Why and how I monetize my blog [How to be an Original]
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I’ve been blogging for some months now and I have started to monetize my blog. At first I was hoping to get break-even, but my ambitions are higher.
This article is about why I monetize my blog and what I try to achieve by it. I’ll also dive into how I’ll be monetizing my blog and what guidelines I’m setting myself for it.
Doing something I love to do
One of the best things in life is to do what you love to do. In my article about my mission statement, you can read who I am and what experiences I want in my life.
This blog is one of the things I love to do as I love the subject of personal development. Writing about it and interacting with you guys gives me a lot of energy, fun and insight at the same time.
If you add enough value…
I strongly believe that if you add value to the lives of others, value will be returned. My intention is to add value to your lives, and blogging is only one of the ways I intend to do this. But value returned does not come automatically. Most of the times you have to make sure that you can be reached. If you’re not ready to receive, nobody can give. So monetizing my blog is a way of empowering the world to return value to me. It is a way of saying I’m ready to receive.
What I try to achieve by monetizing
I want to achieve that I enable myself to do what I love to do on a consistent basis. The concept of receiving value, when providing it to others, gives you control. If you want to receive more, start by giving more. So if I want to get rich, I better enrich the lives of a lot of people 
One of my personal core values is Freedom. There are many aspects to freedom, and one of them is the financial aspect. What I want to achieve is financial freedom. I’m not there yet (not by a long shot), but this is my mindset. Why financial freedom? To ensure that I can do what I love to do on a consistent basis. I don’t want to get into a situation where money forces me to do something I don’t love to do. Value returned can be intangible as well and that’s perfect, but I can’t deny the fact that I need money in this world to get by. And I need to have that money, so the money doesn’t have me.
How I will not be monetizing
First of all, this blog is free and will remain free. Blogging is a way of expressing my thoughts on subjects I love and allows me to discuss them with you, my readers. I am here to learn, share and help on these topics. Subscription fees or sign-up fees are not a part of that concept now or in the future.
I also will not be using monetization methods that I regard as too obtrusive. One of the methods that I have in this category are in-text links that do not support the article. A lot of these links are usually very visible, not related and give small pop-ups that are annoying and prevent you from freely reading the article.
Paid reviews are still a big question mark for me. I did one so far (which made me a whopping $7.50), but it was an article I could’ve done anyway as it was related to topics on my blog. I haven’t really decided upon this yet, but I will keep a strong focus on staying on topic. I’m not against paid reviews, but I’m not going to do them just to get paid (remember what I said about doing what I love to do…).
How I will be monetizing
I will be using affiliate programs, like Amazon, and advertising, like Google Adsense (
function affiliateLink(str){ str = unescape(str); var r = \\\\\’\\\\\’; for(var i = 0; i (aff)) or (aff). Whenever I post an affiliate link, I will add (aff) behind it to identify it as an affiliate link. I don’t want to be ’sneaky’ and present affiliate links as regular links. If you don’t want to follow affiliate links, then don’t. But I appreciate it if you do.
I will be focusing on getting recurring passive income. If you want to learn more about that concept, I recommend Genius Types. I used his affiliate link for Text Link Ads, as a way of rewarding him for the value he has given through his blog. I have no income from TLA yet, but that will come in time.
Reporting in
I will be reporting in on blog earnings, as soon as the monthly income hits $100 or higher. You’ll find that in the weekly reviews on Sundays, but only once every month. In a next article I’ll detail further on what methods I’m currently using to monetize.
I would love to hear your thoughts on monetizing blogs, and on why and how I intend to do it. Drop me a line in the comments, or send me an email.
Original post here: Lodewijkvdb
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