How to Make Money With Blogging (8 Ways)
Blogging online has surpassed the time when you could write down your thoughts and personal journey and hope people would read them.
To make money with blogging, you now need to pick the right blogging platforms, be a savvy marketer, leverage multiple revenue streams, and drive traffic to your website. You’ll need to pick a niche and be passionate about what you write to make the most of it while diversifying your blogs’ monetization strategy to add extra value and a safety net if one dips.
Whether you create a blog using the Wix website builder and build that into a business or add a blog to your existing business website, there are many ways to make money from a blog. These include paid advertising, sponsored content, affiliate marketing, selling products, paid memberships, etc.
Still, you’ll have to put in the time, effort, and cash to grow your business from a small blog to a big-time entrepreneurial business.
How You Can Make Money by Blogging
Let’s take a look at how to monetize a blog, whether you’re running a WordPress blog, personal blog, or blogging for business.
1. Add Banner Adverts
One of the original ways to make money from your website is to add banner advertising to your blog.
Display banner advertising adds image-based and textual banners that show up in different areas of your website.
You’ve probably seen them littered around your favorite websites at the top, bottom, and sides displaying various products and services that are typically targeted toward what you’ve been searching.
Google Adsense is one of the easiest ways to add these types of adverts to your blog, along with other advertising platforms like Taboola and Ezoic, which have honed their platforms to help you maximize your earning potential.
Here’s an example of banner ads on techrader.com.
2. Add Sponsored Content
Another way to create a revenue stream on your blog is by adding Sponsored Content.
Sponsored Content is content curated around the same topics and areas that your blog focuses on but helps promote a specific brand, product, or service. The companies pay you to add a piece of content to your blog or mention it in a video to get more exposure and drive more traffic to their own company.
The content doesn’t have to be written and could be in many different forms. You can create a blog post, video, infographic, or social media post.
This type of content works best when you have a large audience, whether followers or the amount of traffic to your blog.
3. Affiliate Marketing
Instead of adding or creating content whose key focus is to generate more traffic for a specific company, affiliate marketing helps both you and the companies you affiliate with.
You control the type of content and substance of what you write or produce, and you add links to your content that people can click on to visit your affiliated companies.
In return, if the visitor signs up or makes a purchase, you might get a commission.
Commission types include:
- Rev. Share – stands for revenue share, and you make a percentage of what someone spends on a product or service
- CPA – you get a fixed sum for any new customers that make a qualifying purchase
- Hybrid Model – a mix of rev share and CPA, where the rev share percentage and CPA values tend to be lower than if you pick just one type. Hybrid models can help get some instant income to help predict future revenue projections.
Depending on the companies you affiliate with will determine the amount you get in return and how long for. Try and find affiliate programs with lifetime revenue to maximize your long-term blog monetization strategy.
All affiliate programs are free to sign up to, and all it takes is for you to add a display banner or text link to your content in prominent and relevant positions to start making some cash.
Some companies will be part of affiliate marketing networks like ShareASale and Awin where as others might have their own dedicated affiliate platform for you to use.
4. Sell Digital Products
Creating your own digital products like eBooks, Templates, and Photographs is an additional way you can start making money from your blog site.
There’s no inventory to store, customers get instant gratification, and there’s nothing to physically produce. It’s a cheap way to add value to your blog and wallet.
The only thing it takes is time to make whatever you want to sell, but it must have some value to stand out from the crowd. Digital products are also a great way to help grow your email list as you can use them as a lead magnet to get people to sign up for you newsletter.
5. Sell Merchandise
If digital products aren’t your thing or you prefer the idea of making or selling physical products, then selling merchandise on your blog can help you increase your revenue.
Selling t-shirts, hats, mugs, coasters, keyrings, or clothing with your brand on it can add another way to generate money.
You can often use print-on-demand services like Spreadshirt to process payments, produce, and ship to people, making it easy on you as all you have to do is design the item and set up your online shop.
6. Add A YouTube Channel
Adding videos to support your blog’s website content will not only help you drive more traffic to your blog but can also be used as an additional income stream for your business.
YouTube videos show high up in search engines and are more likely to be clicked on and shared. More traffic to your website means that if you’ve got display advertising could help generate more revenue from there.
However, YouTube itself is also its own money-making machine. Apply and get accepted to the YouTube Partner Programme, and you’ll find that the more views your content gets, the more you’ll get paid through advertising revenue from overlay or in-video ads.
There are also channel memberships to consider, where you get subscribers to pay for additional content or early access to your content before anyone else.
Adding a YouTube channel to your business is a great way to add value all-around, and show that you’re an authority in your area of business.
7. Add Paid Memberships
Blogs are typically free to browse due to how you choose to make money from them. Adding display ads or affiliate links to your content means that you don’t have to charge people to get access to the content you write.
However, adding a membership area to your website where people get discounts and access to exclusive content and services could be an excellent way to get a consistent monthly or yearly income.
It doesn’t work well for all types of blogs, so make sure you know your audience and don’t overcharge for what they’ll get in return. Making it a valuable resource can work wonders.
It’s a revenue model that many online news sites like The Washington Post, Telegraph, and New York Times use. Giving you access to more in-depth content, all stories, and depending on the membership level, also removes all the banner advertising, creating a better user experience for your visitors.
Here’s an example of what The Washing Post offers its members and prices:
8. Grow Your Email List
Creating an email list and growing it doesn’t necessarily bring you access to an instant income stream for your website.
What it does do is help you create a larger audience of people who are interested in what you are writing about.
That means you have access to an audience with whom you can refer back to your website time and time again, sell your digital products and merchandise, or refer to affiliate programs you might be associated with.
This combination is a powerful tool, especially as existing customers or happy visitors are more likely to share and make a purchase from recommendations. Be sure to nurture your list, keep adding value, and clean it out regularly, so you make the most of it.
Email Marketing Software
Here’s a few recommended email marketing platforms that can help you generate more leads, and create great-looking emails.
Which Way to Make Money Blogging Works Best?
Can blogging make you money? Yes it can. If you’re blogging for business, it’s about adding extra value to your services or product and can help drive more sales that way, showcasing what it does and how it works.
If you’re blogging about ‘Garden Heaters’, you’re going to want to create a quality resource that people can come back to time and time again for all their garden heating needs. You’ll need to get traffic to a website first before monetizing to ensure you have the resources you need to make money in the future.
Then mix up your money-making ways over time to protect yourself against fluctuations in services, products, or global economic crisis. This mixture of revenue streams will ensure you have a bullet-proof blog that is a great resource and provides a stable, dependable income.
