So you want to learn how to make money blogging and how to generate revenue with your blog. Well, you’ve come to the right place!
You have invested cash and countless hours into your blog to get it up and running. You’ve created amazing content to attract readers and build a following.
You’ve built an appealing platform for your blog or website. To enhance your readers experience on your website you probably put some dollars towards great design and templates for your site.
It takes a lot of time to produce content and you may have hired freelance writers to help you out with the workload.
Also, you had to spend a couple of bucks on a domain name and web hosting. Not to mention the costs associated with advertising and social media to make people aware of your blog.
You’ve invested all this time, energy, and money into your blog to make it successful and provide value for your readers. Now time to get a return on your investment and start finding ways to make money from it!
Yes, you can make money blogging while still providing exceptional value for your readers and followers!
That’s why I always tell everyone that blogging is more than just a hobby, but also an amazing investment!
Additional Blogging Resources & Articles:
- How To Start A Blog (A great step-by-step tutorial and guide!)
- How To Turn Your Blog Into A Profitable Business (An extremely detailed guide for turning your blog into a business and generating income from it.)
Different Ways to Earn Money with A Blog
If you’re serious about making money with your blog, you need to begin treating your blog like a business. You need to be willing to invest the time to create revenue streams to make it profitable and begin earning extra income from it in the future.
Also, if you haven’t yet started your own blog, click here for a step-by-step tutorial guide.
Let’s get started!
1. Place Ads on Your Site
The easiest and simplest approach to make money blogging is to place advertisements on your site.
This is such an easy way to earn extra money on your blog and the best part about it is that it’s 100 percent passive income!
This method can be used to produce an additional revenue stream with any website or blog. When you place ads on your website or blog, anytime a viewer sees and/or clicks on one of these advertisements you’ll receive money and get paid for it!
Some advertisers have different requirements and such. Like the amount of traffic your blog has, your social media following, and demographics. To find out which ad networks will accept you into their program and find out if you’re a good fit, simply fill out an application!
Recommended Ad Networks You Can Join:
- Google AdSense – This is one of the biggest and most well-known advertising networks which you can join to make extra money and earn income from your blog or website. Anyone can join and it’s free to sign up. How much money you earn will depend on the amount of traffic your site has.
- Chitika – Very similar to Google AdSense. This ad network offers both display and text ads that are shown with your content. Also, Chitika is a good alternative for bloggers who are just starting out and want to monetize their blog immediately, since it’s easier to get accepted into their program than most other ad networks. Click here to learn more.
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2. Affiliate Marketing
If you have a decent reader following on your blog, affiliate marketing is an outstanding way to boost your blogs income and generate profit. Especially if you’re already recommending products and services to your readers that you personally use.
Look to see if the companies that offer the products and services that you genuinely love and want to recommend have an affiliate program that you can join.
If they do, you can get an affiliate link to place on your website or blog. Then, you’ll receive a commission anytime one of your readers purchases a product or service through one of your affiliate links.
The key to success and making the most money with affiliate marketing is to only recommend products and services you genuinely love and use. Products that will provide value to your readers.
For example, let’s say you write a post about a skin care product that you use and love. Now, provide an affiliate link that your readers can click on. The affiliate link will send readers to that manufactures or retailers website where they can purchase the product. If they purchase the product through one of your affiliate program links, you’ll earn a commission from the sale. It’s really that simple!
Below are some great affiliate networks you can join for free:
- Flexoffers – This is one of my favorite affiliate marketing networks and program interfaces. They offer a wide-range of different companies and big name brands. Also, they have affiliate programs in just about every niche, which you can apply for and join. I highly recommend Flexoffers to anyone who wants to make money with affiliate marketing. Click here to sign up! It’s free to join.
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- ShareASale – This is another great affiliate marketing network. ShareASale is very similar to Flexoffers, but they offer different affiliate programs which to can join. They also have different companies and brands to choose from. I recommend you join this network too. It’s free to join. You can sign up by clicking here!
