Code readability may be defined as the convenience with which the source code is understood and modified. Code readability is of vital importance when maintaining larger legacy codebase and working in teams. If the code is easy to read, it would be easy to debug, refactor, enhance and maintain, thereby reducing the lifecycle cost of software product. As readability directly impacts software quality, researchers have proposed adding a separate phase during development focused on improving code readability. Although, code readability is subjective to human judgement, static analysis tools can provide a fair estimate on various factors impacting readability such as indenting, naming and commenting. As a programmer, follow the tips provided below to create self-documenting software program, which can be understood conveniently by other programmers during it's lifetime.
Once your blog is up and ready with a steady stream of interested readers, its a good time to make some money from your blog. Before you think about making money from your blog, you must have at least 40 - 50, original, top quality and engaging posts on your blog. There are plenty of ways and online business models to monetize a blog. You should implement a monetization strategy that aligns with your specific blog niche and your goals. This post presents some common ways to make a decent amount of money from your blog.
- Advertisements
- Affiliate Marketing
- Sell Products
- Paid Memberships
- Donations
1. Advertisements
Advertisements is perhaps the most common and popular way of monetizing a blog. Advertising can provide a decent revenue stream from your blog with little effort. Advertisers want to get access to your audience network and introduce their products or services. Following are popular ways to display advertisements on your blog:
- Sell Ads Directly: You can sell advertising space directly on your blog. This gives you the flexibility to negotiate your own cost and terms with interested advertisers. You can charge a flat rate such as $10 / hour, instead of managing Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Million (CPM) ad models. Selling ads directly requires integration of specific tools and plugins to handle payments and management of ads. Some of the popular free and paid WordPress (most popular blogging platform) plugins are:
- WordPress Ad Widget - Free Plugin to Place Static Banner and Interactive Ads in Various Formats and Sizes.
- AdRotate - Free Plugin with Paid Version to Create and Manage Adverts.
- Ads Pro - Paid Plugin to Manage, Sell and Display Advertising Space.
- Adning - Paid Plugin to Create, Manage and Display Ads.
- AdSanity - Paid Plugin for Simplified Ad Management.
- Google AdSense: AdSense is the most popular advertising network, which works by serving ads that are relevant to the content appearing on the specific page of your blog. You will get paid when the visitor clicks on the ad or after a particular number of ad views. The Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Million (CPM) for the ad is specified by the advertiser on Google network. To display AdSense ads on your blog, first you need an approved account with Google AdSense. To ensure the quality of service for its advertisers, Google will not approve any blog / publisher account which does not offer premium quality content. After the account is approved by Google, you can select a particular ad format, copy the script and paste it on your blog to start displaying ads. Google AdSense is top ad network with best payouts because of its huge network of advertisers and relevance to blog content or visitor interests. It is very convenient to integrate AdSense ads with Blogger hosted blogs. Ads placement and display can be managed in few clicks from the Blogger dashboard.
Google Ads Network
- Other Ad Networks: There are plenty of alternatives to Google AdSense, some of which are mentioned below:
- Media.net - It is a good option for both new and established bloggers. Media.net displays contextual ads having CPA, CPM and CPC models. It is powered by Bing and Yahoo, there it has top quality advertisers.
- Infolinks - Renowned for it's in-text ad formats, Infolinks is a good way to monetize content-centric blogs. It has various trusted advertisers like eBay, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft.
- Chitika - Chitika is a good alternative to Adsense and is a popular network among new bloggers.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the most common and effective ways of earning money from your blog. Affiliate marketing is when you include a special tracking link in your blog to recommend a product or service to your visitors, and then receive a commission for every purchase following the link on your blog. As an example, if you have a blog on tennis coaching, you can use affiliate marketing to recommend tennis apparel, tennis rackets or training equipment.
Many products and services sold online have affiliate and referral programs that bloggers can join. There are specific affiliate programs available for every industry or niche. To get started with affiliate marketing, you can search for the products relevant to your content and your readers. Then you can find any affiliate programs available for those products that you can register for. There are plenty of affiliate marketing websites and merchants, such as:
- Amazon
- Commission Junction
- ShareASale
- Rakuten
- Clickbank
- eBay
If you are using WordPress to run your blog, there are plenty of plugins like Pretty Links and Thirsty Affiliates to manage your affiliate links. These plugins make it convenient to insert links and monitor the performance of each link on your blog.
Disclosure of affiliate links and referrals on your blog is important to keep the trust of your readers and it is also a legal requirement in some regions. Secondly, do not compromise on quality when choosing affiliate products and services for your blog.
3. Sell Products
Selling physical or digital products on your blog is a good way of making money. To sell products on your blog, you need to set up a system for handling payments. Selling physical merchandise requires you to think about maintaining your stock and handling shipping. Digital goods are easy to manage because they are delivered electronically. To sell products, you can create an e-commerce store on your blog using WordPress plugins like WooCommerce, Shopify or BigCommerce. You can also list your products on popular marketplaces such as Amazon or eBay, and provide links from your blog. Some of the examples of physical products are paperback books, t-shirts or any product related to your blog niche. Examples of digital products include e-books, audio books, online courses and webinars.
4. Paid Memberships
One popular monetization approach is to create a subscription based model where readers are required to pay some amount to get access to certain areas of your blog. You can include exclusive benefits and premium content in your blog for your paying members. You can manage memberships on your blog using WordPress plugins such as MemberPress, Ultimate Membership Pro and third-party tools such as Podia, Wild Apricot and Kajabi.
5. Donations
You can also make money from your blog by asking for donations, especially if you are non-profit. You can increase revenue from donations by using an effective text message on your donations page. You can add a PayPal donate button, Stripe donate button and use plugins like Give, Charitable and PayPal Donations.
This guide explains how to monetize a blog and make money blogging. If you need further assistance, you can contact me any time.
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