How To Monetize Your Blog Without Upsetting Your Readers

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Blogging can be a great and creative way for someone with writing talent to make money. As long as you’re capable of writing coherent and informative posts and have a passion for something, you can make a blog and turn it into a fairly decent income machine. You'll need to commit to writing for your blog at least a few times per month and can be become a vehicle to passively generate income with a bit of research and additional work.

However, monetizing your blog can also be a risky endeavor. This is because the moment it feels like you’re selling out, your readers might get really upset and they may even criticize your decision. Even worse, they might just stop supporting you at all. So we’re going to give you a few tips on how you can carefully start earning money from your blog without upsetting your readers.

Be Transparent About What You're Trying To Achieve
Turning your blog into your career can be a great idea. If you’re passionate about something and want to completely dedicate yourself to pumping out useful content, then you’re obviously going to need some kind of financial support. With this in mind, it’s best to be transparent and tell people the truth. Don’t hide anything from them; tell them what you have in mind and politely let them know that you want to monetize your blog. If you let them know your intentions up front, there will be no surprises for the changes that might occur down the line. Being genuine and honest might go a long way people people more understanding and accepting as it shows that you’re willing to communicate with your audience and be transparent.

If You’re Going To Charge For Something, Make Sure It Adds Value
The most important goal to focus on when monetizing your blog is giving your readers content that is useful and actually provides value. Many people don’t realize that readers would be willing to pay for something, but they need to feel like it’s worth it first. For instance, selling an eBook might not sound like a lucrative idea at first, but if you’ve put a lot of time and research into the subject matter and source materials and combine it with your expertise, your readers might be willing to support you as long as it provides value to them

Find Non-offensive Ways To Monetize Your Blog
The simplest way to monetize a blog is to lock it behind a paywall. This obviously won’t work for the majority of blogs, so it’s important to look for other ways to provide added value to your readers without cutting off their access to the core of your content. For instance, you could offer blogging tips to your readers by coaching them, or you could even sell merchandise with your logo on it. These wouldn't detract from the current experience of your website. However, if you do decide to add premium content that is locked behind a subscription or fee, you will need to make sure it’s high quality and unique content that is worth the price. The moment your audience feels like you’re getting lazy with content and restricting it behind a paid service, they’ll probably stop supporting you.

This is a contributed post.