How To Make Money On A Book Blog?

Therefore, if you are interested in the question - how to make money from a book, then the answer is quite simple - start your book blog;)

Book blog promotion and monetization strategy

If you love books and want to recommend interesting books to a lot of people, you should consider starting a book blog. Unlike many other types of blogs, book blogs attract mainly an active audience - readers who share their thanks and thoughts in the comments, repost and like.

In addition to self-expression, a book blog can become your tool for finding interesting interlocutors and like-minded people, help you make a career in the book field and develop your personal brand. Some well-known book bloggers, thanks to their blogs, have become editors in major media and authors for book portals. In this article we will talk about how to make money from a book blog.

Where to begin

How to start a book blog? Start writing about those books that hooked you through reading (both positive and negative) and about which you have something to say. As you read the book, make a review on it, where you can present impressions and reflections on what you read. As reviews accumulate, publish a selection of books that you recommend to subscribers. Avoid monotonous monotony by combining different formats: longreads, short reviews, collections of quotes, book spreads, etc.

One of the most important rules for a beginner blogger is to release quality content regularly and whenever possible. At first, this may seem like a waste of effort, but seeing that content is rarely released, subscribers often unsubscribe from small channels.

Think about whether you want to encourage your readers to read the book thoughtfully or buy it. The ratio of these things will determine how much your blog will be commercial, tailored for profit, or non-commercial, for the soul. As a commercial book blog, you will have to obey the laws of the market in order to succeed: follow fashion trends, write mainstream and entertaining mainstream literature, avoid complex topics, and not overstrain the minds of your audience. Choosing the path of a non-profit blog, you are unlikely to be able to get a lot of income from a blog, but you will get more creative freedom, you will be able to turn to classics and difficult books, and deeply analyze texts.

Remember that readers of book blogs appreciate writing in a positive and witty manner. When retelling the content of the books, do not allow spoilers, leave the main mysteries of the plot unsolved, but interest the reader to reveal them himself.

In addition to the text, a post about a book you have read can be provided with a beautiful and original illustration, for example, a photo of the cover of a book (you can, for example, photograph it against an unusual background or surround it with objects, making a still life).

How to grow

Without the use of strong promotion methods and markups, the number of readers of book blogs grows slowly, especially after the first thousand subscribers - many who try book blogging fail to cross this threshold.

Do not hesitate to advertise your book blog to an audience that is predisposed to book content. The first subscribers can be recruited by inviting friends and acquaintances, then you can buy several advertising posts from more famous bloggers. Book contests are a good way to attract an audience. Do not use black promotion methods - in order for your blog to become really popular, do not chase easy money, but rather make quality content.

When reviewing a new book, you can point the book to the publisher that released it, or not the author. This will help blog readers looking to dig deeper into the topic. And thanks to this, you can be mentioned in your repost by those whom you mentioned - and this will give an increase in new visitors.

If you are not against modern literature, you can write about HYIP novelties, the release of which is associated with great reader interest. Being among the first to review a popular new book will bring you a sizeable audience. To be among the first to receive new books, pre-order them from publishers and bookstores.

Participation in the communities of book bloggers can be of great benefit, if it is not just mutual likes and comments, but joint activities - contests, sweepstakes, post of collective authorship, etc.

To make it easier for new readers to find your blog, do not be lazy to geotag and thematic hashtags.

How to monetize

Unfortunately, book bloggers are not very popular with advertisers. Many suggestions come from aspiring authors who want to promote their work. Often these offers do not make sense to accept, since the amounts offered for such advertising are small. In addition, the blog audience, seeing posts with paid weak authors, begins to unsubscribe. It's another matter if the author already has some merits on the literary Olympus, and is even ready to send his autographed book for review or donate for the purchase of e-books. To accept such offers is at least pleasant, and sometimes very profitable.

After about 1000 subscribers are reached, these methods are not so necessary: ​​word of mouth begins to work effectively. And remember about the main secret of blog success - you need to write about what you want to write about.

If you are a well-known book blogger, you can host educational paid lectures and events and also make money from it.

