Here’s the good news… There is no shortage of ways to monetize a blog.

Here’s the bad news… It’s highly unlikely you’ll make any sort of quick money with a brand new blog.

That being said, if you’re committed to building for the long term, by providing great content, there are a few different ways you can make money with a blog.

Affiliate Marketing

You’ve probably heard about affiliate marketing, it’s one of the most popular methods of making money online. As an affiliate for a company, you’ll promote its products or services through your marketing efforts. With any luck, you’ll then get a percentage of the sales you make or sometimes a fixed amount per sale. Your success in affiliate marketing depends on the company that you choose to represent and your own marketing skills.

One application would be creating a “review” style WordPress site. Then filling it with quality reviews that are filled with your affiliate links. Here’s a theme built exclusively for creating a hosting company review site… it’ll give you a few ideas.

Using Plugins

As a WordPress blogger, you’ll want to be aware of plugins you can use to place ads on your blog. You can find ads on places like Commission Junction, Clickbank or even Amazon. Take a look the Smart Ads plugin or Ad Squares. Both allow you to add advertisements easily to your blog. When you start to build traffic you can even make money by charging for those ad spaces!

Pay-per-Click

Pay-per-click advertisements allow you to earn some money in the form of commissions each time a visitor clicks on the advertisement links. You can add advertisements in a sidebar text widget, banners, in-text links, pop-ups, full-page ads or pop-unders. The commission that you earn depends on the kind of system you use and the company’s guidelines. The success of your pay-per-click campaign depends on the ads you place on your blog and the kind of visitors your blog attracts. Services like Google Adwords can help you get started.

One Final Tip…

If you want to make money with a blog, get very good at building a community and giving them great offers. It doesn’t matter which method you choose to do that… they all come down to giving your visitors share-worthy content so they keep coming back (and bring their friends back with them!).

What methods have you found to make money with your WordPress blog?  Leave a comment below and would you please share this post?

(Want more WordPress Training Videos?  Click here to learn more…)

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Disclosure: Affiliates allow us the opportunity to earn income as a large majority of our content remains free.  If you purchase any products/services after clicking on one of the affiliate links or ads on this site, we will receive compensation.  Thank you for supporting WPTrainingVideos!

- Mercer

eCommerce Theme Review

I’ve included a few screenshots for you here, and you’ll also want to check out the demo site.  Part of what makes this theme so nice is the “bells and whistles.”  A plain image just can’t show these features.  BTW, the name of this theme is “Wootique” and it’s available for free from WooThemes.

The Home Screen

This first image shows a picture of the home page.  As you’ll notice, it has a scroll gadget that will scroll through your featured products.  If you go to the demo site, you’ll see something even better… those images rotate to reveal links to the products’ page.  It’s a great feature that engages your visitor.

Ratings & Reviews

In this next screenshot, you’ll see this theme has the ability to let your visitor rate and review your products.  Again, engagement is the key here.  The more ways your visitors can engage (whether is reading or writing reviews) the greater the chance they’ll buy!

The Shopping Experience

Finally, I’ve included a screenshot of what makes an eCommerce site tick.  Your products MUST be easy to find!  Here you’ll see a feature I really like.  Not only can your customers filter, they can use this great little slider tool.  There’s also an ability to search (using a standard search box).  Now your customers can shop your online store AND quickly find what they’re looking for!

See Wootique in ACTION!

As I said, the images above don’t do this free eCommerce theme justice!  WooThemes has really knocked it out of the park with this one. If you’re interested in playing with this theme on your own… click here to visit the demo site.

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If so, please like, +1 and share this post!

Are you using WordPress for an online store?  Do you have plans to build your own eCommerce site?  I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas.  Please leave a comment below!

We are also authorized affiliates for the following products,
and thought you may find them useful…

Disclosure: Affiliates allow us the opportunity to earn income as a large majority of our content remains free.  If you purchase any products/services after clicking on one of the affiliate links above (including those in the blog post itself), we will receive compensation. Thank you for supporting this site! - Mercer

How to Make $100 Online

Learn WordPress.  This is a no-brainer!  You need to know how to build and maintain websites… at least the basics.  If you haven’t already, take advantage of our free WordPress training videos to learn how.

Your niche and keywords don’t matter.  You read that right.  You wouldn’t believe how many people I’ve talked to who have been “internet marketers” for years… and haven’t made a dime because they still haven’t figured out their niche yet.  If this is you (or, uh-hem, “someone you know”) then read this next sentence carefully.

When you are first starting out, choosing the correct niche isn’t necessary.  When you are first starting out, you need to practice TAKING ACTION.  This brings me to the next point…

You’re going to fail.  Get over it.  Sounds like fun, right?!?  :)  Here’s the basic pattern successful Internet Marketers follow:  Practice, Fail, Practice, Fail a little less, Practice, Fail even less, Practice, Get it Right… then they look toward a new level or skill and the who cycle starts over.  Your mission, dear Newbie, is to jump in with both feet and fail your heart out!  The faster you start the “action, fail, learn, action again” cycle, the better you’ll do.

