Can I make money with my Blog?
Or, is it just a myth?
If it isn’t a myth, then how much do bloggers make?
And, what are the top proven ways to make money blogging?
These are the questions that made you land on this page, right?
But trust me!
Making money blogging isn’t a myth.
It’s doable.
Yeah!
Anyone can make money from his blog, either as a side hustle or as a full-time career.
But, let me be honest with you.
It takes time to make really good money from blogging.
It’s not a “get rich quick” scheme.
Most beginners treat blogging as a scheme to get rich quickly and their blogging journey comes to an end very soon.
Their blogs fail.
And fail miserably.
So never make that mistake.
Here’s the truth:
- Making money from your blog is not easy.
- It’s not going to make you rich overnight.
Yeah, that’s the reality of making money with a blog. And you got to accept that.
You have to show patience, consistency, and dedication.
And of course!
You have to work hard and smart.
If you are willing to work hard consistently using the right tools and techniques, there’s no limit to how much revenue your blog can generate.
Many famous bloggers are making real big money via their blogs.
For example, Jon Morrow, Pat Flynn, Ron Stefansky, Alex and Lauren, Adam Enfroy, and Harsh Aggarwal, to name just a few. They’re making millions.
This article will show you 11 top proven ways to monetize your blog and turn your hard work into profit.
#1. Affiliate Marketing
In this form of marketing, you earn a commission by promoting other people’s or company’s products. Depending upon your niche, the commission may range from 5% to 100%. You get the commission every time someone purchases by clicking the link on your blog.
Affiliate Marketing is by far the best and most effective way to monetize your blog and earn online income.
You don’t need to bother about creating and storing the products or dealing with delivery or customer service.
Your only job is attracting potential customers and convincing them of the value of the products. That’s it.
If they end up making purchases, you earn the commission.
Where to find the products to promote?
There are many affiliate programs available for every industry you can join.
Just choose the products you already use and your readers may also be interested in.
To learn more about Affiliate Marketing, you can see my article “What is Affiliate Marketing and how it works?”
And check out “Top 9 Affiliate Programs and Websites” which will help you find the best affiliate programs to join.
#2. Selling Ads
Selling ads is another way to make money from your blog.
But to make a decent amount of money by placing ads, your blog must be getting a significant amount of traffic. The more traffic your blog has, the more money you’ll make. Also, the design of your blog should be professional and should have spaces allocated to ads.
Here are the two most popular ad options you can use on your blog:
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Google AdSense:
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It’s one of the most popular options (especially for beginners) to make money by placing ads on your blog.
Also,
It’s one of the fastest and simplest ways to start earning online income for beginners.
Over 11 million websites use AdSense.
Google takes some fee from the advertisers for showing their ads on your blog. It will show the ads relevant to the content on your site.
And it’s smart enough to identify the content of your site.
For example, if your site is about technology, it will start showing ads for laptops, smartphones, tabs, etc.
So Google puts the ads on your site and you get paid every time some of your visitors click on those ads.
This is called CPC.
When you display CPC ads with Google AdSense, you earn a commission every time someone clicks on those ads.
How much can you earn from Google AdSense?
It’s believed that for every 1000 impressions, you earn $1.
But you can’t predict the Google AdSense income exactly. The best idea is to optimize the ads in various ways to make the most out of it.
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Direct Ads:
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In this method, you deal directly with advertisers.
This will bring you a fixed monthly income from the advertisers.
But to get good deals, your blog must be getting a lot of traffic. Only then you can convince the advertisers to place the ads on your blog.
Here, you have the opportunity to earn more.
Because
There’s no middleman or any third parties involved to whom the commission will be distributed.
Where can you find advertisers to place ads on your site?
Buy Sell Ads (BSA): This is the most popular platform that helps connect advertisers and publishers.
This will buy the ad space only if your blog has quality content and gets a lot of traffic. Also, the design of your site should be professional.
But before selling your ad space, make sure that the advertising link is not spam and doesn’t ask frequently to download the stuff.
And be careful not to choose the ads irrelevant to your niche.
#3. Sponsored Posts
If your site gets significant traffic and following, this is also one of the different ways to monetize your blog. You may get multiple requests for sponsored posts each day.
In a sponsored post, the company pays you if you write about a product or service of that company.
Sponsored posts may take other forms as well, such as
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- With some companies, you may have to write a detailed review.
- Some other brands may approach you to publish a pre-written post for a fixed amount.
- While with some others, you need to write only a product review.
In exchange for sponsored posts, some companies give you free products, while some may pay you money.
To get opportunities from brands, it will be a good idea to set up an advertisement page on your blog.
On the ad page, you can give details about your traffic stats, the demographics of your audience, social media following, email subscribers, and all the other relevant data.
This will help the companies contact you and negotiate a sponsorship deal.
Remember:
You have to be honest with your audience and mention in the post that this is a sponsored post.
Before finalizing to write a sponsored post/review, you must insist on using the product or service for a trial period. Only after your satisfaction, you should go for this. This will help you in writing an honest and compelling post or review.
If you are interested in publishing sponsored posts and making some passive income, here are a few sites you can check out:
#4. Create Premium Content
Premium Content is the content that is accessible to paying members only.
It’s a type of content for which your readers pay you to read more of your work.
The payment can be in the form of monthly, quarterly, or annual fees.
And the content can be an e-book, in-depth blog posts, downloadable guides, videos, audio content, etc.
