18 Pro Bloggers Share Their Monetization Strategy for 2016

As a blogger or web publisher, you’re probably aware of just how difficult it can be to devise and implement a successful monetization strategy.

From producing exceptional posts and media to employing the right tools and techniques, monetization can seem like a maze with no clear path to the end.

Add to that the fact that the industry is always in a constant state of flux — today’s hot new trend could be irrelevant tomorrow.

Publishers have already experienced this with the rise of ad blockers and the consequent fall in display ad revenues.

On your own, the challenge may indeed appear insurmountable. So we went ahead and asked some of the most prolific pro bloggers and monetization experts about what should be your monetization strategy for 2016. Here’s what they had to say.

1. Adam Connell / @adamjayc

Adam is the founder of Blogging Wizard, a training hub for bloggers who want to accelerate their blog’s growth. His advice has been featured on HuffPost, Forbes, CIO, and Entrepreneur.

"If you want to ramp up your income, you need a solid funnel to grow your email list and use to promote your services/products.

The longer we blog, the more we change things and over time we end up with a funnel that is leaking like a bucket.

So take a step back and look at what you can do to encourage each new subscriber to take the next step.

A quick way to get an overview of this is to use a tool like Hotjar.com, which allows you to add all of the pages in your funnel and see where people are dropping off."

2. Angie Nelson / @thewahwife

Angie Nelson manages several successful online ventures and shares her passion for making money with others on her blog The Work at Home Wife.

"Instead of thinking that more money comes from more content, spend a good deal of time this year making what you already have out there better.

Go through your most popular posts and make sure they are monetized properly. Add content upgrades whenever possible to get more people into your sales funnel or newsletter list. Find more and better ways to promote those things that are making you the most money now.

Reach out to your favorite brands and affiliate managers and strength those relationships through custom campaigns and ongoing sponsorships."

3. Chris Guthrie / @ChrisGuthrie

Chris Guthrie said goodbye to the typical 9-5 day job in 2009 and founded Up Fuel, a website that helps people how to start and grow an internet business. He has also written multiple books on the subject.

"The number one thing I’m working on is building my email list. I’m looking to double my email list at a minimum in 2016 because time and time again when I look at the growth of my business I’ve found it often parallels the growth of my email list and for 2016 I’m placing renewed focus on massively growing this list in 2016."

4. Daniel Scocco / @danielscocco

Daniel has built, bought, and sold over 30 blogs and websites over the years, and he founded Daily Blog Tips to share the tips & tricks he was learning along the way.

"Mobile! This is by far the strongest trend and landscape change we have seen over the past years.

If your monetization strategy doesn’t have a mobile component, you are certainly leaving money at the table. The least you could do is to have a responsive site and responsive ads. Better yet would be to have mobile apps that are monetized using different methods. For instance, if your website relies on advertising, you could launch premium mobile apps that have in-app purchases. Mobile is eating the world!" 

5. David Schneider / @SelfMadeBM

David Schneider is the co-founder of NinjaOutreach, an innovative new Blogger Outreach software for marketers. He writes about business and entrepreneurship at SelfMadeBusinessman, and enjoys travel.

"The problem I see with most bloggers is a lack of creating their own products to sell.

It is true there are a lot of ways to monetize a blog, such as through AdSense, affiliate sales, etc – but perhaps the most lucrative method as well as the one that teaches you the most is to have you own product to work to promote, sell, and optimize.

I believe we will continue to see a growth in people creating digital products like ebooks, courses, and software in 2016, and encourage more bloggers to do this as well."

6. Jerry Low / @WebHostingJerry

Jerry is the founder of Web Hosting Secret Revealed. Read Jerry’s tip in finding a profitable blogging niche here.

 

"How to make more money in 2016? The same as you should have in 2015: Narrow your focus.

Don’t go broad. Find a profitable niche (or, pick a unique angle to approach your niche). Figure out who your targeted audience are. Be an expert in your field. Make your blog the go-to spot whenever someone need help in your industry. Think Backlinko in link building tips, Copy Blogger in copywriting tips, Social Media Examiner in SMM, Smart Passive Income in web business,  and Web Hosting Secret Revealed in web hosting guide… okay, I am flattering myself a bit too much obviously – but you get the point.

I’ll help you on point #1 – the easiest way to find a profitable niche is by looking (and follow) at the money. By money, I mean advertisers’ money. Make use of tools like Google Keyword Planner, Spyfu, and SEM Rush to find out how much advertisers are spending on PPC in a specific niche. The more people are spending on ads, the more money it is to be made there."

