Author: Yannick Veys

Yannick has been a professional blogger for over a decade. He's owner of over a 100 websites. He's worked at the best digital marketing agency in The Netherlands, Searchresult. Read more about him on the about page.

How to land your first guest post

A big part of link building these days is getting in front of someone else’s audience with a guest post. For years Google (in the name of Matt Cutts) has been telling us that Guest Blogging is dead.

His main concern was that a lot of websites have changed their linkbuilding tactic to nothing more than spamming a lot of websites asking them if they can add a paid “guest blog” just for getting links that pass PageRank. Obviously, if that is your plan, please stop reading this blog because I’m not talking about the spammy route to guest posts.

What is a (good) guest post?

I’m talking about the high quality, thorough, 1000 word absolute minimum guest posts that are submitted and accepted based on their merits. Based on the fact that you’ve proven yourself in the past. Your website or company is a respectable business and you want to add real value to a website and its readers. Not just posting a 500 word blog post with poor spelling and with only one goal in mind: linkbuilding.

Guest posts are about relationships

This post is about landing your first guest post. This blog isn’t up and running yet. That’s why I’m creating this post. Because I want to show you how to get your first guest post. You should start early with outreach and relationship building because landing one will be harder that you think.

Before you can build the relationships you should know what websites are accepting guest posts and what websites are related to your niche / are in your league.

Because this is a new website I can’t just contact Forbes or the WSJ and ask them if I can publish an article on their website. Their answer will be: No way Jose.

You need to get in front of people who can give you guest post opportunities. Opportunities can be taken. But you need a set of basic requirements before you can go “out” to land your first guest post.

  • A website with body. Not something you started yesterday which has 3 posts containing 300 words each with 1 image and 2 links to your affiliate programs.
  • A clear vision of what type of guest blog you want to write
  • A set of websites that meet your requirements for size, readership demographics and niche
  • A great, can’t say no to, “ask”

Start with collecting a list of websites that accept guest blogs

Anything is possible. You can contact any website and ask if you can guest post on their website but if they have no mention of being a contributor it’ll be a lot harder for you. Some websites simply don’t accept these.

Use these keywords to find guest post opportunities on google

  • guest post
  • submit article
  • submit post
  • suggest article
  • become an author
  • become a guest writer
  • “guest post by”
  • “post courtesy of”
  • posting guidelines
  • send a tip
  • submit content
  • looking for writers
  • writers wanted
  • become an editor

I did the search for my keyword +”guest post” and landed a lot of opportunities just for that one keyword.

Twitter is also a real nice resource to find guest post opportunities

You can do similar searches on Twitter and find lots of guest post opportunities. Usually ranked by when they were posted you can even select which ones were posted recently and contact the authors to tell them how great you think their guest post was and how they landed it in the first place.

For every domain I find I check their Domain Authority with Moz.com Link Explorer tool. In my opinion they should have a DA of at least 20 and more than 100 links to their domain in total. I also check if they accept comments on their (guest) posts. I want to do a few guest posts where I give away a bit of my time to help small business owners but they need to be able to comment on the blog for it to work. So based on if those blogs accept comments I’ll suggest different blogs.

Same goes for if they’re a competitor. I also like to rank for start a blog. So if I contact someone who’s into the same niche I’m trying to stay away from keywords that we both want to rank for. The first reason because I don’t want him/her to think that I’m a threat. The second reason is because I’ll try to outrank them with my own content of course 🙂

Lastly I list the guest post guidelines if I find any.

To summarize, this is what you want to see in your guest post opportunities:

  • High authoritative websites
  • They rank for numerous keywords (not just related to their brand name)
  • Are related to your blog (same niche or industry)
  • Post high quality content (skip the blog when you see a lot of 500 word posts with 2 outgoing links and no internal linking)
  • Have a (large) social media following
  • Leave you with enough room to mention yourself and your site, not just in the author box

If you still have trouble finding guest post opportunities try these lists

Once you have some guest post opportunities think what you can add to their website

I now have a list of about 20 blogs that I can use. First thing I do is check them all. See what they’re writing about. Am I the fifth wheel on the wagon? Or can I really add something to their blog?

If I’m the fifth wheel, what can I do / how can I change my approach so I CAN add value.

When I see a lot of potential for a guest post I try to come up with a few angles. What blog posts can I make? What haven’t they written about? Or what have they written about but years back? Anything older than 2 years is up for grabs in my opinion. Use the “year” as an anchor to get them interested in your guest post.

They’ve allowed a guest post about a similar topic a few years back. You’re here to add a similar post but with all new 2019 and beyond perspectives.

Create a couple of dummy posts as guest blog

Start writing a few guest posts like you already landed an opportunity. You want to have a few examples you can send out to the blog once they’re interested in your guest blog.

Even better is to post your first guest post on a blog from someone you know. Make sure it is top notch so you can refer to it for a long long time.

Get your first blog post live on a website from someone you know

I’m going to post a guest post on one of my own blogs to give myself a head start. Find a friend or relative who owns a blog in a niche that’s remotely related to yours.

The editor from the website that’s considering your guest post won’t go through the entire blog. What they will do is check your writing style. If your grammar is perfect. If you make enough use of (sub)headings. Most important: they’ll check to see if you’re not a web spammer who only points anchor rich links to his own domain and domains from his clients (obscure websites no one has ever heard about).

Comment on blogs from websites that allow guest posts

Before you can even think of landing your first guest post you have to be on someone’s radar to consider you. Using the contact form should be last resort only. Try to get into contact by following someone on Twitter. Retweeting them. Adding value to their website through commenting.

If you shoot, make sure you hit the target

The website owner should know exactly what kind of content is a hit vs content that doesn’t move the needle. You should too. Run their blog through Ahrefs or Buzzsumo to see what content is shared most so you can suggest a topic that has already performed well in the past.

If you can pitch a story that has done well in the past, chances are high you’ll land a guest post easier.

 

Reaching out to your targets

I mentioned this in my post about linkbuilding I don’t like the tried and true form of pitching for a guest post like this:

Hi [Website name],

I’m a long time reader. I love your posts. Especially this one [link] where I left a comment.

I’m writing you because I’d love to contribute to [website name again].

Yadayadayada.

Be graciously direct when pitching your guest post

This might be a European thing but I think this is just too much. How many emails do you think they receive like this? I, with one < DA 50 blog, receive 3 of these PER DAY. Thats over 20 per week. They’re coming out of my nose.

Be more original than this. Love is for lovers or family and friends. Love isn’t used in a pitch. Mentioning their brand name 2 or 3 times in as many sentences is also a bit too much. I would be more direct. They have a big sign in their yard that shouts: WE ACCEPT GUEST POSTS and you’re going to beat around the bush?

This is how I pitch guest blogs. Starting with the subject of my email… I would make it quick and easy. Something like: quick question

Hi [first name of website owner],

It would be my honour to contribute to [Blog name].

