How To Monetize A Blog (Website) In Uganda

You have always heard of people who make money from blogs and wondered how they do it? Well, today I’m going to take you through all need to know to start a money making blog. The article is quite long and contains lots of external links which will help you learn more. I hope you enjoy reading just reading just as I did writing it.

Running and maintaining a website or blog is no simple task as it requires considerable investment both in time and money in order to make it work. However, your efforts can pay off at some stage if you keep lights on this job.

There are many ways to monetize a blog or website, but advertising remains the best option for many bloggers and website publishers. If your blog has the right combination of traffic and audience, then advertising is obviously the first step you should take to earn money from your blog.

In this article, I will guide you through 20 super smart ways you can use to monetize your blog and start making money. I will close with some tips for making your blog a success.

Let’s get start with some background…

When Starting a Blog, ensure that you use minimal ads on it. Crowding your blog with too many ads can be a total turn-off to your readers and as a result, you may end up failing to convert your first time blog readers into loyal followers.

Despite the fact that adverts are the lifeblood of online publishers, there are certain ads that people hate, and when they repeatedly keep seeing same ads, they can leave your blog forever.

There are tons of blogs posts out there on how to monetize a blog but most of them do not clearly explain steps one can take to make money blogging.

This guide is a unique one. I will discuss 46 blog monetization methods with real life examples of people who are employing the same methods to make money with their blogs, and also give you tips on how to succeed with those methods.

I have broken down the 46 blog/website monetization methods into 8 broader categories, namely:

a). Advertising
b). Sponsorships
c). Affiliate Marketing
d). Digital Products
e). Physical Products
f). Monthly Subscriptions
g). Freelance Services
h). Other services

If this is your first time to read this guide, please don’t skip any sections. Consider reading everything from A-Z. This is for your own benefit.

Now, let’s dive in and find out how to monetize a blog!

If this is your first time to read this guide, please don’t skip any sections. Consider reading everything from A-Z. This is for your own benefit.

*This post has affiliate links, which means I receive a commission if you choose to purchase after clicking my affiliate link. This costs you nothing extra. Thanks for supporting this site!

A). ADVERTISING

There are many ways one can monetize their blog traffic, and most of them are related or involve advertising third-party products (or services) to your website audience. There are many advertising programs you can use to earn money these days, but the most popular one and probably one that pays well is Google Adsense. Below I discuss some of the popular advertising networks you can use to make on your website in Uganda or elsewhere in the world.

1. Google AdSense

If you are a starting blogger, one of the best ways to start monetizing your blog is by using Google AdSense. Google AdSense is an advertising network owned by Google.

It is made for web publishers who want to monetize their web content. For this case, a publisher can be anyone owning a website, blog or YouTube Channel.

AdSense allows publishers to place advertisements on their websites (or blog) and you are paid a commission every time people view, click or engage with those advertisements. These advertisements are not by Google but by private advertisers. Google only acts as intermediary between private advertisers and web publishers.

AdSense serves ads to your blog according to your content or niche. For example if your content is about web hosting; your blog is most likely to be served with ads related to hosting or domains.

Sometimes ads are served based on user search history. If someone has been searching more about “making money online in Uganda”, Google will most likely automatically show him ads related to online money making ideas in Uganda.

In otherwords, Adsense makes sure your readers see targeted ads that are relevant to them, thus you will get more clicks which will increase your earnings.

How much can you earn with AdSense?

The amount of money you earn totally depends on the quality and amount of traffic you get on your blog. Before we estimate the money one can earn with AdSense, we need to first understand the following terminologies that Adsense uses:

• Cost Per Click (CPC). This varies, but normally $0.02 to $1, but on some special and rare cases, it can go up to a maximum of $100.
• Cost Per 1000 Impressions (CPM)
• Revenue per 1000 Impressions (RPM).
• Click Through Rate (CTR). These clicks per 100 impressions. Varies between 1-10% depending on your niche and ad placement.
• Other terms: Page views, Earnings, Impressions etc. Guess these are straight forward.

Now, from the above, your adsense earnings will majorly depend on two primary factors ie CPC and CTR. However CPC varies from niche to niche and will also depend on the countries where clicks are coming from. If you are getting your traffic from Tier 1 countries like US, UK, Canada, Australia etc, your CPC will be high compared to that from Tier 3 countries like Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Zambia etc

Now let’s assume your RPM is $2/1000 page views, and you are getting 10,000 pages views in a day. This means you can potentially earn a revenue of $20 in day. If you’re daily page views remain constant for 30 days, you can earn $600 a month (about UGX 2.1M).

If you work hard and follow the best blogging practices, you should able to earn at least $1500 per month from AdSense alone.

From this you should learn that the more traffic you get, the more money you earn. However it doesn’t have to be just traffic, it has to be quality. Many beginners are eager to get quick traffic. They go ahead to post their links all over social media in a bid to generate huge traffic so they can increase their AdSense earnings in no time. This is wrong and Google will penalize you for that.

In fact, social media traffic doesn’t have much value as compared to organic or search engine traffic. You should focus more on building organic traffic using several SEO methods. If you have no idea about SEO, i can do for you SEO service and I will rank your blog number #1 in Google. Just Hire Me Here.

Benefits of using Google Adsense

Below are some of the reasons why you should use Google to make money on your blog or website:

• Easy to setup. You don’t to be a tech-savvy to setup your adsense account. Once your account is approved, all you need to do is copy the ad code and paste it into your blog theme file and ads will start running.
• Legal.  Adsense is a legitimate advertisement program trusted by big companies like Yahoo.
• Recognition.  AdSense is a highly rated and recognized advertisement program. Getting your account approved means your blog has been authorized. However Google has a strict policy and they do not approve blogs that do not meet their minimum standards.
• One account, all sites. You can use one adsense account to monetize all your websites and blogs, unlike other ad networks that require you to create a different account for every website you want to monetize. With Adsense, you can also use a custom channel to see how each of your ad slots are performing.
• Support forum. Google has large number of advertisers and publishers, so it created a support forum where you can find lots of guides and tutorials on how you can easily increase your adsense earnings.
• Payments. Unlike other ad networks, Google offers the most flexible payments ways to publishers, including Western Union and Bank transfer, and on top of that, they pay on time. Payment threshold is $100.

Getting Started with AdSense is something easy. All you need is to have a website, blog or YouTube Channel. However your content must be in line with Google AdSense Policies. Once you are sure your blog meets AdSense policies, you can Apply for a Free Google AdSense account here.

To summarize this, you can make real pretty good cash with Google Adsense, but you should not look at it as a get-rich-quick scheme. You must have passion about the topic or niche you are writing about and ensure you have extensive knowledge about it. This will help you generate a lot of traffic, and like I said above, your earnings are primarily based on good quality traffic.

2. Monetize a blog using AdSense Alternatives

Google Adsense has been the  number #1 monetization choice for Ugandan bloggers who want to make money from their blogs. Google Adsense is the only monetization program Ugandans seem to understand, however there are so many adsense alternatives out there that can pay you good money as well.

If you applied for Google Adsense and your application was rejected for some reasons or your account got banned. Whatever your reasons for not being able use AdSense are, just remember there plenty of fantastic to monetize your website and make money.

Below are some of the ad networks you can use on your blog to make some cool cash. I have personally tested these ad networks on my other blogs and they surely work.

Infolinks. Infolinks offers various monetization options to web publishers. They insert text ads into any text in your content. If one hovers a mouse over the text link, an ad pops up for a visitor to view. They pay publishers 45 days after the end of the month. Their payment threshold is $50. They pay via Western Union, PayPal, Payoneer etc.

Media.net. This one is a direct Adsense competitor. It is operated by Yahoo and Bing. Media.net’s payment threshold is $50, payable via Wire Transfer and Western Union.

Bidvertiser. Bidvertiser is a cost per click based ad network. It offers a referral program where it pays for referrals of both publishers and advertisers.

RevenueHits. Revenue hits is a performance based ad network which serves CPA ads. It is is a Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost per 1000 impressions (CPM) network. You are only paid when visitor perform specific actions on your website or blog.

