
How to Make Money Blogging in (Complete Guide)
Trying to figure out how to make money with a blog? I mean, as fun as starting a blog is, I dont think there are very many people who would mind earning at least a little side income from their blog!
But how do you actually go about monetizing your blog? Do you just throw up a bunch of popup ads and call it a day? Wellyou can. But if you go with that approach youre leaving a ton of less intrusive monetization options on the table.
In this post, Im going to go over a whole heap of ideas for how to make money with a blog. Ill cover everything from the most popular methods (that you might already be familiar with) down to some niche methods that might not have considered already.
The best part is you can use multiple monetization ideas at the same time to create a truly diversified income stream from your blog.
Enough chatting lets get to the money-making do blog sites make money to make money blogging in
Before I jump into the ideas, let me just give you a quick rundown of how Im going to be ordering them. Ill start with the most popular monetization methods and slowly get more narrow as the list goes on. So if youre already familiar with the basics of how to make money with a blog, you might be able to skip the first few suggestions. Otherwise, start at the beginning!
1. Promote products via affiliate marketing
Lets start with one of the biggest money makers for bloggersthat regular people often arent familiar with:
Affiliate marketing.
With affiliate marketing, you get paid for linking or otherwise recommending products or services if someone purchases a product as a result of clicking from your site. When someone buys after visiting from your site, youll get either a percentage or flat-rate commission.
For example, you could write a product review blog post do blog sites make money get paid if someone buys as a result of your review. An example of this in action is our SiteGround review. If someone signs up to SiteGround from our review, we earn a small commission. Or, you can always curate or mention multiple products at a time.
The important thing here is that the customer still gets the same price, no matter if they buy something based on an affiliates recommendation or directly from the vendor.
So how can you do blog sites make money these affiliate opportunities?
One way is to look in companies website footers for an Affiliates link. A good percentage of businesses have such links and you can find out about their affiliate program.
Another way is to sign up to an affiliate network (a collection of affiliate programs). Some good networks are:
Lastly, if youre into WordPress, there are two more options that we can recommend:
- Our own affiliate program here at Themeisle. Check the details here.
- A list of the top WordPress-related affiliate programs in the market.
2. Use Google AdSense ads
Im giving Google AdSense its own category because its one of the most popular and easiest ways to start monetizing your blog. Im guessing youre familiar with what AdSense ads look like. If not, heres a quick example:
To get such ads on your site, all you need to do is sign up for AdSense and add the ad code to your site.
Then, Google will serve up ads that are relevant to your content and your visitors. And youll get paid if someone clicks on your ad (known as cost per click) or even if someone just views your ad (known as cost per impression).
3. Accept sponsored posts from companies
Did you know that there are tons of companies who will pay you money just for writing a post about them? Such posts are called sponsored posts. And if your blog gets decent traffic, plenty of companies will pay for the privilege of sponsoring a post. This might be one of your main strategies on your way to learning how to make money with a blog.
One way to find sponsors for your posts is to use a network like Tapinfluence, do blog sites make money. But honestly, the best way to attract such opportunities is to create a page on your own site advertising your traffic and rates for sponsored posts. That way, advertisers can find you. And trust me, do blog sites make money, sponsors are always looking for opportunities!
Just be aware its a good practice (and sometimes required by law) to clearly disclose when a post is sponsored.
4. Use other display network ads
AdSense is technically a display network. But because its so popular, I gave it its own category. AdSense is not your only option here, though. There are tons of other networks where all you need to do is add a code to your site and start displaying ads.
We already wrote about some AdSense alternatives, but some good options are:
Not sure what I mean by display advertising? Heres a quick example of what a Criteo ad might look like:
5. Sell ads directly to advertisers
AdSense and other display ad networks find ads for you so that you can find out how to make money with a blog without needing to lift a finger. But in returnthey do take a cut of what advertisers pay you.
So one way to potentially make more money and have more control over the ads on your site is to cut out the middleman. That is, do blog sites make money, directly sell ads to advertisers.
Like sponsored posts, the best way to attract these opportunities is to create an Advertise page on your site that lists details about your traffic (including Google Analytics screenshots). But you can also try proactively reaching out to companies in your niche.
And once you get some ads, there are plenty of WordPress plugins that can help you manage them. Some good ones are:
6. Sell a digital product, like an eBook
Speaking of cutting out the middlemaninstead of relying solely on affiliate marketing to sell other peoples products, you can create your own digital product that you sell to your audience. While it does take some upfront work, this is actually a fairly popular way to make money from your blog.