7. John Paul Aguiar / @JohnAguiar

John Paul Aguiar is a blogger and entrepreneur specializing in showing how anyone can use blogging and social media to grow a business or promote an existing small business.

"My advice to bloggers is to narrow down what they offer. I fell into this trap in the beginning where I wanted to offer all kinds of help, numerous services, and consulting options.

Even though it did work, it became way to confusing to my readers and it became a big a pain in the a** to maintain and promote everything.

So, instead of offering 5 courses, offer 2, instead of offering 5 services, offer 1 or 2.

This makes it less confusing to your potential clients, customers and makes it much easier for YOU to maintain and promote.

Much easier to maintain and promote 2 or 3 things then it is to promote 10 things."

8. Karl Kangur / @MonetizePros

Karl is a blogger at MonetizePros.com, a blog dedicated to making more money off your website and achieving both the creative and financial goals of your online business.

"When we talk about website monetization strategies, most people are not looking to build something from scratch. They’ve got some kind of system in place but they’ve reached the limits of their growth. They’re looking to make MORE money, not looking to make money.

Instead of running around and trying to find newer and more innovative methods for making money, dig deep into the analytics of your current revenue. Stop investing time in the things that don’t have an effect on your bottom-line and invest more time and money into what already works.

At MonetizePros we realized that less than 20% of our revenue was coming from advertising but it was costing us a lot of visitors and ruining the user experience. Now we’ve only got one set of advertisements in our sidebar and that’s it. We’re getting more traffic and making more money off the effective 80% of our monetization strategy."

9. Kristi Hines / @kikolani

Kristi is a freelance writer, ghostwriter, and copywriter.Click here to find out how she can help you create high-quality blog content, lead magnets, eBooks, and web copy for your business.

 "Diversify! If you are focusing on one source of revenue for your blog, you’ll never find out if you could be earning more through other channels.

Give things like affiliate promotions, advertising sales, your own products, and your own services a try to see what leads to the best income!"

10. Loz James / @contentchampion

Professional content marketer and founder of Content Champion, Loz James is on a mission to provide the training and tools to help you become a content marketing champion in your online business.

"Without doubt, if you want to make more money through your blog in 2016 then I would build an online course – but not just any online course, you have to create something that scratches an itch or you won’t make those all important sales.

My experiments with micro-courses in 2015 proved to me that this is the best direction to go in, and since then I’ve been learning as much as I can about creating, launching and promoting my future courses.

In this context, two resources I’d recommend would be David Siteman Garland’s Create Awesome Online Courses training and Zippy Courses from Derek Halpern.

I’ve got both of these and they come highly recommended if you decide that course creation is the way you want to go.

My final advice would be to just ‘go for it’ – as you’ll just kick yourself in future if you never even try ."

11. Neil Patel / @neilpatel

Neil Patel is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and KISSmetrics. He helps companies like Amazon, NBC, GM, HP, and Viacom grow their revenue. On his website, he shares in-depth posts about content marketing, blogging, and much more.

"You should collect emails. Emails are the easiest channel to monetize. Whether you are pushing people towards your own products and services or if you are pushing someone towards an ad or an affiliate program, if you build up your email list you can continually monetize it."

12. Pradeep Kumar / @SPradeepKr

Pradeep is the founder and editor of HellBound Bloggers.

 

"The basic monetization plan remains the same for the next few years, but for 2016, I guess we should badly focus on mobile ads. I have been a hardcore smartphone user; I can easily analyze the growth and see how people quickly migrated from desktop to mobile for most of their activities. So the trick is to monetize your blog’s mobile website without hurting the readers, because those ads shouldn’t bother your readers in any way, let it be loading speed or reading experience.

If your majority of mobile users are browsing through Chrome browser, then show some ads related to Chrome. Repeat the same for all the browsers and operating systems. I guess this is something we should take seriously on 2016 and make use of our primary traffic source."

13. Dr. Rachna Jain / @rachnajain

Dr. Jain is the founder of Profitable Popularity and author of Internet Marketing for the Rest of Us: Your Guide to Profitable Popularity.

 

"The monetization strategy I plan to follow this year on my blog is two-fold.

First, I plan to use my blog posts to invite people to my email list, so that I can continue to keep in touch with them. My goal is to build stronger relationships and to help people interact with me through my content.