I’ve already come up with a few ideas that I think would really resonate with your audience

  • idea 1
  • another idea
  • my last idea

I’ll make sure I include links to your other blog posts and to this [link] cornerstone content which I really like.

If you want to check out how I do guest blogs, here’s a [link] to a guest post I’ve recently written.

I look forward to hearing from you,

Best,

[Your name]

Why is this a good pitch?

This is how normal (business) people communicate. Editors from blogs who accept guest posts probably get requests multiple times a day. You want to come down to the bottomline within the least amount of words possible. This entire email is less than 100 words. It’s a 10 second read.

Don’t overcomplicate things. The value you bring in your email should be the ideas you pitch. The fact that you followed them and commented on their pieces should help you get a little bit of familiarity bonus. But that’s it.

Always follow up on your pitch

If, after a week or so, you haven’t heard back from the website, contact them again. It’s a tried and true method. Your conversion rate to landing a guest post will more than double if you follow up.

Don’t overdo it. Give them some time and space. Don’t send a follow up writing 72 hours of you sending the initial pitch. Don’t send a second follow up any earlier than a week after the first one.

Change your “tune” when you send the second reminder. Something like: Did I say something wrong? I must have completely missed the mark with my ideas? Never point the finger at them with stuff like: you must be busy. Make a light remark to try to get a connection going.

Now for the real stuff, writing your first guest post

Let’s first start with mistakes you shouldn’t make.

Don’t do this when guest posting

  • Only use words in your guest post
  • The use of stock images (or copied images)
  • A few external links
  • No internal linking

If you DON’T do the things listed above

  1. You’re content will be seen as more valuable
  2. Google will not see it as (low quality) SPAM
  3. You’ll look more professional
  4. Have another resource you can mention when pitching guest posts
  5. Get more engagement on your post and more visitors

Like I mentioned before, I have a blog that accept guest posts. I don’t accept all the submitted articles on that blog. Why? Because some are really low quality. I’m sometimes very explicit to people who reach out to me so they know what to do if they’re new at guest posting.

I don’t want blog posts which only include words and bad use of (sub)headings. I want a visually appealing piece everyone wants to read.

An editorial piece of content is a piece that gives value. That uses content that is already on the same domain and that links out to resources that are valuable on other domains. If you only have 2 or 3 links in your guest post which link back to your website, that’s not going to go down well.

Chances are your guest post won’t even be accepted.

Split your target websites in 2 or 3 groups

You can only write so much content per week. If you’re a normal guy/girl I mean. I wrote, just this week alone 25,000 words. That’s because of my challenge. I need to write 100,000 words in 30 days and I’m a little behind my target.

But for a normal human being if you write 5,000 words per week, that’s already quite a lot. Definitely when it’s jam packed with actionable advice and screenshots and what not.

So in order to spread yourself according to the value you’re gaining from your guest post, make sure you split your target websites in a few groups.

Go for the Hero hub Hygiene strategy

I try to use Google’s Hero Hub Hygiene/Help rule of thumb. Hero content is your best content. This is the stuff you make that would be great on your own blog but would be OUTSTANDING on someone else’s super popular website.

You want to leverage a super popular website with your hero content because you’ll get 10x the amount of shares, links, mentions, traffic if you post a Hero piece on that website vs your website.

Hero hub hygiene explained

Hero content is posted only a few times per year. This is something you only make for DA 80+ websites with huge amounts of traffic. I have something planned for Medium later this year that should really rock. This is 3,000+ words of content. Maybe even with video. Resources / actionable advice not found anywhere else.

Hub content is content that could be a returning item on a well known blog. It’s used to build your brand. A returning item on a blog where you post a similar type of message with similar writing style and visual style to build recognition and (brand) awareness. 1,000 – 2,000 words content that’s nice to consume. Doesn’t need to be state of the art. Can be easy to consume content. Post these kind of pieces on blogs with DA 50 – DA 80.

Hygiene (or helper) content is your daily stuff. You post this on lower authority blog with less traffic and social following. You should still really add value to the blog. Add internal links. Link out a lot to interesting content and make sure that this content is on par with your smaller pieces on your own blog. These pieces can be submitted on websites with DA 20 – DA 40.

Don’t copy content from your own blog

Create new content. Don’t copy and paste some old stuff from your old website that you’re repurposing one on one.

Of course it’s okay to use things you already mentioned on your blog but you want to give the value the other blog deserves. Plus you want the guest post to rank in Google too. Higher rankings for the guest post mean more shares means more links and more traffic to your blog. Try to be a bit smart about what your title’s going to be so you don’t cannibalize too much on your own traffic.

Respond to comments on your guest post

Don’t hit and run. When you submit a guest post you’re in it for the long run. That means you should check the guest post daily for 14 days for any comments.

A good strategy to follow is to immediately post a comment on the blog. You can sometimes follow comments. So when your post receives a new comment you’ll get an email notifying you.

Being the first to comment on the post also invites others to comment as well. You’re creating more engagement and give people the trust and security they need to comment too.

Mention your guest post on your social media

People who follow you should be interested in what you have to say. You’ll give the website where you posted on some traffic love and your blog post will get some extra social love too. The better your guest posts perform, the more likely you’re asked back to do another post and the more you can use your previous guest posts as a portfolio to gain new opportunities.

Always say thanks

Didn’t your mother and father teach you to always be grateful? To show your appreciation? So always say thanks for the guest posting opportunity. This will go a long way because not a lot of people do this. You never know what comes out of a thank you. Maybe the editor in question knows another editor at a different blog who’s also accepting guest posts and can introduce you?

What you give, you receive back.

You should be after traffic not just links

Yes, links are important but traffic is the reason you have a website in the first place right? It doesn’t matter how yo get your traffic as long as you get more right?

So concentrate on websites that have a lot of comments. If blogs receive a lot of comments it’s evidence of one thing: an engaged audience. And engaged audiences click through to your website more often.

They’re also not the hit and run type. They read this blog because they really want to learn something. That’s different from a news website or a lifestyle blog where people are in a more passive state of mind. They just want to kill some time. Those websites might receive 10x the traffic but will send less traffic than websites that have a more engaged audience.

15 proven methods to make money with your blog in 2019

You have a blog, you’re getting some traction. This article is for you!

Read this first is you’re still planning to start a blog.

We’ll go over 13 ways you can make money from blogging. Most of them are things you can do on your blog (I use WordPress as an example to setup monetization).  Others are things you can do BECAUSE you write and people like what you’re doing.

1. Ads are the easiest way to monetize your blog

By far the most easy way to make money with your blog is through Ads. It’s also the most intrusive method. Because you are taking something away from your visitors (the fact that they can read your articles in a clean non-distracting way).

https://ed-italia.com

I’ve chosen not to add ads to this blog. I want to make my money in other ways. About 100 websites of mine DO have ads. So I’m not saying you should write this idea off. I’m simply saying that this is a good way to make money but you should think about this one. Is the website, the audience suited to add ads? I have plenty of websites that only give information and people are quickly in and out. Because of the high volume of traffic but low engagement I add ads. On this blog I want it to be the other way. Less traffic but a more engaged audience.