Web hosting

Perhaps the most solid way to start a blog is to purchase a reliable web host and register a beautiful domain name. This option gives you complete freedom of creativity - you are not limited in expressive means and you can create a website that is thought out in every detail. This will be a great start for something ambitious.

Wordpress hosting allows you to host your site on the CMS Wordpress. Wordpress blogs load quickly and work stably. With  the WordPress   builder, you can create blog pages - it's fast, easy, and gives you a nice looking blog, albeit a template one. Wordpress is suitable for those who do not want to spend a lot of time building a website and pay a lot, and is great for developing a book blog from scratch.

Shared Hosting is good for starting a small blog. It is called “shared” because all clients, including you, share the server's resources. Memory, processing power, disk space, etc. distributed evenly between all hosting sites. Such hosting services are easy to learn, their rent is inexpensive, all the complex maintenance work is done by the support service. At the same time, the speed of work may sag, the ability to customize the site is limited. They are great if you have a serious mindset and are willing to invest heavily in your blog.

Dedicated hosting provides your blog with its own server. This gives almost unlimited creative freedom: you can create your blog site exactly as you imagine it, and also get high reliability and security. At the same time, this option is much more expensive than the previous ones and requires technical knowledge. It is not worth developing a book blog here - it will most likely turn out to be unprofitable.

Video hosting

Many people find it much easier to speak than to write. If you are one of those people, try becoming a book video blogger. The video blog format requires charisma, good looks, sincere emotions, expressive facial expressions and gestures from the blogger. If you are uncomfortable filming yourself in close-up video, you can limit yourself to the voice acting of the video, but then think over an entertaining video sequence. You can accompany the story about the book by unpacking it.

Youtube video hosting is convenient for narration of books in video format. Book YouTube is actively developing, there are a lot of audiences on this site that crave interesting food for the mind - first of all, these are teenagers. Video blogs and podcasts are actively taking over the audience from text-based blogs - a pervasive trend.

In addition to Youtube, there are other video hosting sites that can generate income: Tik Tok, Coub (they require a capacious and vivid presentation of information), Vimeo (the audience is not very interested in books). Also, your videos uploaded to video hosting can be posted on other sites thanks to services such as Ezoic.

Affiliate and sub-affiliate programs

To monetize a book blog with a large number of readers, you can connect to affiliate and sub-affiliate programs from bookstores and publishers.

The most interesting programs are:

• Ozon.ru: has a huge selection of books and other products, provides many partner tools (links, buttons and logos, search form, etc.). It is very easy to create links to products with Ozone, the service provides detailed statistics of conversions and purchases. At the same time, to participate in the affiliate program, you need monthly activity - at least 2500 spent rubles and a constant influx of new customers, the possibilities for withdrawing money are limited.
• Liters: offers a huge selection of audio and e-books. Has high payouts that are charged quickly and without delay. Detailed statistics and a large selection of tools are available in the partner's office. The support service is responsive, interested in partner support. At the same time, new items appear with a delay, there are no conversion statistics, you need to provide the site with all passport data.
• Labyrinth: online store of books and other goods. Provides a large selection of tools and a convenient partner's office, has a forum for partners. At the same time, there are difficulties with the withdrawal of funds.
• MYTH (Mann, Ivanov and Ferber) is a publishing house with its own affiliate program. Provides a lot of promotional materials, convenient payments, discounts and promotions. It is possible to work only with books from the publishing house MYTH.

Display advertising

You can advertise your blog by placing advertising messages on various sites - banners, videos (display advertising). But it's not enough to pay to have your ad posted on third-party resources: you need to track how efficiently it works so as not to overpay. Bid optimization tools will help you with this:

• Google AdSense (optimizes ads for smartphones, brings good income);
  
• Ezoic (has a lot of useful features, can work with any advertisement, is arranged quite openly);
  
• AdSterra (individual responsive approach to each partner, great potential of opportunities);
  
• PropellerAds (works well on both PC and mobile devices, provides detailed statistics), etc.
  

Frequently Asked Questions

What affiliate programs are most profitable for a book blog?

Profitable affiliate programs for book blogs include Amazon Associates, Book Depository, and Barnes & Noble Affiliates.