If you have ever wondered how to make money blogging, you have come to the right place. Starting a blog has an enormous potential to be one of the most profitable online businesses if you take blogging seriously. Blogging is not a get costly quick money-making option, but if you are willing to put in the work, it can be hugely profitable.
If you have a passion for writing and want to start an online business, you can consider starting a blog to share your knowledge with others and earn money from it each month. If you take blogging seriously, you can turn your blog into a profitable business.
Many bloggers are making a six-figure or even a seven-figure income a year from blogging. I make 6 figures from my blogs and have only been blogging 19 months at the time of this publication.
You need to have a self-hosted blog, we recommend BlueHost, if you want to make money from your blog. While starting a blog is easy, you must consistently create quality content to get traffic to your blog if you’re going to monetize your blog.
There are so many options out there when it comes to how to make money blogging.
I will show you many different blog monetization methods such as:
- affiliate marketing
- online advertising
- sponsored content
- selling your own physical and digital products
That way, you can use multiple income streams to maximize your income potential.
In this article, I am going to share how to start a blog, get traffic, and make money from a blog.
How to start a blog for beginners
If you do not have a blog yet, you are probably also trying to know how to start a blog. Starting a blog is easy. You do not have to be tech-savvy to create a blog from scratch. Most web hosting companies will provide you with a step-by-step guide to create your money-making blog.
Although this article is about making money blogging, here is a quick overview of how to start a blog from scratch:
1. Decide on your niche (I highly recommend that you pick a large enough audience and can be monetized)
2. Choose a blog name and register your domain name (buy it from a domain registrar or the web host
3. Buy web hosting (I recommend Bluehost for new bloggers)
4. Install WordPress (Most web hosts offer 1-click WordPress installer))
5. Start creating amazing content for your blog
Once your blog is up and running, you need to get traffic to your blog. By creating quality content consistently, you can attract new visitors and retain them. While you can monetize your blog once it starts getting a small amount of traffic, you need a large enough audience to make good money from your blog.
Read our 10k word guide on how to start a blog now!
Get your free Blog Planner for a Successful Blog!
How to get traffic?
If you want to make money from your blog, you need quality, consistent traffic each month. Here are a few common ways to attract quality traffic to your blog:
- Write high-quality pieces of content that people want to read.
- Promote your content on social media from the start to increase traffic. Make sure to create and post engaging content regularly. Pinterest can be the best source of your blog’s traffic.
- Learn SEO to optimize your posts for search engines. Choose the right keywords for each post to increase visibility in search engine results pages. Include the keywords in your title, headings, subheadings, and within the body of the content to help improve your rankings for your target keywords in search engines.
- If your blog is ranked highly in search engine results pages, more people will visit your site.
- Write guest posts on quality websites in your niche to get quality backlinks as they are massive for SEO, which means search engines will rank your blog highly in their search lists when searching for information related to your blog.
- Grow your email list to build a loyal audience who will be more likely to buy your products or services or click on ads. Create an opt-in and offer freebies to attract visitors to sign up for your email list.
You will be able to create multiple income streams from your blog if it attracts a lot of traffic. If you can attract the right traffic that is likely to convert, you can make tons of money from your blog even if you do not get large enough traffic.
Related Posts:
- 7 Tips on How to Get Your Blog Into Mediavine and Make Lots of Money
- 33+ Best Tips on How to Write Blog Posts Faster and Easier
- Free Blog Planner – Color and Black and White – 118 Pages
- Debbie Gartner’s Journey to Making $20k a Month Blogging
How to make money blogging
You can start monetizing your blog right from the start of your blog. You do not have to wait until you attract large amounts of traffic to your blog. But usually, it takes time to make money from a blog. It is not going to earn you an instant income.
It may take several months or more before you can make any money on your blog. But if you are committed to blogging from the beginning, you may start earning some money from your blog sooner rather than later. And if you are committed to blogging for the long-term, it can make a full-time income for you in the future.
However, if you want to start monetizing your blog from the start, you will need:
- A self-hosted WordPress blog where you pay for hosting (I highly recommend you buy your hosting from a reliable web hosting company like Bluehost.) and a domain name for your blog to set up your blog on your domain name using the WordPress blogging framework.
