Ok, so now you’ve installed WordPress, chosen a theme, customised it a little and added some plugins… What’s next? Are you now ready to make money with a WordPress blog?

Let’s discover how to monetize your blog with Google Adsense, banner ads and Amazon.

The About Page

Before we dive into monetizing your blog, let’s just cover the type of content you need to add to the key pages of your blog.

One of the most important pages is the About page.

Visitors to your blog are often a little curious about the person behind it, so let them know a little bit about yourself, your background, why you created the blog and why you first became interested in this particular hobby in the first place.

Believe me – a simple About Me page can do wonders for the popularity of your blog and make people want to return again in the future. Human beings like to feel like they are communicating with real people, so make sure your blog conveys that it is written by a real person and isn’t just a random faceless online blog.

So what do you put on your About page?

Well, you don’t want to tell them your whole life story but you do want to mention a little bit about yourself – and especially stuff that relates to your hobby.

Try to keep your writing informal and add a photograph of yourself to the page too because your readers will often be curious as to what the author looks like.

Here’s an example of what you might write on the page:

Hi there, my name is Joe Bloggs and welcome to my fishing blog. I love fishing and have been a keen fisherman since the age of 13 when I first went out to sea with my granddad on his trawler. I can still remember the thrill of getting my first catch, but today I take things a little easier and prefer to concentrate on gentle fishing by the riverbank.

I go out fishing most weekends with my two children Oliver and Harry, and I decided to start this blog to share with you my experiences and fishing tips…. etc.

Hopefully you get the idea 🙂

Another important page is your Terms / Privacy page.

It’s important that you let people know that you might receive affiliate commissions if people buy a product through a link on you blog – or if you have an opt-in form on there that you respect their email privacy and won’t pass on their details….. etc.

There are standard terms and privacy policy templates available online that you could use – but remember that these might not totally cover you legally.

For total reassurance you would need to get one drafted up by a lawyer. Find out the law in your country and make sure that you comply. Remember I’m NOT a lawyer and I’m in NO way giving legal advice 🙂

A Note About Making Blog Posts

At the heart of any blog is the actual content contained in it.

A blog without good content is pretty useless, as I’m sure you’ll agree. Good content is what makes people engaged with your blog. It’s why they found you in the first place and it’s why they’ll keep coming back…

So – filling your blog with great content is absolutely essential – and that means making regular blog posts.

As we touched on earlier, the great thing about a hobby blog is that you should already have a got knowledge of your subject – and because you’re part of target audience you should know the type of information YOU want to read, what people want to know, hot topics in your niche etc.

If you DO ever struggle to know what to write about then have a read through your favourite hobby magazine. That should give you plenty of ideas for blog posts…

Your hobby magazine is for sure a tool to always be using if you want to make money with a WordPress blog.

Don’t copy of course but take the idea, rewrite in your own words and add your own thoughts and opinions or experiences.

Another good place to look is online forums and even other blogs. If you can, try to base each blog post around a particular keyword, which should go some way towards getting your posts indexed by the search engines.

Monetizing Your Blog

Okay, so obviously you’re passionate about your hobby and you enjoy talking about it.

I reckon you’re going to really enjoy running your blog and being a blogger…

But let’s face it – we also want to make some money with a WordPress blog whilst we do it!

The good news is that there are a lot of ways to make money with a WordPress blog…

Google Adsense to Make Money with a WordPress Blog

Perhaps the most common way to make money with a WordPress blog is through Google Adsense.

Essentially you sign up to Adsense, put some code onto your blog and then Google will display adverts on your pages.

Then, when somebody clicks on one of these adverts you get paid a small commission.

There are different types of ads that you can choose to display, for example text ads, image ads, video ads and link ads.

You can see an example below of Adsense on a blog:

or the one below which is from a car blog:

Before you can start running ads on your blog you need to get yourself approved by Google.

This actually isn’t as easy as you might think because they can be quite picky over what they will and won’t allow, so make sure that you thoroughly read through terms and conditions (and obviously make sure that you can comply with them once you’ve signed up).

To sign up to Adsense simply click here.

Note that there are quite a few rules surrounding which sites they’ll accept – so if your blog is still under construction or doesn’t yet have any content on it then be aware that you will probably get rejected. It’s best to wait until your site is up and running before you apply for Adsense.

