How To Make Money Blogging: 8 Ways To Monetize Your Blog

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Is it possible to make money blogging? Can you earn a full-time income from blogging? The answer to these questions is ‘Yes.’

Blogging for income is a reality. Anyone that has a basic knowledge of blogging, SEO, and how the internet works can make money with blogs.

In this article, I will focus on how you can monetize your blogs and make your first $500 as a blogger. To achieve this goal, I have shed light on 8 practical ways that will help you actualize this goal.

1. Affiliate Marketing

In case you don’t know, you can find a product or service you like, link to the product from your blog, and earn a commission when people buy the product or service from your link. This process is referred to as affiliate marketing.

This is a great way that you can use to make money blogging. You can use it to make money when you’re just starting your blog because you don’t need lots of traffic to make money through this method.

If you have valuable content, you need just 100 people visiting your blog and if one person ends up clicking your affiliate link and buys one of the products that you recommend, you will make money.

Where can you get reliable affiliate programs? Here are the best high paying affiliate programs.

How To Start Making Money From Affiliate Marketing

Here are the steps that you can follow to start making money as an affiliate (with your blog):

Grow your blog traffic to 20 to 50 visits per day

You need to have about 25 to 50 people visiting your blog every day before you can make money with affiliate marketing. This is important because you need to have some traffic so that you can be approved for an affiliate program.

Most affiliate networks will look at your blog and will be like, “This blog has no traffic, so we can’t approve you”. Without blog traffic, you will not have the chance to promote anything.

List the products that you use

Once your blog starts attracting some traffic, then make a list of the products or things that you love using and consider if you want to sell these things.

This is a good approach because you will be able to educate your audience from your personal experience. This makes it easier to craft content since you are already an expert on the product.

Register for affiliate programs

You can register for different affiliate programs. All you need is to let the affiliate networks know about you, your website, and how your site is growing, and you will be accepted.

You need about 5 to 10 minutes to sign up for each affiliate program and they all require straightforward information.

Create blog content

If you are just getting started as an affiliate marketer, you should focus on “Best”, “Vs.”, or “Review” content.

Let’s take a look at what each of these forms of content means.

1. “Best” content

This content focuses on helping your audience understand the best options that are available for a specific product.

For instance, I wrote a post on the best WordPress theme builders. This post lists the different theme builders that bloggers can use for their WordPress websites. If people click on any of the links in the post and buy the theme, I will earn a commission for referring them.

2. “Vs.” content

I have also written a couple of articles on this type of content. It is a good way to create engaging affiliate content.

This type of content compares two products together and sees the one that tops the comparison. For instance, I created a post on Swagbucks Vs. Survey Junkie; a post that compares two online survey panels.

You can check it out if you need an easy way to make money online without any special skills.

3. “Review” content

You create this content when you want to focus on a single product and write an in-depth review of the product. Here is a Lifepoints review that I wrote.

As you can see from the post, it is very detailed and anyone that reads it has the potential of clicking on the links and sign up on the platform.

2. Sell Ad Space

Most bloggers that are looking for ways to monetize their blog use this strategy. However, not that you should not limit yourself to selling banner ad spots.

Check out other areas that you can rent out, such as space on your pop-up box, social media headers, or the ‘P.S.’ section in your email newsletters. Think outside the box and you will come up with a great idea.

3. Offer Services

Although selling services may not make you rich (only passive income can make you rich), it is still a great way to earn some cash and build your reputation.

Sell services that relate to your blog’s topic. For instance, you can sell catering services if your blog is about food. You can also sell freelance writing services if you blog about writing.

4. Create Advertorials and Sponsored Content

Offering sponsored content is one of the best ways to monetize your blog. Advertorials are adverts that are in the form of a paid blog post or article.

For instance, if Adidas introduces a new swimwear line into the market and you blog about women’s sportswear, then they can offer to pay you to write an article about their new product. You can also add some affiliate links to the post.

This monetization method is effective when you have a targeted niche audience. Once you have an engaged audience, brands will reach out to you for sponsored post opportunities.

5. Sponsored Social Media Posts

If you have a strong presence on social media platforms, brands will find you attractive. Some bloggers make their entire income via sponsored posts on social media. You can charge your clients per post or repost and the amount you can charge is usually high.

You just need to focus on building your followers; this will be your social proof. It is what brands see as evidence that readers will love what you post about them.

Read Also: How To Make Money With Your Social Media Followers

6. Write Guest Posts

In some cases, members of the press and brands that have their blogs may get in touch with you if you are an authority on a particular topic. They may ask you to make a little cameo appearance on their site.

For instance, if you are knowledgeable about writing business plans, a business-related firm or newspaper may reach out to you and ask you to contribute some business planning tips to their site or magazine.

You should also be confident enough to pitch ideas to publications. You can send an email intro to get your name (and that of your blog) out there if editors don’t know you.

7. Sell Information Products

You can also make money blogging by selling information products. The information products could be in the form of PDFs, plans, instructions, or eBooks.

Irrespective of the format that you use, the main thing here is to have an information product on your website that you can always refer people to. If you can convince them that they will get value from the products, they will buy them.

Read also: How to Make Money Selling Information Products

8. Write Tutorials

In-depth and well-written tutorials are great for getting links on your site and also for social shares. However, they are also a great way to make money blogging.

This can happen differently; you can include affiliate links of products you use in the tutorial. You can also promote your information product in the product.

Also, you can write a tutorial to create awareness about an advertiser’s product. If you’re using this approach, ensure you let your readers know that it is a sponsored post.

FAQs

Can you blog about your life and still make money from it?

Yes, you can. It is an increasing form of blogging that lots of people are using to make money blogging. People share information about their daily activities and create an engaged community around them. You must have come across lots of them on YouTube and you can replicate this approach on your blog.

Some successful topics for this form of blogging include:

  • Fashion
  • Lifestyle
  • Motivation
  • Travel
  • Entertainment

The most important thing here is to add value, make the content entertaining, and build a community around your brand.

Read Also: How to Make Money as an Influencer [Why 99% of New Influencers Fail]

What should you blog about if you want to make money?

If you’re not interested in blogging about your life and you want to know the best topic that you can use to monetize your blog, you can consider these four factors to guide you on a topic to choose; passion, traffic and trend, monetization opportunity, and competition.

How will you receive blogging payment?

Your advertisers may be in different parts of the world and you can receive your payment from all over the world through these 5 popular ways:

  • PayPal
  • Payoneer
  • Transferwise
  • Coinbase (cryptocurrency payment)
  • Wire transfer (bank transfer)

Conclusion

Making money from blogging is a practical concept; it is something you can do. Lots of bloggers are making money from their blogs through the methods discussed in this article.

Here are some traits that successful bloggers have in common:

  • They have blogs with valuable content.
  • They have built communities around their blogs.
  • The bloggers use more than one way to make money from their blogs. Apart from promoting affiliate products, most bloggers also sell their products and ad space.
  • They have been in the blogging game for years and it also took them some years to be at the point of earning a living from their blogs.

You can also make money blogging. Your success depends on the amount of work you’re ready to invest in.

All the methods that I discussed in this guide are effective for monetizing your blog. However, I will advise you not to overwhelm yourself. Implement them one by one and stick to the method that works for your blogging niche.

Blogging is not an easy job and it will not generate results within a few months. It will take time and you need to be patient.

Although it may take time for you to start seeing results; once the results start trickling in, it is the best job you can ever think of.

Thanks for reading.