How To Make Money From Your WordPress Blog
Posted 30th October, 2013 by Aliysa
Creating and maintaining a high quality blog requires a substantial amount of time, effort and sometimes even money, so why not earn some cash back for all your hard work? If you have a great blog that receives a generous stream of traffic, it’s possible to do so without sacrificing the quality and value of content you provide your readers.
Displaying ads, offering premium, paid-for content and selling products are three ways to monetize your blog. And as WordPress has just about every functionality you can think of via plugins, it’s possible to add these features to your blog.
Display Ads
One plugin that I really like is WP125, a really simple solution for adding 125x125 ad boxes (and - contradictory to the plugins name - ad boxes of other sizes) to your site. It’s easy to monitor ad clickthroughs, set automatic expiration dates and change the way ads are displayed. Once activated, simply navigate to Widgets under the Appearance tab where you can then drag and drop ‘WP125’ into your sidebar area.
Another way to gain money from your blog is through displaying third-party ads, the largest program for this being Google Adsense. Once Google approves your application, Adsense lets you control the types of ads that are displayed on your site, so you can ensure they’re relevant to your audience in order to maximise revenue. It’s easy to add an Adsense code to your WordPress blog. Go to the widgets menu, drag and drop a Text widget onto your sidebar, add a title and underneath in the text field paste your Adsense code. Alternatively, there are a few good plugins for Adsense integration with extra functionality, a popular one being Google Adsense Plugin.
Offer Premium Content
Of the tools out there, I’ve found Tinypass to be a brilliant plugin for this. With Tinypass it’s possible to set up a paywall for certain posts or pages, which can be fully customised in terms of pricing, display and access options through your Tinypass account. You can then specify your premium content in WordPress by marking it with tags. But don’t worry if it seems a bit complicated
to install, you’re provided with a bunch of really helpful guides.
This plugin supports 24 different currencies, a range of payment methods including PayPal and can be implemented without making changes to the structure of your site. There’s also a version of the product called Tinypass Applause which lets you accept money from your supporters, without restricting content access - a kind of donation system.
Bear in my mind that this plugin is initially offered as a free trial mode, where you’re limited to three transactions. A simple per-transaction service fee is then applied.
Get Selling!
If you have a popular blog about - say - cooking, why not sell cooking utensils? A plugin I can wholly recommend for adding a store to your WordPress blog is Ecwid Shopping Cart. This feature-rich ecommerce solution integrates seamlessly with your theme and is available on a free plan (with a limit of 10 products.) Through the Ecwid control panel you can control every aspect of your store - adding products and categories, monitoring sales and keeping track of customers. Ecwid supports a number of payment processors including PayPal, Authorize.net and 2Checkout.
(http://www.ecwid.com/)
The real brilliance of Ecwid is that it’s a cross-platform application - it runs just as smoothly as a Facebook app, and can also integrate with other social networks. An analysis by the guys at Ecwid found that users who implement the Facebook widget see a 15% increase in revenue!
I know there’s a number of other plugins out there which offer similar functionality to the ones I mentioned. I’m always looking at new plugins and I’d love to hear about any you have used for your blog, as well as methods that you use to earn some cash! The real brilliance of Ecwid is that it’s a cross-platform application - it runs just as smoothly as a Facebook app, and can also integrate with other social networks. An analysis by the guys at Ecwid found that users who implement the Facebook widget see a 15% increase in revenue!