 Have you seen other artists obviously making money from their blog and you've wondered how do they do that or maybe that's something I would like to do myself? So in this video I'm going to share 7 ways that you too can monetize your blog. Hello, welcome or welcome back to my channel, my name is Sophie and I love to help artists just like you to set up market and grow a highly successful business doing what you love. And if you'd like to learn more tips and tricks on how to build that successful art business then you're in the right place. Here on this channel I post videos about all things art business related so make sure that you subscribe and of course hit that bell to get notified every time I post a new video. So before we dive in let's just get clear on this term blog because for me it means a couple of things. The term blog can actually mean the name for your specific website especially if you are somebody who builds their whole business around creating articles every single week or maybe several times a week and a major part of the website are your articles then people just attend to call the website a blog. It goes back to the days when people just used to have websites that just were blogs and didn't have other content on them so I feel like it can be a bit confusing when people saying I'm monetizing my blog. Do they mean the website on which you have lots of blog articles or do you mean just one single article is also called a blog? Now in my previous video that I'll link up here I talked about seven steps actually creating a blog article I'll also put links below to the three reasons why I believe blogging is still alive and well for us creatives in 2022 so I just wanted to be really clear so you completely understand what I talk about when I say monetize the blog. So let's dive into the seven ways to monetize off your blog. Now I want to be clear that a lot of these ways you can actually use just one single article not necessarily the website in general so that's pretty exciting too. So let's go ahead and look at the first one and the first one might seem really obvious but I sometimes think people just forget about this you can actually sell your artwork. So imagine that you've written a blog article talking about your latest collection the inspiration behind it how you created you in fact you might create a series of blogs the inspiration behind it the process how you move through the end results etc etc you might have made a little mini series of blog articles about your latest collection then wouldn't it make sense to make a little bit of an offer on that last blog article and say seeing as you are a one of my blog readers I'd love to give you 15% off this new collection and give them a code so if someone's reading those articles they get a code to go to your shop and purchase from that new collection now it might sound really simple but I don't see anybody else doing this all very very few people doing it it sometimes feels a little salesy as an artist so if it does I want to let you know that people are reading your blogs because they're interested they're on their website on your website because they want to know more they join your mailing list because they want to hear from you and if they're looking on the shop chances are they might want to buy something so wouldn't they just love a discount code I'm thinking they would all you're doing is being kind to your incoming audience so the second way of course to make money from your blog and that is we're using print-on-demand products so again you could be talking about a specific new product range that in give a discount code it can be simple as that sometimes people read blogs on your website and they're blissfully unaware that you have anything to sale sometimes they'll just go perhaps you use Pinterest as a strategy to market your blogs and they found a pin they love they click through they love your article but at this point they haven't really looked at the rest of the website they're just reading that one blog article right now they go back and they think okay they've got two options when they read a blog article one is they can read the article and of course they can link through and read other articles or they just go so you want to send them somewhere right you want to keep them on the website we know that so by offering print-on-demand that's another way to generate an income someone's read the blog you sign posts into it did you know if you love this artwork you could get it on a nice tipped bag and go shopping with it and here's where you can go maybe again a discount code so by just letting people know that that's what you have on the website it's really really becomes a really powerful marketing strategy blogging can become a fantastic way to make income but what you wouldn't want to do is just send people in the social media post you know go and see my print-on-demand I'll give you 15% off it's too big a gap right someone comes reads a nice article now they understand what's behind it now they're probably a little bit closer towards wanting to purchase so it's pretty harsh to kind of go from zero to ten in a sales perspective but if you've got a nice article or perhaps a Pinterest pin and then a lovely article about what you're selling then a discount code to purchase it feels more organic and it's you're much more likely to get better results that way than just trying to skip all those middle steps out I hope that makes sense the third way you can make money from your blog website is digital downloads now if you're not a digital artist you know you're gonna say I'm not interested in this and I want to make sure to be clear at the beginning you know even if you just use one of these strategies to go with your blogging that's good enough right you're not going to do all seven you might do one or two maybe three so you're going to find the one that resonates for you if however you're a digital artist or you already create things perhaps you have an Etsy shop with products on this is a perfect way to introduce perhaps a whole new line of digital downloads that they combine the website as well as your Etsy store so for example you could have simple and easy things like cards, calendars, planners, organisational items, colouring books and so many more things and they got very low price point item so someone's come again they've read some articles I've watched a video they're on the website that's a really easy way in to them becoming a customer is spending just a few pounds or dollars on say a colouring book or something that complements the article they've just read so you want to start thinking outside the box and I imagine by now you might be getting quite excited and you might want to here's a thought grab a sheet of paper