For example, the ProBlogger team has created 6 different eBooks that they sell via their blog:
Try to think of a product you could create based on the topic of your blog. Then, market that product to your readers!
7. Become a freelance blogger
If you already enjoy blogging, you can actually use your own blog as one big advertisement to attract clients willing to pay you to blog. This is actually a pretty solid way to make a living (its what I do!). And its pretty popular in some blogging niches.
For example, Carrie Smith Nicholson runs a personal finance blog called Careful Cents that she also uses to find freelance blogging clients:
The best way to do this? Create a Hire Me page like Carrie did. Then, if someone likes your writing, they know exactly how to get in contact with you.
But what do you need in order to start this blogging business? We recommend you this comprehensive step-by-step guide by FirstSiteGuide on how to create a blog by yourself.
8. Create an eCourse
Similar to creating a digital product like an eBook, launching your own eCourse is another popular method of monetizing a blog. Again, think of what youre an expert atand offer up a course to your readers.
For example, Elna Cain has a blog about freelance writing that she uses to promote her online courses:
Or, you can always create Udemy course based on your blog content and earn money that way.
9. Launch a membership site
The final form of eBooks and online courses is to launch a full membership site. With a membership site, your readers pay every month for access to a full community of information.
For an example of this in action, check out Digital Marketers Lab site. With Digital Marketer Lab, readers can pay a monthly fee to subscribe to premium content:
Charge people to read your posts
I knowthis seems like a pretty far-fetched method for how to make money with a blog. Charging people just to read all of your posts?! No one would ever payright?
Well, it depends on your niche. I wouldnt recommend this method for most sites. But some bloggers have actually found success using this method. For example, Mark Manson charges readers $4 per do blog sites make money to read unlimited posts:
Readers can read a limited number of posts for free. But after that, they have to pay to continue reading. Again, not for everyone. But if you have longform content that people love reading (like Mark), it might be a viable approach.
Similarly, Consumer Reports charges a subscription fee for unlocking unbiased reviews and ratings, do blog sites make money, discounts, and more.
Create a podcast
As much as people love reading your blog posts, they dont always have time to stare at words on a screen. So why not reach them in another medium with an audio podcast? Podcasting is exploding nowadays and plenty of bloggers are jumping into the mix.
One of the best examples is Pat Flynns Smart Passive Income podcast:
Once you turn your blog readers into podcast subscribers as well, you can start monetizing your do blog sites make money with ads.
Accept donations
Not a fan of selling products or ads? You can always simply ask for donations! Thats what plenty of bloggers do in important, but hard-to-monetize, niches.
One method is to use a service like Patreon to collect money from your supporters, do blog sites make money. Or, you can always use a plugin like PayPal Donations to collect donations directly.
Sell consulting or coaching services
If you arent looking to become a freelance blogger, another way you can use your blog to sell services is to offer consulting or coaching services. Do blog sites make money principle is the same, but youre selling your time instead of your writing.
For example, Chris Lema runs a popular WordPress blog that he uses to sell his consulting services.
Basically you use your blog content to establish your expertise then monetize with consulting.
Sell leads to other companies
If you have a niche blog, your visitors information is valuable to other companies. For example, if you ran a blog on insuranceinsurance companies would love to pay for access to your readers information.
The information for each reader is called a lead. And as long as youre transparent about it, you can collect this information and sell it to other companies. Youre basically connecting an interested person (the lead) with a company that fits their needfor a fee.
Create a job board
If you have a large audience of people interested in a specific topic, you can use that audience to create a job board in your niche. Then, you can charge companies to post a job ad to your targeted audience.
One of the best examples of this is ProBloggers Job Board. Companies looking for freelance bloggers pay ProBlogger money just for the privilege of posting a job ad:
Sell products via eCommerce
If your blogs audience is more casual than business-oriented, you can make good money selling physical merchandise via an eCommerce store. For example, apparel is a huge seller for blogs that skew more towards humor and entertainment.
One of the most successful examples of this is The Chives The Chivery store. It sells a huge array of apparel, do blog sites make money, all powered by the success of The Chives blog.
Sell your blog and cash out
And finally, this brings us to the nuclear option for how to make money with a blog:
Selling your blog.
If youre at the point where you just want to cash out (or if you think youll reach this point in the future), selling your blog lets you get one big lump sum for all the hard work you put into it.