In addition, I’m going to be setting up in-house advertising, where my blog will promote my most popular services and products. This will be a clear and streamlined way for visitors to know what business growth challenges I could help them with. The most money for bloggers is always going to be in sales of high ticket services, followed next by advertising."

14. Ron Sela / @ronsela

Ron Sela is a Profit Driven Marketer at RonSela.com

"Keeping up-to-date with changing trends can be very beneficial, especially for bloggers who want to know what the best monetization strategies are for 2016. To that end, most bloggers will find that this years’ opportunities will lie in their own products and services. This means each blogger will need to assess and evaluate all of the things that they have available to them if they want to reach the goals that they have established for the year.

In some cases, the blogger may want to capitalize on one or more areas in their industry including offering various kinds of products like highly coveted instructional courses, eBooks, site memberships, and other popular items that will create a growing demand in their social and network circles. Also, based on their personal area of expertise, they may benefit greatly from offering opportunities for mentoring or providing consulting services to those who want or need them."

15. Ryan Biddulph / @ryanbiddulph

Ryan is the founder of Blogging From Paradise — a community that helps bloggers boost their income and generate more traffic

"Following my passion has always led to more freedom for me. That increased freedom usually reflects back to me in terms of increased cash flow. In laymen’s terms, do what you love – and THAT alone – and having this level of fun will open creative channels which help you make more money blogging in 2016. Building a list and networking are important in their own right but the passion, the fun-loving attitude and play, that’s where the biggest profits lie."

16. Steven J Wilson

Steven is the founder of the Visual Life. The focus of The Visual Life is to help entrepreneurs and bloggers find success online. You can get help with everything from blogging, marketing, content creation, social media and more…

 

"In order for bloggers to make more this year I think focusing on Email Marketing will be one of the most important factors to focus on.

There is so much to for you to do online and constantly hunting for new customers, readers etc can be tough. It may seem hard to believe but selling to an existing customer is much easier than getting a new customer.

Set up some quality content to attract readers, have an awesome Freebie to get them on your list and then create a good mix of straight value and affiliate offers or your own product offers in an autoresponder.

That way you are keeping many engaged and by using an autoresponder you are continuously selling and (hopefully) making sells!"

17. Sue Anne Dunlevie / @SueAnneDunlevie

Sue is the founder of Successful Blogging and helps bloggers make more money with their blog so they can work at home, be their own boss, and spend more time doing what they love.

"For 2016, my monetization strategy is just like last year’s. 1-1 coaching and group coaching for bloggers who want to make money with their blogs.

I always recommend freelancing or coaching for bloggers to start their monetization process. The money comes in quickly and you can use your clients as a resource for researching additional products and services.

If freelancing or coaching isn’t for you, then sell an affiliate product or course. When you see how well it resonates with your audience, start building your own product or course to sell."

18. Timo Kiander / @productivesd

Timo Kiander is a blogger, who helps individuals working in a cubicle or in a home office to improve their productivity, save time and become more organized. He is also a productivity coach, trainer and an author.

"Turn your expertise into an online course. This helps you to reach new audiences and teach people without being tied to a specific location or time.

It’s also a great way to show your expertise on a given topic, giving you a stronger presence and authority online.

The great thing about online courses is that you don’t have to build an educational platform from scratch.

There are services like Udemy or Teachable, which help you to get started with your online course building."

Norway -- The Would Be First Country To Turn Off FM Radio In 2017

Norway’s Minister of Culture announced this week that a national FM-radio switch off will commence in 2017, allowing the country to complete its transition over to digital radio. It’s the end of an era.

As Radio.no notes, Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) will provide Norwegian listeners more diverse radio channel content than ever before. Indeed, DAB already hosts 22 national channels in Norway, as opposed to FM radio’s five, and a TNS Gallup survey shows that 56% of Norwegian listeners use digital radio every day. While Norway is the first country in the world to set a date for an FM switch-off, other countries in Europe and Southeast Asia are also in the process of transitioning to DAB.

According to Thor Gjermund Eriksen, head of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation:

“This is an important day for everyone who loves radio. The minister’s decision allows us to concentrate our resources even more upon what is most important, namely to create high quality and diverse radio-content to our listeners.”

Frequency modulation, or FM, radio was patented in 1933 and has been recording and sharing the human story for nearly a century. But its days are clearly waning. According to a 2012 Pew Study, while over 90% of Americans still listen to AM/FM radio at least weekly, more people are choosing to forgo analog radio for Internet-only services each year. It seems like it’s only a matter of time before many countries follow Norway’s example, although I’m not so sure I’m ready to part with my 80’s-era Grundig. Thing still sounds like a dream.