some colour pens write out all the topics that you could blog about and see how they might link to the things that you have for sale on your website so you could say all I could write a whole article on this and that would be great to give a discount code to link to this particular item so rather than having it random make sure that it's strategic and planned out just a little hot tip for you there now number four ways to make money from your blog website is usually one of the standard ways that people think of or if you Google the term monetize your blog is likely going to be the first one that comes up and that is affiliate links now what is an affiliate link an affiliate link for example is you buy lots of art materials from one large website online they give you the possibility to have your own private link so when somebody else goes shopping through your link and buys what you love to buy they get a discount perhaps ideally but you actually get a small percentage of that sale so you can do that with lots of different companies you can even approach maybe a local art shop or you could approach businesses or products that you buy a lot of and you say hey I'd like to talk about them on my blog and I'd like to offer my customers either a discount code or at least there's some sort of a win-win situation so an obvious affiliate program is something like Amazon so if you buy tech gear or studio gear or book specifically that you think your audience would be interested in then you can set up selling through Amazon and you can create your own little affiliate link there and then when people buy you get a percentage of their shopping cart now initially it's not going to make you a millionaire so don't get too excited but it's another income stream and once it's set up it's a passive income stream all right so think about if you use the Adobe suite if you use Canva if you use any social media publishing tools most of these things have an affiliate program you just could be aware that it's only any good for you if your audience is going to want those things you're just because you use them doesn't mean to say your audience will so think about your audience if you teach painting art materials is the obvious thing if you talk about specific books in a blog article then a lot of people shop on Amazon so that's an obvious one as well so start to think about what affiliate links could you create and you can have them in the article you can talk about that topic and create one off articles or you could have a page on your website with specific helpful helpful links for people so number five way of course is to sell an e-book or a physical book so maybe you could put your artwork all into an online beautiful picture book where people could do a print-on-demand and you could link to a print-on-demand site that will fulfill that book for you so that you're not having to deal with it but again what a great thing they come they read an article they look on the website perhaps they're not ready to buy original piece or to spend thousands on something you've created but an easy way in a low sort of a low hanging fruit as we often call it easy purchase for them might be something like a beautiful book of your work or maybe you've written five ways with watercolours and you've got a little e-guide and you could sell that for just a few pounds or dollars again if it's if it's a value to your audience that's a great passive income stream once it's set up on your website number six online courses so again if you teach or you're in that world of creating courses selling courses via your websites are fantastic but again there's a difference between having a course on your website and having a clear marketing strategy that will send people across to that course and enable them to buy so if you're decided to go with blogging you might write a series of blog articles that answer the questions that people really have before they want to join your course so there's all sorts of things that you can do again to be strategic in terms of monetizing so you don't want just a course sitting up there not doing anything you want to market to it so you think okay it's going to be ultimate watercolour course what are people what are the key questions people ask the paint the brushes the surface I'm going to write a little article on those particular things and then give them a discount code for buying the course I hope this is beginning to make sense I love this stuff it really is about taking different pieces of your art business and making it all fit together right this is a fitting together type of video and last but not least again if you are a content creator and you create a lot of content you create a lot of videos for example and or you teach then you can make a simple membership site so on sites like patreon a lot of artists use as well but you could also create your own membership sites that sits within your website that people pay a small monthly fee for or an annual have a subscription like a lot of other things we have subscriptions for and actually gain access to artwork or behind the scenes or maybe it's a course I've done the course and now they want ongoing help so maybe it's a membership for people who learn watercolours and every month you give them a little bit topic they have a nice forum they can hang out in and they can share what they're doing etc etc now I have a membership myself art business academy if you're interested in looking and seeing how membership looks that I will link below this video link where you can find out more about our membership and that sits on my website no surprise so you see how it all kind of mixes together I hope this is sparking your interest your excitement and now you're thinking about wow okay maybe I could use blogging as a strategy to actually sell more things on my website that's great isn't it if you've loved this video don't forget to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment below because I really love it I'm really grateful to each and every person who leaves a comment I read all of them I answer all of them if I haven't answered a comment of yours let me know I try to answer all of them and it's just really helpful also for other people I think who watch the video you know let me know if you're going to do it you already monetize you're thinking of monetizing or now you're excited and where you're going to get started so thank you so much for watching the next video you probably want to watch if you haven't already would be others in my blogging series so maybe had a seven steps to structuring a blog or if you're at the beginning of your journey might want to find out three reasons why you should be blogging thank you so much for watching and I'll see you on the next one