How much can you expect for your blog? That depends entirely on your traffic, do blog sites make money, age, revenue, and consistency. But generallyyou can get anywhere from x what your site makes each month.
For example, WPLift, a popular WordPress blog, sold for a massive $, in
As for where to sell your blog, you can either try to find buyers directly or use a third-party marketplace like:
Wrapping things up
And there you go! 17 viable ways for how to make money with a blog. Not all of them will apply to your specific situation, but you should feel free to mix and match to create a diversified monetization stream.
If you rely on a single method for earning money online, you put yourself at risk if that income stream ever stops working. But if you, say: promote affiliate products, have some AdSense ads, run an eCourse, have a podcast all at the same time, do blog sites make money, then it will be difficult for you to ever lose all your revenue overnight!
Now over to you have you figured out any novel ways for how to make money with a blog? Leave us a comment and well add them to the list!
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Download free guideHow to make money from blogging
There are several ways to monetize a blog. Discover different online revenue models and popular strategies to make money from your blog.
If you have a blog or site – or you’re thinking of starting one – it’s never too late to start making money from it, do blog sites make money. There are several ways to monetize a blog. This article covers different online revenue models and popular strategies for digital content monetization.
Let’s start with the basics. What is monetization? To put it simply, monetization means making money from your site, do blog sites make money. When you earn revenue from the online content on your blog, that’s monetization.
To begin making money from your blog, there are several online business models:
- Ads
- Affiliate marketing
- Physical or digital product offerings
- Subscriptions
- Coaching
How can you make these work for you and your blog? Let’s take a closer look at each monetization model.
Ads monetization: Offer advertising on your blog to make money
As the publisher of a blog, advertising can provide a healthy revenue stream for your online content. Advertisers are willing to pay to gain exposure to your audience. In the same way that a newspaper with a large circulation can charge advertisers more, the more popular your site and content become the more you can earn, do blog sites make money.
You can offer advertising space on your site directly to businesses that want to appear alongside your content. That’s called a direct deal. You can also use an ad network – such as Google AdSense – to sell your ad space on your behalf.
The way AdSense works is by serving ads that are relevant to the content appearing on a specific page of your blog. For example, if your blog is about adventure travel and you’ve just uploaded a post about a trip to Rekyavik, do blog sites make money, AdSense might show an ad about travel insurance, Iceland or warm clothing. As the owner of the site where the ad is appearing, AdSense pays you when a user views or interacts with an ad, do blog sites make money.
With the ability to make online ads relevant to the content and readership of your blog, many advertisers are keen to pay a premium price for your ad space, do blog sites make money.
Affiliate marketing: Earn income through product recommendations
Affiliate marketing is when you include a link in your content to a product or service for sale on another site. Here’s how it works: when someone clicks the link on your site, goes to the affiliate’s site and proceeds to buy the product you’ve endorsed, you earn a commission on the sale.
For blogs with an engaged audience of people who are interested in product recommendations, this can be a viable revenue model. Informational, how-to and lifestyle articles offer lots of opportunities for promoting affiliate products.
Using the example of an adventure travel blog again, say you’ve posted a story about a tour of wild swimming spots. You could use affiliate marketing to recommend the gear – such as a swimsuit, towel and goggles – that you packed for your trip. When a blog reader clicks on the link to the swimsuit you’ve recommended and then buys it, you generate an income from your blog.
To make sure you maintain the trust of your audience, aim to be transparent about your affiliate relationships. In many countries it is also a legal requirement to disclose your affiliate relationships, so be sure to discuss with legal counsel before engaging in affiliate marketing. Also remember the reputation of your blog is related to the product or service you’re promoting, so focus on quality when choosing your affiliate partners.
Physical or digital product offerings: Sell things to make money from your blog
As a way of monetizing their blogs, many bloggers establish a presence on an ecommerce platform, create an online store, and start selling products. Your products do blog sites make money be physical or digital. In the example of the adventure travel blog, you might sell t-shirts displaying your logo or digital guidebooks for exotic destinations.
Whether your products are physical or virtual, you’ll need to set up a system for accepting payments. Selling physical merchandise requires you to think about storing your stock, do blog sites make money, organizing shipping and handling taxes and duties. Digital goods can be less complex logistically because they can be delivered electronically.
Subscriptions: Charge a regular fee to add a new income stream
If your blog has an active community that’s eager to know more about your subject, a paid membership or subscription model is another way to use your valuable content to generate revenue over the long run.