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- Amazon Associates – This is another affiliate program I really like. Basically, you can link to anything that’s for sale on the Amazon website and earn a commission anytime someone clicks on one of your links to make a purchase. Amazon’s affiliate program is more difficult to get accepted into than Flexoffers or ShareASale. If you do get accepted into Amazon’s program, you have something like a 90-day probation period to refer a sale from your website or blog. Learn more about the Amazon Associates affiliate program here.
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- LinkTrackr – LinkTrackr is an amazing WordPress plugin which allows bloggers to convert any keyword on their WordPress blog into an affiliate link. In other words, LinkTrackr is an income generator for website owners on steroids! It allows you to make money blogging automatically. Learn more here.
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- ClickMeter – Affiliate Link Tracking – This is another highly recommended tool for affiliate marketers who want to easily track the money they make from their affiliate programs. ClickMeter allows bloggers to track and manage all of their affiliate links and commissions in one place. Click here to learn more.
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You can join each of these affiliate networks to find brands, companies, services, and products that you may want to recommend and promote.
Common and effective ways to promote you affiliate links is by doing product reviews, tutorials, and introducing new and exciting products or services.
Important: Only promote products and services you truly love and use. These should be products that you would recommend regardless of whether or not you were getting paid.
Always ask yourself, “would I recommend this product to a family member or a loved one?”
3. Sponsored Content
Another great and profitable way to make money with your website or blog is by doing sponsored posts.
One nice thing about sponsored articles as compared to affiliate marketing is you receive a flat rate or payment instead of income based on clicks and purchases.
Companies offer paid sponsorship’s in a variety of ways. A common way is when a business sends you their product or asks you to use their service.
Then based from the experience you had using the product or service, you write an honest review and provide feedback.
Another common way to get a company sponsorship is when a business simply asks you to provide a link in your blogs content on a post or webpage.
If you’re having difficulties finding brands and companies to work with, here are some resources that can help you out:
- Izea – Depending on the size of your audience and social media channels, you can find opportunities in the form of sponsorship’s here from big name brands and companies.
If you want to attracted brands and companies to work with you and your blog, consider creating an informative media kit. A media kit should include your website and social media stats and information about the type of readers you have and content you write about.
4. Create and Sell Your Own Products
If your readers visit your blog to get information or to learn how to do things, it’s most likely because they trust you. It’s also probably because the content on your blog answers questions to problems your readers might have.
You can monetize and profit from their problems by creating informative information products. These products should be designed to solve any problems your readers are facing.
These information products will also help you establish yourself as an expert in your field or niche. As an added bonus, you’ll also be able to make money from these products!
The best part is, you’re making money by helping other people, which in turn improves their lives!
Figure out what your good at and create some type of product from your expertise’s.
For example, Nina Restieri who is the owner of the blog MomAgenda.com, makes money with her site by creating and selling downloadable products and printables. Most of her information products are things that are simple to make, like daily planners and organizational products.
Everybody is an expert at something, you just need to figure out what your good at. Then package it into an information product. It can be in the form of a book, eBook, printables, downloadables, etc.
Types of Products to Create and Sell:
- Digital Products – This is one of the most profitable forms of products because you create the product once, then you’re able to sell it over and over again with little work or interaction. When you create a digital product to sell you’re truly creating a passive income stream for yourself. Digital products can include printables, e-courses, e-books, software, apps, etc.
- Physical Products – You could also create or design a physical product that people could purchase and then you ship it out to them. Physical products could include arts or crafts if you’re a crafty person, or you could create your own designs to sell on things like t-shirts, coffee mugs, cell phone cases, laptop cases, etc.
There are a lot of resources and websites with platforms you can use to help design, launch, and sell your products for both digital and physical goods. I’ll go over a couple of good websites and platforms you can use below.