Above are the few adsense alternatives I have personally tested, however there are several others which may be good as well. Some of them include:

• Adversal
• Chitika
• VigLink
• PropellerAds
• AdBuff
• PopAds
• Amazon Associates
• Clicksor
• Skimlinks
• Popcash
• Adsterra
• Kontera

Above are just some of the best and most popular AdSense alternatives you can use to monetize your blog. If by bad luck your AdSense account gets disabled, do not feel as if it is the end of your online earning. Choose a combination of 2-3 ad networks and start earning.

These ad networks work better if your website gets a lot of traffic. So before you think of using any of them, ensure that you have grown your blog traffic, preferably organic traffic (from search engines).

I have read success stories of bloggers who have confessed making more money using Media.Net than Adsense. I suggest that you try out a number of them, and settle for what will work for you better.

Life still goes on even without AdSense.

3. Native Advertisements

Native Advertisement is a form of advertising where brands advertise their content on the publisher’s website in a non-intrusive way. When these ads are clicked, they normally redirect to another page within the publisher’s site not externally. The ads are hosted on the publisher’s site but are authored by an advertiser.

Several big brands and blogs have built native advertisement programs. In most cases their ads are presented as promoted posts/content, sponsored listings or sponsored posts. It should however be noted that each of them perform differently but the concept remains the same.

Native ads get 3 times more engagement rates as compared to traditional banner ads. Visitors tend to click native ads while banners are commonly ignored. Visitors normally perceive native ads as part of the website’s organic content thus gets more attention and clicks.

This advertising scheme is becoming common with big brands and companies who use them on their blogs. The most popular native ad networks include:

• Disqus Reveal
• Revcontent
• AdNow
• Outbrain
• Taboola
• Gravity
• Nativo
• TripleLift
• Earnify
• Spoutable
• RonSearch
• Yahoo Gemini
• Mgid
• Content.Ad
• Disqus
• Sharethrough
• Facebook Audience Network
• Adblade

Native ads are just another way you can monetize your website without adsense. Native advertising coupled with well researched relevant keywords is one of the best ways to monetize your content.

In a similar way, you can also place other people’s text content on your blog. I would call this your own native ad network. Of course those willing to promote their content on your blog will have to pay for it. This scheme is not only limited to the above mentioned networks.

A Kenyan friend of mine confessed that Outbrain is the best contextual or native ad network he ever worked with. Like mentioned before, native ads definitely promise a higher engagement as opposed to traditional banners and other ad formats.

The only drawback with some of these schemes is it is hard to get approved for most African websites, especially those that receive low traffic.

4. Premium Banners

Instead of monetizing your blog through ad networks, you can sell ad space in your blog where advertisers can place their banners. After Google AdSense, premium banners is the second best way Ugandans monetize their blogs and websites.

Getting premium adverts from private or corporate companies is not something easy. It takes a lot. Many Ugandans who have never blogged before have been sold a myth that you can make money online simply by starting a website or blog, walk to companies such as MTN Uganda and ask them to give you advertisement deals. This is not only false but impossible.

Getting advertisement deals [premium banners] from private companies doesn’t come on a silver plate. It takes a lot for them to trust you.

If you’re targeting local advertisers who advertise local products and services, you should ensure your website is getting local traffic.

For example if you want Airtel Uganda to place a premium banner on your blog or website, you should ensure your blog gets a large volume of local Ugandan traffic. This is because Airtel’s target audience is Ugandan people. Airtel Uganda will not advertise on your website if your traffic is Indian.

I’m not saying your website or blog you should only have Ugandan traffic, but if you’re targeting local advertisers that advertise local services, you should ensure your blog receives a good number of local visitors as well.

Most advertisers will demand for your blog analytics or statistics before they can actually partner with you on an advertisement deal. You may be required to prove this to them physically by showing them your blog statistics.

With banner advertisements, you can charge anywhere from UGX 300,000/- to as high as high as UGX 5,000,000/- per month depending on the size and the position where the banner is placed. Banners placed in the header of the website will always cost higher than those placed in the sidebar or footer.

Most bloggers charge their clients monthly, but for more flexibility, you can choose to charge per week, per fortnight, per month, per three months or per year depending on your plans.

As of 2016, Big Eye UG, the Ugandan gossip blog was charging UGX 4,500,000/- per month for a leader billboard banner, placed in the header of their blog. New Vision and Bukedde websites charge UGX 6,500,000/- and UGX 4,300,000/- for leader billboard banners respectively. Howwe Biz, another local Ugandan entertainment website charges $1000 for a leader billboard banner and $1200 for a full screen background banner.

The best way to get banner ads is create a blog or website that targets a given niche, then look for advertisers within that particular niche. Having connections with established brands or people working there is an added advantage.

You need to build an authority around your blog, grow your traffic to at least 5k visits per day, write high quality content and above all be professional. For example Stanbic bank will not advertise with you if your blog is full sexual content. Companies love advertising on websites whose content is in line with their ethics.

Last but not least, ensure that you register website as a company. Companies deal with fellow companies not individuals.

5. Sell text links (the legit way!)

This is just another form of advertising which you can use to monetize your website in Uganda. With this method, instead of a display ad (I mean those rectangular and square images you always see in sidebars and such), it is simply a hyperlinked text that points to the brand’s website or any other website of its choice.

There are two types of text links, namely:

1. Text-Link ads
2. In-text ads

Text-Link ads and In-text ads are almost similar but have a minor difference. The first difference is that In-text ads are offered by an advertising network or agency while text-link ads can be inserted by you the publisher.  The other difference is In-text ads usually have a double underline below the link. The double shows the link text is an advert. Normally when you hover a mouse over these in-text links, they will display an advert.

Text-Link ads are common with Ugandan blogs. Locally, Ugandan bloggers place Ad phrases within text content with a call-to-action link or text button at the end of the ad phrase. The call-to-action text is hyperlinked to the advertiser’s website.

Example of a Text-link ad

For example

“Jumia Uganda has got cheap phones this store

Buy an iPhone 9 this week for only UGX 1M

Hurry while offer lasts. Buy Now!”

Now, in the above first paragraph, I have inserted a Jumia Uganda link in the text Buy Now. When a user clicks on that link, they will be taken to Jumia website from where they can buy that phone.

Like I mentioned before, for In-text ads, you have to signup on an In-text advertising agency to have text links placed on your blog. Usually, these In-text Ads links appear in a different colour from the rest of the text content on the website. When your website visitors click on the linked phrase or word, they are redirected to a specific page on another website.

However, selling text links to companies is not allowed by Google. To avoid being penalized, you must add a “nofollow” attribute to your paid links.

With In-text ads, publishers are usually paid based on the number of times visitors click on the text link ad, but they can also be paid a flat fee for placing the link on their web (or blog).

Here are some of the popular in-text link advertising programs:

• Google AdSense
• Amazon Associates
• LinkWorth
• Amobee
• Vibrant
• BeContext
• Skimlinks
• Infolinks
• Clicksor
• VigLink

If you’re interested any of these programs, simply go to one of the above advertiser websites and register. The advertiser will then pair interested parties with your blog or website and start earning.

There are so many In-Text advertisement programs, but I have listed only the most popular ones whose earnings are good and relatively high.

To sum up this, your earnings depend on your blog traffic demographics. For example traffic from Europen countries has more value and pays more compared to traffic from African and Asian countries. So my advice to you is pick a network which converts for your blog demographic. Try one, if it fails, do not give up, just try another till you find one that works for you. It is all about trial and error.

6. Start a podcast and sell ad spots

Podcast advertising is one of the fasted growing ways to make money podcasting. Podcast advertising is simply means advertising your brand or company on a streamable or downloadable podcast. Most times podcast hosts will endorse your business or brand will a live read advert during the beginning, middle or end of the podcast show. The advert contains information about your products and services, personal experiences the podcast host may have with your service/product, where listeners can find you or order product from etc. Podacast advertising has seen one of the highest ROI in the advertising industry and is growing so fast.