In this business model, readers pay a fixed amount on a regular basis, typically monthly or annually. By collecting a membership or subscription fee from readers in this way, you can produce recurring income. This kind of continuous cash flow offers the potential for a more stable, predictable and accurate revenue stream.
In exchange, you might offer subscribers or members premium content, do blog sites make money, a community area, learning resources, videos, or extra services and tools. Do blog sites make money could combine several of these elements to suit your blog.
Coaching: Monetize your blog through training
If your blog lends itself to training services, you could earn money by setting up and charging for online courses or coaching packages.
When you create self-guided teaching materials such as videos or downloadable ebooks, you allow members of your audience to proceed at their own pace. As people progress through your course, you can gauge their interest about other topics to cover.
Developing an online curriculum can require significant time and resources upfront, so you’ll need an engaged audience to make it viable.
Another option for increasing your revenue is to offer live video coaching and be paid for your time.
Whether your offer is based around an online course or on-demand coaching, you can also include opportunities to communicate with your students via email or within your blog itself.
Remember, you have many options when it comes to do blog sites make money money from your blog. You can master one blog monetization strategy, or you can mix and match any number of revenue streams to discover what works best for your business. If you're interested in learning more about online monetization, visit our blog.
There are lots of guides about how to make money blogging, do blog sites make money, but here’s what makes this one different:
I’ve taken three different blogs to over $1 million per year. In fact, the blog you’re reading right now has made a total of $ million.
And in this post, I’m going to give you a step-by-step case study showing you exactly how I did it, starting from nothing, along with my step-by-step guide for beginners trying to get started.
Let’s jump in.
7 Ways to Make Money Blogging (with Examples!)
- Online Courses and Workshops
- Books and Ebooks
- Affiliate Marketing
- Advertising
- Speaking Gigs
- Consulting/Coaching
- Selling Freelance Services
In a moment, Im going to show you a general framework you can follow to start a profitable blog from scratch.
But first, let’s jump into the specifics of how to make real money blogging, including real-world examples you can study and learn do blog sites make money Training:The 31 Most PROFITABLE Niches for Bloggers in
Here are the top 7 awesome ways to make a good blogging income:
1. Online Courses and Workshops
Here at Smart Blogger, we make most of our income from online courses and workshops — over $1 million per year — but we are far from the only successful blog doing this. Most of the people making a lot of money from their blogs are doing it through online courses.
Ramit Sethi reportedly crossed $10 million dollars in annual revenue with his suite of premium courses:
And it’s not only business or wealth-focused topics that are doing well. You can find successful blogs on just about any topic or niche monetizing with online courses. For instance, the popular interior designer Maria Killam has quite a few courses and workshops in her catalog:
Online courses and workshops can bring in one-time payments or, depending on your model, recurring income via subscriptions.
2. Books and Ebooks
Quite a few writers have parlayed their blogging success into a major publishing deal. Mark Manson, do blog sites make money, for instance, published a blog post called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck in Millions of readers later, he got a book deal with Harper Collins and went on to sell over 3, copies in the US alone.
Self-published books have also been successful. The most notable success story among bloggers is probably James Altucher’s Choose Yourself, which is now sold overcopies:
3. Affiliate Marketing
If you’d like to create some passive income streams from your blog, one of the best choices is affiliate marketing — recommending the services, digital products, and physical products of other companies in exchange for a commission.
Here at Smart Blogger, we make more than $, per year promoting affiliate products, most of that coming from casually recommending products we love like SiteGround (affiliate link) and Elementor (affiliate link).
Editors Note: Read our in-depth review of SiteGround here: SiteGround Review: Still the Best (Or Not-So-Good) in ? And, for an in-depth review of Elementor, read: Elementor Review: Is it REALLY the Best Landing Page Builder?
But there are lots of other examples too. For instance, John Lee Dumas of EOFire made $, in affiliate income last year. Digital Photography School has reportedly made over $, in Amazon Associates commissions from promoting photography equipment:
With so many companies offering referral programs to help spread the word about their product or service, the number of different affiliate marketing opportunities is enormous.
Joining an affiliate network is one way to begin tapping into this revenue stream and to start earning extra income from your hard-earned organic traffic.
Free Bonus: Click here to get our cheat sheet for affiliate marketers delivered straight to your inbox (for free).
4. Advertising
Normally, we’re not big fans of selling ads on your site as a monetization strategy. You need roughly a million visitors per year for the large ad networks to take you seriously, and affiliate marketing is almost always more profitable and just as passive.