Websites to Design and Sell Digital Products:
Websites for Creating, Designing, and Selling Physical Products:
You can learn new creative skills over at CreativeLive, which offers free online classes for creators.
5. Sell Advertising Space At A Fixed Rate
Once your blog becomes well established and has a fairly large following, you can make some serious money blogging by selling ad space on your site or blog. The nice thing about selling ad space to private advertisers is you set your own rates and you’re guaranteed to be paid a certain amount of money, because an agreement is made between you and the advertiser to pay you a certain rate before any ads are even placed on your site.
Many companies are willing to pay a decent amount of money to place their ad on a website or blog that has a large and engaging audience. The reality is the more traffic you have going to your blog; the more money your blog is able to generate.
If this blog monetization strategy sounds like something you’d be interested in doing with your website, there are a few crucial steps you need to take first.
First, you have to prove that your blog would be a good platform for a company to advertise their products or services on. You also want to make essential information about your blog to be available and easily accessible for companies and potential advertisers quickly find and access. You can do this by creating a media kit for your website or blog.
What is a Media Kit?
A media kit is like a resume for your blog. When you’re searching for a new job or career you create a resume which career seekers use as a marketing tool that quickly outlines all of their job qualifications, skills, education, professional accomplishes, and career goals. Employers can then use resumes provided by the potential job candidates to quickly screen out job applicants and determine whether or not a job applicant would be a potentially good fit for the position they’re hiring for. Then they decide whether or not to contact a job seeker for an interview. This all happens in a matter of seconds just by quickly glancing at a career seekers resume.
Once a job seeker makes his or her resume, they’re then able to upload it to career sites like SnagAJob and other job boards for employers to find. You can also send your resume to employers directly by email, mail, or by dropping it off in person. Many job candidates also bring a copy of their job resume with them when they go to job interviews.
If you have every created a resume to use as a marketing tool to help you find and land a job, a media kit is very similar, only it’s like a resume for your blog.
Your blog’s media kit should be used as a marketing tool when searching for companies to sell ad space to on your blog, or the other way around, when advertisers are searching for blogs or websites to purchase ad space from.
How to Create a Media Kit for a Blog or Website
A well-crafted media kit quickly describes and provides information about your blog, your niche, your audience, your blogs stats, and any additional information or accomplishes about your website that would make companies and advertisers want to purchase ad space from you on your site.
What You Need for Selling Ad Space On Your Website
If you want to sell advertising space on your website, you’ll need to do the following:
- Create a web page on your website or blog specifically for companies and advertisers. This page should explain to companies and potential advertisers your websites terms and rates (if you have fixed ad rates), options for advertising on your site, why they should advertise on your site, and anything else you feel is important and should include.
- Create a well-designed media kit for your blog. A media kit is an extremely powerful marketing tool. It’s essentially a resume for your blog. By taking the time now to craft a beautiful and informative media kit, it could pay you countless dividend payments in the form of advertising fees paid to you in cash lump sums!
Connect with other bloggers and companies you’d like to work with and form relationships with them. Send them your media kit and use it as a marketing tool to show off your blogs stats and why they should work with your blog and yourself.
Helpful Resources to Use
Here are some helpful resources and websites you can use as starting points to help get your wheels spinning to find advertisers and make money with your blog!
- Passionfruit Ads – From what I understand these guys to a very good job and is like an ad management platform. I’ve never used them, but I’ve heard good things about them from other bloggers who have.
- Buysellads.com – This is a great resource for established blogs who want to find and attract advertisers.
6. Market and Sell Your Services
If you don’t have a product to sell, you could always provide and sell some type of service. Once you have a service in mind that you want to offer, use your blog and website to market your services and attract clients.
The options are endless for the different types of services you can sell through your blog or website. Think about what you’re good at and skills you have to offer that others could benefit from.
Are you good at graphic design? How about coding? You could even offer services as simple as setting up a WordPress website or blog.
