How To Make Money With A Blog

Updated March 21, 2019

I’ve spoken with many bloggers recently about why they started a blog. Often they come back to me with “I needed an outlet for my thoughts”, or “I wanted a place to share my knowledge”. One of the most common reasons I’ve heard is, “because I want to make money blogging”.

It’s an ideal many of us have – to earn blog income, or at the very least, enough to take the pressure off. Many parents are now choosing this option as a way to work around their families while still contributing to the financial costs of running a home.

Whatever your reason for wanting to make money blogging online, you need to go into it with your eyes open. Earning a living online isn’t easy. It takes a lot of hard work, a lot of patience and plenty of determination. Let’s look at some money management tips, and ways you can make money online and explore each one in detail.

So, how do bloggers make money?

Making Money Through Advertising Income

This is probably the most popular form of how to make money blogging for beginners that they think of. Services like Google Adsense and other ad networks allow you to place various sized banner and text ads throughout your blog or website.

Depending on the network, you’re paid every time a user clicks your ad, or by the number of impressions your banner ads receive. How much you’re paid again depends on the network, however with each click or impression you can expect to earn pennies.

While monetizing in this way seems pretty easy, it won’t make you a decent living on its own. To really benefit from these ads, you need a substantial inflow of traffic to your site. The more traffic you have, the more likely it is that people will click on your ads. If your traffic is on the low side, it’s probably worth exploring a different way of blogging and making money that you can use instead, or alongside your ads.

Making Money Through Sponsored Posts

This form of making money blogging is popular. It works via a brand approaching you and offering to pay you to write about their products or services on your own blog. The catch is usually the inclusion of a link back to a page on their website.

Essentially, it’s another form of advertising, however, you have greater control over what content appears on your website. If you have an approach to a brand that’s not relevant to your audience, you’re free to turn the offer down.

You can expect to earn anywhere from $50 to $500+ per sponsored post. However, this will probably depend on your site’s metrics including traffic volume, domain authority and your level of influence on social media. It’s also difficult to land these opportunities when you’re just starting out. You won’t be on anyone’s radar just yet, so will need to work on publishing great content before you start getting any offers.

The biggest downside of relying on sponsored posts to make money blogging is that they’re not a regular occurrence. I’ve found that they’re a bit like buses – you’ll go for weeks without hearing a thing and then they all turn up at once.

Another thing you must consider is how you’ll disclose your relationship with a brand to your readers. To stay within FTC regulations about advertising, you must state in any sponsored post that you’ve been paid to write it. Along with this, it’s good practice according to Google to “no-follow” any paid links so as not to hurt your page rankings.

Making Blog Income With Your Own Products

One way to really start getting serious about making money blogging is to create and sell your own products. Savvy bloggers have done this for years by selling online courses, webinars, eBooks, and videos, with a great deal of success.

First, though, you’ll need a product. This is the part where many become unstuck. What should you sell? How will people buy it?

My suggestion is to start small. Make your first product an eBook or something similar, like my friend Ryan Biddulph. [And, if you want to make money travel blogging, Ryan knows his stuff! [Base your book on something you know a good deal about, perhaps a topic you cover on your blog for example. Then set an affordable price and market the pants off your product before analyzing your results.

When the momentum dies down, you can see how well you’ve done, what you could have done better and where you need to improve. This will make your next product better, more successful and will improve how much money you make.

This method again takes time. You need to put a lot of hard work in at the beginning, to get the results you want at the end. So don’t be frustrated if you don’t do so well the first time around, dust yourself off and try again better than before.

Making Money By Selling Your Services

Many people overlook this monetization method because it all sounds like too much hard work. However, this is likely the most lucrative way to make money online fast.

While it’s not a passive way to make a living, offering your services to other bloggers puts you in a position to earn a substantial amount of money. This can then fuel other projects you might consider on the side, such as a product you wish to create.

The best way to do this is to show your skills. Put a page up on your website directing people to your services. Tell them what you do, examples of where you’ve done it and how they will benefit.

A few examples of services you could offer include:

• Freelance writing
• Ghost blogging
• Graphic design
• Web design
• Virtual assistance

As more and more people take their businesses online, people offering services such as these, at a reasonable price, are in short supply. They’re overrun with work or are snapped up by entrepreneurs with an eye for a self-starter. Therefore, it’s an excellent way to earn money in a relatively short amount of time.

Final Thoughts

While this isn’t an exhaustive list of ways to make money online, they are some of the most popular. The key with all of them is to stay patient and remember that things won’t happen overnight. You won’t suddenly wake up able to retire to a life of luxury, but it will open doors and paths you can expand upon in the future.