That being said, some niches like recipes, do blog sites make money, fashion, and news are hard to monetize through many of the other methods mentioned here, and they get LOTS of page views. In that case, putting a few banner ads on your site can make sense as a supplementary income source.
For example, here’s a screenshot of a income report from Share the Yummy:
Normally, you make money by joining an ad network. Nearly anyone can join Google AdSense, for example, and you can later grow into more selective networks like Mediavine and AdThrive.
5. Speaking Gigs
If your blog takes off, and you start being recognized as an authority in your space, you might be surprised by how many invitations you get to speak at conferences. And it’s amazingly profitable, do blog sites make money. I typically make a minimum of $10, per speech and it can go as high as $, when you count product sales resulting from the speech.
Not bad for a minute talk, do blog sites make money. 🙂
6. Consulting/Coaching
While this certainly isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, doing a bit of coaching or consulting is an online job that can earn you a surprisingly nice living, even when your audience is small. I rarely do consulting anymore, but the last time I did regularly, I charged $1, an hour with a six-month waiting list.
But I’m not the only one. Going back to Maria, again, she’s been quite innovative in coming up with ways to do design consultations by photo and email, currently charging $1, per room:
You can make this work in almost any niche. You just need to know what you’re doing and be confident in the value you do blog sites make money providing to clients.
7. Selling Freelance Services
The next step up from consulting is to actually do it for them.
Typically, you’ll make more money freelancing than with anything else, but it’s also the most draining and time-intensive. That being said, I’ve seen bloggers make six-figure incomes with no more than a few thousand readers on their blog, essentially using their blog as a lead mechanism to get clients.
It’s so profitable, do blog sites make money, even if successful bloggers continue to do it. For example, Elna Cain continues to sell her freelance writing services:
If you’re a freelance writer, do blog sites make money, designer, photographer, programmer, do blog sites make money, or other service provider where your skills can be sold digitally instead of you having to be there in person, you might want to consider this income stream from day one. All you really need to get started is a contact form for clients to reach out to you.
Okay, now for the fun part, do blog sites make money. Let me show you the framework I used to become an honest-to-goodness millionaire
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If you’re a new blogger starting from scratch with no traffic or influential friends, it’s easy to wonder…
Is it reasonable for you to believe you can make money blogging?
For that matter, how do blogs even make money? Ads? Sponsored content? Sell products? Good luck? Or something else?
Well, let’s take a look at exactly how I did it at Smart Blogger. Here’s my complete step-by-step process for how to make money blogging:
1. Choose the Right Blogging Niche (a Profitable One)
Let’s start with a little brutal truth, shall we?
- Passion does not equal profit.
- Neither does expertise.
- Hard work doesn’t guarantee anything either.
For example:
You can be the world’s non stock investment options expert on square-shaped tomatoes, wake up every morning with a burning passion to educate the public on their vast superiority to normal-shaped tomatoes, and work until your fingers bleed and your eyes fall out of your head, do blog sites make money, following all the right tactics for turning your new blog into a popular one, and…
You’ll never have a chance in hell at making any amount of money.
Here’s why:
- Nobody but you gives a damn about square tomatoes
- Even if they did care, they wouldn’t spend any money
In other words, you need a large audience who buys things. Without that, nothing else matters. It’s a prerequisite for everything else.
In the case of Smart Blogger, do blog sites make money, I noticed early on that bloggers buy lots of different things:
In fact, there are companies with $10 million+ per year of revenue in most of those categories. It’s also a growing space with millions of people:
The only problem?
Loads of competition. Whether it be my previous employers Brian Clark or Neil Patel, my good friends over at Problogger, or the gazillion other “blogging about blogging” peeps infesting the social media space, everyone was intent on snagging a piece of the pie. They also had a several-year head start on me.
So, how did I compete? The honest answer:
2. Improve Your Content Skills
Embed This Infographic On Your Site
You’ve probably heard that “Content is king,” and it’s true… to an extent. A more accurate statement would be…
The Best Content Is King
If that’s hard to understand, think about it this way:
Lots of bloggers sit down and think, “What will I write today?” They jot down some thoughts, doing their best to be helpful, original, and entertaining. If they’re disciplined, they might even stick with it for a few months.
But it almost never works. Here are a few reasons why:
- What you want to say isn’t what other people want to read
- You weren’t using a proven content framework
- It’s not the best post ever published on the topic
Granted, it’s not your fault. Until today, do blog sites make money, chances are no one ever told you about any of those requirements. You thought, to become a successful blogger, you just had to write interesting stuff and publish it.