So what is a podcast?

A podcast is an audio or video recording that made available on the internet. Usually users subscribe to listen or watch it. In short, it is an audio story, discussion or analysis. Podcasts are used for information, entertainment, motivation and educational purposes.

The usage of podcasts is limitless. Many Ugandan bloggers use them for interviews, news discussions, tutorials, political debates, comedy, public relations, propaganda etc. If the topic in discussion is wide enough, a podcast can be presented in series or episodes.

You must have seen Ugandan Facebook bloggers like Peng Peng and Ashburg Katto record videos of themselves discussing certain topics and upload them on their Facebook pages, those are also categorized as Podcasts. A podcast can be in an audio or video format. If these guys were wise enough, they would monetize their podcasts because they command a huge following on Facebook.

To get started, you can begin a podcast streaming program on your blog or website, make your podcasts streamable and downloadable. Podcasts work better if your blog receives a good amount of traffic. Once you grow your podcast listeners audience to a substantial amount, you can start selling ad spots to companies.

Reasons why you should advertise on podcasts

• The podcast space is growing so fast
• While still in its infancy, podcast advertising is booming.
• Long term marketing exposure with podcast ads. Your ad will permanently remain online.
• Podcasts are highly engaging platforms for spreading messages
• Podcasts cover a large diversity of topics
• Brands can track their campaigns performance with Unique URLs

How to Monetize a Podcast

Podcasts can be profitable. The most common way to monetize a podcast in Uganda is by adding ad spots in the podcast. An ad spot is basically the advert you hear while playing a podcast. It can be placed at the beginning, middle or at the end of a podcast. Usually the host will say something like “This episode is brought to you by (brand/company name)…”

Ad spots can be sold to companies that are interested in spreading awareness about their brands. When a company is interested in advertising on your podcasts, you may be required to provide them with your podcast streaming statistics for example number of listener/streamers, where they come from and the number of downloads it gets in a month.

You can choose to sell your ad spots at a per-month rate. If you command a huge number of listeners, you can charge anywhere from UGX 500k to UGX 1.5M per month.

Even if you don’t have a blog or website, you can still make money podcasting by hosting your podcasts on several  podcast hosting networks. Some of them are free, others charge a small fee. The most popular ones include:

• Soundcloud
• YouTube
• Simplecast
• Podbean
• Buzzsprout
• AudioBoom
• Libsyn
• Blubrry
• Spreaker

Podcast ads are very close to paying to paying for word of mouth advertising. When people stream podcasts overtime, they develop a sense of intimacy with the podcast host. When the host promotes a given product or service, listeners feel the recommendation is coming from a good and trusted friend, most especially if it is done through a live read ad.

Many companies have been built on podcast advertising, for example a company called Onnit grew up to a revenue of $28M mainly by buying ad spots on major podcast networks.

If your brand has a story to tell, podcast advertising can be a very effective way of getting your business infront of the  right people.

Whether you’re into storytelling or gossip or political analysis, starting a podcast is a great way to turn your verbal content into cash. So why not grab that mic and start making money today?

7. Sell Ads In Your News letters

Almost every internet user in Uganda now owns an email address, and email usage in Uganda has increased overtime. If you’re starting a blog, ensure that you begin building your mail list from day one by collecting your website visitors’ emails through subscriptions.

It takes a lot of time and efforts to build an email list, but once you grow your list to thousands of subscribers, you can surely monetize it and start making money out of it.

If you sell products or services, an email list would even work for you much better because you would advertise your goods and services directly via your subscriber’s mailboxes.

If you have an email list but have no products and services to sell, here is how you can turn potentially valuable information into cash:

• Promote other people’s products and services
• Advertise your affiliate services
• Sell premium banners to brands
• Create own product or service and sell it
• Subscription model news letter

No matter which way you choose to monetize blog through an email list, it is important that you do it slowly and in a peaceful manner. Do not spam your subscribers, else they will lose your trust and will unsubscribe from your list.

Monetizing your email list should not be your primary goal but should come as a natural result if the relationship you have created with your readers or followers.

It is okay to make money from your email list, but that aspect will take time to yield results if you have done everything the right way. I advise that instead of monetizing your list from day one, it is important that you focus on building strong relationship with your readers first.

Your goal should be trust and loyalty if you want your readers to love you and promote you. The conversions won’t come overnight, but with hard work, long term relationship with readers will be very much better.

Just don’t bombard your subscribers with product recommendations frequently. That’s a bad idea. They might unsubscribe from your mailing list.

8. Cost Per Mile Advertising

Cost Per Mile Advertising (CPM) are ads that can be displayed on your blog or website and you are paid for every 1000 impressions shown to your website visitors.

According to Wikipedia, in the context of online advertising, an impression is when an ad is fetched from its source, and is countable.Each time an ad is fetched, it is counted as one impression.

CPM advertising is almost the same as Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. The major difference is that is when you’re subscribed to CPM, you are not paid for every click. You will instead be paid for every 1000 impressions.

For example if you display ads worth $1 CMP, you will be paid $1 for every 1000 impressions you generate. To earn a reasonable amount from CPM advertising, you need to have lots of traffic. As you can see, 1000 impressions earns you only $1.

How much can I earn with Cost Per Mile Advertising?

To know how much you can earn from your blog with this type of advertising, take your total traffic and divide it with 1000. For example if your blog receives 200,000 page views a month, this means your earnings will be 200,000/1000 = $200.

So if you want to earn $200 a month, you must ensure that you grow your blog traffic to at least 300,000 page views per month.

That said, it all comes down to your blog traffic. And you can only get quality traffic if you have great content or if you invest in advertising your blog through different advertising platforms.

If you’re interested in making money through CPM ads, below is a list of top CPM advertising programs which you can join and start making money from your blog.

• Tribal Fusion
• Casale Media
• Value Click Media
• Right Media
• UberCPM
• PropellerAds
• HillTopAds
• AdBuff (Offering $25 as bonus if your site is approved)
• ClickADu (Do not use this with AdSense)
• Amazon CPM
• Conversant Media
• Exponential
• RhythmOne
• Advertising.com
• Criteo

Each of the above mentioned CPM ad providers have different policies. Some will require your blog to have lots of traffic before applying while others have no such limitations.

Again, it all comes down to traffic. And traffic only comes when you have quality content or when you are investing in advertising. It is hard getting traffic but once you succeed in getting it, making money blogging becomes easy.

9. Advertising Plugins/Widgets

There are several WordPress plugins and widgets that allow you to run advertisements on your blog. They are similar to banners but have a different way of implementation. The plugins allow you to insert an ad code at any section of your blog.

These plugins or widgets normally make a mixture of advertisements including Affiliate ads, corporate ads, CPM ads, Cost Per Order ads, PPC ads, banners and many more. These widgets can be placed in your blog side bar or in any other position on your choice.

This kind of advertising has been around for a while, although it is not yet popular in Uganda. I have interacted with a few bloggers in Kenya and Nigeria and they have confessed this advertising method is working for them pretty well. If it can work for Kenyans, then there’s hope that it can work for Ugandans as well.

Here are some of the powerful advertising management plugins for WordPress:

• Ad Inserter
• WordPress Ads widget
• Ads Pro
• AdRotate
• WP Pro Advertising System
• AdSense Plugin WP QUADS
• Ad Injection
• Adplugg
• Advanced Ads
• Ads by Datafeedr.com
• Ads Pro Plugin
• Corner Ad
• WP-Insert
• Amazon link

I hope you can now realize that there are a lot of great solutions out there that you can use to make advertisement management easier in your WordPress blog. In fact, most of the plugins on the above list are free to use.

The above plugins will allow you to manage your ads for example set display locations, sell ad spots to advertisers, track ad statistics and much more awesome stuff. With these plugins, the only thing you are left with is to focus on creating great content and you should be able to make extra income on the side.

