10 Surefire Methods to Make Money from Your Blog
Money. Isn't that one of the main reasons you started your own blog to begin with? Apart from the pleasure of writing and the independence of being your own boss, the desire to make some money is the driving force behind this business venture.
You've probably heard about people making a lot of money from their blogs. They're all correct. According to a 2017 report, Harsh Agrawal, the owner of the popular blog shoutmeloud.com, earns around 34,390 USD per month solely from his blog, Faisal Farooqui of mouthshut.com earns 8000 USD per month, Amit Agrawal earns around 50,000 USD from his highly popular technology blog, labnol.org, itexamtools.com, and the list goes on.
As a result, one thing is clear: blogging is lucrative. But how do you go about doing it? To assist you, we've compiled a list of tried-and-true methods for monetizing your blog or website.
But first, here are a few things you'll need to start making money from your blog or website:
- A self-hosted blog: A free WordPress blog does not offer monetization options. So, get a self-hosted blog with a reputable host, such as HostGator or BlueHost.
- Excellent content: Whatever topic or niche you choose to write about, make sure you're giving your readers unique content in attractive packaging.
- Audience: No matter which method(s) you use to make money from your blog, you won't be able to do so unless you have a sizable and loyal audience. As a result, you must promote your blog on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as optimize it for Google search and publicize it in any other way you can think of.
- Build your email list: This is how you convert one-time visitors into long-term subscribers. Building an email list is so important that we wrote an entire article about it.
How can you make money blogging?
Ads
Ads are the most popular and straightforward way to make money from your blog, with Google Ad Sense being the most widely used method.
Simply sign up for an Ad Sense account, and Google will begin serving your readers ads that are truly relevant to their searches and interests.
You can make money with Ad Sense in two ways:
1. Initial impressions (i.e. how many page views you get)
2. On the basis of clicks (i.e. how many people clicked and bought via your ads).
If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog or a free Blogger.com blog, you can use AdSense, but not if you have a free WordPress blog.
How much money can you make with Ad Sense? In 2016, Srinivas Tamada, one of India's most successful bloggers, was earning between 6000 and 8000 USD per month.
Affiliate Promotion
Affiliate marketing is the second best way to make money from a blog, after ads. It entails promoting someone else's product or service on your website in exchange for a commission for each click, sale, or lead you generate for the merchant.
You can either become an individual merchant's affiliate partner or join a network like Cuelinks, which allows you to be an affiliate partner of over 500 merchants with just one account.
Simply paste a ready-made JavaScript code in the footer of your website or download and install the Cuelinks WordPress plugin in your WP blog to begin including merchant links in your blog posts once you've signed up with Cuelinks and had your account approved.
Cuelinks converts all of your links into affiliate links automatically, and they handle all of the tracking, link management, and payment for you.
Cuelinks also has a feature called Cuewidgets, which is similar to Ad-sense ads. You will receive ready-to-use codes that you can use to display ads with affiliate links anywhere on your blog.
However, because affiliate marketing is more subtle, you must follow some unspoken rules when using it to monetize your blog.
For example, it's always a good idea to promote products/services that are relevant to your blog's theme, write reviews and recommend products/services that you have personally used, and include disclaimers where necessary.
Banner advertisements
It works similarly to TV commercials or outdoor hoardings in that you charge for the ad space you can provide.
Your blog and the traffic it generates are a valuable resource. Merchants will pay you money to place banners advertising their products and services on your blog pages.
You can start a banner advertising campaign through Google Ad-words or any other display network, or by directly approaching brands.
There are static and animated advertisements. Then there are fixed ad sizes and fixed positions on your blog pages where you can place the ads. You earn more money if more people click on the ads on your blog pages.
Paid Testimonials
If you're a fashion blogger, you can work with fashion websites or brands to write product and service reviews and persuade your readers to buy them.
You can write reviews for airlines, hotels, and resorts as a travel blogger, or you can do paid reviews for various gadgets on your tech blog.