No, grasshopper, do blog sites make money. No.
The truth is, having good ideas and powerful words isnt enough. You have to create the best content ever published on blog topics lots of people are interested in learning more about. And that brings us to the three levels of content creation:
- You know what blog content is popular in your niche, and you write exclusively about those topics
- You’ve mastered frameworks proven to make your content more popular (list post, how to post, etc.)
- Your content delivers more value to the reader than any other post published on that topic
You’re probably thinking, “Geez. That sounds hard.” And you’re right, it is.
I personally spent about three years honing my skills by writing for other sites before I started my own blog. It doesn’t have to take that long — I’m just a perfectionist, do blog sites make money I wanted to learn from the best people in my space.
It worked, though. Nowadays, my posts get millions and millions of visitors, not because I know some special “secret,” but because I’m really good at what I do.
Blogging is really no different than anything else. The more of a badass you are, the easier it is for you to make money online.
So you want to know how to make money blogging?
Become an awesome writer.
Then the next step is to…
3. Choose a Traffic Source (Google Search or Facebook)
When you’re a newbie, getting traffic is confusing.
Should you focus on optimizing your keywords? Growing your Facebook page? Leaving comments on blogs? Answering questions on Quora? Being active in Facebook groups? Creating videos for your YouTube channel? Starting a popular podcast?
And so on.
There are a gazillion traffic tactics out there. Everybody says theirs is the best.
But here’s the data:
Pretty much all the traffic for written content comes from either Google or Facebook. The rest of traffic sources combined don’t even come close to competing with those two Goliaths.
So, how do you get them to send you a bunch of traffic?
One option is you can pay for it. They like that.
But chances are, you’re reading about how to make money blogging because you don’t want to pay for traffic. You want it for free, right?
Well, imagine this:
There’s an arena where all the bloggers in your space go to compete for traffic. The number of other challengers you defeat determines the amount of traffic you receive.
In other words, getting traffic is a sport.
- There are winners, and there are losers
- To be good, you have to train
- You need to study your opponents
There are actually two sports, and I’d bet you’ve heard of both of them: search engine optimization (SEO) and going viral on Facebook. Both take years (yes, I said years) of study to master, but you can start getting pretty decent traffic after just a few months of study and practice.
Which one should you focus on?
Well, here are two questions to guide you:
- Is your topic something your friends and family regularly talk about on Facebook? Examples: pets, parenting, self-improvement, and health. If so, focus on playing the viral traffic sport.
- Is your topic something people actively search for information about on Google? Examples: product reviews, specific questions they would ask an expert, do blog sites make money, how-to information. If so, focus on SEO.
For most topics, you can do both, but one or the other will be dominant. In that case, focus on whichever one is dominant.
In the blogging space, for example, stuff about writing and grammar occasionally goes viral on Facebook, because we love criticizing our relatives about their terrible English. On the other hand, you rarely talk with your family about blogging platforms, WordPress plugins, affiliate marketing, digital marketing, keyword research, or any other blogging topics.
You will, do blog sites make money, however, search for them on Google. Just as you would guess then, do blog sites make money, the blogging niche is heavily dominated by search. Here’s a breakdown of Smart Blogger’s traffic by source:
The truth is, we pretty much ignore Facebook. The volume of traffic available there comes nowhere close to the volume of traffic available from search engines. So, we focus on Google.
I also spend WAY more time keeping up to date on SEO stuff than I do on social stuff. I’m a geek about it. Throw me in a room full of Google engineers, and I’d probably know more than half of them.
Not to imply I’m the best, though. I’m also competing against people like Darren Rowse, Amy Lynn Andrews, and Neil Patel. They’re pretty freaking good too.
In time, I think I can be better, but who knows? That’s why sports are fun. You never know who is going to win.
If you’re good though, you’ll always be in the “playoffs,” for your space, and you’ll get lots of traffic. Maybe not the most, but still plenty.
And then you can focus on how to…
4. Grow Your Email List with Pop Ups
Chances are, you see pop ups as an annoyance.
They get in the way when you’re trying to read. They ask you to hand over sensitive information like your name, email address, and phone number. Sometimes you have to deal with multiple pop ups on the same site, and it makes you feel hassled and uncared for.
And all that sucks. In my opinion, you have every right to be annoyed.
But here’s the thing…
That’s where the money comes from, do blog sites make money. The best predictor of the revenue for a do blog sites make money making blog is the size of their email list. Here’s a breakdown of our revenue at Smart Blogger comparing revenue dollars from email to other sources.
