Make Money Blogging: The Art and Science of Diversification

Think Jelly Beans...

Finally, we’re here! This is the last and final part of the Making Money Blogging Series and we’ve covered nearly all of ways in which a blogger can make more than a decent living through their blog (if they so choose).

The last “way” in which a blogger makes money is less of an actual methodology and more of a strategy of diversification – in other words, the very best bloggers are the ones that take a multi-faceted approach to making money.

And especially for Professional Bloggers, they ultimately know that it is in their best interest to capitalize on the multiple streams of income so that if one channel falls short one month that they still have money coming into their pockets.

The challenge is spending your time on the right ones and not necessarily doing all of them because if you do you may extend yourself too far in terms of time, energy, and resources. You see, maximizing one stream of income is better than doing mediocre (typically less than mediocre) in all of them.

Then, after stabilizing one income stream, you begin to experiment in another and building that one up. You then rinse and repeat as you have time and need.

10 Things to Remember:

If only it were that easy...

As I mentioned above, not all of the strategies will work for your blog, your content, and the community that will ultimately to experience your advertising and monetization strategies.

Here are a couple of things that I’ve learned over the years that have served me very well:

1. Experiment thoughtfully and wisely when you first start. Choose 1 of the strategies at a time and run the trial for a set amount of time.
2. Remember that it is better to maximize and grow one channel than have a shotgun approach and do all of them at the exact same time. Your blog will quickly get cluttered, messy, and just plain ugly and annoying. You know the blogs that I’m talking about – they are trying too hard and it shows. Shameful.
3. Never overextend yourself when it comes to managing the channel. It takes time and careful work.
4. Listen to your community and audience. Be explicit with them with your advertising and obvious with your strategies and methods. There’s no reason to “pull anything on them” and catch them off guard! Be authentic.
5. Make sure you have a Disclosure Policy statement!
6. The context and content that you write helps you choose the channels and strategies that will work the best. You write about photography and cameras? Affiliate marketing would work well as you mention hardware that you use and review.
7. There’s no rush and any “pressure” you feel is completely artificial. Seriously. Especially as a TentBlogger, you’re goal isn’t to transform into a revenue generating machine but to give you a few extra dollars in your wallet so that you can spend time on the other things in life, right? It may happen but that’s a nothing more than a nice bonus.
8. Patience and time are the only true ingredients to long-term success. Frustrated? You’ve got the wrong perspective.
9. Remember that there is definitely a “Good Time to Start Advertising” and I’m pretty explicit about what I believe: Wait. Build your community and content first.
10. Not having fun? Then you’ve forgotten one of my biggest rules! Making money blogging is part of what your blog is about and if this isn’t fun then you should not advertise. Period.

So there. We’re at the end. This doesn’t mean that I’m done giving you all the tips and tricks that I’ve learned and that has lead me to leave my full time job and become a Full Time Blogger!

These were just the foundations and the core ideas and opportunities and so now we get into the nitty-gritty details of what I do specifically. I hope to outline these over the coming months.

Very exciting! I hope this series was helpful and has laid some groundwork as you seek to make a little more from the work that you’re already doing! Keep blogging strong!

[This is a part of the Make Money Blogging Series.]