If your website is going to be your livelihood I would definitely add ads to it at the start. You’ll immediately start making money. Even if it’s just a small amount.

Adsense

Adsense is by far the easiest way to monetize your blog. Go to Google.com/adsense and register an account. You’ll have to enter your first website url and add the code snippets to the website. It will take a few days before your website is reviewed after which ads will automatically start appearing. I’ll walk you through how to setup Google Adsense on your (WordPress) blog.

Don’t signup if you just started and still have the default “Hello Dolly” post up. Invest a few days in creating valuable content. Only then should you signup for Adsense and have your website approved.

Once your account is activated go to Ads -> Auto ads

Click on “Setup Auto Ads” on the right.

You’ll get a piece of code that looks like this:

<script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
<script>
     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({
          google_ad_client: "ca-pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXX",
          enable_page_level_ads: true
     });
</script>

Include this code in your theme by going to Appearance -> Theme Editor and open the header.php file on the right side of your screen.

Click on your theme header and include the code between the <head> </head> element of the HTML

Just add a new line and paste it in there. Visit your website on a different browser and check your HTML code via Right click – view source to see if the code is in there.

Next up is the AMP code snippet (IF you downloaded and activated the AMP plugin). No ads will be shown on your AMP pages (so people visiting your website from a mobile phone) if you don’t also add the AMP Adsense snippet.

Click on the auto ads for amp tab.

Then go to step 2 and you’ll again get a code snippet.

You can past this snippet immediately below the other snippet you just added.

<script async custom-element="amp-auto-ads"
        src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0/amp-auto-ads-0.1.js">
</script>

Go to step 3

Paste this code snippet in the same file but just after where you see the <body> tag.

<amp-auto-ads type="adsense"
              data-ad-client="ca-pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXXX">
</amp-auto-ads>

I removed my ID everywhere, so if you copy the above code(s) make sure you add your own ID to it otherwise you won’t get any ad impressions and subsequently no income.

It takes a few days for the ads to show.

In the meanwhile you have to do something else thats new for 2019. You have to add an ads.txt file to your web server with a line of text. Connect your domain to your Adsense account so Google knows your WordPress website hasn’t been hacked by someone else and they added their own Adsense code.

Download the ads.txt file and upload it to the route of your website. That’s usually the public_html folder.

Adsense is go great because you don’t have to do any work for the ads. Google acts as the middle men and has a large supply of advertisers. They also have advanced algorithms to try and get your RPM (Revenue per thousand impressions) as high as possible.

I do have some tips for you because Google is also the butcher that inspects its own meat. Google is a big advertiser on Adsense as well. They advertise Google Adwords on it and I’ve found that the RPM from these ads is very very low. So I excluded Google themselves from advertising on my websites. Hahaah 😂

This is how to do it. Click on Blocking Controls in the left menu

Look to the right and click on the 3 dots to open a menu. Click on “Return to the old Ad review centre”

Next click on the “Advertiser URL’s” tab.

Add adwords.google.co.uk, adwords.google.com and any local equivalents (.nl etc.) to the blocking list. This will prevent the Adwords ads from popping up on your website.

How to optimize your Adsense earnings

The biggest part of your earnings from Adsense is through people clicking on your ads.

Mine is almost 90% from clicks (CPC bid, cost per click) and almost 10% is from views (CPM bids, or Cost Per Thousand views).

With Google’s new auto ads, they decide the best place to place your ads on your website. But a few years back you had to decide where you’d place your ad blocks. If you didn’t want to intrude your visitors you would put them below the fold. In the sidebar, etc.

If you still have the old ad blocks you should place them “in content” so people see your ads when they’re reading your content.

Optimize your ad impression share

Google is very adamant about  the user’s experience. They don’t want to scare them off with a lot of ads. Rightfully so because before 2016 the use of ad blockers has soared to new highs.

Users were just mad because websites were littered with ads. They loaded slow. Hid the content. User Experience from ads was just awful.

That all changed once the ad blocker became so popular. Google’s earnings were at risk and they needed to do something about it. A couple of years back they introduced a method to reduce the ad impressions you show your audience. Google also lists the amount of revenue you’ll lose when you ease back on the ads a little.

You should also optimize for impression vs ad revenue. This is how to do it. Click on optimisation -> experiment

Next, click on ad balance experiment

I’ve experimented quite a lot with it. My sweet spot is 60% ad impression to keep 99% of revenue. If I go below 60% my revenue starts dropping (faster than Google is prognosing).

Setup your own experiment and see what happens. The reason I give up some ad revenue is because user experience and user engagement on your website is a known ranking factor. It’s a public secret that Google “sees” how long people stay on your website. The longer they stay the stronger the signal they give Google that your website should rank high(er).

Optimize your Adsense revenue even more with Ezoic (Advanced stuff…)

Ezoic is sort of an ad on to Adsense. They say (and I’ve seen it work) that they can optimize your ad revenue even more than Google can do. You should only apply when you make hundreds of Dollar each month. It’s quite a hassle really. It’s the only thing I don’t really like about Ezoic. Setting up the account is not really user friendly. I’ll try to walk you through it.

Register for an account on Ezoic.com.

Once you’ve registered follow the steps on the dashboard:

If you run your blog on WordPress install the Ezoic Plugin:

Once it’s downloaded activate the plugin and connect your account by logging in.

Continue to step 2. Setting up the ad testing.

If you installed the plugin, you don’t need to “wrap” your ads. Continue to the creation of the ads part.

These are my ads lots for 1 website. Quite a lot. Click on the green button to start adding your own. This is a little bit technical but I’ll walk you through it.

Start by telling Ezoic where this ad placement will be shown. Remember, you need to manually ad code snippets to your pages later. You also need to add Adsense Ad Blocks before you can add Ezoic’s snippet code’s.

Next up is sizes of the ads and what type of devices you want the ads to be shown.

Top bar, in content and footers can show the widest version ads. The 728, 970 ads can usually be shown in those areas. If you’re not sure, just test it out. For every ad block, think about what size ads you want to show on what spots.

Select all the boxes you want. The more boxes you (can) select the better Ezoic can test and optimize your revenue for you.

Don’t add a minimum screen size. Just uncheck the “devices” you don’t want to show your add to because the size just doesn’t fit the device.

For mobile you should uncheck:

  • 120×600 skyscraper
  • 160×1600 wide skyscraper
  • 300×600 half page
  • 300×1500 portait
  • 970×250 billboard
  • 580×400 netboard

Once you’re done selected / deselecting all your options click create ad.

Do this for at least 10 – 15 different ad blocks.

  • Top navigation
  • Top of the page
  • Just below header of page
  • Second paragraph
  • Third paragraph
  • Long form content
  • Bottom of the page
  • Sidebar big
  • Sidebar small
  • Footer
  • Etc.

You’ll get a small code snippet for every block you create.