The rule of thumb is you can expect to make $1 per subscriber per month. So, if you have 10, email subscribers, you should be able to make about $10, per month.
So income statement and retained earnings example, growing your email list is a top priority. You might, however, feel conflicted about using pop ups. What are you supposed to do?
Here’s a different way of looking at it:
If a visitor comes to your site and doesn’t give you their email address, the chances of them returning are nearly zero. You’ll never have another opportunity to help them.
If you believe your content is the best, and you believe you can help them over time, I believe you owe it to them to be as pushy as possible about staying in contact. In other words, not using a pop up is unethical. A little annoyance is a small price to pay for change.
And remember, esg investing the challenges of a growing market doesn’t mean you have to be extremely pushy or spammy. You can absolutely use pop ups in authentic ways.
But you absolutely must use them. Assuming you want to make money, anyway.
5. Begin Monetizing with Affiliate Programs
So, you’re operating in a profitable niche, and you have traffic and an email list. What next?
Lots of new bloggers jump into creating a course or book or community of some sort, but that’s a mistake, do blog sites make money, in my opinion. Before you start selling things, you need concrete evidence those things are what people want to buy. Otherwise, you’re risking wasting months or even years of your life trying to push a product no one wants.
The simplest way to obtain that evidence:
Affiliate programs.
By seeing what your audience buys from other people, do blog sites make money, you can get a much better sense of what they might want to buy from do blog sites make money. If you promote an affiliate product and it converts well, you should think about creating a similar product. If it doesn’t convert well, you should probably move on.
In other words, affiliate program offers are a form of market research. As a bonus, do blog sites make money, you just so happen to get paid commissions on the products your customers buy in the process. So not only are you learning what your target audience wants to buy, but you’re making money from your blog at the same time. Pretty sweet deal.
At Smart Blogger, I’ve tried lots of different offers. WordPress blog hosting, landing page tools, email marketing software, Amazon affiliate content links, WordPress themes, and half a dozen different types of high-quality courses. Since we sell courses, I pay the most attention to the results from those programs, and here are a couple of lessons:
- End to end solutions sell best. Courses promising to take someone from knowing nothing to making money far outperformed the others. For instance, here’s a screenshot showing us as the #1 affiliate for Danny Iny’s Course Builder’s Laboratory:
- Tools with a clear connection to money making also sell better than the others. For instance, landing page builders. As proof, heres a screenshot of our earnings from promoting LeadPages:
By themselves, neither of those promotions really moved the needle on our revenue, but they did teach us useful lessons that went into creating Freedom Machine, which brings us to…
6, do blog sites make money. Develop a Unique Mechanism
Before you think about launching your own products or services, do blog sites make money, there’s one essential point about human nature you need to understand:
Whenever anyone purchases anything, they expect to transition from where they are now (Point A) to where they want to be (Point B). For example…
- When you buy pizza, you want to transition from being hungry and craving pizza (Point A) to tasting delicious pizza and feeling full (Point B).
- When you hire a plumber, you want to transition from having a clogged, overflowing toilet (Point A) to having a normally functioning toilet (Point B).
- When you buy a course on SEO, you want to transition from feeling bewildered and getting ignored by Google (Point A) to ranking for competitive terms and getting great blog traffic.
The success of a product ultimately depends on helping customers make those transitions. If the customer doesn’t get to Point B, they typically view the experience as a failure.
So, here’s the magic question:
What makes you better equipped to deliver that transition than your competitors?
The answer to that question is what content marketing expert Todd Brown calls your “unique mechanism.” It’s a little different from a “unique selling proposition,” because it’s not just something about you that’s different, do blog sites make money. It’s something about you or your method that makes you better able to help customers than anyone else.
For Freedom Machine, we have multiple unique mechanisms:
- Get published on Medium — a platform with more than 60 million active readers looking for great content
- Content frameworks developed behind the scenes at Smart Blogger to produce popular, valuable content
- A monetization methodology proven by our success with Smart Blogger
Combined, those unique mechanisms are EXTREMELY convincing at setting us up as the superior solution. Therefore, the product sells like hotcakes.
To be clear… it’s not necessary to have 3 different unique mechanisms. Sometimes just one is all you need (i.e. fresh, do blog sites make money pizza in 30 minutes or less). The core idea though is to make sure you are obviously far more capable than your competitors at delivering results.
