Every day, we scour the internet for trending stories. From global news to celebrity gossip, we seek out the most relevant and interesting content to bring you the latest headlines. Sometimes this content is available for free and other times it costs money to access. Regardless, we always have an interest in learning about the latest news stories and what is happening in the world around us.
While many of us may be interested in making money off our love for online news, it’s not always easy to find a profitable niche. That’s why we’ve gone ahead and curated this detailed guide on how to make money with online news sites. With valuable advice on how to position your blog and how to choose the right affiliate products to promote, you’ll be able to hit the ground running and start reaping the financial benefits of writing online news stories.
Find Your Niche
The first step to making money with an online news site is to find your niche. What is your niche? Simply put, your niche is the topic or area of interest that you will base your content around. There are many different niches to choose from when you’re starting out, but you will find that most articles can be classified under one of three categories:
- Personal Development
- Health
- Relationships
Once you’ve established your blog with a decent amount of content, take the time to explore how you can monetize your site.
The key to making money with an online news site is to find a profitable niche in a highly competitive market. In 2018 alone, the personal development niche had the highest average revenue per click of any niche on the Google Adsense affiliate network.
Monetizing your site through affiliate marketing can be a lucrative path to take. But to make the most of this opportunity, you’ll need to consider carefully what types of products you will promote and how.
Position Your Blog To Maximize Revenue
One of the most effective ways to make money with an online news site is to position your blog to maximize revenue. When someone lands on your blog’s homepage, there is probably a good chance that they will engage with your content and eventually click a monetized link or button. Before you begin your affiliate marketing journey, take the time to explore how you can improve the user experience on your site. Consider the following recommendations:
- Create a Call To Action
- Make Sense Of The Funnel
- Use Social Proof
- Avoid Burying Your CTA In Text
Creating a call to action is a highly effective strategy to increase conversions and make money from online news sites. A call to action is an element on your site that encourages a user to take some sort of action. For example, if you sell products related to health and fitness, you could offer people a free trial or discount if they click a certain link or button. Creating a call to action is one of the simplest yet most effective ways to make money with an online news site. Simply put, the more you can do to draw visitors to your site, the more you can charge for your content.
Create Free Content To Keep Readers Engaged
Creating and publishing free content is a fantastic way to encourage people to engage with your site. Simply put, people like to support content that is free of charge. When you first launch your site and are struggling to gain traction, free content is a great way to encourage people to visit your site. To create free content, you will want to look for ways to encourage users to engage with your content beyond just reading it. For example, if you have an engaging piece on living a healthy life, your readers may want more information on how to adopt these habits. In the example above, the writer provided free content to encourage people to click a link to learn more about health and fitness. When you have thousands of items in your virtual catalog, the money you save from not having to pay for adverts can be reinvested into new content.
Choose Products You Can Affiliate With
One of the challenges to making money with an online news site is choosing products you can affiliate with. This is largely due to the fact that most affiliate programs require you to first establish a network of bloggers/writers who you can trade ads with. As you may imagine, this can be a difficult process to go through if you’re just starting out.
If you find that most affiliate programs prohibit advertisers from sponsoring content that is purely about money-making opportunities, then you may want to consider choosing a different line of work. Ideally, you will want to affiliate with products that you feel passionately about and that you believe will be valuable to your readers. If you keep these two points in mind when selecting affiliate products, you will be able to choose lucrative options that compliment your blog’s content.
Avoid Free Blogging Platforms
If you’re looking for a free blogging platform, you may be tempted to write your content for free on a popular blogging platform like WordPress or Blogger. While there are many benefits to blogging, you should avoid these platforms if your ultimate goal is to monetize your content. The main reason being that these platforms are highly susceptible to scams. Simply put, if you host your own blog, you will be able to use a service like Google Adsense to monetize your content without any worries.
What About Monetizing Existing Print Publications?
If you are looking to monetize an existing publication, you may want to explore options for monetizing your print journal or newspaper. Most likely, you will want to choose an affiliate program with a reputable company that specializes in online performance marketing. Simply put, this is the field that combines marketing, sales, and technology to get results for businesses.
This company specializes in pulling in high-quality, relevant traffic and getting conversions. They also understand the benefits of measuring digital marketing success in terms of returns on investment (ROI). For instance, if you buy a $10,000 piece of digital marketing software and get 1,000 phone calls to action, the software company will appreciate your business as much as you do.
Considering the above points, it’s clear that monetizing online news is a viable way to make money from a blogging or website perspective. Simply put, if you want to make money with a blog, you need to focus on finding a profitable niche and positioning your blog to maximize revenue. From there, you can dive into the world of affiliate marketing with a reputable company that specializes in digital marketing.