Once approved the actual process of putting the code onto your site is relatively simple and Google provides full instructions, so there’s not much point in me covering this here.

Amazon to Make Money with a WordPress Blog

Another common way to monetize a blog is by becoming an Amazon affiliate.

Since Amazon pays you a percentage of the purchase price for any sales you make through your affiliate link, there is great potential to make higher commissions than through Adsense; especially since Amazon sells products up to several thousand Dollars in price.

To learn more about the Amazon affiliate program and to sign up then just visit this link.

Amazon will display adverts on your blog and then if people click on those adverts and buy something you get paid a commission.

Amazon also supplies their own tools to go onto your blog, for example the Amazon Wish List Widget.

Review Posts

A great way to make money with a WordPress blog is through writing reviews of products and posting them to your blog.

Just give an honest review of a product that’s related to your niche and then put your affiliate links into the post.

Actually, this is a great way of selling Amazon products…

and the beauty of it is that your posts can get picked up by the search engines, and then people who are searching for that product might see your post.

Obviously someone who types “product name + review” into Google is obviously potentially looking to buy the product.

I’m sure you’ve done it too. You’re interested in buying a product and you want to find out what other people think of it before you actually buy it.

Often you’ve pretty much made the decision that you ARE going to buy it but your just looking for some reassurance.

So somebody is looking for reviews, they come across your blog post, buy the product through your affiliate link and you get paid.

The most important thing in a review is that you give an HONEST review of the product.

So – let’s say you are running a blog about golf and you’re reviewing a book you bought on Amazon that teaches people how to improve their golf swing.

All you need to do in your review is explain a little about what’s inside the product, why you decided to buy it yourself and what you really thought of it.

Don’t be overly positive in your review because you think that will make people more likely to buy – all products have faults, no matter how good they are, and it’s important that you tell people about the negatives as well as the positives.

Believe me – a couple of negative points in your review won’t put people off buying it in the least because everyone expects to find negatives.

A review which ONLY talks about the positives and how great a product is will actually set off alarm bells for many people because they’re going to think “hey, this isn’t an honest review. The guy just wants me to buy this.”

So – give an honest review and only recommend products that you actually truly DO recommend to people.

Before you write a review and promote a product, ask yourself “would I recommend this product to a friend?”

If the answer is YES then by all means go ahead and write your review and promote the product.

But if you wouldn’t really recommend it to a friend then it’s probably best to pass that product by and choose to review something that you WOULD recommend.

Then, at the end of your review make sure that you have a call to action.

You don’t need to be overly pushy with this – just say something along the lines of “In conclusion I would recommend this product to anyone who wants to learn how to improve their golf swing. Click on the link below to learn more about this and purchase “Product Name” today.”

You get the idea 🙂

Banner Ads

Another great way of monetizing your blog is through banner ads.

We’ve already discussed Google Adsense, but you could also consider things like Clickbank banner ads too to make money with a WordPress blog.

Remember as well that you could promote individual affiliate products on your blog – let’s say a Clickbank course etc – and you’ll often find that the owners of these products will have ready-made banners that they can supply you with.

You could also consider selling advertising space on your blog. You might struggle with this model at first but as soon as you have some decent traffic coming to your blog it should be possible to find people in your niche who would be willing to pay money to put an advert on your blogspace.

How to Make Money with a WordPress Blog

Hobby blogs are great because you will enjoy writing them AND you can make some money as you go.

As we discussed earlier, traditionally one of the big problems with blogging for profit is coming up with ideas for blog posts. It’s damn hard to constantly come up with ideas and write about content about a subject which you aren’t at all interested in (no matter how much money it makes you) – but with hobby blogs you can turn your passion into profit and make money with a WordPress blog.

Like any online business model, blogging requires you to put the work in – and there is no guarantee that your blog will be successful.

Always remember that the actual content is at the heart of your blog.

You’ve got to give people a reason to come to your blog in the first place and make them want to come back time and time again. Achieving this means writing good quality content on a regular basis and entertaining your readers as well as informing them.

WordPress itself is a wonderful tool and blogging is FUN.

Follow this process and get ready to make money with a WordPress blog.

Go and start your hobby blog today 🙂