You’ve started a blog, have written lots of epic content, and have consistent, high-quality traffic. Now what? It’s time to make money blogging!
When you have dedicated countless hours toward creating a blog your readers love, it only makes sense to make money off it if you can. Passive income is the best income, and when you’ve truly set yourself up for success, you’re going to ask yourself why you didn’t sooner!
Some people start blogging with the intent of monetizing it, while others blog strictly as a hobby… only to later realize the income potential. Whatever position you are in, we are here to help you monetize your blog the smart way.
First, let me set the record straight: you cannot make money off your blog overnight, or by simply publishing a few posts. Monetization, like growing traffic, takes time, strategy, trial and error. Most of all, it takes patience.
Here are 5 proven ways to make money blogging in 2019:
It’s your choice which money-making strategies you decide to add to your blog. If you aren’t interested in ads, forget about them! Having a tough time choosing a product that you’d love to market as an affiliate, don’t! If you’re too shy to reach out to another website for a sponsored post, that’s your call!
But, I would be lying if I said you wouldn’t be robbing yourself of opportunities.
If you are able to make a profit off your blog, why not? Once you start seeing the money roll in, you will feel even more empowered to keep pushing forward until you achieve bigger goals. For those that suck their teeth at various monetization strategies: there are beautifully efficient ways to make money blogging without being so in-your-face that readers quickly bounce. There are also some horribly tragic monetization mistakes that beginners tend to make that can truly tank your income AND your traffic.
So where can you get started?
1) Advertisements
Two of the best ad networks to work with as a new blogger are Google Adsense and Media.net. These networks have the most minimal requirements for acceptance. You can make decent money if you have a consistent flow of traffic, as they pay based on clicks and impressions.
If you are a seasoned blogger and are just getting started with monetization, you may qualify for a bigger network like MediaVine. This network requires upwards of 25,000 sessions/month to be accepted, but you will make much more than you will with the aforementioned networks. They also offer one-on-one services with which you can get help optimizing your ad positions to maximize your income potential.
We love to use advertisements, but when we start new web properties, we like to scale back on the ad blocks (I’m talking little to none at all) and focus on user experience and traffic, before adding them in.
Pro tip: Go easy on the ads. The last thing you want to do is load your blog up with so many advertisements that your page becomes slow to load, or worse, your readers become so irritated with the extra content that they quickly exit your site.
2) Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing can be a huge way to make money blogging, even as a beginner! Have you ever browsed Pinterest and noticed bloggers talking about making a few hundred bucks in their first, second or third months? It is totally possible, largely thanks to affiliate marketing.
For example, this blogger made close to $400 in their second month and 82% of that income came from affiliate marketing.
What is affiliate marketing?
In short, it is the process by which someone earns a commission by promoting a product or service on their own platform. If a sale is made through a person’s custom affiliate link, they get a piece of the profit.
There are tons of high paying affiliate networks you can work with. You can become an affiliate for various products and services through companies like Amazon, ShareASale, Impact, and Awin. There are plenty of others, but those are good places to start. Through those networks, you can browse all of the available advertisers and apply to programs that fit your niche.
If you are accepted, you will be given a custom affiliate link and banners to incorporate on your blog posts. If you are declined, you may not have enough traffic or the network may not think your blog fits the brand. They don’t always provide a reason.
When you are an affiliate, it is important to market things that you have actually used and love.
This is because when you are writing your recommendation, telling your readers why it’s awesome and how they can benefit from it, you want to be able to give real feedback so that they grow to trust you. If you promote some product that you’ve never tried and someone buys it because of your recommendation and finds that it is bogus, they’re not going to trust you in the future.
If you are a beginner blogger looking to monetize with this method, I would highly recommend taking Michelle Schroeder’s course Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. It teaches you all of the bones of affiliate marketing, coming directly from the woman who makes $100,000/month off of her own blog. Trust me, she knows her stuff!
3) Sponsored Posts
Asking a company or brand to sponsor your content can be daunting to some, but it is one blog monetization tactic that has high payout potential.
Sponsored posts are a promotional blog or website article, video, photo, etc. that you get paid to publish. The incentive for the paying companies is the potential for new paying customers coming to them via your awesome content.
Bloggers can earn anywhere from $100 to $5,000+ for publishing sponsored content, depending on how much traffic they get and the value that the offer the buyer.
Getting paid to promote companies that you trust is an amazing way to make money from your passion. Like affiliate marketing, I would only recommend promoting brands that you have experience with and truly love, because you will be able to write your most honest feedback, which is what your readers want!
4) Sell Your Own Products
Selling your own products, whether digital or physical (but most often digital), is the safest, most consistent way to make money blogging, and has the greatest potential. Why?
Ad CPCs fluctuate throughout the year, affiliate commissions can change or programs can cancel, and landing a sponsored post is not always a guarantee.
The products you sell are yours and yours alone. You don’t have the share the profits with anyone unless you implement an affiliate program, you get to name the price, and assuming the product is top-notch, your potential buyers are limitless.
If you are crafty, you can create and sell physical goods both on your blog and through sites like Etsy. If you are an expert in any given area, consider selling e-courses, eBooks, offline training and seminars to demonstrate your knowledge and skills. You can use your blog as a way to bolster your products by writing about what you have to offer and how your product can help solve someone’s problem.
This approach can be used in any niche, it’s just a matter of getting creative.
5) Sell Your Services
Your blog is a killer platform to outsource yourself for freelance opportunities.
While it may not be a direct way to “make money blogging,” your blog can help you land money-making opportunities. This is especially if you offer services related to what you write about.
The purpose of selecting a niche is to have a very specific topic that you can write a lot about. Demonstrate yourself as an expert in your chosen field, and you may just find your readers wanting even more from you! As we get more and more digital, an increasing amount of jobs can be done on your computer, from the comfort of your own home.
For example, if you are a personal finance expert (and that is your blog niche) with ample experience in accounting, you may market your accounting services around tax season. If you are a professional writer or editor, and your posts are well-written, eloquent, and teach your readers how to become better writer themselves, perhaps someone will want to outsource your writing services for their own blog (yes, there are ghostwriters out there!). If you are a professional graphic designer, a blog is a great way to exhibit your artistic skills, potentially landing a branding gig.
The options are truly endless.
Make sure you have an easy-to-find contact page as well as a “Work With Me” or “Services” page so your readers know what you have to offer and how to get in touch if they want to hire you!
Whether you have been blogging for a long time and haven’t yet monetized, or you are new to it all and want to make money blogging from the start, we hope these strategies get you off on the right foot!
