Are you wondering how to monetize your blog from day one as a business owner? You’re in the right place.
As an entrepreneur, you understand the value of having multiple outlets to generate income. With a blog, you can establish yourself as an authority in your field while also creating another revenue stream for your business, and it doesn’t have to take years and a boatload of money to get started.
If done strategically, monetizing your blog from day one is achievable by following certain steps that can help set up the groundwork for success. Plus, blogging for business can truly help you focus less on social media to rely on leads. Read on if you’re ready to learn how to monetize your blog from day one as a business owner.
This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my links, at no extra cost to you.
Write high-quality content
If you want to make money from your blog as a business owner, you really need to write high-quality content. You can’t be writing posts that are super short that don’t really answer the keywords’ search intent.
(To find a keyword’s search intent and make sure you’re answering it, be sure to just do a quick Google search for your keyword and see what the current ranking posts actually cover.)
Don’t worry though, you can always go in and change your keyword in the future if you really have to.
You have to write high-quality content because by putting your marketing efforts into something free, (like a free resource on a blog), you’ll be showing the potential buyers who come to your site that you’re there, you know exactly what you’re talking about, and you’re willing to educate people on it, even if they don’t want to purchase.
Of course, be sure to only share specific information so that you don’t share everything that is in your paid content or services. BReally make sure you’re kind of playing the edge of what should be free and what shouldn’t be free pretty well, because you also don’t want to go ahead and give everything away for free.
Revolve your posts around your services
When it comes to how to monetize your blog from day one, make sure that your posts always revolve around one of your services.
obviously, this won’t always be easy, but we like to always put a call to action at the end of our posts, kind of letting people know like, “Hey, if you like this post, we do offer web design services, you can learn more here, or you can get in touch here.”
To make this easy, use your blog’s categories. So for instance, let’s say we have a blog category called “web design.” Anytime we have a post in that category, the call to action will revolve around a web design service.
If we have something in the notion category, it’s going to either revolve around our notion service or it’s going to revolve around our Stand Out with Notion course.
This way, if someone reads your post and is interested in everything you had to say, you do have that call to action there to guide them in the right direction if they want to learn more or even inquire to work with you.
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Have a freebie you can promote with each of your blog categories
Going along with that, you can also make sure that there is a freebie that goes with every single one of your posts. If someone signs up for your email list, even though it might seem like they’re trying to just get the free information from you, they’ll most likely stay on your email list.
Some people will just kind of freebie hop and take your freebies and unsubscribe immediately. But a lot of people will stay on your email list, and then you’ll have the opportunity to nurture them and potentially turn them into a client!
Make sure that you have a different freebie for each one of your categories too. For instance, with our Stand Out with Notion course, we always put a call to action for it at the end of our notion posts. We also have a freebie that’s all centered around Notion, so we always make sure to put that in our Notion post as well.
Be sure to always put your freebie higher up on the page, though, because people tend to pay attention to things a lot more right at the beginning of the post.
You’ll actually find people might leave your page as they continue to read the post. People don’t always read the entire post, so always make sure all critical information is at the top.
Promote your affiliate links whenever you can
Another effortless way to make money from your blog as a business owner is to use affiliates!
As a business owner, you probably are part of more affiliate programs than you even think you are, or you at least have access to more than you think you are.
So, for instance, one of the easiest affiliate programs to become a part of are with your CRM. I say this because I’ve used HoneyBook and Dubsado, and with both of them, you’re pretty much automatically signed up for their affiliate program just by being a paying member of their platform.
So you can very easily write posts about Dubsado, HoneyBook, or whatever else you use, and then tell the reader what you love about it. You can put your affiliate link in there, too.
People are actually a lot more likely to click affiliate links than to end up reaching out for services. It’s a much easier yes on their part. So be sure to try to find ways that you can meld your affiliate links into your posts.
Make it easy for people and let them know if your link gets them a discount. For instance, I know if someone uses my Flodesk link, they actually get 50% off for however long their first membership is, whether that’s the month or the year. So that ends up saving them a lot of money in the long run because I believe it’s about $40 a month otherwise!
If they’re going to be getting something out of it, they’re even more likely to click that link.
Instead of just making it a regular hyperlink on your site, be sure to turn it into an actual button if you can. So, for instance, in WordPress, there are button blocks, and you can just go ahead and add a block that looks just like a button onto your site to help draw the eye.
You can make it super wide, too, so that it fills the width of the blog post. Don’t be afraid, too, to throw in your affiliate link every time you mention HoneyBook, Flodesk, Dubsado, or whatever else you use throughout that same post, because, again, people could really click on anything!
Collaborate with other business owners
Another way to make money from your blog as a business owner is to actually try collaborating with other business owners for your blog. This is something that I find not a lot of people do. However, it’s really not any different than gaining visibility by being on someone else’s podcast.
You’ll want to find business owners that don’t have services that rival yours, but maybe you both serve the same community, and you could end up just reaching out to them, maybe asking if they want to do a guest post for your site and you can do a guest post for theirs.
You could do a swap – again, this will really help you get new eyeballs on your content. This in turn could turn to people coming over to your website, learning about your services, and inquiring.
When you do guest posts, be sure to ask if you’re allowed to have a freebie link in your guest post because that can be a tremendous way for people who read the post to easily stay in touch with you.
If you do a swap you can offer the same thing back and be like, “If you write a guest post for me, you’re more than welcome to put a freebie link in there as well.”
Promote upcoming masterclasses or other products/education
Last but not least, use your blog to market anything that you have that’s upcoming!
So you can, for instance, make blog posts for upcoming masterclasses or products that you have coming out. This can help you grow your interest list or at least get people aware that this is something you’re going to be talking about for a while.
Be sure to include a freebie somewhere in those posts, even if it is for an upcoming masterclass or product. That way, people can sign up and you can tag them directly in your email marketing platform that that’s something that they’re interested in.
You could also go ahead and make a waitlist. So maybe in your blog post, you have an upcoming masterclass that you’re trying to market. So in the blog post, you end up talking about a topic related to that masterclass, and then at the end, you can let them know about it, and include a link for people to sign up to learn more.
Keep in mind too though, you’ll want to make a note somewhere in your blogging planner that you’ll have to go back to that post once the masterclass is live and take that link down and swap it out for a link to actually just purchase the masterclass.
Overall though, know that it is a very long-term game. Sometimes you will have posts you’ll write that will suddenly start ranking quickly. Other times, it can take up to a year.
The more you blog, the more topical your site becomes and the easier it is going to be for you to rank and then the harder keywords you can start to write for. Keep that in mind and know that it is a long-term game that is very much worth it.
Well, there you have it! That’s how to monetize your blog from day one as a small business owner.
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Krystianna, or "KP" for short, is a multi-passionate, travel-obsessed creative who struggles to sit still. In addition to running the show at Inkpot, hosting The Unexpected Entrepreneur podcast, and building templates for Not Your Average Template Shop, she also operates three travel blogs.
KP’s design journey began in book publishing, but she fell in love with the truly limitless possibilities that web design presents. Since then, she’s been helping photographers and creatives become the no-brainer option for their dream clients before they even get on a call.