10. RSS Advertising

You have probably come across a button on various websites asking you to subscribe via RSS. If you didn’t know what it means, you must have asked yourself the following questions:

• What is RSS?
• What are RSS feeds?
• What is an RSS newsfeed?
• How do I get RSS feeds work for me?

Well RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Simple Syndication. It is a revolutionary way users interact with content on the web. Users can subscribe to RSS feeds through a feed reader. Website or blog owners submit their update content to RSS directories and it is delivered to subscribers through RSS feeds.

These updates are aggregated and can be easily viewed using a feed reader. A feed reader, sometimes called a feed aggregator, is a simple way one can view all the feeds they have subscribed to in one place.

I always recommend people to use a feed reader called Feedly because it has a nice web based interface, Android and IOS apps. It is generally a very convenient feed reader that I have personally used before.

When you subscribe to any website’s RSS feeds, whenever that particular website writes a new post, you will get a notification via your RSS reader.

How to monetize a website or blog using RSS feeds

There are a number of ways you can monetize your RSS feeds. If your blog is running on WordPress, you can use a WP plugin called RSS Footer Plugin. You can add a custom HTML code, premium banners or links to your content. You can also use your RSS feeds affiliate marketing, product sales and promotions.

Below are some of the most popular RSS feed directories that you can monetize your website with.

• Feedburner (by Google)
• Feedvertising (Text-Link ads)
• Pheedo
• Yahoo Publisher Network
• Mediafed
• FeedM8
• Bidvertiser
• ThakYouPages
• Feedshow
• AdGenta

Advertising online is constantly changing. Web publishers and new advertisers are adapting new advertising models. RSS feed advertising and subscriptions are just one way online advertising is evolving.

Knowing your audience demographics will guide publishers determine the most effect way to monetize contents of RSS feeds.

Start building your RSS feed subscriber list from the day you launch your blog or website. Having a large volume of subscribers will help you earn some good side income.

11. Audio Advertising (Pay Per Play)

Pay Per Play (PPP) or cash per play (CPP) advertising a form of audio advertising where an audio advertisement is played when someone visits your blog or website.

The ads play when users visit specific webpages on your blog or website, normally with a media control option to stop or mute them.

However most people don’t like this type of advertising as the ads are distracting and also cause web pages to load really slow. If you put audio ads on your blog, ensure that you monitor your blog bounce rate and weigh up whether audio ads are hurting User Experience (UX) or not.

Audio ads usually have a 100% conversion rate since they automatically play each time someone visits your blog or website. However the conversion rate can be low if the ads are not set to play automatically.

There are several third party audio adverting networks you can use to monetize your blog. The most popular audio ad networks include:

• Net Audio Ads
• Google Audio ads
• Targetspot
• Podtrac
• Kiptronic
• RadioTail
• Volo Media
• VoodooVox
• LocalVocal

Note that you do not necessarily have to use third party audio networks, you can start your own audio ad program, reach to brands and advertise their products and services.

To get the best out of audio ads,  your should have a targeted audience otherwise potential advertisers won’t be interested in advertising with you.

12. Video Advertising

In a similar way, you can sell video ads on your blog or website. You can be paid per view.or stream.

Over the past few years, video has increasingly has one of the most popular advertising methods. This method is very much similar to audio ads. Video ads (sometimes called rewarded video ads) can be placed on any site/blog that runs content. Rewarded videos have become a winning strategy for website publishers for both desktop and mobile web.

Below are top video ad networks:

• Google Adsense for video
• Springserve
• Airpush
• Inmobi
• Harren Media
• Yume
• Division D
• Selectmedia
• Undertone
• PropellerAds
• HaxHax
• BrightRoll
• RhythmOne
• Vdopia
• AdoTube
• Advertising.com
• VidRoll
• SpotXchange
• VeohClick
• Matomy
• Fedility Media
• Adobe Auditube

Video ads have become a number one choice for bloggers and publishers who are trying to maximize online revenue. Interactive and fun video content that is targeted to your audience is like to perform extremely well and has a substantially higher CPM than other standard ad formats. So, there’s excuse you shouldn’t try them out.

13. Pop-ups/Lightboxes

These are ads that usually popup on the webpage you’re viewing, darkening the background so the ad stands out in focus. The popup ad can be in form of a banner or a web form. Most people use them to build email lists by collecting emails of their blog users through filling out a web form.

These popups can also be used on your own custom popup ad program. All you need to do is reach out businesses and ask them to advertise with you using this method. Place their ads in popups (could be banners) and start earning.

Pop-ups are generally good when you use them to grow your e-mail subscribers list or for selling lightweight products on your website, for example selling an e-book to your customers. But they are commonly used for capturing visitor emails so they are persuaded in newsletters, which may turn into loyal customers.

There are also third party popup ads that you get paid when you display them on your website or blog. Below are some of the most popular ones:

• Adsterra
• PropellaAds
• PopAds
• ClickAdu
• Ad-Maven
• PopCash
• AdCash
• Exoclick
• Ero Advertising
• Galaksion
• PopUnder Total
• PopMyAds

Many businesses are looking to advertise on popular blogs using popups and lightboxes as a strategy to attract more customers. But always be precautious not to use too many popups as they turn off users and at the same time hurts user experience. You are therefore advised to use popups and lightboxes in a smart and peaceful manner that would not send away your visitors.

B). SPONSORSHIPS

Man people confuse sponsorships and advertisements to be the same thing, but they are slightly different. Whereas both seek to promote a brand or company you have partnered with, sponsorships are usually less obvious than ads.

A sponsorship is a relationship or agreement between a program or event host. Advertisers support the event or program in exchange for an agreed amount of exposure. Sponsorships are often stronger and long term commitments between the event or program provider.

Sponsorships should always be done with integrity, even if you can wholeheartedly recommend sponsored content, always remain honest in your recommendations and indicate the content is sponsored

Getting sponsorships is not easy, and the problem with many new bloggers is that they rush into making money as soon as they launch their blogs. This is understandable but if you don’t have enough audience or readership, no sponsor will be interested in you.

While I don’t have sponsors on my blog, I have been selling sponsorships to other bloggers in a bid to promote my blogs. It has worked out for me pretty well.

Here are some tips to help you find blog sponsors easily:

• Make a sure understand what is included in the sponsorship
• Contact potential sponsors whose businesses match your niche and audience
• Create a win-win situation. Show them sponsorship benefits
• Ask sponsors their expectations

When you have a new blog, you are most likely to go out and look for sponsorship deals. They won’t come to you by themselves. Below are some of the ways to monetize a blog using sponsorships:

14. You Can Sell Sponsored Reviews

Selling sponsored reviews is another smart way you can monetize your blog. Here you write an in-depth review about a product or service and then publish it on your blog. Advertisers pay for these reviews as a way of promoting their products and services.

This method perfectly works with niche specific blogs. If an advertiser visits your blogs and he feels your audience maybe interested in their products, he might pick interested in paying you to write a review about his product(s).

If your blog receives good traffic, brands will always approach you to have their products reviewed on your blog. You could charge them anywhere from UGX 100K to UGX 500K per review. Just make it clear on your blog that you charge a small fee for product reviews.

In order to get a sponsored or paid review, you need to reach out to an advertiser who might be interested in having their product reviewed on your blog. It is easier to get sponsors for niche specific blogs.

There are also online platforms where you can find people looking to buy reviews. The best way to find advertisers online is by joining or signing up on a network that connectors publishers and advertiser. Here is a list of a list of some of the best sponsored review networks in 2023:

• Tomoson
• Revcontent
• Izea Pay per post
• SponsoredReviews.com
• Famebit (For YouTuber channels)
• PayU2Blog
• Influenster (Mostly for USA & Canada users)
• SocialSpark
• Shopstylecollective (For Lifestyle bloggers)

If you write 2-5 sponsored detailed reviews using any of the above sponsored review ad networks, you can easily make $80-$400. Always remember to target brands whose products are related to your niche.

15. Publish sponsored posts on your blog

A Sponsored post, sometimes referred to as a promoted post or paid post is a type of post that has been paid by an advertiser to be published on a website or blog. Unlike sponsored reviews, a sponsored post is not necessarily a review.

