Learn How To Monetize Your Blog (Using These 14 Methods)

This is a guest post written by Jeff Finder.

You might have heard or seen people who make a lot of money from their blogs. But is it really possible to make money from blogging?

Yes, if your blog gets a number of visitors a month it’s practically possible to monetize it and earn a nice income out of it.

The real hurdle is making money from a blog that does not receive a lot of visitors. When you are just starting out it can seem like one of the most frustrating and difficult tasks. With so much knowledge to apply and strategies to use, how can you even find the resources and time to do this?

In this post, you’ll learn how to monetize your blog and make money with 14 profitable and proven strategies.

1.) Start Affiliate Marketing

If you are wondering how you can monetize your blog, you should consider affiliate marketing. It’s perhaps one of the most common ways that website owners and bloggers make money. This method is good especially when you’ve just started out and you don’t have a service or product to sell.

With affiliate marketing, you promote the services and products of other businesses. All you need to do is to create quality content that is in line with what you are promoting. Every time someone buys a product through your affiliate link you earn some commission.

For instance, if you are running a fashion blog you can sell, footwear, fashion apparel, and sportswear. To start affiliate marketing you can begin by joining programs such as Amazon associates, ClickBank, Shareasale and Commission Junction.

LaptopCut.com is a good example. It’s a dedicated blog for laptops and they write in-depth laptop reviews and put affiliate links to Amazon to monetize. Best Laptops For Teachers for example is an article where they have done a round-up review of top 10 laptops ideal for teachers with an in-depth review and buying guide (and of course put amazon affiliate link).

2.) Try Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the less expensive and most powerful ways to monetize your blog and make money. This method involves adding new subscribers to your email list.

By giving your subscribers a free gift you can get many visitors to subscribe to your blog. You can also do this by consistently creating quality content that drives people back to your site.

In order to be successful use some of the most popular email marketing platforms such as ConvertKit, AWeber, Mailchimp or infusionSoft. A good amount of money can be made by building a connection with your readers. With the help of email marketing, you can offer both affiliate and your own products through email.

3.) Use Google Adsense

Most people start a blog mostly for Google Adsense and Ads. This means Google Adsense is one of the most popular platforms around. There are two methods that you can use to make money through Google Adsense. These include:

• Based on Clicks. Despite page views, if a visitor clicks on the ad you’ll earn some money. Depending on the ad this can be something to do with $0.01 to a couple of dollars.
• Based on impressions. This generally depends on page views. For instance, for every 1000 page views, you can earn a certain amount of money.

4.) Sell Ad Space Directly

Although Google Adsense is quite simple to set up, the amount of money that you can earn is not much. With that said you might want to consider selling your ad space directly to the customers.

By doing this you get to set the price. Instead of getting paid only a small amount of cash, you can charge a flat rate for any ad to appear on your blog. This is not only easier but you can also earn some good money.

If you are looking for businesses willing to buy your ad space, just create an “Advertise Here” page on your blog where people can contact you for pricing information.

Since you’ll be responsible for everything, doing this is a little bit difficult. However, there are a number of tools online that you can use to make the process easier.

5.) Sell Ebooks

Making Ebooks of your services and goods is also another way to monetize your blog. Write an Ebook that explains the content on your blog. If you are teaching your users a new skill, then the Ebook is likely to give them value.

If you are committed and consistent there is a lot of money to be made from Ebooks.

6.) Accept Sponsored Posts

Accepting sponsored posts is a great strategy to make extra money from your blog. It is also a win because you will be receiving fresh and unique content to publish on your website without you having to write it.

If you have a consistent blogging schedule, great looking blog, and engaged visitors then companies will be willing to pay you a lot of money to get their content published. You can start by directly reaching out to brands, or simply create a “Write for Us” type of page.

Pro Tip: Any content that gets submitted to your website for publication should be checked with a plagiarism tool such as Copyscape. You do not want to publish a duplicate article as this could negatively affect your SEO.

7.) Make Money through Branded Merchandise

If you’ve developed a solid brand and following you may want to consider selling branded merchandise. Lots of people love to show their connection to a particular community by sporting branded merch. Some influences even use this as a way of monetizing their podcasts.

If you are looking to monetize your blog you can also do this. If your brand is not popular you may change this strategy and sell merchandise that’s relatable, funny and even helpful. The good thing is that you can do this without investing a lot of cash upfront.

8.) Get Paid Writing Reviews

Getting paid to write a review is almost the same as accepting sponsored posts. With this strategy, you can try out a product, write a review about it and then earn from the same.

The best thing is to write reviews of products that are related to your blog. For instance, if your blog niche is budgeting, reviewing budgeting apps and softwares make more sense than writing reviews about vacuum cleaners.

And just like sponsored posts you can contact brands directly and ask them whether they are interested in hiring you for review.

9.) Offer Coaching Services

If you are looking to make money within the shortest time possible then become a coach. Giving customers and prospects direct access to expertise and products is one of the best ways of making money.

It doesn’t matter how much experience you’ve gathered in the process, offering coaching services to your clients or visitors can always earn you some cash. Your responsibility as a coach will be to help people manage the challenges they are facing instead of giving up or getting frustrated.

10.) Create a Private Forum

Instead of turning your entire blog into a mentorship or coaching site you can create a private forum that people have to pay for to gain access. A forum is basically a page that people use to discuss different topics with each other and get the advice that they need.

Having a forum is one of the best ways of getting engagement and building a following around you. Plus with a paid forum, you can create a revenue stream from your blog.

11.) Sell Other Digital Products

Apart from selling eBooks and other services, you can also monetize your personal blog by selling products such as WordPress themes, printables, templates, audio recordings, and video tutorials among others. If you have a skill and digital product, sell it to earn money.

12.) Create a Directory

Depending on your blog niche, you can use your blog to play the role of matchmaker and create a job board or directory. These resources when done well are not only useful but can also attract a lot of readers.

The directory used to be the “in” thing online and they are still in high demand. If you are wondering how to go about this, there are a bunch of good directory plugins that you can use. You’ll even get plugins that will allow you to accept payments.

13.) Host Webinars

Although many businesses use webinars to generate leads, hosting a well-paid webinar is another means of making money. When doing this you only need to ensure that you are providing value.

Since there are many free webinars out there you should be offering something pretty good if you intend to earn money from it.

14.) Become a Freelance Blogger

A freelancer is a writer who creates content on various topics for emails, websites landing pages and products. If you already have a blog then you have all the skills you need to be an on-demand freelance blogger.

Top brands and companies are constantly looking for bloggers with the appropriate skill sets. So becoming a freelancer will give you a huge opportunity to improve your financial life. Once you’ve marketed yourself well you’ll start seeing business coming your way.

You can also join several Facebook groups and use the same to market yourself.

Wrapping Up

If you’ve already done the work of creating your blog, why not make some cash out of it. This process will just take a bit of know-how. After paying for development, hosting and design cost, your blog can easily make you money.

Give one of the above approaches a try and you may be pleasantly surprised by what comes out of it. Just make sure you choose the best niche and be consistent in what you are doing. Remember there is no success that comes overnight.

Author Bio

Jeff Finder is a Digital Nomad who travels around the world and blogs about technology, gadgets and specifically laptops at Laptopcut.com. He’s also an international speaker and loves to persuade youth to find their voice online and make it count.

 

 

Which blog monetization methods will you try from the list above?