<!-- Ezoic - bottom_of_page 105 - bottom_of_page -->
<div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-105"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - bottom_of_page 105 - bottom_of_page -->

How here’s where you have to deviate from Google’s Auto ads.

Go to Adsense again and click on ads -> ad unit -> responsive ad

Add the ad. Give the ad block the same name as you did with the Ezoic ad so it’s easier to match them.

You need to combine Google’s Adsense snippet with the Ezoic snippet. This is Google’s one:

<script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
<!-- bottom_of_page content -->
<ins class="adsbygoogle"
     style="display:block"
     data-ad-client="ca-pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
     data-ad-slot="xxxxxxxx"
     data-ad-format="auto"
     data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>
<script>
     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
</script>

This is how the snippet should look like once you’re done

<!-- Ezoic - bottom_of_page 105 - bottom_of_page -->
<div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-105"><script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
<!-- bottom_of_page content -->
<ins class="adsbygoogle"
     style="display:block"
     data-ad-client="ca-pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
     data-ad-slot="xxxxxxxx"
     data-ad-format="auto"
     data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>
<script>
     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
</script></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - bottom_of_page 105 - bottom_of_page -->

Add this combination to your website. Download Advanced Ads Plugin for WordPress. Install and activate it. Add an ad by filling in the details here (just the title is enough)

Enter the combined code snippet below. Once you click Publish on the right side you can use the shortcode for this add and add it to one or more of your pages. This is a lot of work to setup yes… That’s why I told you to only do this when you have hundreds (if not thousands) of Dollar of ad revenue each month. You won’t get a lot out of it if you’re trying to optimize an ad revenue of 100 bucks a month.

 

Use Media.net if you a 100k pageview a month website

Adsense is from Google. Media.net is from Microsoft. On Adsense anyone can join. On Media.net not so much so. You can only apply if you have a website that has 100k pageviews per month and you have a decent and up to date website.

I tried to apply the other day with one of my blogs I haven’t updated in months and I was not approved. Haha. Even though it gets more than 150k pageviews a month. So I need to update the content on it first.

You can always reapply but you should just get your stuff in order BEFORE you apply.

Actual people look at your website and determine wether you’re good enough for Media.net’s advertisers to join the programme. Once you do though… Your earning will skyrocket compared to Adsense.

2. Sponsorships

Once you get a bit of traction brands will start to approach you if you want to cooperate with them on a sponsorship deal. This usually only works though if you’re “out there”. If you audience (and the brands / advertisers) can see who you are.

You should have a clear author page that says a lot about you. Where you live, what you do. Advertisers want to be able to assess what risk they have of reputation damage. If you’re being sponsored by a vegan food brand and you have pictures online where you eat eggs or meat, that’s not really helping their brand is it?

If you want to accept sponsorships, if you want to be asked for sponsorship deals you have to be open about yourself.

Best is even to have your own Instagram account or Facebook page. That way the brands have an easier time assessing what impact you can make for their brand.

Listing your audience will also help you land sponsorship deals. How much traffic does your website get? What are the demographics of your audience? Any data that can help the brand to see if you align with their target audience should make it easier to land sponsorship deals.

Brand ambassadorships

One way to get your first sponsorship deals is to contact PR agency’s or the PR departments of brands you like. Brands are always on the lookout to reach new audiences.

Do make sure you have some traffic to show for. More and more brands are paying for actual sales in stead of just impressions or a post on someone’s website.

No pay no cure isn’t common but a base fee plus a feee based on number of interactions or sales is very common. Oftentimes brands want to see a minimum engagement level (on their site) before payment is made.

There are too many people (influencers) who have bought a massive amount of fake followers. Fake followers don’t buy anything. At most they might click through or like a post but that’s often not even the case. If you have social presence, make sure you only have genuine real followers. Brands don’t just look at follower counts anymore. They look at the ratio between interactions and followers and if that drops to a certain point they suspect you to have either have bought followers or you just don’t have an engaged following of people. Either one is bad.

Search Facebook for Ambassador Groups for example. There are also usually openings on job boards. Most of the Ambassador programmes either want you do directly promote their brand on a festival or something. Others are fine with you promoting them on your blog. Most earnings are made through sales. If you have a small following your earnings also will be low.

Press trips

If you own a lifestyle blog press trips should be your number 1 money maker. A new car. A new travel destination. New restaurant. There are so many opportunities out there IF you have the right blog.

Before you can land press trips you have to go through a few steps

  1. Grow a following (on Instagram or Facebook)
  2. Make it very clear to people what your “niche” is so brands can relate to you
  3.  Align yourself with the brands you want to work with (writing style, target audience, other demographics)
  4. Become visible (start interacting with brands, join the right groups, accept speaking gigs (for free) where the same brands are present)

Do a search for “Influencer marketing platform” on Google and you’ll get quite a few results where you can sign yourself up to.

Here are my favourite blogger / influencer marketing platforms:

  • Upfluence: You need to download Chrome plugin so Upfluence can “scrape” your social profiles and look at how much engagement your accounts have. They are a really big platform for influencers
  • AspireIQ: is also a really big one. Easy to use platform. Payments are fast and they don’t take a cut from your pay check

Free products

Free products are probably the easiest to land as a sponsorship deal. Local companies are easiest to persuade to give you a product in exchange for a review on your blog. For a beginning blogger this is an excellent way to start your blogging career. Even if you don’t have a big following, you can do these reviews.

If you’re a bit cheeky you could ask for 2 products. 1 in exchange for the review on your blog the other one to give away to your audience. Tell the company that blogs that consist of giveaways tend to get more engagement. For one: that’s true. The second reason is giving away something to your audience is always a great thing. You can shout it out on Facebook or Twitter or Facebook. Do a Like & Share. Stuff like that.

3. Your own content upgrades

The highest margins are always made when you sell your own products. It’s also, in my opinion, easier to do. Your audience knows you. They came to your blog. Not someone else’s blog. They come to you for a reason. Maybe it’s just because you were the result they clicked on on Google. But if you’ve been blogging for a while you should have already gotten your own following.

Ebooks

The easiest way to make money with your blog and your own content is with ebooks. A comprehensive guide with case studies is a great way to start your ebook business. Just make sure it looks good and brings at least 100x the value you charge people. So if you charge $1 you should provide a minimum of $100 value.

Ebooks are generally priced till $10. Start with 1. See how it sells. You can always go up. Find someone on Fiverr or Upwork to make the ebook look nice if you can’t do it yourself. It should not be as blank as your blog.

An ebook should be seen more as a Powerpoint presentation which is converted to a book vs your blog.

Courses

Courses are about 10x harder to make but also at least 10x as valuable for you and you audience. I use Learnpress for my courses. It’s a plugin for WordPress and works great to setup your own courses.

Once you’re done setting up Learnpress you can install a sample course to see how it works. You can make really extensive courses with the free version. If you want extended options for payments and course types.

Products sales

If you have a a loyal following they’ll even by t-shirts with your name on it. But you should extend your product line with products that match your niche and the subjects you talk about on your blog.