A sponsored post is normally written by the owner (author) of the website but can also be written by the sponsor himself although he must indicate that the post has been sponsored. For example he can put a disclaimer similar to this below:

“This post was sponsored by <brand name>”

or

“This is a sponsored post”

The idea behind a sponsored post or promoted post is to draw traffic from a popular website to sponsor’s website or to help sell the sponsor’s product or even simply create awareness about the sponsor’s company or its services.

There are several pros and cons of sponsored posts, however if you engage in best practices of writing sponsored posts in a professional way, you could have the potential to earn a significant income from these posts.

Note that native ads, a new form of advertising, is replacing sponsored posts. Native advertising blends ads making them look like they are part of the website content. I have already discussed native advertising above.

16. Publish sponsored posts on your social media pages

Apart from putting sponsored posts on your blog or website, you can also make money from your blog publishing sponsored post on your social media pages such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Pinterest and other social networking platforms.

If you command a large following on social media, advertisers will love to share the products or businesses with your audience. You however need to build an engaged audience with curated feeds.

Brands that advertise on your blog can extend a contract with you to share their advertisements across your social media channels at an extra cost.

Your brand is your entire reach, from your website (or blog) to social media channels and more. There are limitless ways to earn from a blog. Think strategically.

17. Become a brand ambassador

Brands love promoting their products and services by cooperating and associating with great bloggers through ambassadorship. When you become a brand ambassador, you represent a brand in public and show them in a good light.

Usually a brand pays you in kind compensation with free products or merchandise and sometimes hard cash.

Your duties as a brand ambassador can be website or social media mentions, include their adverts in your tweets, share their post on your social media pages and many more. However to execute this project perfectly, one needs to be a true fan of the brand.

Not everyone can become an ambassador; you have to exhibit exceptional greatness in what you do. If you are that great blogger, brands will themselves look for you.

Brand ambassador duties

Below some of the duties of an ambassador;

• Posting on your social media pages, blog and linking to products.

• Attending events on behalf of the brand you represent
• Giving mentions or speeches about a brand in conferences.
• Serving as an event host
• Handing out product samples of a brand in experiential campaigns, at events or street.

The best thing with being an ambassador is there is no risk involved. You can just try to earn some side hustle bucks while you maintain your full-time job. The new era of social media and Public Relations (PR) have opened opportunities for anyone who wants to grow an audience and perfect their networking and business savvy skills.

One effective way to boost a brand’s image and credibility is by tapping into their own fans and clients, and turning their passion for the brand into a powerful marketing strategy by using social media or word of mouth. So it is a win-win situation for everyone!

C). AFFILIATE MARKETING

18. Join affiliate networks

Right here, I discuss how to monetize a blog with affiliate marketing. But before we get into that, let’s first understand what affiliate marketing is.

What is Affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing can be simply put as a practice of selling other people’s products online and you are paid a commission every time someone buys a product through your special online link called an Affiliate Link.

Affiliate marketing is actually a modern interpretation of a very old idea where you get paid commission on a sale. You introduce your readers to products or services from trusted brands, companies or individuals and get a commission on any sales generated through your affiliate link.

For bloggers, that means you have to find a product or service that you like, promote it to your blog audience; get paid part of the profit on each sale you make.

Let’s take an example.

You are a loyal follower of my blog, and you love the content I publish such as free advice, tips, guides and insightful posts on the topics that interest you. Now someday i recommend that you buy a product from a company that I personally trust and believe their products are the best.

Let’s say buying a Tecno Phone. If I put an affiliate link under the product, you click on it through my recommendation and actually buy the phone. I will then get a small commission from your purchase.

Affiliate marketing works better for blogs that receive large volume of traffic and also produce content on a regular basis consistently.

How much commission do I get with affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing commission varies depending on the affiliate program you are using, the product you are promoting. But usually commission per sale ranges from $1-$10,000. For example I do affiliate marketing with a web hosting company called Bluehost and I earn $65 every time some purchases hosting through My Bluehost Affiliate Link.

Earning from Affiliate marketing

• There are mainly three affiliate marketing revenue models, namely:
• Pay Per Click (PPC) – You earn a fee if a visitor clicks on a promotion on your website.
• Pay Per Lead (PPL) – Here you get a fee when a visitor participates in a promoted activity on your website e.g a contest.
• Click Per Sale (CPS) – This is the most popular one. Here you earn a commission if a visitor actually a promoted product through your affiliate link.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

• No investment needed
• Little or no operating costs
• You can make money 24/7
• List risks involved
• No need to have a warehouse
• No need to have a website
• Fast and easy to get started
• You don’t have to create your own product.
• The internet community of over 3 billion people is your audience

Choose an Affiliate Network to work with – Join affiliate networks

I assume that by now you have an idea about how affiliate marketing works generally. Now the next step is for you to choose the right affiliate networks to work with, and can work for you.

For one to be a successful affiliate marketer, you need to choose and promote the right products on your blog.  Statistics show that 76% of new affiliate marketers fail to make money from affiliate marketing because they usually do not choose the right products to promote.

The best place to start hunting for affiliate products is in marketplaces like ClickBank, Commission Junction, ShareASale etc. Depending on your blog niche, you can find the best affiliate products to promote.

Below are some of the most popular affiliate networks you can join today

• Clickbank
• Amazon Associates
• FlexOffers
• iTunes Affiliate Program
• Commission Junction
• Awin
• Skimlinks

You should only work with an affiliate network that offers services relevant to your niche. For example if you run a travel blog, I do not expect it to have web hosting affiliate links. Web hosting affiliates would work better on a web development or internet marketing blog.

Your blog niche highly contributes to how much you can earn from affiliate marketing. Technology and Heath niches seem to work best for Affiliate marketing with some schemes paying commission as high as $200 per sale. However you should be able to earn good money with other niches too, provided you can drive lots of traffic to your blog. With the right traffic, you can sell anything.

How to make Affiliate sales on your website or Blog

The easiest way to drive affiliate sales is by reviewing products. Simply choose a product or service you like or wish to promote, write an in-depeth review about, drive traffic to the review post and start generating leads and sales. A good review should be written in the format below:

• Introduction of the product you want to promote.
• Introduce the company brand behind the product or service
• Description the product
• Writes about its pros and cons
• Provide recommendations
• Provide a call-to-action

Only review products or services you have used before and you fully understand how they work. If possible provide screenshots about the product or service in your review.

19. Affiliate Marketing vs. Google AdSense

While affiliate marketing involves promoting other people’s products on your website for a commission, Google AdSense is a bit different. AdSense is an ad placement network. It pays you for clicks or impressions you get on ads placed on your blog or website.

Personally I have found Affiliate Marketing the best way one can monetize their website. In fact most of the money I make from my blogs comes from affiliate marketing, consultation service and then AdSense is my third source of income.

Take an example, if my blog receives 300 visitors in day and 100 of them click on the Google ads, I would earn only $10 assuming AdSense CPC is $0.1. However with the same amount of amount of traffic, if just 5 people click on my Bluehost web hosting affiliate link (Bluehost gives commission of $65) and actually buy hosting, I would earn $325 from affiliate marketing in just a single day.

The above scenario shows Affiliate marketing is clearly the best way one can earn a reason amount of money their blog. However it is not easy as it sounds. Your potential to earn from affiliate sales depend on the traffic your blog receives and the buy habits of audience. If your blog followers are poor people, they won’t probably buy your products that are sold expensively.

You won’t get any sales if you advertise products that are not relevant to your audience.

20. Become a direct affiliate for your favorite products

This is my best way to do market affiliates products because I do not need to signup with any middlemen to get started. Usually I go for products that I have personally used before and found them to be perfect.

Think of your favourite products, Google them to find out if they offer any affiliate programs, if they do, simply signup for atleast two and get started.

Here are some of the products I’m an affiliate with:

Web Hosting Affiliate Networks

For those technology niche bloggers who wanto monetize their blogs with hosting affiliate networks, I recommend the following programs.