You don’t only have to offer web services either. Think about your blog’s niche. I know some personal finance bloggers who offer coaching and consultation services for things as simple as helping people set up an emergency fund or creating a budget.
The service you offer doesn’t have to be complicated. Things that seem really easy and simple to us, are hard and complicated for others, so try not to over think it. The nice thing about offering services over the internet is your market is very large and somewhere there are individuals looking for the type of service you can offer.
Here are a few types of services you could offer on your website or blog:
- Web Services – This could include a large variety of things like SEO optimization, coding, setting up a WordPress site, optimizing website performance like page loading time, etc.
- Marketing Services – Marketing services could be anything from driving traffic to website, to email marketing, to social media optimization, branding, design, or copy-writing.
- Writing and Content Creation Services – If you’re a good writer and enjoy writing, there are countless opportunities for you to make money. Individuals, companies, and even other bloggers are always looking for other talented writers and freelance writers to produce and write content.
- Consultation and Coaching – This is an extremely popular type of service that other bloggers offer and make really good money doing it. The reason coaching and consultation is so popular is because it can literally be about anything. What are you good at? Once you’ve answered that question you can begin coaching others about whatever it is that your good at!
- Teach Classes or Webinars – Once you use your blog to establish yourself as an expert in your niche, you’ll find that the opportunities are endless for finding ways and markets to teach your expertise.
Take advantage of all the platforms available to you for marketing your services – like your blog, social media channels, web forms, directories. etc. Market your skills and services on anything and everything, and before you know it people will be knocking at your door (or sending you an email) asking for your services!
Products VS Services
If you’re debating whether to sell a product vs’s a selling a service, either one can be profitable and good revenue sources for earning extra income, and many bloggers utilize both of these revenue sources and offer both products and services to their readers.
I personally prefer to sell digital products which is considered to be more of a passive income stream that requires little interaction on my part, compared to if I provided a service to sell which is considered active income and would require significant effort, time and interaction.
Also, because a selling service is considered to active income, once you stop doing the work and money also stops flowing in. I would rather work hard and put a lot of effort into something once, like creating a digital product, and then get paid for that work and make money from it over and over again.
7. Accept Donations
You could set up a donations page if you wanted to and accept donations from your audience. If you’re offering great content to your readers for free, sometimes you might have a reader who wants to show you their appreciation for the work and effort you put into your content, and give you a couple bucks.
8. Become A Speaker
As your blog grows and you become more well known as an expert in your niche, you’ll notice more and more opportunities being presented to you. Opportunities like request for you to speak at a conference or other type of event.
I know another blogger who was taken by surprise when he received a request to speak at an event. When he accepted the request he was taken by surprise once again when they asked him what his rate was. He had never thought about it before, but that one opportunity leads to another and now speaking at events is part of his business and makes good money from doing it.
9. Job Boards
You can make money with your blog by having a job board. They way to make money with a job board is by charging companies with job opening to post and advertise the job opening on your site or blog. This not only adds a ton of value to your readers, but also puts opens up another revenue stream for your blog and puts extra cash in your pocket!
A wonderful example of implementing a job board on a blog can be found over at ProBlogger. Their job board adds countless value to their readers and is a source of recurring revenue for their blog.
10. Email List and Newsletter
Every blog should offer some type of newsletter for their readers to opt into. Building an email list is an extremely important and valuable thing which all bloggers should do.
By building an email list of loyal followers, you’re able to send them offers and promote any of your own products. If you want to make money blogging, I highly suggest you create an email list. I suggest using email marketing services like iContact.
Conclusion
This is just a list to help give you an idea of how to make money with your blog, but there are countless other ways to also make money blogging.
Take bloggers Michelle from Making Sense of Cents or Pat from Smart Passive Income for example, they’re both very successful and influential bloggers who make around $100,000 per month using their blogs!
Anyone can make money blogging, it just takes time and persistence!
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