Adding an online store to WordPress is easy at least. Woocommerce is free and comes out of the box. You can sell both virtual as physical products in your own online store.

From bingo cards to templates, to your ebooks we talked about earlier. Adding a store to your blog is easy and a great way to add as a revenue stream.

4. Affiliate marketing

Probably the number one thing starting bloggers make money with is with affiliate marketing.

Amazon is making more money from other people selling on their platform than they are making themselves with their own products. It’s the most basic form of affiliate marketing. They actually just refer traffic to themselves but by doing it there profit margin goes through the roof because of the network effect. The more products Amazon has the more likely people are to buy stuff there and the more likely they are to buy more products in the same order. The common road to affiliate marketing is referring traffic to someone else and earning a commission for every sale or lead from the visitor you sent.

If you have a blog you can sell your own product. A course, an ebook, another digital download, or even real life things you can ship via mail. Before you can sell something you made, you have to create it, install a service through which you’ll sell it (e-commerce storefront), start customer support, add a payment provider, etc. etc.

With affiliate marketing you have non of that. You simply add a link to your website which has your unique referrer code attached to it and when someone buys something via your link you get a commission.

You don’t have to do any support, no payment processing, nothing. The downside is, is that you’re not building your own customer base and you have to keep getting more clients who want the same thing over and over again. So in order for affiliate marketing to be interesting for you, you need quite a big audience and a lot of different advertisers.

How do I start with affiliate marketing?

Register an account at your local affiliate marketing network. If you Google it (in your local language) you’ll get the top networks. For the US, Canada and probably the UK your best bet is CJ.com. Commission Junction is the biggest of them all. The benefit of using the biggest? You only have to signup once to a platform and you’re able to apply your website to all the different advertisers they have on their platform.

If you have a lifestyle blog or blog a lot about products like electronics for example, signup for Amazon Associates program. It’s Amazon’s affiliate program.

They don’t pay a high percentage affiliate fee but their conversion rate is off the chart. Traffic you refer to their websites probably has the highest conversion rate of all your affiliate programs.

5. Youtube

YouTube is the world 2nd largest Search Engine after its bigger brother Google. The opportunities on YouTube are vast. You can make a lot of money if you’re active and active on regular times.

When you start on YouTube you should always post a new video on the same day and time of the week. YouTube rewards creators with more eyeballs who upload their videos on a regular interval. If you do it every Saturday morning at 10AM and do that on a weekly basis you’ll get more eyeballs (as in double, triple even quadruple the amount) compared to when you don’t upload new videos on regular intervals.

You can signup to YouTube’s Partner Program when you’ve reached 1k subscribers with a total time viewed of all your videos of 4,000 hours. YouTube does this so they can assess better what kind of content you make. What people watch your channel and how they comment. They try to filter out people who promote hate speech, terrorism, profanity, etc.

You need an existing Adsense account or you need to create a new one. Connect your YouTube Channel with your Adsense account.

6. Specials for food bloggers

Are you a food blogger? Or are you interested in becoming one and monetizing your website and video’s? If you haven’t started your food blog yet, read about starting a blog here.

You need a nice SEO friendly plugin to create your recipes with. Use WP Recipe Maker.

There are a lot of people who want to start a food blog. So help them with starting too! Start a course and show them how you got 1k, 10k, 100k visitors.

Make a course on how to create beautiful food photos. Probably the most important part of being a food blogger is creating great looking shots of the meals you made. Beautiful pictures get shared more and add to your standing as a professional blogger.

7. Specials for travel bloggers

Travel bloggers have vastly more affiliate options than your ordinary blogger. Signup for Booking.com’s Partner program. AirBnB has a partner program. Hostelworld has a partner program.

Traveladsnetwork is an affiliate network that specializes in the travel niche. If you signup with them you’ll get a wide range of possibilities to monetize your website with them.

Last but not least… Focus on travel insurance. World Nomands is one of those websites that offer travel insurance for travellers for decent rates.

There are also a lot of money making ideas you can try out BECAUSE you (have a) blog. You won't make money directly with your blog, but you can make money through blogging indirectly because you're improving on your writing and business skills.

8. Consulting

There are always people who need help with setting up their own website or blog and are very happy to pay for it.

Mapping out the road for them in your articles on your blog isn’t enough for them. They want tailor made advice. They might even want you to do part of the work.

When you consider consulting jobs make sure it’s worth your while. You’re building someone else’s asset. I’ve got websites where I spent less than 4 hours on and that made me over 10k in revenue. That’s 2,500 Dollar per hour and they still make money for me every day.

Consider what else you could be doing that can create revenue for you. Of course not everything should be measured in Dollar amounts. If you genuinely enjoy the consulting (I Know I do) you should defenitely consider doing it.

9. Ghost writing

Probably the best kept secret of Fortune 500 companies. Not everything that appears to have been written by their CXO is actually from their hand. They use Ghost Writers. Someone who writes an article, an opinionated piece and get paid handsomely. The CEO’s of big companies don’t have time (nor the writing skill) to publicize often. But they do want to use their influence and name to their advantage.

Ghost writers get paid handsomely for work where their name never gets mentioned. You’ll get a hefty NDA and a huge penalty if you even mention the fact that you did ghost writing for someone in company X. It’s a major reputation damaging fact if someone finds out there’s actually someone else behind the writing of a big shot in a company.

The compensation you receive usually amounts in the mid 4 figures to upper 4 figures range.

10. A Paid column

Unlike ghost writing with a paid column the client wants your name under the piece you’ve written. That’s also the value they’re paying for.

If you have a controversial opinion or a new vision on an (old) subject and you are known in the industry you will get asked to write columns for newspapers, magazines and online publications.

You can speed up the process of being asked by making sure you’re seen by the (chief) editors. Follow them on Twitter. Comment on their social feeds and their news items if you can. Add value to their work and you’ll be considered faster.

11. Medium

Medium.com is a website where normal people can write stories. They are awarded “claps” by the Medium community. Writers are paid based on the amount of claps they receive.

At the moment of writing this article (August 19 2019) Medium allows writers from 34 countries around the globe to join their partner program.

 

Medium has a tax wizard to guide you to which tax form to fill out. They explicitly mention that they do not give tax advice and neither do I… So consult a (local) accountant to help you find the right tax form to fill out.

There are a lot of writers on Medium that earn quite a bit of money with it. But you need to be a good writer and you need to enjoy writing. Don’t start writing on Medium because you want to make money. Start to write on Medium because you love to write.

Use Medium in combination with your blog

You can combine your writing on Medium with your articles on your blog. Try to write a prequel to a blog post you already made. That way you can link out to your blog in your Medium article. This is a great way to kill two birds with one stone.

You can also use Medium to drive email signups to your email list. Or, while it’s not prohibited to use affiliate links on Medium posts, you could get in trouble, you’re more free to use affiliate links on your own article you link to from Medium.

