Thoughts on monetizing a programming blog that's gaining organic search traffic?
I have been writing a programming blog for almost two years, mostly just to keep a record of the things I've learned. It turns out that the blog has been gaining traffic on Google Search and now gets between 1K-1.5K page views from search on weekdays.
I have been trying to think of good ways to monetize the blog. Of course, ads are the conventional way one might think of, but I'm wondering what other ideas (maybe community-based?) there might be.
Edit: Here's my traffic from Google Search Console if anyone's interested what it looks like. The bumps are because people are usually googling coding things during the week (M-F), so I get large dips on the weekend. Also, my audience is mostly American, so I took a big traffic hit for the July 4 holiday.
Affiliate marketing - write about products like Digital ocean, Scraperapi and plug your affiliate link.
Sponsored content - Collab with founders, write about their product (product reviews, comparison, how to integrate their API, etc) and charge a certain fee per article.
Start a newsletter and monetize it.
Can you provide me the link to your blog? Would love to check it.
Oh! I forgot to mention I do have a newsletter with about 1400 subscribers. What ideas are there for monetizing a newsletter?
Sponsorship is the most common way to go forward for newsletters.
Yeah sure. it's https://typeofnan.dev
Mostly random React/javascript/typescript content. What I do to come up with topics (usually) is if I implement something at work that takes a little researching I jot it down and write a post about the topic later. That has served me pretty well so far.
It's great to see your blog is growing! If you're planning to monetize your blog then you should keep your main vision for readers in mind!
Are you looking to make money only from that blog or you want to add value to your readers.
As you said most of the traffic comes from USA then their are fair chances of getting much higher CPC with display ads like adsense or media.net. But with display ads you will not add any value to your readers, as you're not the one who is controlling the advertisers.
On the other hand if you look for other monetization methods like affiliate marketing, ebooks or 1-o-1 mentorship that way you will not disturb the user experience of the website + can would able to establish your blog under more authoritative roof!
I really like the and it's a great way to articulate why I have been hesitating to put ads on the site. It may generate a little revenue but adds not value (and possibly even detracts from the experience).
If there's a certain slice of content that seems to resonate with the people visiting your site, maybe create a paid screencast or ebook that dives deep into that topic?
It doesn't have to be huge, just large enough to go into depth and help people through something they're struggling with.
Many years ago I bought a Git screencast because seeing it in action helped me a lot more than just reading about it. A few months ago I got into learning Haskell, and after getting a good grasp on the basics found myself going "okay but how do I actually build anything in a production setting?" Found this book and it was a nearly instant purchase for me: https://leanpub.com/simple-haskell-book
Web development is huge space and lots of people are struggling with understanding everything. A random idea from your recent blog headlines: A screencast detailing your personal approach to creating new React components from scratch, while avoiding various pitfalls. Or: An ebook on getting the most out of Jest with a React/TypeScript frontend.
Thank you Tyler! I have definitely thought a bit about the eBook space. I think my hesitation has been two-fold: (1) your standard impostor syndrome stuff (who am I to write a whole book on this topic?) and (2) the amount of time/effort it takes to put something like that together compared to the relatively-quick process of writing a blog post with no guaranteed return.
Of course, the answers to those concerns kind of write themselves: the impostor syndrome concern is likely unfounded given how well the blog is doing and it takes time/some risk to make money.
I suppose additionally I could do the smart product thing and put a landing page out there for the ebook to help understand interest before investing a bunch of time.
Yeah, your hesitation is definitely a common feeling! I've certainly felt it myself.
Another couple things to consider: What would you most enjoy doing? And what are your goals? (monetary or otherwise)
I've wanted to produce a paid screencast course on TypeScript for a long time, but have struggled to do so. Upon reflection, I think a big reason for this is that I just don't enjoy the process of creating them! I'd much rather be writing code for real apps. I have a vague goal of wanting to diversify my income, but it's not a powerful enough goal for me to overcome my distaste for creating screencasts, especially since the ROI is unknown.
Ads always seem kind of random IMHO.
Maybe you can find products you can and want to endorse and can earn income through affiliate links.
Disclaimer: I’m selling a JS image Editor SDK so depending on the blog audience maybe it’s a good match.
I totally agree that ads seem random and, in my opinion, can cheapen the feel of a site!
Try some organic methods, finding referral programs for book, services, products could get you decent referral income in your blog posts. If your blogs are related to things that people want to put into practice, having recommended resources would work best.
You could even setup some membership/chip in kinda benefits for readers. 1,500 viewers per day depending on the country/quality could turn into maybe a couple of dollars a day.
Thank you!
Membership benefits sound kind of interesting to me just because I really like the idea of building a community (you have a built-in audience for future marketing!). Have you seen any blog-related memberships that stuck out to you as a neat idea?
For the most part I’ve just seen people with Patreon content and buy-me-a-coffee tipping, I haven’t seen too many blogs with memberships per say.
Feel free to link your blog and I’ll brainstorm some ideas, building communities is cool, blogs can turn into YouTube/tutorial/podcast/forum content with enough of a niche 👌.
affiliate income by recommending online courses.
First:
I would suggest growing this website.
Find a partner to write different topics in the style that you have.
Second:
You can create Jobs board.
Let companies post front-end jobs for a fee.
You got traffic that might make this possible and reasonable to them.
And with jobs board you stay with clean aesthetics of your site (which are cool btw)