3 Ways to Repurpose Old Content to Make Money From Your Blog

One of the biggest questions many bloggers ask is how to monetize their blog. Search for that on Google, for example, and you’ll get almost three million results.

From having advertisements on your blog to selling affiliate links (or your own product), it’s clear that bloggers want to be able to make money from blogging – it’s just a matter of how (and without upsetting your readers).

Yet instead if trying to come up with new ways to monetize your blog, why not dig back into your archives and use stuff you’ve already created? After all, that offers a simpler and quicker way for you to start monetizing, and also gives you a ready audience, because they’re topics that people want to hear about (which we’ll see in the post).

So, with that in mind, here are three ways for you to monetize your blog with some of your older content.

Create a Premium Ebook

Last year, I started writing blog posts that were akin to short stories. I’d offer business ideas and strategies through these posts, but wrap them in stories that could be looked at as fables.

These posts were incredibly popular, and gave me the idea to create an ebook around them and add new content as well to enhance the older posts, and then release it as a premium ebook.

That ebook was The Parables of Business, and it’s since sold just under a thousand copies. Multiply that by the $15 price for the ebook, and you can see that it was a great way to make the content from my blog profitable.

Look back at your content, and see if there’s an ongoing theme that can be fine-tuned and made available as a premium publication. It could be an educational series; a series on blogging tips; a series on health, or whatever your blog talks about. Look at the comments from these posts, and see if there were any unanswered questions.

Take these questions and turn them into brand new sections of your ebook, to make sure you offer value for any loyal readers. Add some new resources, and get your ebook professionally designed to make it a more attractive proposition. Then start selling and promoting (and even consider an affiliate program to help you reach more potential buyers).

By being a blogger, you’re already a writer (unless you’re a video blogger or podcaster) – so why not sell books too?

Create an Educational Video Download

Video is an incredibly powerful medium. Not only can a video enhance a point more than any written word could, purely from an “Okay, now I see what you mean” standpoint, it’s also a great way to revamp old content.

Check your analytics, and see which posts had the most traction. That suggests that there’s an audience for that content, and while your written word may have been popular, a video overview will be even more so.

Create a video that shows how to maximize the SEO of your blog and content; or how to set up a WordPress site from scratch (including finding the best host); or how to understand the basics of coding so other bloggers can improve their own site design.

If you can write about something, you can almost universally create a video about it. Make it valuable and something that’s clearly needed, and a premium video download can be a great addition to your monetization strategy.

Host a Premium Webinar

Bouncing off the video download idea, an equally effective way to monetize old content is to build a webinar around it.

Did you write a post that looked at the importance of theme design and readability when it comes to reader growth? Or did you write a post about the best way to take advantage of new technologies?

Any time you write a post about something that can help someone overcome issues or improve their process, it immediately becomes valuable.

If the written word becomes valuable, you can imagine how valuable a live webinar, with the ability to ask questions on the fly and see something happen in real-time, can be.

Again, look at your analytics and see where the most popular content has been. Combine that with something like InboxQ to get an idea of current needs and wants of potential customers for your webinar, and you can soon build a session that people will pay to attend.

If You Can Create It, You Can Sell It

These are just three ideas to get you started on ways to use old content to get new ways to monetize your blog. There are more – blog consultancy services based on old content research, for example, or a members-only forum to answer the questions your readers are asking the most.

As a start, though, they should help you get started with selling your content that you take time and love to create. Because let’s face it – if it can be created, it can be sold. Quality never has a price limit on it.

All you need to do is find the content you feel offers the most value and opportunity to turn into a premium offering. The good news is, the audience is waiting – you just need to provide.

image: My Blogging Journey