• Bluehost affiliate program
• Hostgator affiliate program
• Godaddy Affiliate Program
• A2 Hosting Affiliate program
• Dreamhost affiliate program
• SiteGround Affiliate program
• InMotion Affiliate program

SEO Tools Affiliate networks

• Semrush
• Moz

Domains Affiliate networks

• NameCheap
• Godaddy

And many more

21. Launch your own affiliate program

Just like any other affiliate programs, you can create your own affiliate program aimed at promoting your products. Here you can allow other people to sell your own products in exchange for a commission on every sale.

There several tools you can you can use to launch your own affiliate. Here are some of the best affiliate marketing softwares:

• Affiliate Pro
• HasOffers
• 1ShoppingCart
• Post Affiliate Pro
• Omnistar
• iDevAffiliate
• ClickInc
• Interneka
• HitPath
• Jrox

There you are. It is time to make money affiliate marketing now. Think about a winning strategy and take a road to become one of the richest affiliate marketers in Uganda or elsewhere in the world.

But remember that before choosing any affiliate program to work with, you must identify the needs, habits and tendencies of your blog traffic.

Do not stay in the present; strive to earn big the future!

Note: Affiliate marketing isn’t a walk in the park. You won’t just put affiliate links on your blog and expect people to just buy things. A blog is like a business, when you choose to monetize it, there’s need to establish authority in your niche or topic, build more traffic and most importantly, gain trust from your readers or audience. That is the only way you will be successful in affiliate marketing.

D). DIGITAL PRODUCTS

This is one of the most lucrative methods of blog monetization in Uganda. If you get this right, you can potentially make a good amount of money.

You have a website or blog, but are you monetizing it with will all the time you are investing in it? With over 500 million websites and blogs created each year, there’s stiff competition in grabbing people’s attention in almost every topic you can think of…and as time goes on, it is even going to get more crowded than ever before.

Today there’s so much information online readily available to us. With just a click of a button, you can access lessons, courses, books, tutorials, graphics, photos, blogs, music and many more. Everything you want now can be bought online digitally.

Ugandans are embracing the entrepreneurial spirit. In fact, Ugandan was recently ranked the most entrepreneurial country in the world. Most Ugandan entrepreneurs are now using the internet to sell their products and services.

Making money blogging is no longer a game of just putting premium banners, sponsored content, Google AdSense or affiliate links on a website or blog. Truthfully these are great monetization strategies but it is not where the real money will be flowing in future.

By now you need to consider how you can sell digital products with blog or website. If you’re running a niche based blog, think of a way you can package your most popular topics and create courses out of them. If you are an expert in any field, trust me there are people who will pay for your accelerated learning materials.

Selling digital products is one of the most attractive online businesses in Uganda. It is an endlessly scalable business once you create products. In most cases there are almost no costs involved for every digital item you sell, and if you do the right SEO, you will be able to rank high in search engines like Google thus bringing more customers at no costs.

Moreover with digital products you don’t have to store inventory or incur shipping costs. Unlike affiliate products where you only earn a commission on every sale, with digital products you keep 100% of the sales excluding processing fee for your payment platform.

Of course, just like any business of true value, you are not going to achieve success overnight with selling digital products via your blog. You will have to work hard first if you are to achieve anything.

Many Ugandans are now turning to selling their expertise online. Some are selling ebooks while others are selling courses in form of trainings. The biggest problem some encounter is they don’t know how to choose the right products that will profitable.

I have already discussed how affiliate marketing works and how you can make money from it. But why sell other people’s products when you have the potential to sell your own? Of course it takes a little more work but the reward is much bigger.

I’m here to help you out. Below I discuss the strategies you can use to monetize your blog or website with digital products:

22. Sell Web Elements

If you are a graphic or web designer, this is for you. People out there pay lots of dollars to get logos, themes, wallpapers, icons, avatars, patterns and much more such related stuff.

WordPress Themes or templates are very popular and are downloaded hundreds of times every day. Themes on Themeforest range from $15 to $70.

There are websites like Graphic River where creative guys sell their art. They can sell anything ranging from vectors, social media packs, ad banners, textures etc. The possibilities of web elements that one can sell online are endless.

23. Create and sell online courses

If your blog focuses on teaching, informing or helping people learn, for example Internet Marketing Tips, then you should consider creating an educational course for your readers.

Use your blog to showcase your and expertise in a particular niche or subject. If your content is great, your readers won’t be inclined to buy your premium content in form of a course.

You can create a course in any format you want. It can be an eBook, video course or even audio series or podcasts.

The course you offer doesn’t have to be ground breaking, it just has to provide your readers with what they need.

Many people shun creating courses because they feel like it won’t be “perfect” like for others. In most cases that is just an excuse, anyone can create a course. Just get started.

Benefits of creating an online course

What are the benefits of creating an online course?

The market for online courses is big. The world has over 3.8 billion users and most these are always looking for information and learning materials online.

In fact, according to Forbes, online courses market was projected to reach $150 billion in 2019 and expected to grow by 15% per year starting in 2023. Whoa!

Now do you still need reasons why you should create an online? Well, let me give you a few more reasons.

• Online courses are a great way bloggers can make extra income.
• Many people love paying good money for them. Why yet one can find same information for free? Answer: Convenience, all info in one, no need to look for it in different sources.
• You don’t to have a specific qualification to create a course. Anyone with extensive knowledge on a particular topic can create a course.
• You help inspire students by improving their skills
• You are recognized as an expert by your peers and students
• You get new opportunities. You could get hired to speak at events or be hired to develop courses for other people.
• You can reach a big audience through your courses
• Teach = Learning. You learn every time you help others learn.
• Helps improve your communication skills

How to sell an online course

You can sell your course directly from your blog or sell it through online course hosting platforms like;

• Udemy
• Teachable
• Skillshare
• WizIQ
• Academy of Mine
• CourseCraft
• Thinkfic
• Learn Worlds
• Click4Course
• Educadium
• Digital Chalk
• Learn Dash

Online courses help you bridge the gap between you and your audience. They provide a more personal way of showcasing your expertise, and this always takes you to more success. If you think you can’t create an online, you can try other blog income generating methods. You lose nothing in doing that.

24. Publish an eBook

Writing and selling eBooks is one of the best ways to make money online from your blog. People love eBooks because they offer them extensive knowledge in a handy file.

You can choose to sell your eBooks directly through your blog or sell them on kindle. Regardless of where you sell it from, it is your blog that will act as a marketing tool that prompts people to buy your eBook.

But now the internet changed everything. There are several ebook publishing platforms that allow anyone to get their book infront on millions of readers on the internet.

Write an ebook on a niche you understand best. It doesn’t have to be the best in the world – it just has to provide great information to readers. Once you have created your ebook, you can use your blog or website as a marketing tool to promote it.

You can create new ebooks whenever you want. Have a designated webpage on your blog where people can view them for promotion or marketing purposes.

You can sell your ebooks directly on your blog or through the following platforms:

14 best platforms to self-publish an eBook

• Amazon Kindle Direct Publish
• Payhip
• Scribd
• Smashwords
• iBooks Store (by Apple)
• Kobo Writing Life
• Gumroad
• Tradebit
• NOOK Press
• Payspree
• Payloadz
• E-junkie
• Booktango
• Bookbaby

If you are a new ebook seller, I recommend that you start with Payhip because of their relatively low transactions, and comes with no risk. If you’re already a professional in this business, then BookBaby or Amazon Kindle can add up your game.

How much can you Earn from selling eBooks online?

How much money can you make from an eBook? Ebooks can be profitable. However how much you can earn totally depends on your pricing, blog traffic, audience buying habits etc.

Darren Rowse, the founder of ProBlogger.com reportedly earns over $70,000 per month from the sale of his ebooks.

Digital downloads is now a billion dollar industry. Making real money from digital downloads is very possible, but you won’t make much money if you’re selling your products from third party websites. Yes there are few people who earn decent money through selling on third party websites, but they still end up giving up a percentage of their total earnings.

