It’s day four of Armchair BEA! Here’s today’s topic:
Today we’d love you to share your top tips for getting beyond your blog! Have you done any freelance writing? Are you monetizing your blog and how so? How do you make connections outside the book blog community on the internet?
How I Monetize my Blog:
The first thing my family and friends asked me when I told them I wrote a blog was if I made any money. The answer was a big fat “no,” so I looked into it. I found three ways to make money on your blog:
The only one of these that I do is affiliate links.
I tried Google Ads, but it was confusing and I never got the ads to actually show up on my site so I gave up. A few months later, I forgot that I had already made an account so I made another. Since that’s a big no-no, both my accounts are in a weird limbo and I don’t know how to fix it. Whatever. I’m A Reader Not A Writer did a feature on advertising and said Google Ads was the hardest to make money from anyway.
I signed up to do affiliate links with Amazon. It’s easy to do and you basically create links through Amazon and put them on your site. I put affiliate links in all my book review posts or any post that mentions a book title. If someone clicks that link and then buys something from Amazon (even if it’s not what your link went to) you get a percentage of that sale. The post that gets the most people buying things from my site are my eBook deals posts.
You can create Affiliate accounts with The Book Depository and Barnes and Noble as well. I have an affiliate account with The Book Depository, but I haven’t made anything from them yet. The Barnes and Noble account was just too dang hard to set up, so I haven’t bothered.
Blog ads is a good way to make money, too. People pay a certain amount of money to have their ad run on your blog for a certain amount of time. I applied to do this on my blog a few months ago and haven’t heard back from them yet.
So long story short – yes, I make money from my blog (so far I’ve made $4). If my blog ever makes enough money to support all the expenses I have, then great! If it doesn’t, I will still keep blogging because I love it.
How I connect with others on the Internet:
The number one way that I’ve made friends in the blogging community is by having conversations in blog comments. I love to read people’s posts and leave a comment telling them what I thought.
I also have met tons of bloggers and authors on Twitter. I felt a little overwhelmed at the lingo on there at first, but I soon figured it out and I love it!
I’ve also had great discussions with people about books in Goodreads Groups.
How do you monetize you blog and connect with other bloggers?
My name is Jessica. I love to read Young Adult and classic literature. I’ve been a book blogger for six years and I haven’t gotten tired of it yet. I’m a very curious reader. Writing about all the questions and thoughts I had while reading a book is the best hobby ever.
Thanks for the tips!
Amanda
I haven’t tried to make any money with my blog. I always forget to use a fellow blogger’s affiliate link when I buy something from BookDep. I should try and remember as it’s nice for them and doesn’t make any difference for me. Thanks for reminding me.
I just feel like it might be too much work sometimes to deal with the little amount I might make.
Good point. It’s totally a number game. Only about 2% of people that visit daily will click on affiliate links. If your blog ever gets big numbers, that 2% can actually be a good amount of money. But when you’re starting out like me, its almost nothing.
I think most bloggers are in it because they love it. It’s hard to make $ from a blog unless you have a unique angle with a lot of traffic. I have a friend who just sold the rights to his blog to a publishing company who run a magazine; he now gets paid to run his site. However, he’s been blogging for over 10 years, back when blogs were not what they are today. He’s also very active in the community he blogs about – comic cons and pop culture etc. It was his lifestyle that he spent all his free time on. Yes, it’s possible, if you WANT that, to make a living off your blog. It’s not my thing though :)
I’m in blogging because I love it, too! :) I definitely don’t want to make a living off my blog. But something’s better than nothing and it helps offset my expenses a little :)
YES to your last point! I love interacting with people and at first, I was so nervous and kind of overwhelmed with twitter but now I love it. :D
LOL Twitter was so bizarre when I first logged on. I kept thinking – what is everyone talking about??? and what are all these letters (RT) and symbols (#) ? :D I’ve talked to a lot of fun people on twitter!
I’m an Amazon affiliate too. I haven’t made any money yet, though. The funny thing is that my review on La Dama del Alba, a play that hardly anyone that reads my blog has read, is the one that generates the most stuff from Amazon. But, it hasn’t amounted to anything to get paid yet. Oh well. Like you said, I blog just to blog. So, I don’t care if I make money or not. :)
I haven’t monetized my blog yet, but I’ve heard so much recently about affiliate links that I might try it, even if it won’t make me a ton of cash.