- An SSL certificate (this says your blog is secure) for your blog
- A fully responsive, mobile-friendly free or paid (preferable) theme (the layout of your blog)
- All critical pages, such as About page, Contact Page, Disclosure page, Privacy policy page, Resources page, etc., complete
- 5-10 high-quality blog posts on the blog
As you continue to add more high-quality posts to your blog, you will get more traffic. Some monetization options will work for you if you receive large enough traffic. So focus on getting more traffic.
Although you can start a blog on literally any topic, you want to pick the right niche if you’re going to make money from your blog.
It will be easier to write about something you are passionate about, but if people are not interested in your topic, you will not be able to get the traffic you want. So make sure that your chosen niche has a large enough potential audience and is commercially lucrative enough.
Now I am going to show you the best ways to make money from a self-hosted WordPress blog:
#1 Online advertising
Online ads are one of the easiest ways to make money from a blog. Many people do not use this monetizing method as online ads can distract the audience and slow down your blog. However, if your blog receives a lot of traffic every month, running online advertisements on your blog can make you good every month.
If your traffic levels are low, but you want to earn some cash anyway from your blog, you can run online ads on your blog.
When you sign up for an advertising company or network, they will display ads on your blog, relevant to the theme of your blog.
Various online advertising companies work with bloggers. When you sign up for an advertising company or network, they will display ads on your blog, relevant to the theme of your blog.
Some advertising networks will not work with you if you do not receive a certain amount of traffic each month.
You can earn an income from online ads in two ways: CPC (Cost Per Click) and CPM (Cost Per Thousand).
CPC ads
These ads allow you to make money when people click on the ads displayed on your blog. You will earn money every time someone clicks on one of these ads. You can earn anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars. It depends on the advertiser and the niche of your blog.
CPM ads
CPM ads are ads that will pay you a fixed amount of money based on every thousand impressions of an ad shown to your visitors.
With CPM ads, the amount of revenue you can earn is directly related to your site’s traffic. The more traffic you get, the more money you make. Because you are paid per thousand impressions, CPM ads are an excellent monetization method for blogs that receive large amounts of traffic each month. These ads make you money as people visit your site.
Here are some of the popular online advertising programs:
Google AdSense is the most popular online advertising program that offers both CPC and CPM ads. There is no minimum traffic amount required to apply to AdSense and be accepted.
To be admitted to MediaVine you need to have at least 50,000 sessions per month. Mom Beach is currently in Mediavine and I highly recommend them.
I was in Monumetric and wasn’t very happy because I didn’t make much money. Monumetric will accept bloggers with 10k page views but charges $99 for acceptance.
AdThrive needs 100k page views a month for admittance, so is for more established bloggers.
Online ads are straightforward to set up. You just need to add the code to your blog to get started.
#2 Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money from a blog. This involves referring visitors from your blog to another individual or company’s website via your affiliate links provided to you by the individual or company (also known as the merchant, advertiser, retailer, etc.).
When a visitor clicks on your affiliate link to visit that website and then purchases anything or signs up for anything on the site, you earn a commission. Your commission can be a fixed amount for every sale or lead generated or a certain percentage of every transaction completed.
Depending on the affiliate marketing program you are running on your blog, you can get paid based on the following payment models:
Pay Per Click
PPC is where you get paid for every click generated through your affiliate link regardless if it resulted in a sale or lead. It is the easiest way to make money from affiliate marketing.
Pay Per Lead
PPL is where companies pay you a fixed amount of money for every qualified action performed via your affiliate link. Typically, this kind of affiliate program pays you when someone signs up for a newsletter, fills out a form, installs something, etc. via your affiliate link.
Pay Per Sale
This is where you get paid by your affiliate partners for every qualified sale you generate for them. You can earn a fixed amount per sale or transaction completed or make a certain percentage for every sale/transaction completed.
Here are some of the best affiliate programs available for bloggers:
Once you have signed up for your favorite affiliate programs, start promoting your links via blog posts, reviews, your email list, and social media.
For this monetization method to work, you need to promote products and services you already know and love that are relevant to your target audience.
You can get started with affiliate marketing as soon as you start receiving some traffic. However, you can make great money from affiliate marketing once you build up an engaged audience and your email list.
#3 Make money from your blog with sponsored content
Sponsored content is where you get paid to write a post about a particular product or service on behalf of a company or individual on your blog.
Once your blog starts receiving some traffic, you can reach out to brands that are interested in your audience. However, typically brands approach bloggers directly with sponsor deals.