12. Coaching

Just like consulting you can coach other bloggers to create a successful blog like yours. Being successful is more than just having a great idea. It’s a mind shift. A habit.

You write something every week or every other day or daily. You think about your blog / your business on a daily basis. You’re always on the lookout for new angles for your blog. New additions to old articles.

This lifestyle, this habit is something you can teach other people too. Just like Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Effective people. You could create your own: The XX habits of highly successful bloggers.

You might not be great at writing. Maybe you’re great at photography or Photoshop or Video. If you have your own blog you will become a master at something. And a master needs a student.

13. Speaking gigs

This isn’t for everyone. Most bloggers enjoy writing and doing some AMA’s or a bit of YouTube. But being in front of a real life audience is quite something else.

People want to learn and hear from a successful blogger. So expect to be invited to share your story on your niche related conferences.

If you haven’t been asked yet but would love to do a speaking gig… Just contact your favourite conferences and ask to speak. You probably won’t be able to charge something as opposed to being asked. But you can build a portfolio of speaking gigs and one gig leads to the next which leads to a paying gig.

14. Guest posts

A high authority blog also attracts advertisers that want to be seen by your audience. Who wouldn’t want to be featured on the WSJ or The Guardian. Well those articles aren’t for sale but your could sell your store space.

I have a blog that lands me a couple of hundred Dollar per month in guest posts. A lot of brands want “nofollow” links inserted in these guest posts. It’s a form of paid linkbuilding which is prohibited by Google. Or at least… Google wants you to “label” these links with nofollow tags so Google can see the difference between a paid link (which they don’t want to give any value) and a editorial link (which Google desperately wants to give value to and distinguish from the paid links).

15. Sell your website(s)

Once you build a following and you have traction you can start thinking about selling your website. Flippa is a website that is a marketplace for people who want to sell and buy websites.

You can normally ask 1x – 4x your yearly profit.  So if you’re done with your blog or don’t think you can get it to the next level anymore you could consider selling it.

Do keep in mind that the moment you sell it is also the moment you lose an asset that could potentially land you a multiple in income over the next few years. Not just 1x to 4x but 10x if you keep building your blog.

I would only suggest selling your website if you’re really tired from doing the work and you’re ALSO seeing your traffic slide. If you do see your traffic decline, spend a couple of weeks / months to get it up again because you’ll get a much better price for a blog that’s on the rise than a blog that’s on a decline.

7 of the best (free) blogging platforms to make money with in 2019

So you decided to start your own blog? Great! Before you can really get going, you need to decide what blogging platform you want to use to make money with. In this article I’ll compare 7 of the largest blogging platforms you can use to make money with.

What is a blogging platform?

It’s basically web based software that allows you to write articles and publish them online. Any blogging platform will allow you to publish your articles. Add media (images, video, etc) to it. Customize the way it looks by offering different free and paid themes.

Blogging and web hosting

Some blogs are only hosted by the platform itself. Others you can choose your own hosting. In this tutorial I mention a couple of blogging platforms which don’t allow you to host it yourself. It’s proprietary software that’s not open source. Wix, Tumblr, Weebly and Medium are platforms that only allow you to publish content on their platform.

WordPress, Joomla and Drupal allow you to download the (open source) software and host it on your own web server. This gives you a lot more freedom and doesn’t create a vendor lock in. You can move your data to another web host or download all your content and start again on another blogging platform if you wanted to.

Introduction to the 7 blogging platforms

I’ll first give a short introduction of all the different platforms. Once you’ve gotten to know all of them, I’ll zoom in and tell you what platforms are best to make money with.

  1. WordPress
  2. Joomla
  3. Drupal
  4. Tumblr
  5. Medium
  6. Weebly
  7. Wix

1. WordPress

Not many people know this but the biggest blogging platform in the world is split in two. You have WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

WordPress.org is the foundation that “invented” WordPress. You can download a free version of WordPress via that domain and run it on your own web server. You can also run WordPress on a paid webhost like Bluehost. Whether you run it on a webhosting you’re already renting or you get a new hosting package: it’s gonna cost you!

If you don’t want to pay anything for your blog, you should go to WordPress.com. There you can start your own blog, for free.

The downside of the free version is that you get a subdomain on wordpress.com like yourname.wordpress.com. You don’t get your own domain name like yourname.com. You can of course have your own domain name, but that isn’t free.

If you’re just testing the water you should use WordPress.com. It’s free. You can have a look how it works. Play around with it. Find out if blogging is something for you.

2. Joomla

Joomla used to be a pretty popular blogging platform. It’s an open source free to use platform.

Joomla has been downloaded over a 100 million times in the past decade. I’ve used them only a few times as a blogging platform. It’s a little bit more advanced than WordPress. If you’re a programmer or are interested in the technicalities of blogging software, Joomla might be a good choice.

3. Drupal

Drupal has been around for quite some time. About 10 years ago it was really popular. A lot of websites used it. Somehow they missed the boat. Their developer base was too small to catch up on all the new possibilities the web gave us.

If you asked me 10 years ago I would’ve said that Drupal was a serious contender as a platform if you wanted to start a new blog. Right now, I wouldn’t start using this platform. I think it’s too complicated. Great for developers. Not so much for normal people who just want to start blogging and make money with it.

4. Tumblr

Just yesterday it was announced that Tumblr was rumoured to have been sold for 3 million Dollar to Automatic. A couple of years back Yahoo bought it for a value of more than 1 Billion Dollar. What a whopping write off that must have been.

I actually like Tumblr a lot. It’s very user friendly. You can setup your blog in seconds.

5. Medium

Medium is a little bit more of a niche platform. If you’re in the business niche (which is very broad still) Medium is a good place to start a blog.

Medium is an up and coming, already live for quite some time though. It really started taking off in 2013. It’s basically a large news website / knowledge website where everyone can post articles on. You can give the writer “claps” to show him your l0vvvv for his work.

A nice way to show your appreciation. I like Medium but it’s not for every niche. Business, tech, startups, AI. That sort of stuff.

6. Weebly

Weebly was acquired a few months ago by Square. Square is the payment provider (for retail). Square acquired Weebly because they want to cross a bridge between the retail space and the online world.

It’s free to use if you don’t run a online store on it. Great for starting out as a blogger. They also let you run your own blog on one of their subdomains. If you want your own domain prices start at around 6 Dollar per month.

7. Wix

Wix has been around for more than 10 years and keeps getting popular by the day. There user interface is very user friendly. It’s easy to start a blog.

You can use Wix for free on one of their subdomains like yoursite.wix.com. If you want a domain name you’ll need a premium plan which starts at about 5 Dollar per month.

On which platform can you make the most money?

Let’s start with the ones you can make the least amount of money with.

Or platforms that cost you the most to get up and running. I’ve mentioned this before and I’ll say it again and again:

Free comes at a cost.

Joomla & Drupal are free. Joomla doesn’t require a lot of resources to run. Drupal is a little more resource heavy if you want to cache a lot. But to get up and running with those platforms you’re going to spend a lot of time.