Start your own store, brand yourself, market yourself and start selling digital downloads on your own terms, without having to pay hefty fees to third parties.

This is really simple to get started as you don’t need any manufactures, packagers, suppliers, shipping and all the pain that comes with physical products.

To get started, pick one of the above digital product types or any other, create an eCommerce store and start selling!

My pro tip?

Remember to use a tiered pricing structure. Ensure there’s affordable entry-level products for beginners or newbies as well as expensive premium products for corporates or large businesses.

Whichever monetization method you choose will largely depend on your blog, industry, and audience. Some industries don’t perform well with digital products while others do extremely well. Also some industries do not have many products while others have a lot.

It is all a matter of testing and getting what works for you right. You may not get it right on your first try, but that should not make you give up. Keep pivoting and trying out new things.

The most important thing is for you to build your blog traffic and an email list. If you have these two, you are likely to succeed no matter what monetization strategy you choose.

E). PHYSICAL PRODUCTS

Physical products will require a warehousing and shipment or delivery. However these can sometimes be easier to sell compared to digital products. Ugandan consumers tend to trust tangible goods more than digital items. They really find it hard justifying buying something digital. Below are some ideas for physical products you can sell on your website or blog:

25. Sell Fashion products

You can sell fashion products through your blog such as clothes, shoes, capes etc. For example, I’m planning to introduce customized outfits on this blog. The outfits will be branded with by blog name. Other products will be branded with ICT related terms. I expect to get sales from my loyal blog followers and other ICT enthusiasts in Uganda and around the world.

26. Sell handmade products

This is a booming business in Uganda. If you are a great artist, why not sell your art pieces through your blog? Start a blog today, sell your talent and make money.

27. Sell Your Products Via Auctioning

Yes you can sell you products via auctioning using your blog as an auctioning platform. There are several themes and plugins you can use to achieve this. Below are some of the most popular plugins and themes that you can use the easily setup an auction system:

• Responsive Auction Theme
• WooCommerce simple auctions
• Ultimate WordPress Auction plugin
• WP Auction Plugin

28. Sell Merchandise

Sell your own creation for example prints, books, accessories, agricultural products etc.

29. Sell Printables

These are products that are designed to be printed out. They can be planners, cheat sheets, work sheets, party invites or anything that someone can buy to print and (or fill in).

Examples of printables

• Calendars
• Piece of Art
• Party Invitation cards
• Planner pages
• Gift tags
• Greeting cards

Although blogging rotates around the online or digital world, nothing can stop you from creating and selling physical products, using your blog as a marketing tool. Please note that physical products require shipping or delivery.

If you are a Ugandan and your target market is Ugandan, it is easier to deliver products to clients physically. If you are targeting global clients, you will need to register with shipping companies and showcase your products on relevant online market places. For example if you are selling good handmade crafts, you can register with Esty or Amazon for any product.

Physical products are not for everyone, but if you think they are right for you, you should give them a try.

F). MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTIONS

Monthly subscriptions is one way one can monetize a blog in Uganda. This method is not yet popular here but if someone started it and did it the right way, they could make some cool cash from it. Below are some are some of the ways you can monetize your website using monthly subscriptions methods:

30. Create a membership Program

You could mastermind premium membership group within your blog where you release exclusive secrets, tricks and information on money making methods to premium members. Members pay a subscription fee to join the group. Premium members get firsthand information that helps them to maximize their business revenues.

Joining such clubs usually comes at a cost. Popular blogs around the world charge starting from $100. Here in Uganda where people can’t afford much, you could charge subscription fee of upto a maximum of about UGX 50,000/- per month.

The larger the number of subscriptions, the more money you will make as a blogger. If you can manage to get 1000 premium members, each paying UGX 50,000/- per month, that translates to UGX 50,000,000/-, as in Fifty million Uganda shillings. This is very possible if one is determined.

Membership programs are not yet popular in Uganda, but if you started one and sensitized your audience on how it works, people will eventually start subscribing to it.

If you still think this doesn’t make any sense, just look at Ben Thompson’s premium membership blog Stratechery.com. This guy is said to be having over 2000 subscribers, each paying a subscription fee of $100 per year. This means Thompson potentially makes $200,000 per year. That is roughly UGX 700M. Whoa!

I’m not saying you will earn exactly the same if you started a membership site today, but with determination and hard work, you can earn a reasonable amount of money. Remember if Ben Thompson and others did it, you too can. Yes you can!

31. Create a blog subscription model

If your blog receives large volume of traffic from loyal readers, you could monetize it by locking some content, thereby requiring your readers to pay a recurring fee to access to full content.

However, your blog content should be worth paying for. If your free content is crap, then definitely no one would pay to read the premium one, because they would assume everything you write is crap.

Before you go for this, you should put these factors into consideration.

• Can your readers pay to read content?
• Will you retain your readers if you locked some content?
• Can an all premium blog work in Uganda?
• Can your publishing switch from free to paid?
• Do you have a large volume of loyal readers?

The best way to do it to lock just specific and then leave the rest of content free to access. An all premium blog may not work here in Uganda.

A good local example is www.ugandaradionetwork.com. Uganda Radio Network (URN) is a subscription-based news agency where you have to pay to read their news stories. They have been doing this since 2005 and I guess it pays them handsomely that is why they have managed to survive for this long.

32. Online Seminars and Webinars

You can also create online seminars on your blog where people have to pay a fee to attend or stream live. Announce a webinar on your blog, and explain to your audience its benefits and why they should pay to attend. If you have loyal followers, you can easily find people to buy attendance slots.

33. Create a paid Job board

This is a new online earning model in Uganda. A job board is simply a website that list jobs supplied by employers. This is different from a job search engine. Job search engines only aggregate job listings from job listing boards and employer websites. Employers pay to have their jobs uploaded on your website. Basically your job board acts as a resume warehouse and employers pay to access them.

As a blogger, you can earn money by posting jobs on your blog. Tom Ewer, the founder of LeavingWorkBehind.com started PaidToBlog.com job board that posts high quality blogging gigs, and today he charges a monthly subscription fee of $39 to join his board. You can either join as an employer or an employee.

But remember for all these monthly subscription service, you have to build credibility and reputation around your blog in order to be able to earn people’s trust. Jumia Jobs and Brighter Monday are some of the job boards in Uganda that have earned credibility overtime because of their professionalism, and now employers pay them to have their jobs listed on their job board.

Jumia Jobs and Bright Monday is still free to employees, but in future, employees may be charged a certain fee to be able to access those jobs or to be able apply online.

There are also some Job Software publishers that pay you as website publisher, even if a job application is just submitted through your blog or website. Most of these Job Software publishers are free to get started with and below are some of them:

• JobThread. JobThread is an easy to manage job platform. You don’t need to have any technical expertise. No programming skills needed. You set your own job posting and JobThreat will 50% off every paid listing.
• JobCoin. This is the first international job platform. Employers pay $99 to upload jobs. You are paid around $20 for any job application that originates from your site.
• SimplyHired. SimplyHired aggregates jobs from various job boards around the web. Their aggregated job lists are shown on your site and you are paid on a Pay-Per-Click basis.

G). Freelance Services

If you can’t think of a specific method to monetize your blog; Are you a great graphics designer? Are you a coding genius? Are you an SEO wizard? Use your website or blog to showcase your experience and expertise.

Write content that establishes your authority and grow your reach and audience. When you prove yourself as an expert, you can sell those skills to other people.

This is one of the most common business models for many internet marketing blogs and websites around the world. Bloggers use their skills to earn extra income using their blogs.

Take an example of Bryan Harris, the founder of VideoFruit.com, he built a very a strong audience with his blog and most of his income comes from creating and selling internet marketing videos to businesses.

34. Content writing services

If you are a niche blogger, you are likely to get lots of freelance writing deals. If you believe you have great writing skills, list Freelance writing on your blog as one of the services you offer. You can also drop an email to other big blogs in your niche and ask them for a writing a job. Here your blog will act will act as your CV. If you’re a great writer, your blog content will speak for itself.

