Top 6 WordPress Plugins to Monetize Your Blog

Since you already have a blog, you can use content marketing to attract people to your main site. But if all you have is a solid blog that people like to read, how can you turn that website traffic and interested audience into a real stream of revenue? Well, the answer is to start building a loyal audience and convert your loyal blog audience – using the help of WordPress plugins.

It’s generally known that setting up your own online business and monetizing your blog will give you the freedom to live your life on your own terms.  This sounds very appealing however knowing just how to get started can be a huge challenge.

Investing on the right plugins is essential for your business especially when it comes to saving your time and maximizing your blog revenue at the same time. Therefore, let’s review the 6 best WordPress plugins that will help you to monetize your blog efficiently and make your venture a success!

Woocommerce Plugin

One of the best monetization methods is to sell products on your own blog which allows you to have 100% control over the products you sell and the revenue you generate.

WooCommerce is the best plugin available for WordPress if you’re looking to create an online storefront that helps you to sell your products with ease.

Woocommerce is packed with built-in features that allow you to manage your online store with ease including shipping options, payment processing, inventory management, and more. If you need more advanced features added to your online store, you can do that easily with several extensions. In addition, WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce platform on the web, so you can search for supported themes and complementary tools easily in order to build a powerful eCommerce store.

OptinMonster

Do you wish to convert your website visitors into email subscribers and customers? Looking to improve conversions on your blog?

OptinMonster is the best customer acquisition and lead generation tool that enable you to construct and perform A/B test on captivating lead capture forms without a developer. It works for any type of business, so you can use it no matter how you decide to monetize your blog.

You can create visually stunning optin forms including lightbox popups, floating bars, sidebar forms, etc by leveraging OptinMonster’s powerful builder and high-converting templates. In addition, you can also convert abandoning visitors into subscribers and customers by prompting them with a targeted campaign at the precise moment they’re about to leave – all by using its Exit Intent Technology.

OptinMonster offers flexibility – you can use it on any website, whether it’s WordPress, Drupal, Joomla or even a static HTML website. To connect optin forms on your WordPress site, you can install the free OptinMonster WordPress plugin and easily publish them anywhere on your site.

AdRotate

Advertising is often the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to making money with your blog. Monetizing your existing blog content is the best way to get started.

You may consider include AdRotate on your blog in order to manage and serve ads on your WordPress site. To date, AdRotate supports popular advertising networks like Google AdSense, Chitika, Doubleclick, JuiceAds and many more similar ad servers.

The basic version of AdRotate is available for free to download from the WordPress.org plugin repository. If you need more advanced such as live ad previews, mobile device detection, geotargeting, and many more – you may consider upgrading from the free version to the premium version. This plugin is user-friendly and features an intuitive dashboard interface where you can review how well your ads are performing at a glance with daily, monthly, and yearly stats. In addition, you get to keep 100% of ad revenue instead of just a percentage because this plugin allows you to sell ad space directly to advertisers without engaging an agent or third party.

Easy Digital Downloads

Besides selling advertising space, selling digital products is another great way to create a steady stream of income from your blog.  Installing Easy Digital Downloads plugin on your WordPress blog is a great way to monetize your site – by creating a storefront to sell digital products only.

Right now you might be wondering, why not use WooCommerce to create a digital storefront instead of Easy Digital Downloads?

The answer is WooCommerce comes with lots of unnecessary options such as shipping and inventory managements that you’ll never need for your digital storefront, hence Easy Digital Downloads plugin is a better option since it offers a lighter weight plugin that focus more features specific to digital products.

Just like Woocommerce, the Easy Digital Downloads community is also huge, thus many useful add-on plugins are easily available and supported by developers which really helps to enhance the overall features of your digital store.

WPForms

If you want to create simple order forms easily without having to hire a developer, you may consider installing WPForms on your blog. This is a “Drag-and-Drop” WordPress forms builder plugin specially designed to connect your form with payment processors such as PayPal and Stripe, so you can sell goods and services and collect payments right from your WordPress website. Besides payment processors, WPForms also allows you to integrate your form with your favourite email marketing service providers and other online services.

With its easy-to-use “drag-and-drop” plugin feature, you can create any type of forms easily such as contact forms, survey forms, order forms, newsletter signup forms, donation forms, and many more right from your WordPress dashboard.

The free version of WPForms or Lite version comprises almost all the features you need to create a basic WordPress form. Similar to AdRotate and OptinMonster, this lite version is available for free download in the official WordPress plugins directory. You may consider purchasing the pro version if you require more advanced feature such as payment processing.

Thirsty Affiliates

Another great monetization method is through affiliate marketing. The main benefit of affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to create a product to make a passive income which is probably why it is the easiest way to monetize your blog. To get started, you may join several popular affiliate programs such as Clickbank (digital products) or Amazon (physical products) and promote their products on your blog. You will generate a sales commission whenever your website visitor or subscriber makes a purchase through your affiliate link.

With ThirstyAffiliates plugin, you can add and manage your affiliate links easily. By using this plugin, you can insert links into posts, cloak links, auto-insert links, and see how many clicks each affiliate link is receiving.

Just like other plugins mentioned previously, the Thirsty Affiliates plugin is free to download from WordPress.org plugin repository and you may consider purchasing the premium add-onss individually if you require more enhanced features.

Final Thoughts on Blog Monetization

With the advent of WordPress platform, blog monetization can now be done easily even for a novice. Not only is WordPress powerful enough to handle a fully functioning online store, but it’s an easy and affordable option that can be customized to suit any of your e-commerce needs. However, it’s essential to install the right plugins for your site, or else you’ll find yourself wasting too much time on managing the details.

The plugins listed above have all the features you need to monetize your blog and maximize your revenue. Today, many web hosting companies including ServerFreak are offering special hosting package for self-hosted WordPress blogs. With your own self-hosted blog, you can start creating your own online store and monetize it today by using the plugins listed in this article.  So, what are you waiting for?

Click here now to secure your WordPress hosting package today!