It takes a while to really configure the platforms and it takes even longer to really get to know them. Mastering these platforms takes months and you should be submersed in them 5 days a week or you’ll forget where all the options are.

Yes, you can look up everything online or on YouTube. But for a small business these (powerful) platforms should not be used. The cost of these free platforms is too high. It takes you too long to master them. It’s going to cost you a lot of money if you ask a consultant to help you set them up.

Weebly and Wix both offer great UX when building your blog. They don’t offer many options to customize though and you have limited storage space for images and video.

At the time of writing this blog is 3 weeks old. Contains 72,000 words of content and about 200 images. Guess how much space this takes up? 150 MB. With Wix and Weebly you get 500 MB of storage for free. So after 30 months you’ll have to upgrade.

You’ll pay 5 Dollars per month. That’s not even the worst thing because it’s not a lot of money, but it’s the scalability of the platforms that I think is the biggest problem.

Use this platform if you want a simple online store

If you want to host a (very) simple online store you can use Weebly or Wix just fine. But as you grow you’ll also want more advanced features. You want this plugin in stead of that one. You want custom code and Weebly or Wix don’t offer this.

So you’re digging yourself a hole which is hard to get out of. The longer you stay on the platform the harder it is to move to a more sustainable platform.

Tumblr is great for blogging but not for money making blogs

I like Tumblr, I really do. I think it’s more user friendly than WordPress. But you don’t own your Tumblr website. Tumblr shows ads on it. You can’t stop that. More Tumblr ads means less space for you own.

Starting in 2017 it isn’t even possible anymore to add Google Adsense to your Tumblr blog. Probably the #1 way to make money online is through Adsense. You add a small snippet of code to your website and Google automagically adds ads to your website.

It’s not possible to do it on Tumblr. Not Adsense, nor Media.net (Microsoft’s Adsense) nor any other major ad networks.

Tumblr has its own ad network and allows brands to advertise on your blog without any revenue sharing. If you just want to touch the water, see what blogging is like: Tumblr is a great way to start blogging. But not to make money with it.

Medium is a great channel to make money, if you’re a good writer

The part after if is important. If you lack the writing skills, stay off Medium.com. On Medium you get paid through claps other people give you. If they don’t like your writing skills you get no claps. No claps is no money.

You can’t make any “easy” articles littered with affiliate links, you’ll get banned. Çreate insightful pieces of content that bring real value to the readers.

You can add affiliate links to your Medium articles but you have to be a bit careful. Writing a 500 words blog with 10 links all with an affiliate tracking code won’t be accepted. Your post will just disappear into nothingness.

If you’re a good writer and writing is the only thing you want to do than I suggest you start a blog on Medium and apply for their Partner Program.

Stick to a niche. Keep writing and building content. Try to make between 3 to 5 content pieces before you start your outreach. The articles should have a minimum length of 1000 words preferably 2000 words and a minimum of 3 images.

Once you’ve created a bit of content look for other creators on Medium. Follow them. Comment on their articles. Add value to their articles.

The more followers you have the more eyeballs your articles will get and the more money you’ll make through the Medium platform.

The ultimate money making platform: WordPress

WordPress is by far the most used blogging platform (to make money) around the globe. By estimation there are around 175 millions websites online. One third of those are WordPress. Half is hosted on WordPress.com the other half is self hosted.

I would suggest to first make a WordPress.com subdomain and test the waters. See what you think. I think it’s pretty good blogging software. UX is good. Adding a post is easy. Uploading media is easy. You can just drag and drop images in content without going to an upload screen or anything like that. Hosting for WordPress is pretty cheap.

There are a lot of hosting specific tools that keep you installation up to date. Bluehost has a WordPress Hosting tool to help you manager your WordPress installation and to speed it up with caching. Siteground has the same.

The real benefit from WordPress comes from Plugins

There are tens of thousands of plugins for WordPress. Every plugin ads functionality to your basic installation. Most of them are free to use. Some of them have premiums you can buy. A lot of them are very handy to use. Let me sum up some for you:

AMP

AMP = Advanced Mobile Pages. Ever clicked on a result in Google and saw that the site loaded very quickly on your mobile device? Like instant? That’s AMP. You’re being shown a very basic version of a web page but the benefit is speed.

Google has confirmed that faster pages rank higher than slower pages. So this is a must have plugin for WordPress.

Yoast SEO Plugin

If you want to rank higher in Google you want to add the right titles and description tags to your pages. You want to get input on how well your pages are written. You want to link a lot to your cornerstone content (your most important content Google should rank the highest).

Yoast SEO Plugin helps you with all that. When you also downloaded AMP, you should also download Glue, to glue the two together.

W3 total cache

Everyone wants a quick loading website. That’s why AMP was invented. That’s also why you should use a caching plugin like W3 Total Cache.

Enable caching and the most basic minify settings. You should see a considerable improvement in Google Pagespeed.

Social sharing plugin

You can’t go without a social sharing plugin. One of the easiest ways to get more traffic is by having other people do the outreach work for you. Your readers network is infinitely bigger than yours. Make use of that by downloading Social Pug. It’s a very basic social sharing plugin that can show the number of shares on each social button. Don’t activate that yet by the way. Once you have some traction and some social shares activate it. It doesn’t really look good if you have 0 shares on every blog post right?

Think about where your audience is. If it’s not on LinkedIn, don’t show the. The smaller the number of social sharing buttons the more likely someone is to click on one of them because of the choice paradox. Making a choice is easier when you only have 3 – 5 options. If you have more you’re more inclined not to make a choice.

Click to Tweet

Are you lazy? You should be! Because lazy people are more creative. They think of more ways to make their life easier. One of those ways is Click to Tweet. A plugin that ads a box where your audience can click on to tweet. Like this:

Lazy people are more creative Click To Tweet

People love to tweet things that make them laugh or things that makes them look smart. So make sure you include a couple of these boxes throughout your articles to get some extra social l0vvvv.

Adsense: your first (and easiest) road to making money

Google used to have a WordPress Plugin for Adsense. That was great because it automagically placed the ads on the best performing spots. Google has not been sitting quietly in a corner and they improved their basic snippet to also have the same functionality.

So signup for Google Adsense. You can only signup if yo already have a website with a considerable amount of content. Don’t signup if you just started and still have the default “Hello Dolly” post up.

Invest a few days in creating valuable content. Only then should you signup for Adsense and have your website approved.

Once your account is activated go to Ads -> Auto ads

Click on “Setup Auto Ads” on the right.

You’ll get a piece of code that looks like this:

<script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
<script>
     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({
          google_ad_client: "ca-pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXX",
          enable_page_level_ads: true
     });
</script>

Include this code in your theme by going to Appearance -> Theme Editor and open the header.php file on the right side of your screen.

Click on your theme header and include the code between the <head> </head> element of the HTML

Just add a new line and paste it in there. Visit your website on a different browser and check your HTML code via Right click – view source to see if the code is in there.