If you only take the advice of the paragraphs above, you’ll be fine.  BUT if you want some more concrete direction…

Ideas for Monetizing WordPress

• You could create a membership site (like this one).
• You could blog about your passions, sell ads on the site targeted to your audience.
• You could build a review site that reviews products and has affiliate links.
• You could build an online store and team up with a company that drop-ships the products (no inventory!)
• You could create your own products and sell them online (digital downloads or even physical products if you’d like).
• You could build your site, collect email “subscribers” and marketing to them through a monthly newsletter.
• If you are doing a newsletter you could sell adspace on it, even sprinkle it with a few affiliate links.
• Why not try a video blog and tie in your YouTube channel?  You could make money doing both.

In summary, it’s not hard to make that first $100.  It’s hard to keep taking the action and slogging you way through the inevitable failure that will result.  Stick with it though… you’ll get there.

I actually chose the health & fitness niche when I started out.  I bought articles to post on the blog… even started collecting a few emails on my opt-in form!  Then I realized I really have no passion for health and fitness.  (I’d rather eat cheesecake.)

If I hadn’t of tried that though, I wouldn’t have failed.  I wouldn’t have learned from that failure and I wouldn’t be writing this post and I wouldn’t have made my first $100 online.

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I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas on making $100 online. Please leave a comment below!

We are authorized affiliates for the following products,
and thought you may find them useful…

Disclosure: Affiliates allow us the opportunity to earn income as a large majority of our content remains free.  If you purchase any products/services after clicking on one of the affiliate links above, we will receive compensation. Thank you for supporting this site!- Mercer

5 Reasons Why You Should Use WordPress:

• Quick & Easy.  From the beginning, WordPress was built with a single-minded purpose… to help people quickly and easily create websites.  WordPress is point and click simple.  Want to add a new page to your site?  Click “Add New.”  Want to add a picture to your latest blog post?  Click “Add an Image.”  Simple!

• No Tech? No Problem!  WordPress doesn’t force you to learn how to code.  As long as you know how to turn on a computer… you can use WordPress.

• You’re in control.  WordPress gives you complete control over just about every aspect of your website.  If you want a different look, you can change the “theme” of your site (this is also very easy to do).  You can edit, change and adjust almost anything you can imagine.

• Future-proof.  There is nothing worse than taking the time to learn something, only to have it go away.  WordPress allows you to install “plugins” to expand its capabilities to include online stores, memberships sites, podcasting and so much more.  These capabilities are always evolving.  For example, the “next big thing” has been online webinars.  There are now plugins that help you host webinars!

• The Price is Right.  Did we mention WordPress is free?  WordPress is the result of thousands and thousands of people who donate their time and energy so they can make WordPress even better.

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Let your voice be heard by leaving a comment below…

We are authorized affiliates for the following products,
and thought you may find them useful…

Disclosure: Affiliates allow us the opportunity to earn income as a large majority of our content remains free.  If you purchase any products/services after clicking on one of the affiliate links above, we will receive compensation. Thank you for supporting this site!- Mercer

If you don’t want to create your own products and would rather help others sell theirs, affiliate marketing might be the perfect method for you.  It’s not automatic money, though.  There’s still a bit of work when it comes to generating traffic and getting sales.

The 5 Simple Steps to Becoming an Affiliate Marketer

• Register Your Domain.   Try to find a domain with your particular niche in the keywords.  Not only will you rank a little higher in the search engines but it will be easier for others to tell their friends about your site.  We tend to use GoDaddy as they currently offer a Domain Sale! $7.49 .com at GoDaddy.
• Get Hosting.  There are plenty of companies to choose from (we use Bluehost and HostGator ourselves).  Whatever you do, don’t go for a “free hosting” option.  They aren’t made for what affiliate marketers need to accomplish.
• Signup with Affiliate Programs.  Start with ClickBank, PayDotCom, Share-A-Sale, Commission Junction and Amazon (for starters).  Look for top quality products that would be a great fit for your visitors, not just the ones that pay great commissions.
• Build Your WordPress Blog.  Install WordPress and begin to fill it with quality content that relates to the niche you’ve decided to promote.  Make sure the content is relevant and high quality.  Ask yourself if you would stick around to read the content you’re providing, if not… make it better.  Your site won’t perform as well if you don’t have solid content that’s worth coming back for.
• Mix in Affiliate Offers.  Here’s the fun part!  As you write blog posts, include hyperlinks to any relevant affiliate offers.  Place affiliate offers in your side bar as 125×125 button ads, even as a banner ad above your blog post.   Did you notice we mixed in our own affiliate offers for Bluehost, Hostgator and GoDaddy on this post?   If you click on those links and decide to purchase, we’ll receive compensation and you’ll see affiliate marketing in action!