Whatever the form of your content, it should be of high quality and give value to the readers.
Also, it should be exclusive i.e., it shouldn’t be available anywhere else.
You should also keep some parts of your blog posts available to all the readers. These free sample contents of your blog will help you hook up your audiences on your blog.
Creating these kinds of content can bring a significant stream of income since it is a source of recurring income.
The readers pay you a fixed amount regularly, either monthly or yearly.
You can use the plugins MemberPress or Paid Membership Pro to create a membership site.
#5. Write E-books
If you are a regular blogger and have been blogging for a while, you can easily create an e-book and sell it on your blog.
An e-book is an elaboration on the topics you covered in your blog.
It allows you to establish yourself as an expert in your industry.
If you have been providing value to your readers through your blog consistently, then with time, they become your fans.
And, the opportunity for you to make money.
Just offer your readers in-depth material in the form of an e-book for which you can charge them a fixed amount.
Remember:
While creating e-books, keep in mind that your e-book readers are your paying customers. So, it should be relevant to your niche and give more and more value to the readers.
Or else, it’s less likely to be successful.
There are several plugins – such as Easy Digital Downloads, WooCommerce, etc. – to sell your e-books on your blog.
#6. Create and sell online courses
You can create and host online courses on your blog and earn good money.
With the advancement in technology and the percentage of people going online increasing every year, there’s a huge demand for online courses.
If you have expertise in fields such as academics, photography, gardening, digital marketing, or anything else, you can make good bucks selling online courses.
To deliver the course to your students, you can use the Learning Management System (LMS) plugins.
Plugins like LearnDash and Zippy Courses are easy-to-use plugins to get started.
Or, you can also use some other great platforms like Kajabi, Thinkific, Teachable, or Udemy to host your courses.
#7. Offer Freelance Services
In Freelancing, you don’t need to invest your time and money.
You can use your blog to convert your visitors into clients and offer them your freelancing services.
You can also sign up with freelancing platforms – such as Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer, and People Per Hour – to find clients.
Since the competition is high on these sites, finding clients is tough.
So you need to have excellent marketing and communication skills to find clients on these platforms.
But doing it via your blog could be a great idea. Here you’ll have a competition with no one.
If you have been providing value to your audiences, you can convert them into your clients.
All you need to do is create a “our services” or “hire me” page and on that page, mention all the services you offer.
For invoicing and collecting payments, you can use the plugin FreshBooks.
#8. Offer Consulting Services
You can offer consulting services on your blog by sharing your skills/expertise.
You use your expertise to solve your visitors’ problems by offering them advice/strategy, and for that, you charge them consultation fees.
Starting consulting services doesn’t involve any startup investment.
You can start by creating a page on your existing blog with a form. Users can use this form to request more information.
You should make it clear on that page what exactly you offer in the session.
However, the main drawback of consulting services is that this service isn’t for beginners.
To start this service, your website should be a high authority website and the credibility of your blog should also be of high level.
#9. Become a coach
There are many kinds of coaches, such as writing coaches, life coaches, health and fitness coaches, blogging coaches, marketing coaches, etc.
As you’re a blogger and have been blogging for a while, you must be an expert in your niche.
You must use this expertise/skill to share your knowledge, your insights, and your passion with others by offering them one-on-one coaching to give them advice or answering their questions.
So, whatever your niche, you can offer advice, guidance, support, encouragement, and motivation to your audiences with coaching sessions.
It allows you to learn more about your audiences and also provides reliable income.
You have to create a page on your blog for one-on-one coaching and help your audiences improve their lives and solve their problems through your advice and guidance. And you charge them fees for that.
#10. Paid Public Speaking Gigs
Are you good at marketing and comfortable with public speaking?
If yes, then here is great news for you.
You can use your blog as a platform to get some jobs in public speaking.
Public speaking at events or conferences helps in personal branding and promoting your blog.
To get more opportunities, you need to be an expert in your field.
You can also use social media platforms to promote your skills/expertise.
So just get started and start speaking at smaller or free community events or meetups.
And over time you’ll gain experience and recognition and lots of opportunities will start coming your way.
#11. Flip Your Website
If your blog has a significant following, and quality content, and has been making some money through advertising or by selling some products, you can consider selling it.
And you’ll be able to sell it at 10-15 times the amount of its monthly income.
If you want to make more profits by flipping your website, you should know the type of websites in demand. You should also know how to price and sell them.
Only then can you get rewarded for the efforts you put into creating your successful blog/website.
Where can you sell your website?
There are many websites and marketplaces where you can put your site for auction. The popular ones are Flippa, We Buy Websites and FEinternational.
Conclusion
Your blog will generate more and more revenue using the above methods only when it gets significant traffic.
To attract more traffic to your site you need to optimize your site, use email marketing, and promote your site on social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.
Check out “On-Page Search Engine Optimization” for the important steps to optimize your site.
Most importantly,
To begin with, you can focus on one or two methods.
And later, you should diversify your marketing strategies and build multiple streams of income through your blog.
So, get started, choose a niche, create quality content, promote your blog, drive traffic, and build a following.
Must read:
According to Jon Morrow,
If you love writing, I can’t imagine a better business, though. Not only is blogging a great way to get your writing noticed, but it’s a great way to connect with people around the world who need you, teach them what you know, and get paid pretty damn well in exchange.
What other ways do you use to make money online? Do let me know in the comments section below.