It is possible to make hundreds or thousands of dollars from a single sponsored post.
If your blog receives a large amount of traffic every month, sponsored posts can be incredibly lucrative for you. It is possible to make hundreds or thousands of dollars from a single sponsored post.
A popular way for many bloggers to find sponsored content opportunities is to join influencer networks that connect brands and influencers.
Here are some of the best influencer networks that offer sponsored content opportunities:
How much you can make from a sponsored post will depend on the niche of your blog, the traffic your site gets each month, and your Domain Authority (DA).
#4 Sell physical products
Selling physical products is a great way to make money from blogging if your blog’s niche is product oriented. To sell a physical product from your blog, you need to add eCommerce functionality to your blog. No coding knowledge is required.
You can add a WordPress shopping cart plugin or even PayPal to add eCommerce functionality to your blog.
I like to use Shopify to sell products myself. It is an easy to use platform that is off your site so it won’t slow things down. WooCommerce, a plugin, does slow down your site so I don’t recommend them. You want a fast site or you won’t rank in Google!
✅Click here to get a Shopify 2 week free trial now!
Depending on your niche, you can sell physical products like clothes, jewelry, shoes, bags, etc.
Here are some options for you when it comes to selling physical products from your blog:
- You can sell products entirely created by yourself via your blog.
- You can get someone else to create your products, and then you sell them on your blog.
- You find great deals on certain types of products relevant to your target audience and then sell them on your blog for a profit. This is known as retail arbitrage.
- You can sell physical products on your blog without having to deal with inventory, packaging, and delivery using the dropshipping model. This is where you advertise a product or several products of a manufacturer or wholesaler, known as a drop shipper, on your blog. Still, you accept the payment whenever someone places an order, and then you forward the request to the drop shipper that ships the item to the client. If you sold an item for $15 and you paid $10 (including fees) to buy the item from the drop shipper, your profit is $5.
If you have a Shopify, Etsy, eBay, or Amazon store, you can drive traffic from your blog to these online stores and sell your products. In this case, you can sell your products indirectly from your blog.
You can start selling products on your blog from the start of your blog. Before selling your own or other people’s products, make sure the products are valuable to your audience.
#5 Sell your own digital products
You can get started with this one right away. Many bloggers sell digital products on their blogs, myself included. I make over $1.5k a month selling my printables and ebooks in my Shopify store.
Those who don’t have any design experience can get commercial digital products at PLR Beach, my new shop for business owners, coaches, and bloggers.
✅Get a free commercial rights planner to sell or use an an opt-in now!
If you have good knowledge of a topic, creating an eBook or online course can be a great way to make money from your blog. You can sell it on your blog or promote it on the blog and sell it on a third-party platform like Shopify or Teachable.
Depending on your expertise, you can create a variety of digital products, such as:
- Online courses
- E-books
- Online coaching
- Video tutorials
- Blog themes
- Plugins
- Printables
The beauty of selling digital products is that you get to keep 100% of the profits.
You need to build an engaged audience to be successful with this blog monetization method.
#6 Sell your services
A blog can be a great tool to advertise and sell your services. If you want to get paid to write for others, your blog can showcase your writing to potential clients.
Besides writing, here are more ideas for services you may sell from your blog, depending on your expertise:
- Graphic design
- Digital marketing
- Web design
- Virtual assistance
- Coaching
- Business consulting
- Photography
If you are good at a particular area, you can create a “Hire me” or a similar page about your services to let people know about the services you offer.
As your blog continues to grow, brands and individuals needing your services will come directly to you.
You can contact companies and people who have a website or blog to offer your freelance services.
As your blog continues to grow, brands and individuals needing your services will come directly to you.
#7 Sell advertising space on your blog directly
Another way to make money blogging from online ads is to sell ad space on your blog independently. You can create several ad space slots on your blog to sell to private advertisers.
Brands may contact you directly to buy ad space on your blog, or you can reach out to potential clients to offer space every month on your blog in exchange for a fixed monthly fee.
You can also choose a third-party company like BuySellAds to help you sell advertising space on your blog. This site connects advertisers and publishers.
Make sure the ads shown on your blog are relevant to your audience.
#8 Make money from your blog doing product reviews
This is where you get paid to write a review about the product of a company or individual on your blog. If you write product reviews related to your audience, you could not only make money from your reviews but also help your audience.
