Introduction
After a pandemic, everyone wants to make money online mainly to add an extra income stream in case of an emergency.
This is the main reason why online profitable businesses such as YouTubing and blogging have seen a huge boom in a matter of months.
In fact, there are over 1.1 billion live websites on the internet as of now according to Siteefy.
It’s insane. Right?
Nope.
The majority of the websites are personal blogs and unfortunately, very few of them are actually creating an impact on the search engines.
Creating impact is way too far, according to the industry reports, most blogs are making less than $3 every day which is insanely crazy.
Due to the poor results, many of us quit blogging when it’s too soon.
So what is blogging, anyways, and can you really make money from it?
Let’s discuss all the “hows” & “whats” at length.
What Is Authority Blogging?
Authority blogging is the process of creating content for the web mainly in the form of the written text.
You may be thinking, is it different from normal blogging?
Yes, and not even close.
It’s very different. I mean, the process of buying a domain name, hosting, etc is the same.
The real difference that lies between them is the quality & niche.
Where a normal blogger focuses on writing for all the topics possible, an authority blogger does the exact opposite.
Instead of writing content for every user, an authority blogger works smartly.
He has a specific audience (small in amount but targeted), a super-targeted mailing list, and an active ecosystem.
While a normal blogger presses more on writing additional content taking forever, an authority blogger emphasizes scaling his/her blog into a profitable online business.
A typical blogger has a small term vision but the latter has concrete future goals.
A normal blogger is limited to Google AdSense for blog monetization wherein an authority blogger sets multiple monetary streams for his/her blog.
And the list goes on and on.
Overall, a complete authority blogger is a person who:
- Has a target audience
- Works on a single niche
- Provides epic content (10X better content than what’s already out there).
- Builds genuine relations with other bloggers.
- Focuses on multiple incomes as well as traffic methods.
- Vision-oriented.
- Brands his/her blog.
- And the rest.
That being said, you may have understood at least something about being a normal blogger vs being an authority blogger.
As per my experience as well as the researched data, normal blogging used to work great when blogging was a new trend.
But over the years, blogging has evolved and so has its strategies.
Let me share with you some of the main reasons why you should move your mechanisms towards being an authority blogger rather than blogging all way around.
Authority blogs talk about a single niche –
Unlike a normal blog, you would easily be able to differentiate an authority blog.
How?
Due to its solidity in a single category.
This is the main reason why you visit a site like Wikihow when you are looking for “How to” content or visit “Backlinko” when you want to learn digital marketing.
These blogs have created a rock-solid impression by mastering themselves around a specific subject.
Writing on a single niche not only helps build an authority blog but assists in receiving extra traffic from Google.
Once you become an expert in a particular field, people will directly search for your blog on Google. This increases the trust between Google and your Blog.
Fair enough.
Google loves authority blogs due to their EAT ranking metric –
Google knows that you and I cannot be an expert in all the topics available in this universe.
That’s why writing content on every topic may not be the perfect fit if you wish to construct an expert blog.
Writing on different topics will lead to a diverse audience and you will not be able to focus on one type of audience.
Over time, your audience will also start unfollowing you as you may write something that does not make them happy.
I am not against this but Google certainly is.
They will eventually become your customers –
Brian Dean from Backlinko is also known as an SEO expert.
Not only that, write “SEO EXPERT” on Google and you will see his blog at 2nd position after SEJ:
What has led to his immense success?
One thing as a major:
He writes only on the topics that he knows.
In one of his articles, he said that initially, he used to write on different topics like CPC, PPC, etc in which he had but little knowledge.
This leads to a reduction in the quality of the content.
Due to it, he learned a lesson and fixated only on writing content that mattered to him and his audience.
This single change led to a million-dollar revenue from his SEO video courses.
Pro Tip: As an authority, it is normal to face burnouts while writing epic content. In this case, always remember this evergreen Mantra – “DOCUMENT, DON’T CREATE”.
Write on the things that you have already experimented with practically and you will enjoy the process.
These were some of the main reasons why authority blogs are the future.
With that out of the way, let’s quickly discuss how they make money.
How Do Authority Bloggers Make Money?
Unlike a typical blogger, an authority blogger has his monetization set from day one of blogging.
He monetizes his/her blogger mainly through the following mediums:
1. Premium ad networks –
When it comes to making money from placing direct ads on your blog, authority bloggers do not prefer the so-called Google AdSense and all.
They rather favor going with premium ad networks.
Some of the well-known premium networks are:
- Ezoic
- Mediavine
- AdThrive.
One of the major benefits of joining a premium ad network is that they pay way higher than common ad networks.
Where Google for instance pays $1-$2 for every 1000 visits, an ad networks network like Mediavine can pay over 10 times higher than this.
This is the power of using a premium ad network.
2. Affiliate Marketing –
This is one of the most used methods by authority bloggers to monetize their content.
In fact, I monetize 85% of my blog through affiliate marketing.
Unlike ads, affiliate marketing needs less traffic but pays much more.
Here, all you need to do is to build a genuine readership and a targeted ecosystem.
Then, it’s all yours.
3. Online Courses –
Once an authority blogger reaches a stage where he/she has everything we discussed earlier, then he/she can create and sell his/her own courses.
This is the most profitable online business model.
In advertisements, you get paid the least.
Affiliate marketing pays in commission.
But selling your course is your profit, 100% profit and no sharing.
4. Blog Sponsorships –
Once your blog’s DA (Domain Authority) grows, other bloggers or brands will start pitching you an email where they will give you ready-made content.
All you need to do is to insert that sponsored content into your blog and get paid for it.
This is the most effortless monetization method I have ever seen.
If you wish to increase your blog monetization opportunities through sponsorships, I suggest you checking Flyout.io.
By adding two sponsored content on my blog and nothing else, I got paid 30$ which is great especially when your blog is not that old.
Here’s the proof:
If I can do it, you can do it too.
Besides these methods, authority bloggers also use methods such as online consultancy, bookselling, etc to create more income opportunities.
With that, it is clear that blogging is not dead if you follow all the methods that an authority blogger keeps an eye on.
Conclusion
Blogging isn’t dead, it is in fact thriving and evolving.
You need to change your strategies and cope up with the current changes to make the most out of them.
With proper knowledge and guidance, you can pay off your debts and bills from blogging and many bloggers are already doing so.
This was a beginner’s guide to authority blogging.
Hopefully, you learned something new from this article.
What are your opinions on ordinary blogging vs authority blogging?
Do let me know by leaving your quick views in the comments below immediately.
Also, do not forget to share this valuable article with all your friends who wish to become a blogger.
It will help them take better decisions 🙂