Human Life - InValuable (Quite Literally)

No value can be put to a human price. But just for my knowledge, I went on to find out how much would be the worth of a human body after death. Well, the results did give me a shock. I had expected the amount to be high, but not this high.....

I had thought that the total worth would be under $400K, well my estimate turned out to be very small. Smaller than the value of heart itself.

And different parts of our body are worth different amounts—while corneas are small, they fetch a large price ($22,450), whereas our skeleton garners significantly less ($7,483). The price also depends on whether the body part is sold for specimen use or transplants.

HereIn, I would again like to say that I did this research just because I was curious. Also, in many countries, it is illegal to sell organs, even after death.

High Fi: Hands-on with Google's wireless service, Project Fi

Launched in the US in April, Project Fi is Google's foray into the mobile wireless service industry. It offers subscribers the familiar ability to call, text and surf the Web on their Google Nexus 6 smartphones while letting them control how much they pay for data per month. It differs from most other mobile service providers by using Wi-Fi as the default communication method for voice and data, and it smoothly switches between US carriers Sprint or T-Mobile's cellular and data networks when a hotspot isn't available.

Rather than describing its service as a competitor that undermines existing carrier partners, Google considers Project Fi an experiment that will hopefully push other companies to provide cheaper and more efficient data plans.

We tested the service in the San Francisco area across several days to check out what it's like using the tech giant's budding "network of networks."

The specialized Project Fi nano-SIM only works with the Nexus 6 for now.

Editor's note: Because the user experience with wireless carriers can vary greatly depending upon a variety of factors -- especially location -- we do not rate wireless carriers. 

The basics

Project Fi primarily defaults to local Wi-Fi networks (the same kind you set up at home, or connect to at a coffee shop or airport) to patch calls and browse the Internet. Because some Wi-Fi spots are public, Google promises to encrypt your data so it's protected (yes, even the password-protected networks that belong to those small businesses still pose a security risk). If Wi-Fi coverage is not available or too weak, the network has partnered with US carriers Sprint and T-Mobile to use their cellular network.

As the first two major networks in the US to bake Wi-Fi calling into their coverage, this makes sense. T-Mobile and Sprint launched Wi-Fi calling in 2007 and 2014, respectively, with the former addingseamless hand-over from Wi-Fi to voice-over LTE. (As a side note, AT&T also rolled out its Wi-Fi calling service for some devices in October 2015).

Switching smoothly between networks is crucial since users won't notice when they're being ported over to one or the other. They also won't have their calls dropped just because they are leaving one network, nor have to take any action to switch over to another network. In addition, when Project Fi automatically connects to the one that is the faster and more reliable network of the two.

The process

As of now, if you want to participate in the service, you'll need to do two things: request an invite using a Gmail address and have a Nexus 6 phone (the Americas variant, model number XT1103). That's because there's a specialized radio inside the phone that supports multiple cell networks, and it works with the unique Project Fi SIM card, which also has multiple-carrier support. If you don't have the device, you can purchase an unlocked model from Google or other third-party retailers. (We bought one at Amazon.)

Once you get an invite, you'll be linked to the sign-in site where you need to enter your ZIP code to make sure you have coverage in your area. You can transfer your current number or get a new number altogether. If you elect to receive a new number, Google will suggest local area codes to choose from based on your ZIP code. This number will live on a cloud as your Google Voice number as well, and you can make calls from other devices with it too, like a tablet or laptop.

The service charges $10 per gigabyte a month and refunds your unused data.

After that, choose your data plan. There is no annual plan and the bare-minimum monthly rate is $20 plus taxes and fees. That includes unlimited calls and texting in the US, unlimited international texting in the US and 120-plus countries, and Wi-Fi tethering. If you want data, that's $10 a month for every 1GB of data (so $20 for 2GB, $50 for 5GB, all the way to $100 a month for 10GB) -- all of that is on top of that base $20 per month.

You will be charged upfront for your data at the beginning of the month, but if you don't use all of your allotted data, that amount will be refunded to you. For example, if you selected a 4GB plan but only used 3.1GB by the end of the month, you have 900MB leftover and will receive $9 back. The same goes if you exceed your data plan too -- if you go 900MB over your plan, you'll be charged an additional $9 on next month's bill.