For example, I blog about helping moms make money and lifestyle, so one of my sponsored post reviews are beach shovels for families.
Make sure to write reviews about the best products to make money from product reviews so that your reviews can help your audience choose the right products.
#9 Make money blogging from a membership program on your blog
You can create premium content and offer it via a membership program accessible to those visitors on your blog who pay for it. If you are already offering helpful content to your blog audience, you can create and deliver your audience premium content for a monthly fee.
If you have an engaged audience, you can try offering a paid membership program to your blog visitors.
For example, you can write a more detailed article or guide by expanding an existing article or combine existing articles and new content to create premium content and make money when people pay for it to access the content.
If you have an engaged audience, you can try offering a paid membership program to your blog visitors. Many bloggers do this to make a passive income each month from their blog.
If you have an extensive mailing list, you can sell ad space within your email newsletter to advertisers. Make sure the ads you run are a good fit for your audience. Do not sell more than one ad space per newsletter.
Another way to monetize your newsletter is to mention a sponsor in the newsletter for a fee. You can do it via a text link or a banner ad.
#11 Have a job board
You can add a job board to your blog and charge companies to list their jobs on your blog. You can charge companies a fixed amount for a month per listing. When starting, charge a small fee. When the advertisers get a lot of applications from your job board, they will come back, and you will get repeat customers. When your blog becomes more popular, you can increase your rate per job post.
When the advertisers get a lot of applications from your job board, they will come back, and you will get repeat customers.
If you have a significant niche audience, even some companies will pay you to display their banner ads on your job board to get exposure to your audience.
You can use a WordPress job board plugin, like WP Job Plugin, add to your blog to have a job board on your blog.
#12 Ask for donations
If you offer useful content to your readers, gaining contributions from Many bloggers ask their followers and fans for a small amount of money. You can set up a donation platform like Patreon that allows your readers to contribute to your income if they enjoy your work.
If you provide valuable content and give out a lot of free resources, then your readers are more likely to donate some cash. You can install a WordPress donation plugin on your blog to start accepting donations from your readers if they enjoy your work.
#13 Sell your blog
You may want to sell your whole blog to make money if you are not interested in continuing with the site further. Many people build blogs to sell them for a lump sum.
If your blog brings in revenue each month, and gets large amounts of search engine traffic, selling your blog could be a very lucrative option. You could sell your blog for at least 12 months of revenue. For example, if you make $2,000 a month from your blog, and want to sell it for 12 months revenue, then you will get $24,000.
You can find a buyer on your own, or you can go through a blog and domain flipping site like Flippa.com.
Here is a list of sites where you can sell your blog to make money:
Can you make money blogging?
If you are committed to blogging for the long-term, then the answer is yes. As you can see, there are many different ways to make money from a blog.
If you are just starting, it can take a little bit of time to see any money coming in from your blog. Try to write blog posts regularly as this is the best way to get traffic when you are new.
The more people visit your blog, the more money you make from your blog because some blog monetization methods depend on the traffic you get.
The vast majority of bloggers either do not make any money or much money from blogging. Some make some pocket money with their blogs, while others who have taken blogging seriously make thousands of dollars each month.
It is possible to make $2000-$3000 or more per month within the first year of starting your blog. It depends on your traffic levels, how profitable your niche is, and your monetization plan. However, you can expect to make between $2000-$10,000 per month if you have 100,000 page views per month.
At the time of publication, my blog is 19 months old and I make $5k a month blogging by selling digital products, affiliates, ad revenue, and sponsored posts.
So if you have been wondering how to make money blogging, try to grow your traffic and then combine a few or multiple income streams to maximize your earning potential.
In Conclusion
As you can see above, there are lots of different ways to make money from a blog. How much you can make from each monetization method will depend on your blog’s niche, and the amounts of traffic your blog gets each month.
Before you choose your income streams, you need an engaged audience to make money from your blog. By creating informative content regularly, you can attract new visitors and build loyal visitors.
Have you made money blogging or have more ways on how to make money blogging? Let us know in the comments!
Don’t forget to download your free Blogging Planner for a Successful Blog!
Related Posts:
- 7 Tips on How to Get Your Blog Into Mediavine and Make Lots of Money
- 33+ Best Tips on How to Write Blog Posts Faster and Easier
- Free Blog Planner – Color and Black and White – 118 Pages
- Debbie Gartner’s Journey to Making $20k a Month Blogging
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