Next up is the AMP code snippet (IF you downloaded and activated the AMP plugin). No ads will be shown on your AMP pages (so people visiting your website from a mobile phone) if you don’t also add the AMP Adsense snippet.

Click on the auto ads for amp tab.

Then go to step 2 and you’ll again get a code snippet.

You can past this snippet immediately below the other snippet you just added.

<script async custom-element="amp-auto-ads"
        src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0/amp-auto-ads-0.1.js">
</script>

Go to step 3

Paste this code snippet in the same file but just after where you see the <body> tag.

<amp-auto-ads type="adsense"
              data-ad-client="ca-pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXXX">
</amp-auto-ads>

I removed my ID everywhere, so if you copy the above code(s) make sure you add your own ID to it otherwise you won’t get any ad impressions and subsequently no income.

It takes a few days for the ads to show.

In the meanwhile you have to do something else thats new for 2019. You have to add an ads.txt file to your web server with a line of text. Connect your domain to your Adsense account so Google knows your WordPress website hasn’t been hacked by someone else and they added their own Adsense code.

Download the ads.txt file and upload it to the route of your website. That’s usually the public_html folder.

Analytics is the start of your money making journey

If you haven’t already done so, signup for Google Analytics (free and extensive analytics plugin but you’re giving Google even more knowledge about the web :)) or Matomo which is a first party (self hosted) analytics plugin. That means your data, better GDPR compliance, etc.

If you installed the Yoast SEO plugin you can add your AMP analytics code via that plugin if you go to AMP -> Analytics.

Use this Google Analytics code snippet as an example but DON’T FORGET to include your own ID in it where it says GA_MEASUREMENT_ID.

<script async custom-element="amp-analytics" src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0/amp-analytics-0.1.js"></script>
<amp-analytics type="gtag" data-credentials="include">
<script type="application/json">
{
  "vars" : {
    "gtag_id": "<GA_MEASUREMENT_ID>",
    "config" : {
      "<GA_MEASUREMENT_ID>": { "groups": "default" }
    }
  }
}
</script>
</amp-analytics>

Your tracking ID should look like this: UA-1234567-1

This should be enough to track your traffic on the AMP pages but you still need to add the “normal” code snippet to the same page we added the other code snippets to earlier. The header.php and also between the <head></head> tags.

Measuring and acting upon your website traffic and engagement is the road to success.

You can see what pages have the most interaction, have the most visitors. You can see what are more and less successful pages.

Best of all it makes your traffic visible if you haven’t received any blog comments or income from your blog yet but you did already spend days / weeks / months on it.

If you’re planning to do some paid outreach you can see what channels are most effective. What channels get you the most traffic for you Buck? Which ones the most engagement? The most income?

When you’re planning to add an ecommerce store to your blog you can implement Google Analytics Ecommerce tracking. Once you’ve done that you can see the value every visitor has.

Connect Google’s Search console to your analytics account. First signup foor Google Search Console. Next go to your Analytics account -> Acquisition (left menu) -> Search console. If you used the same Google Account for both services you should be able to easily validate Search Console  with your analytics account (use the second option when you get the validation options in Search Console) and connect analytics.

Use the option on the right for easier authentication

Track your rankings in search engines

I receive over 200,000 visitors per month on my various websites via Google’s Organic results. So I really depend on them income wise. Google’s Search console also shows you your rankings when you go to the performance tab. But I also find it a nice addition to track my rankings for my top keywords with Wincher. You can try it for free for 14 days. Just add all your keywords and you’ll immediately see where you’re ranking. After the trial is over it costs you 4 Dollar a month.

You can add competitors to your reports so you can see where they rank compared to you. If they rank higher you can see what page and investigate how they rank higher. Do they have better content? Do they have more links pointing to their domain / page? Use Majestic to check how many links they have pointed to their domain / page. You won’t get a lot of information if you use the free version but you’ll get a glimpse of what you need to outrank them.

The most important reason why you should use WordPress?

You’re building an asset. It’s on webhosting you control. It’s on your database. You can migrate to another hosting provider when you want. You can make backups and decide what plugins you install without paying for them on a monthly basis.

You’re not locked in to a contract where you pay more the more visitors you get or the older your domain gets. The older your website the more content you added and the paid plans from the other platforms all focus on long time users who’re not inclined to go off the platform because they’ve built a valuable asset on their platform.

In the end that’s what’s going to cost you the most money. Not being able to scale enough and create a website for your audience the way you want it.

When you have 1000 visitors a month it doesn’t really matter that not everything works how you’d like it to work. But once you get to 10,000 visitors a month or 100,000 visitors a month you want more and more control over the user experience of your visitors. You don’t want ads (on Tumblr) you don’t want to pay 50 USD extra (Weebly / Wix) because you’re succesful. You want to stay with the same host and add plugins that can help you grow your audience even more like email marketing plugins.

Having your own email marketing list is probably the second most important asset you have to build.

Once you have a bit of traction and you start to receive 100’s of visitors every month, you should focus on building an email marketing list.

People subscribe to your list for the following reasons

  • For a free ebook
  • To get a content upgrade (for example bonus tips on stuff they just read about)
  • Because they get a discount
  • They love your content

For anyone who wants to make money online your email marketing list is your lifeline to create more revenue.

It comes at very little cost. There are a lot of email marketing providers that offer their services for free (or at very low cost) if you still have a small list size. Mailchimp has a free service until you reach 2000 subscribers. Activecampaign has a 9 Dollar/month package.

Read more about email marketing here.

If you have the right hosting WordPress is lightning fast

If you host at Bluehost or Sitepoint you should be set for the fast web hosting part. Did you install the W3 total cache plugin too? If you did you have the best combination to start with your WordPress website and you should be future proof.

Go check your Google Pagespeed score and if you’re not happy with it follow my Website Optimization guide.

Weebly and Wix are fast. But they optimize all websites the same way. There’s no way you can improve the PageSpeed beyond a certain point.

This is the Google PageSpeed score on mobile from one of Wix’s users.

This is my score after I followed my own optimization guide.

That’s quite a difference. A day and night difference I’d say. That’s because I optimize for 1 website. I don’t optimize for 100,000 websites and make concessions.

You’re totally at their mercy. If they decide to change something which affects page speed you have to cross your fingers the needle turns the right way.

You can always file a ticket to ask them to improve Page Speed but the question is how big their pile of “Stuff to do” is.

Take control of your own future and choose WordPress with your own web hosting

If you want to make money online, there’s really only one option to choose. WordPress as a platform hosted on your own web server or a web server dedicated to WordPress hosting.

You can have a go at WordPress by going to WordPress.com and trying it out. Once you have the hang of it start your own website “fo real”.

Don’t be mistaken… It will take months and months of constant work to move the needle. You won’t get rich quick and you won’t get rich on day one. But you can make money online. Lot’s of it. I’ve made over 200,000 Dollar the past few years with my websites but it has taken me a long long time to get to this point of financial freedom.

If you have any questions please leave a comment! Happy to answer!