If you have opened a blog on a free blogging platform like blogger, and your blog has started commanding good traffic, the next thing you might want to know is if its possible to monetize a free blog and how to make money with a free blogger blog.
The answer is a capital YES, you can make money with a free blogger blog. But for the amount of money you can make… I can’t tell. Reason I can’t tell is that it all depends on you. It depends on how hard you are willing to work, how many hours you can put in and the quality of contents you are able to deliver.
Your main focus as a new blogger should be engaging your fans with quality contents. The best way for you start a blogging career is to put your audience ahead of any monetary benefits involved.
There are several ways to monetize your free blog, among which are; displaying of ads on your blog, affiliate income, and selling personal stuffs. Now let’s look at how each of these works.
recommended: how to set up a free blogger blog
How to make money using blogger.com
1. Displaying of Ads on your blog
You can make money on a free blogger blog by displaying of Ads on your blog. There are several advertising companies you can register with so you can display their ads on your blog and get paid. The biggest in the game when it comes to making money from a free blog is Google AdSense.
Google AdSense is an advertising company owned by Google as the name implies. They have been in the game for a very long time. Google also happens to own blogger, which makes it easy for them to accept your free blogger blog into to their AdSense program. However, a lot of preparations are needed to meet up with their program requirements if you don’t want your AdSense application to be rejected.
There are so many other alternatives to Google AdSense when it comes to displaying of banner ads on your blog. If peradventure AdSense refuses your application or you just want to register with more than one advertising company, two other popular options are, AdThrive and Media.net. They are all free to join.
But how do you make money by placing ads on your blog?
After registration with any of the above mentioned advertising companies, they help you with adequate tutorials on how to install their banners on your blog. When people visit your blog and they see an advertisement they are interested in, most time they click on it. Clicking on these ads by visitors to your blog is what generates your earnings.
2. Affiliate income
Affiliate income is generated from affiliate marketing and sales, it is one of the easiest ways to monetize your blog. All you have to do is to sign up with some of the biggest affiliate programs around like, Amazon Affiliate Program, AvantLink, ShareASale, etc.
Mind you, for you to be able to register for these affiliate programs using a free blog, your blog must be well optimized and irresistible. However, it’s a lot easier for you to get approval when you register using a professional looking blog set up with a custom domain.
How do you make money from these affiliate programs?
After you have successfully registered for these affiliate programs, you are given unique codes to place on your blog where you want their banners to appear (you’ll be provided with adequate tutorials). When people click on those banners and make purchases, you get a commission.
For instance, I will get a commission from a sale if after listing an Amazon eBook on my blog, a reader clicks on it to view what it’s all about, and ends up making a purchase of that eBook.
What makes it even better is that, after buying that eBook, if he/she sees a phone he/she likes on Amazon and decides to buy that phone, I also get a commission from that sale, because the buyer’s URL will indicate that my blog is the referral.
All purchases made by that person on Amazon through out that particular visit, I get a commission from it.
A good way to promote affiliate products on your blog is by offering review on those products. If for instance I read a book that explains how to make money online, I can choose to offer a product review of that book on my blog, highlighting a few things I’ve learnt from the book and how they too need to read that book.
The important thing is not to overdo it. You should not offer reviews on a products just because of the commissions you get from purchases of that product.
It must be because that product will add value to your audience. Because if you offer a review on any product that’s not worth it, it might end up costing you a dear fan.
3. Selling of personal stuffs (e-commerce).
For me this is like the best way to make money with your free blog, because you get to keep the whole money realized from the sales. There are a lot of personal stuffs you can list on your blog for sale.
Things like ebooks, your unique designs (if you are a graphics designer) or some of your best stock photos if you are a photographer. Things you can sell are not limited to those. You can decide to sell some of your used stuffs that can still be valuable to someone else.
4. Freelance writing
When you start publishing blog posts regularly, it’s like displaying your portfolio on your blog. Your unique articles will go on to show the world just how knowledgeable you are in your blog niche or topic of choice.
Some of the visitors you get may decide to send you emails requesting that you write a blog post for them on your niche, which is a good opportunity for you to make money online.
I have covered the major ways you can make money from your free blog, I hope you are now able to choose which of them you think will work for you best.