Monetizing Your Blog in a Different Way

I've been exploring ways to monetize my blog. The suggestions given in WA aren't bad suggestions, but they aren't for me. I don't want to be an affiliate marketer. I don't want to put ads on my website - at least not in the traditional sense (more on that later). Instead I'm going to go in a different direction. I'm going to go with sponsors for my blog.

Sponsors pay you to review their products and post the reviews on your blog. Since my blog is a chocolate blog I felt that this was the best way to monetize my blog.

The purpose of my blog is to help people find chocolate gifts for special occasions. This means I need a lot of reviews of chocolate products - something I knew from the beginning. But, by having blog sponsors, I don't have to spend my money getting products to review. Instead, the sponsors send me chocolate or chocolate gifts to review, and I post those reviews on my blog. I may or may not get additional money from the review; it depends on the sponsor.

In the beginning of May I was contacted by Chocolate.org, whom I'm also an affiliate for. They saw that I ran a chocolate blog and reached out to me, asking me to review a product of my choice. During that time I was mourning the death of my cat, so I didn't check my email for weeks.

Last week I finally went to check my email. I saw the request. I couldn't believe my eyes. I hadn't reached out to them or anything; they contacted me first. But since it had been three weeks I didn't know if they were still interested in working with me.

Regardless, I decided to try. I went ahead and replied back. I apologized for not responding sooner, and told them I was interested in reviewing a product. I sent them a sample of a review I've done for a chocolate bar (which you can find here: http://buychocolategift.org/mast-brothers-chocolate-review ) and told them if they were still interested to contact me back. (Incidentally that is the first and only chocolate bar review I've ever done.)

This morning I checked my email again. They said the review I sent them was excellent and they were still interested in working with me. I signed up to be an official reviewer, and now I'm waiting for more instructions.

Here's how it works: I get to pick the product I want. They ship it to me for free. I try it and post my review of it on my blog. I just got free chocolate and content for my blog, they just got free exposure.

Nice, right?

I know there's a course about getting sponsors for your blog online. I've decided to go with coaching instead of the course to cut down on the learning curve. I'm hoping I can start it in July or August. In the meantime, I'm just excited that my blog is moving in the direction I want it to. And it's not even 6 months old.

Eventually, I plan to sell ad space on my blog to certain companies. Targeted ad space sells for a lot of money. Some blogs get more than $500 per ad space. I only plan to sell 3 at a time, because my plans for my blog involve a lot more than selling ad space. But it will be some extra money to pull in for my blog.

If you're new to WA, stick with it. It really, actually works. Even though I went in a different direction for monetizing my blog, I'm still happy I found this community. It helped me and continues to help me build my blog up so that I can reach my goals.