How to Make Money with a Blog – 15 Ways to Rake in Cash
Reading Time: 10 minutes Are you searching for how to make money with a blog? Even if you have a small amount of traffic, you can start implementing money making strategies on your website.
Building your own blog is a huge learning curve. Some people will start to make money in their first month and others may take a lot longer. It’s important not to get disheartened if you don’t make money right away.
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In your first few months make sure you are focusing on getting traffic to your blog, building your website’s domain authority, making your blog user friendly and writing awesome content.
How to Make Money with a Blog
There is a lot of money to be made from blogging if you stick around long enough. Some bloggers make 1-2k up to 100k monthly from a mix of money-making techniques.
If you still haven’t started your blog yet, you can read my tutorial on how to start a WordPress website. It’s a super simple guide and you can have your new blog set up in a few hours!
Starting a blog is actually not as expensive as you think. You can get hosting with Siteground or BigScoots for a few dollars a month and buy your domain name on Namecheap for very little.
Just by investing a few dollars a month and putting in the time to write content, there is a potential to make a full-time income blogging.
How Long Does It Take to Make Money Blogging?
I’m not going to lie to you and say it’s easy. It can take time, persistence and a lot of effort to start making money from your blog.
Many authority websites have built up their followings for years and didn’t just have overnight success as you may think.
If you need extra guidance building an authority website check out this free training.
Some skills you’ll want to hone:
- Learn how to build white-hat links to your site
- Research profitable niches
- Perform keyword research
- Learn how to outsource high-quality content
Recommended reading; 11 Simple Techniques Guaranteed to Increase Blog Traffic.
How to Make Money with a Blog – 15 Ways to Try Out Today
Let’s look at 15 tried and tested ways on how to make money with a blog. Remember you can try more than one at a time to increase your monthly earnings.
Once set up, some of these methods will become passive income, which means you no longer have to do much but enjoy the money!
1. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is recommending a product and when someone buys through your link you make a commission. Only promote products you know and love, to ensure you don’t hurt your reputation by recommending rubbish.
Many bloggers and entrepreneurs make a lucrative income from affiliate marketing. If you want to make money with a blog, affiliate marketing should be a top priority.
Recommended reading;
You can find affiliate programs by searching in Google; (your niche) + affiliate program.
Other ways to find quality affiliate products, is to search affiliate platforms like;
- Clickbank
- Shareasale
- JVZoo
- CJ Affiliate
- Rakuten
- Warrior Forum
- Linkshare
If you have a blog about travelling, you can find products to promote that would help your readers like travel luggage or flight operators. Many travel websites do well promoting the big travel companies like Booking.com, Agoda or Skyscanner for example.
Once you have your affiliate links, you can embed them into relevant blog posts and in your websites sidebars.
2. Display Ads
The second way to make money with a blog is by using display ads. Google AdSense is one of the easiest to sign up to as a new blogger, with low traffic volume not being a problem.
Others that pay a little better but are often harder to get accepted into are; Raprive, Mediavine and Monumetric. Read more about these display ad platforms here.
Selling ad space is a great way to make easy cash from your blog. Once the ads are set up, you can make a passive income each month. Just keep on writing great content and increasing your website traffic to get more sales.
3. Sponsored Posts
Sponsored posts are a brilliant way to make money with a blog. Even as a beginner blogger you can write sponsored posts for a small fee. When your website traffic increases you can increase your rates.
You may even find that companies start reaching out to you about sponsored posts as your website authority grows.
Create a media kit which you can display on your website and send out to relevant companies. This will show off your;
- Blog stats
- Your rates
- Collaboration options
- Social media stats
- Your contact information
- Audience demographics
- A short blurb about YOU
You can find many great media kit templates!
4. Create and Sell Courses
You may think ‘’why would anyone listen to me!?’’. But, even as a beginner blogger you are still many steps ahead of someone who hasn’t even started a blog or made any money online.
We all have value to give to the world!
If you’re brave enough, you could sell a live webinar. And once you’ve created a series, group them together into a course you can sell for even more profit.
Alternately, pre-record your e-learning course and sell it on your blog, Skillshare, Udemy or Teachable.
Clickfunnels is an all in one funnel building and course creation platform. It contains a simple drag and drop editor that anyone can use even if you’re not tech-friendly.
Create beautiful sales funnels that convert website visitors into leads and build your course to sell.
Grab your 14-day free trial of Clickfunnels here.
5. Write an EBook
Creating your own EBook takes work upfront. But once it’s written you may earn passive income for years to come. You can even enlist the help of a ghostwriter to do the work for you if you don’t have the time.
If your EBook does well, you can earn money in other areas like; public speaking engagements, consulting and selling other products off the back of the book.
6. Do Product Reviews
Writing product reviews is a great way to make money with a blog. We all want to read about a product before we buy and this is why review blogs do so well. The majority of products these days have an affiliate program and you can link out to a product you review for a commission.
As you get more visitors to your blog, some companies will send products to you for free to review. Always declare you have received the product for free and be totally transparent with your review.
7. Sell Your Skills
Many bloggers make money selling other skills before they start making money from their blog. I make money from freelance writing gigs for digital marketing agencies and other blogs.