Getting paid to write for brands, on the other hand, can only happen if your blog or website has established itself as an authority in its field and has a steady stream of loyal readers month after month.
Also, because Google penalizes unnatural and unpaid links, make sure your posts/reviews appear natural and unbiased. There are several websites where you can find products and brands willing to pay you to write reviews.
Email Addresses
Getting people to give you their email addresses is relatively easy if you have something truly interesting, useful, and/or entertaining to offer in terms of content.
E-newsletter subscribers frequently sign up in exchange for useful content. It becomes a reliable source of income once you have a good list in place.
To begin with, these email addresses generate consistent page views, increasing your chances of increasing your earnings indirectly.
Next, prime real estate in your email newsletter can be sold for advertising. The more you charge brands for banner space in your newsletter, the more you can charge them.
A co-branded newsletter also benefits from your reputation for providing high-quality content. Co-registration agreements with related brands/companies are another way to monetize your blog/website audience.
If you're a food blogger, for example, you could invite your readers to sign up for grocery shopping website or kitchen appliance brand discount alert emails.
You can either form direct partnerships with brands or enlist the assistance of networks. You can also rent out your email list, allowing third-party brands/companies to send promotional emails to your audiences in exchange for a flat fee.
However, keep in mind that you must provide value to your subscribers in order for them to stay on your list.
Sponsored Articles
As blogging has grown in popularity, companies have begun to pay for articles about their products and services to be published on popular blogs.
This is referred to as guest blogging. Guest blogging is growing in popularity because it helps a brand gain quality traffic and subscribers, build back-links, and gain exposure, credibility, and trust.
As a result, once you've established yourself as a blogger, you can host sponsored posts on your own blog or write articles for various brands and companies in exchange for money on other blogs.
The amount of money you make from sponsored or guest posts is entirely dependent on your writing ability.
The more clients you can attract and the more money you can make, the faster and higher-quality articles you can produce. Guest blogging has earned people tens of thousands of dollars.
You must first do some free guest posts before you can start getting paid for them.
Then you can use Google to look for paid opportunities, contact SEO or marketing firms, look at freelancing job boards, or use social media to find more clients.
Membership fees
You can start charging people for really exclusive content once you've established yourself as an expert on a topic and people start looking to you for answers.
You can charge a small fee to have access to the additional and unique content on your site (e.g. some videos or learning guides)
RSS Feeds
RSS or Really Simple Syndication is a great way to put your content on blogging networks.
However, it is also a great way to make money from your blog or website. It works pretty much like Google AdSense but is a lot more SEO friendly and useful to your readers.
Through RSS Feeds you can show your readers ads and content related to your blog theme. Once you have 10 to 15 RSS feeds in place on your blog, it will start pulling fresh, valuable content regularly, thus converting your blog into an ever-changing, dynamic webpage.
Just download a free RSS Feed creator software, set it up on your blog, get the RSS Feed code of relevant sources that resonate with your blog/ website, and see your search engine rank and your income soar.
Seminars, e-books, and online training services that cost money
The better your blog performs, i.e. attracts more traffic, the more brands and companies become aware of you. They may then approach you about conducting paid seminars and/or webinars for their clients.
They may also ask for your assistance in selling their e-books, online courses, or other products and services for a fee. Affiliate marketing has evolved into this.
Sponsoring a blog
This is most likely your blog's final phase of monetization, and it occurs only after you've established your blog as the go-to source for a specific topic, i.e. after your blog has established itself as an influencer in that niche.
Brands frequently seek collaborations with influential blogs.
In this case, brands will pay a high fee to be mentioned in the header or sidebar, or to have their logo cross-branded across your entire blog.
Making money from a blog takes time and effort, but once you get started, it pays off handsomely.
Obviously, you won't be able to make money from your blog in all of the ways mentioned above at first, but over time, you'll figure out which method works best for you and when to advance.
If you have any other ideas for making money from your blog, please share them in the comments section.
After all, we're all here to assist one another. Stay tuned to this blog and/or sign up with Cuelinks to stay updated and learn more about the best ways to monetize your blog.
