your guests. Podcasting is the best networking resource you can have as you can more readily meet new people. Some podcast hosts focus on finding guests that match their client avatar, having them on the show, and then mentioning their services later on.

Rather than a 30 minute sales conversation, you have an actual conversation with the guest about their expertise. Then with a series of follow ups you can determine if the guest is a great potential client without being annoying. 

I see the follow ups as offering a helping hand. If a guest becomes a client, that’s amazing. If not, I’m still friends with that guest. Most people are quick to abandon relationships if they don’t immediately get what they want. Business relationships can evolve in a variety of ways if you give them time.

#3: Repurpose Your Episodes

Some podcast hosts do a masterful job at turning their podcast episodes into other products. The content from your podcast episodes can turn into books, training courses, services, newsletter, membership site, and more. 

You can also repurpose your episodes into social media content that will help you grow your audience and gain additional visibility for your show. 

As you record your episodes, take notes so you can recall the gist of the episode without having to listen to it for a second time. This will help you create new content and understand how you can repurpose each episode for further visibility and revenue.

Want to learn how to launch, grow, and monetize your podcast? Get your copy of Podcast Domination today.

Medium is one of my favorite platforms to write and get paid. It’s one of the few platforms where you don’t need a large audience to do well. Medium rewards quality content even if you don’t have many followers.

While some articles may earn you a dollar here and a dollar there, some Medium writers make 6-figure incomes from this platform. In other words, Medium can become your full-time income. If you want to learn how you can start making $100 each month on Medium and scale it into thousands of dollars each month, apply these 5 tactics for your Medium strategy. 

#1: Write More Articles

Each article you write has the potential to go viral. However, you can’t plan for the Medium algorithm choosing your article and sharing it with thousands of people.

If you write more articles, you give yourself additional chances to go viral. Someone who writes a new article each day has 30 chances each month to go viral. On the other hand, someone who only publishes 1 article each week gets just 4 chances to go viral.

Writing more articles will also help you grow a following, and first time readers may browse through several of your articles. Later on, you can repurpose your articles into a book or a series of YouTube videos.

#2: Reference Your Previous In Your New Articles

Some people will enjoy your articles so much that they’ll read your previous articles. While this is a possible scenario, you can increase the likelihood of readers binging your articles by continuously bringing up your older material.

Let’s say you wrote an article about Facebook ads a few weeks ago, and today you’re working on an article about creating an effective social media marketing plan. In this social media marketing plan article, you mention Facebook ads as a great asset for any social media marketing strategy.

While talking about Facebook ads, include a link to your previous article where you explored Facebook Ads in greater detail. Some people will click off the article and read your Facebook Ads article. If that Facebook Ads article includes a link to a previous article, you can continue the chain.

Some writers go back and edit their older articles to include links to newer content to continue the cycle. 

#3: Browse Through Medium

The best way to become successful at something is to learn from people who have already succeeded. Look at the popular Medium articles in your space and see what they have in common.

What are some of the recurring topics? What type of audience are these articles commonly written for? What do the headlines and pictures have in common?

Look for patterns and experiment with your writing. Use the most popular articles as models. When you emulate the best articles, you will become a significantly better writer whose more likely to gain traction on Medium. 

#4: Get Your Content Into Publications

Getting your articles featured in publications is vital for growing on Medium and generating notable income. As you browse through popular articles, look at which publications those articles are featured in.

Some publications have larger audiences than others. At the start, get your content published into any Medium Publication that will accept your content. As you get a better feel for which publications give your articles the most traction, narrow your focus on the best publications.

Each publication has different guidelines, so it’s important to do your research on each publication before submitting any articles to them. I suggest looking through those publications and seeing what type of articles they accept.

#5: Include A Call-To-Action After Each Article

Not only can you make money on Medium as people read your content, but you can also make money off Medium. You can include a call-to-action at the end of each article encouraging your readers to subscribe to your YouTube channel, grab your free resource, follow you on Instagram, or something else.

I strongly recommend leading your readers to an opt-in page that provides a free guide. The money is in the email list, and it’s an easier transition from article to guide rather than from article to free video series. 

You can test multiple calls to action across multiple articles and see which ones work the best. My general rule of thumb is one call-to-action per article.

Medium is a great platform for writing content, getting noticed, and making money. I believe any writer with the right mindset can quickly make $100s each month from Medium and eventually scale it up to $1,000s per month if they stick with the platform long enough.

Want to learn how to write full-time? Grab your copy of How To Become A Full-Time Writer today