Blog owners out there are looking for niche writers. If you’re indeed a good writer, you will be surprised at the number of people who will contact you for blog writing gigs. You can charge anything from $5-$100 for a single blog article. The price value normally depends on the number of words and quality of the article.

If you think this idea can work for you, you can create a services page on your blog with a catchy Call-to-Action phrase like “Hire Me”.

I offer freelancing writing services on this blog of mine. So whenever I’m not writing for my blogs, I’m always busy writing content for other bloggers. I charge $2 for every 100 words I pen down on paper. While I’m not in position to disclose the total income I earn from this service, all I can tell you is there’s a lot of money in content writing services provided you have good writing skills.

Other services writing services you can offer as a freelancer writer may include:

• Business Plan writing service
• Thesis and dissertation writing service
• SEO optimized content writing service
• Custom essay and speech writing service
• Proof reading and editing service
• Research project and proposal writing service
• Resume and CV writing service
• Feasibility study and report writing service
• Letter writing service

35. Offer Consulting Services

Becoming a blogging consultant is one of the lucrative ways of monetizing your website (or blog). For this case, you will have to be recognized as an expert in your field. For new bloggers who have no much expertise, this might be a distant dream for you. But with consistency, self-research and having a helping attitude, you could someday become a top-notch expert in your niche.

Consultants can earn a lot of money by offering one-on-one counseling or consultancy sessions. People hire them to solve their problems and they happily pay them premium amounts because they understand the value they generate from their knowledge, experience and exposure.

Self-experience is one great skill you can use to make money through your blog, depending on your niche. If you are an expert in your niche, you can start a professional consulting program on your blog and start charging people for it.

For instance, if you are into web development niche, you can offer website audit, web design training, website marketing, SEO services and many other similar things.

If you are a professional blogger with a blog that receives high traffic and engaged audience, you can offer your services as a blogging consultant. You can help individuals and businesses that are struggling with their blogs. You will only earn client trust if your own blog is performing well. Having a well performing blog would mean you’re an expert and therefore can sell your expertise as a service to other people.

Personally, I’m an ICT guy, and I offer several ICT related consulting programs for individuals, small businesses and corporate companies.

Other consulting you can offer include:

• Legal consulting
• SEO consulting
• Social media consult
• Offer Strategy services
• Content marketing
• Internet security
• Financial consulting
• Blogging consulting
• Coaching Consulting
• Market entry strategy
• Virtual assistant services
• Business strategies

You don’t need to have an MBA from India or Harvard to start earning millions as a consultant. You can Start a Blog on a topic you are passionate about, develop your skills/expertise and start offering consultation services to individuals and businesses.

Like i mentioned before, being an ICT guy, I have offered several IT related consulting services to many individuals and small businesses and I have made millions out of it.

To achieve this goal, you have to be consistent and be an expert in your field. Be everywhere on the Internet, join internet forums and discussions and help solve your audience’s problems free for now. The time will come when you will be confident enough to sell your experience for a premium price. There are so many consultants in Uganda who charge UGX 700k per hour. I believe with hard work, you can become that great too.

In this world where we all need money to survive, you don’t have to always offer free services. Use your expertise to make money through consultation services. I love helping others but there are some things I can’t just do for free.

G). OTHER WAYS TO MONETIZE A BLOG

36. Organize Events

Many blogs like Uganda’s PC Tech Mag and America’s TechCrunch amongst several others, make money through organizing tech events. They either make money through corporate sponsorships or by charging people to attend these events. This is very common in Uganda especially among tech blogs, fashion blogs and tech hubs such as Outbox, Innovation Village, Hive Colab and many more.

37. Promoting a business

Many businesses in Uganda start blogs to promote their services. This is part of content marketing and it is highly effective way for startups to promote their businesses. Startups usually approach bloggers to promote their businesses. Depending on the value of the service paid for, blog promotion services could generate you a lot more income than you could ever imagine.

38. Public Speaking

Blogging will cast you as an expert to the world, and as a result, you will be invited to speak at several events whose themes are related to your expertise. You will be paid for it in return or be given presents. For each event you attend, attendees’ response and the success of the event will determine how much you will be paid on the next event you will be invited to.

49. Link building

If your blog receives a large amount of traffic, other bloggers and web publishers will constantly reach out to you to have their links included in your articles. This practice is called Link building, sometimes referred to as linkbuilding or link-building. It helps promote one’s website by improving their search engine rankings. You could accept links from other bloggers by charging them anywhere from $20 to $500, depending on your blog traffic and page rank in search engines.

40. Offer coupons

Offer coupons with affiliate links. Everyone loves buying stuff at discounted prices. People are eagerly hunting for promo and discount codes for everything ranging from clothes to travel vacations. If you can offer valid codes, you could get a commission on the revenue too.

41. Create a Paid directory or a business page

You can easily setup a directory on your blog or website. You can then charge brands or companies to have their businesses listed in your directory.

A directory is also another great way of driving traffic to your blog because of a large range of keywords that maybe contained in the directories. You can redirect this traffic to other websites and be paid on commission

42. Build your own software

This is not a simple method and it is not for non-programmers. If you are a great programmer, why not create a software and sell it using your blog? Create a service or tool that people will find useful and be willing to pay for it. It takes time and efforts, but if you put hard work in it, trust me it can be profitable.

43. Create an App for your blog and monetize it.

Many bloggers are now turning their apps into mobile apps, specifically Android and iOS apps. You can separately monetize your blog app and make money from it.

44. Accept donations

If your blog receives huge monthly traffic that is very engaged, simply add a Donation Button on your blog asking your readers to support your cause of offering them free content.

You could have loyal followers who love your work and can reward you for your hard work.

Accepting donations isn’t a fast road to getting rich quickly, however it can help your cover your operational expenses like hosting, premium tools, research, new product creation and all other tools required to maintain a healthy and active blog or website.

Take an example of a web content archiving platform, web.archive.org, which makes a lot of money from donations. This is mainly attributed to their millions of monthly visitors.

45. Auction Your Website

If you correctly followed the above ways of monetizing a blog/website but none worked for you, you can consider quitting the game by selling your blog/website. Flippa.com the best website selling platform you can use to sell your website. If your website has a decent domain, good looking and with great content, you can sell it anywhere from $1000 to as high as $50000.

If you successfully sell your blog at a good amount, you can as well invest into the business of buying and selling websites. This kind of business can become profitable for you. Go buy buy domain names, make websites and sell them on Flippa.

Final words

There are over 100 ways to monetize a blog (or website), and the above mentioned are just some of them that I have personally tested and proved. Making money from a blog will always largely depend on your efforts.

The biggest takeaway from this article is there is no one perfect way to monetize a blog. What works for me may not work for you. You just have to experiment and tweak everything till you find out what works for you. It is all about trial and error.

However, if your blog is just starting and doesn’t receive large traffic yet, I highly recommend that you start monetizing it with Google AdSense, then if you hit like 30k sessions per month, you can upgrade to other monetization methods.

The bitter truth is you cannot Make Money Blogging but you can use your blog to make money by promoting products and services or offering services.

Most starting bloggers will give up in less than one year because they joined blogging with a misconception that just writing articles alone was enough for them to make money.

To be honest, it is hard to make money from Internet Marketing blogs like this one of mine because the people you target are bloggers too and also want to make money, but it is easier to make money from other niches and industries. Most successful bloggers make money from blogging industries outside internet marketing.

The blog monetization ways I have discussed above are only to inspire you take action. You can monetize your blog in any possible way, even by offering services as photographer, musician, gym trainer, life coach, graphic designer, programmer or whatever you have passion or interested in.

With that said, you have to work hard and be consistent with your blogging activities. There’s no free money in blogging. You have to work for it. No real success happens overnight.

If you know any other ways to monetize websites that I haven’t mentioned in this article, please let me know in the comment section below. I will add them to this article and credit you by putting your name below it.

Please share this article if it has been helpful to you!

Thank you for reading!