(T-Mobile offers a similar rollover service called "Data Stash," which lets you use any untapped data in your plan for up to 12 months. AT&T does too, but the data expires at the end of the next billing period.)

When you're done signing up, Google will ship you a Project Fi nano-SIM card in the mail.

The experience

Data speeds

I tested 4G LTE data speeds in our San Francisco office. Results from Ookla's speed test app varied widely across multiple days and times. Download rates ranged from 3 to 13Mbps, while upload rates range from 1 to as high as 18Mbps. Out of seven trials, the average was 5.48Mbps down and 9.17Mbps up.

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A few of Project Fi's 4G LTE data speeds.

For real-world, everyday usage testing, speeds were slow for the most part, but tended to be faster in the evenings. Out of three trials, loading the CNET mobile and desktop site took 16 and 18 seconds respectively, and downloading and installing the 44.52MB game Temple Run 2 took 5 minutes and 3 seconds. Downloading the 1.7GB movie "Gravity" once took a whopping 2 hours and 4 minutes, but during another attempt, it took 25 minutes and 16 seconds.

There's no built-in way to tell if the handset is using Sprint or T-Mobile's network at any given time (though you can install a third-party app like SignalCheck Lite that will tell you). It's important to note that you should take these results with a grain of salt. Data speeds differ widely depending on several factors, such as location and time of day. What I've observed here is just a minuscule sample size from our San Francisco location.

Lastly, as Android Central pointed out, if your Nexus is using Sprint's network, you can't use data and voice simultaneously -- a known issue that has affected phones using CDMA technology before.

Making calls

Making calls was simple and easy and doesn't require any setup. I made calls to landlines and cell phones and call quality was reliable -- audio was continuous, there was no extraneous buzzing or static and I was able to hear the person on the other end of the line clearly. Likewise, my partners reported that I sounded clear and easy to understand as well.

For Wi-Fi calls, I made sure that I had no cellular network signal before dialing a number and that the feature was toggled on in Settings. Calls that were being patched through this method showed the name of the Wi-Fi network on the dialer. When consistent, audio was very clear, easy to understand and appropriately loud. There were instances, however, when audio cut in and out, but it didn't last for very long. All in all it remained relatively steady.

The competition

Google isn't alone in its wireless endeavors, and if you're considering Wi-Fi only networks, there are alternatives.

Republic Wireless charges $10 per month for talk, text and Wi-Fi, and $15 per gigabyte of data. If we choose to go with a 3GB plan, it would cost $55 per month. Excluding taxes and fees, that's $5 per month more than the same plan on Project Fi. You will, however, be credited for any unused data, and have a wider and cheaper lineup of devices to use, which include the $99 Motorola Moto G (2013) , the $129 Moto E and the $299 Moto X .

Scratch Wireless offers a different structure. While Wi-Fi tethering and texting is free, users have to pay for voice and data usage on a pay-as-you-go system. Though there are different usage tiers that span as short as 24 hours and as small as 50MB, let's revisit the 3GB example earlier. On Scratch, unlimited voice for 30 days cost $15 and 1GB costs $25 for 30 days. That means it'll cost about $90 to have all the same services as Project Fi and Republic Wireless. Currently, the carrier is selling only theCoolpad Arise for $99, but you can purchase other Scratch-certified devices from retailers like eBay.

Both Republic and Scratch Wireless use Sprint's network when Wi-Fi is unavailable. 

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Making a Wi-Fi call (left) and checking out my data plan on the Project Fi app.

The takeaway

I was disappointed by the slow 4G LTE data speeds I experienced on Google Project Fi. Even though my observations offer just a narrow sliver of the network's possible coverage, benchmark tests were consistently slow compared to speeds I've previously seen from Sprint and T-Mobile.

Another major drawback is the fact that it's only compatible with the Nexus 6 for now. The premium phone starts out at $500 unlocked (for the 32GB model). Though you can pay it off in installments, the hardware will be beyond the budget of many people.

While the service pricing for Project Fi looks good at first, note that it's most competitive for individuals. Many big carrier family plans will offer better deals for two or more people sharing data on the same plan.

However, I did find Project Fi's pricing structure, an aspect of other wireless networks that many find to be frustrating, to be extremely user friendly. Its transparency is reassuring, and the fact that you don't have to worry about overshooting or letting your monthly data allotment go to waste is a relief. And obviously, Project Fi's biggest draw is the low month-to-month cost (again, for individuals). Depending on your data usage, your bill can be incredibly low, and getting credit for data you don't use means more money back into your pocket.