Monetize Your Squarespace Blog For Passive Income
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Passive income takes time. If you truly plan to generate a lucrative passive income, you have to make a commitment. This commitment entails doing a lot of work for no immediate return, only for the hope that it will pay off in the long-term, and allow you to not only get a lot of your time back so you can be a helpful and significant family member, friend, and community member, but so you can help more people.
The 1:1 model is so limited.
I have to turn down clients all too often. But, when I build a course or write a detailed blog post, and then send it out into the world, the amount of people it can help is multitudes greater.
This helps me and it helps a larger number of people than the standard 1:1 service model.
Passive income is a win-win in my book.
Now let’s talk about the ways you can start working toward a passive income sustained business and lifestyle!
Monetize your squarespace website for reliable and passive online income
if you need income now, consider offering services on a 1:1 model
This website generates over $60,000/yr. in service exchange. I’m slowly transitioning to more passive forms of income so I can get that other very valuable resource—MY TIME—back, but offering web design & SEO services here has allowed me to truly grow my own business and escape the employee life of morning alarms and daily commutes in favor of working from home or anywhere I please, and I’m truly so grateful for this.
That said, I have found that when all of my time is blocked out for 1:1 client work (which it often is), I have too little time to devote to family and friends and to more meaningful creative endeavors in my life.
For this reason, I’ve started focusing more on passive forms of income.
how to monetize your squarespace blog for passive income
ADS
Ads are one of the primary ways bloggers can earn income from the content they create and provide to the public for free.
In the beginning, when your site is new, you won’t have much traffic. You can still place ads on your site, though!
Start with Google AdSense. I wrote an article explaining how to set up Google AdSense on your Squarespace site, which you can read here.
Then, after you’ve grown your traffic to at least 25,000 page views a month (which happens by consistent SEO-driven blogging), you can join the ad network MediaVine, who pays significantly more than Google AdSense.
Once you’ve reached 100,000 pageviews each month, you can then apply for the ad network AdThrive. This will increase your ad revenue substantially.
So it’s all a snowball effect.
My recommendation is to use ads tastefully so that you balance ad revenue potential with a pleasant user-experience for visitors to your site.
I typically place an ad or two in the sidebar of blog posts, and then an ad or two in the body of blog posts, sometimes in place of a divider. Don’t overdo it.
Affiliate Income
You can also become an affiliate right away, even with a new blog, using the Amazon Associates program.
Of course, you need a significant amount of traffic to make this profitable, but it doesn’t hurt anything to go ahead and get registered and start placing affiliate links throughout your site where applicable.
Once you sign up for Amazon Associates, you simply decide on the product you want to link to, then grab your personalized affiliate link, or image link, and place it in your blog post or page.
Squarespace offers an Amazon block to make this even easier. Just copy the ASIN code in the URL/address bar of the item page on Amazon, then paste it into Squarespace’s Amazon block. I’ve taken a screenshot and highlighted the ASIN code in the address bar here for you to see:
A lot of bloggers are starting to transition away from Amazon though as they recently decreased their affiliate commission percentages pretty significantly.
I recommend reaching out and learning about other affiliate network platforms such as CJ Affiliates.
You can also reach out to brands directly and ask to become an affiliate. For example, on one of my niche websites, I made a blog post about choosing a sauna for home use, and reached out to the sauna company I decided was best, and they accepted me as an affiliate. So now anytime my blog post brings someone to their site, and that person ends up purchasing a sauna, I make around $300. On another outdoors gear post I created, Carhartt reached out to me (via CJ Affiliate).
So, just to keep driving it home, creating SEO-driven blog posts on a consistent basis is key for growing your traffic and getting more opportunities.
Create digital products to sell
This avenue can be as diverse and creative as your imagination allows.
You can create an eBook (use Canva, it’s simple) that your audience might find useful and sell it for a few bucks on your site.
For example, Victoria over at A Modern Homestead reported that a large chunk of her annual blog income actually comes from a knitting pattern she sells.
So think of all of the things you know, that relate to your site, and come up with a creative and engaging way to present that information, and then charge people for it. It’s that easy.
The more digital products you have for sale, the more potential for income growth.
Be sure to create blog post content around your digital products, and link to the related product(s) within blog posts.
create an online course
Technically, this qualifies as a digital product too, but I like to put courses in their own category altogether.
I really like courses. They help so much more people than 1:1 services can, and they open up your income potential as well.
For example, my newly released Squarespace SEO Expert Course has been the perfect solution for me and my clients. How? Because I was having to turn down requests for SEO Services left and right, because web design projects keep me booked out months in advance. Most people aren’t wanting to wait that long. My course has been the answer to this problem: I profit a little and my clients are able to learn all of my SEO techniques in-house, allowing them long-term benefit. The investment pays off in no time for them. Much better than just hiring me for a one-time service, in my opinion.
You can even host your course on Squarespace, no need to get technical and incorporate other softwares. Kerstin Martin’s online course Squarespace Classroom was the tool I used to learn how to host my course(s) on Squarespace, and it’s been working wonderfully for me!
incorporate membership functionality
Another way to generate regular income from your blog is to offer paid memberships. This can be set up on a monthly or annual basis, whatever you prefer.
What would you offer your members? Well, that’s entirely up to you. Maybe it’s regular blog posts that divulge a lot more inside info that your public posts. Maybe it’s weekly videos or live webinars. Or maybe rather than sell courses or digital products individually, you offer all of your products via the paid membership.
Sound daunting? It isn’t too bad actually. Memberspace makes it surprisingly easy to set up a membership feature on Squarespace websites.
First step: grow traffic
To make any of these options fruitful, you have to grow your traffic. This means blogging consistently, and not just about anything, but strategic SEO-driven blogging.
If you aren’t quite sure how to do that, my course explains everything in detail.
I don’t even feel bad promoting my course because I know the value it brings. So if it’s in your budget, my Squarespace SEO Expert Course is one of the best investments I can think of for your Squarespace site and the future of your brand overall.
Before jumping in and making the investment, consider reading my other article: Looking to Monetize Your Squarespace Blog? Do This First…
Then, when you’re ready to dive in, join my Monetization course.
I’ll teach you a variety of monetization strategies and show you exactly how to implement them on your Squarespace website so you can build up reliable, even passive, online income!
Let me know if you have any questions! You can leave a comment below or reach out to me at tiffany@tiffany-davidson.com
Talk to you again soon,
x
Tiffany
Welcome!
Hey there! I’m Tiffany ~ a Squarespace Web Designer & SEO Expert. I design beautiful & professional websites that rank well on Google, and I teach courses on becoming a Squarespace SEO Expert, Monetizing Squarespace, and Starting Your Own Squarespace Design Business!
Feel free to contact me at: tiffany@tiffany-davidson.com
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