Other services you can sell are:
- Pinterest management
- Editing/proof reading
- Social media management
- Creating logos or website design
- Virtual assistance
- Creating lead magnets
- Editing videos
- Writing emails or newsletters
- Creating funnels
- Lead generation
You can reach out to other businesses you want to work for on social media and have a ‘services’ tab on your blog. Here you can add information of exactly how you can help, your rates, experience and testimonials.
8. One-On-One Coaching
Coaching can be a super lucrative way to make money with a blog. Working with a business or person one on one means you can command high rates.
Getting high paying clients will depend on your previous results. So, work on building up your testimonials first. Offer to coach a small amount of people for free in the beginning, in exchange for glowing testimonials.
Want to learn how to make money with a blog affiliate marketing?
Tip; Take time to learn from a super affiliate who has achieved the results you want. Introducing: The Blog Monetization course. This training will catapult your earnings and help you cut out the learning curve.
9. Build a Membership Section
Creating a membership section on your blog, will bring in another stream of passive income. You can create your membership section in WordPress or enlist the help of an expert on Fiverr for an affordable price.
Obviously, you will need a good amount of readers for this to work. But if you have readers that are enjoying your content and regularly returning for more, you could start advertising a paid membership section with exclusive content only.
Market your membership section to your email list, at the bottom of blog posts, on your website homepage and across your social media.
10. Link to YouTube Tutorials
With 90% of shoppers saying they discovered a brand or product through YouTube and over 2 billion unique users watching videos on the platform every month, many people are making a huge amount of money from tutorial videos.
Starting a YouTube channel related to your blog content is another way to promote what you do. Many people prefer to watch videos than read and turning your blog posts into videos will engage a whole new audience.
Once you get enough followers, YouTube allows you to make money from ads on your videos. Another option is to get brand sponsors and promote affiliate products in the description of your videos.
Recommended reading; How to make money in affiliate marketing without a blog
11. Create a Job Board
Creating a job board on your blog is a great way to bring in extra cash. It’s best to wait until you’ve built up your blog traffic for this one to work, otherwise, you just won’t get enough people applying to make it worthwhile.
You can create a job board website right away, or add a section to your current blog at a later date. Check out Fiverr to enlist the help of freelancers who create job board websites.
Remember, the job board website niche is competitive. In the beginning, you’ll need to give advertisers a reason to use your platform like low monthly fees.
Some examples of successful job board websites are; ZipRecruiter, WeWorkRemotely, Problogger, Hired, Blogging Pro, Behance and Dice.
12. Have a Resources Section
A resources section is a page you will create which advertises all your favorite tools and resources. Here are some examples what you can include;
- Courses you have taken and recommend
- Email autoresponder
- Funnel software
- Software you use like Fiverr, Moz, Canva or ScreenCastOmatic for example
- Books you recommend that will help your readers
Many of these tools will have affiliate programs you can sign up for and make money from if someone buys through your link.
A resources page will be there forever and you can add to it as you use different tools. Once you have an engaged following, they will want to know what you use to run your business. It’s another top way to bring in extra monthly passive income.
13. Ask for Donations
It’s simple to add a PayPal button to your blog, asking for donations if someone likes your content. This won’t make you a millionaire but a few dollars here and there will boost your earnings.
Even some big platforms like Wikipedia run partly on donations. So you can see how powerful this method can be.
14. Sell to Your Email List
You’ve probably heard before; ‘’the money’s in the list!’’
Building an engaged email list should be high up on your agenda. Many leads will not buy from you right away and need to be warmed up through an email series. Some benefits of building an email list are;
- Promoting your latest blog posts or videos
- Promote new or old products to make money
- Keep in touch and build rapport
- Delivering a free lead magnet where you can promote an affiliate link eg; a cheatsheet, EBook or industry report for example
You can capture emails through popups on your website and by offering a freebie. Build an autoresponder sequence that automatically gets triggered once someone signs up.
Remember, don’t just sell to your email list constantly. This will make people unsubscribe. Lead with value first and try to solve your reader’s problems. Then you can offer your product as a solution to their problem once they see you as an authority.
15. Flip Your Website
Flipping your website basically means selling it for profit. Many people make a whole career from flipping websites and others just use it as a side gig.
A blog is online real estate and if you build it up to get enough traffic and authority, it can be a valuable asset. You might not want to sell and that’s fine. Build your blog up and it will be a steady earner for years.
But if you fancy a big payday, and you’ve cracked the website building world, you could flip one website and move to the next with a big chunk of change in your pocket.
There are online platforms where you can buy and sell websites safely. Here’s a list of popular places to flip blogs!
Some of the largest ever website sales were;
- Bankaholic.com; sold for 15 million
- Techcrunch.com; sold for 30 million
- Mint.com; sold for 170 million
- HuffingtonPost.com; sold for 315 million
- Business.com; sold for 350 million
Check out; How to sell a website for the most money possible.
How to Make Money with A Blog – Conclusion
As you can see there are many ways to make money with a blog. Not all will be right for you as a new blogger but you can implement a few methods then add more to your arsenal as your traffic grows. This is what I’m doing!
Don’t be disheartened if you don’t make money right away.
It’s essential to work on creating great content, defining your websites USP (unique selling point), work out how you can help people, plus improve your sites SEO so readers have a great experience.
This can take time and that’s ok! It’s important just to get started and you will learn as you go along.
Did I miss anything off the list? I’d love to know your thoughts. Let me know in the comments below and please share this article on your social media.
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