Then all you have to do is…
7. Launch the Minimum Viable Funnel
Look around at successful entrepreneurs of any type, do blog sites make money, and you’ll find a surprising trend:
They tend to sell their products before the product is created.
To most people, this sounds like insanity at best or a disturbing lack of ethics at worst. How could you possibly ask people to buy something that doesn’t exist?
The answer:
It’s the same principle as Kickstarter.
You create a fancy minimal sales funnel of some sort (in this case, just a simple sales page), tell people the product is coming soon, and then wait to see if enough people sign up to justify making the product. If they don’t, you refund everyone’s money and start over.
In other words, it’s the final step in validating you have a viable product. The steps go like this:
- Identify demand by promoting affiliate products
- Find a unique mechanism that makes you clearly superior
- Test the demand for that unique mechanism with a quick and dirty launch before you create the product
In my case, the minimum viable funnel was a minute webinar. The first time I did it, there was no product, do blog sites make money, no follow-up sequence, nothing. It was just a bare-bones test.
And it resulted in $, in sales live on the webinar.
Seeing that $30, sales was my minimum for success, we went ahead and created the first version of the product live with students. About a year later, it’s now approaching $1 million in sales.
That’s also just one product. We have others, and we have still more in the research pipeline.
And guess what I would do if I had to start over again?
The exact same thing. It’s not easy, it’s not fast, it’s not even that sexy, do blog sites make money it works.
Let’s close with some questions and answers, shall we?
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FAQ about How to Make Money Blogging
So, we’ve covered the basic process. Now let’s step back for a moment and answer some of the questions I hear the most often:
Do bloggers make money?
I certainly do, but I don’t think that’s what you’re asking. I think you’re asking…
“Is it reasonable for me to learn how to make money blogging?”
The no BS answer:
It depends on how patient and persistent you are.
Starting a blog from scratch is just as difficult as starting a small business. For example, it requires the same time and effort as starting your own restaurant, software company, or accounting service. Yes, those businesses are wildly different, but the first few years are usually the same story: low income, lots of stress, big learning curve.
If you want a more concrete answer than that, we’ve found it takes even our smartest, most dedicated students years to make enough money from blogging to quit their jobs. And that sounds like a long time, but so what? years to be able to work from anywhere in the world, take a vacation whenever you want, and probably have passive income until the day you die?
Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
How much money can you make from blogging?
The fact is, most bloggers make as much money as any other type of entrepreneur:
Nothing.
And it’s not because there’s no money in it. This blog makes more than $1 million per year, for God sakes, and it’s nowhere close to the most profitable blog out there. Blogs like The Penny Hoarder, do blog sites make money, Moz, and Lifehacker power businesses worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
So why aren’t more bloggers rich?
The truth is, most people quit. They start a blog, write a post or two, realize it’s hard work, and walk away.
But if you’re patient and persistent?
You can make millions. I have. So have lots of other smart, dedicated entrepreneurs.
You just have to do the work. Consistently. For years.
Can you do that?
Then yeah, I think you can make six figures at least. Maybe more.
How do you make money blogging? (Or, How do bloggers make money?)
As I mentioned earlier, there 7 popular ways to make money blogging:
- Offering online courses and workshops
- Writing books and eBooks
- Affiliate marketing (recommending products and services in exchange for a commission)
- Blog ads
- Speaking at conferences
- Offering your expertise as a consultant or coach
- Selling freelance services such as writing, designing, do blog sites make money, and programming
Which is best for you will depend on your blog, your expertise, and your situation.
How do you start your own blog for free?
Lots of people say you can’t. They tell you to buy a domain name, a web hosting account (Bluehost is one you see pushed a lot by influencers), and a premium WordPress theme.
But I think that’s nonsense.
You can get started for free within five minutes on Medium. They also have over 60 million monthly readers, so you can get a do blog sites make money of exposure there if you get featured.
This great do blog sites make money walks you through that strategy, step-by-step.
Alternatively, you can write on www.oldyorkcellars.com, Linkedin, or any of the other platforms out there. It doesn’t really matter. The point is, start writing and learning as soon as possible.
Once people start sharing your great, informative posts, and you begin to understand how everything works, then you can go through the trouble of setting up your own site, installing WordPress, and all that jazz. Until then though, do blog sites make money, it’s just a headache you don’t need.
What are the most popular blogging platforms?
WordPress is by far the most popular. No one else is even close.
But that doesn’t mean it’s the best for everyone. There are several blogging platforms you can try — and most of them are free.
As I mentioned earlier, I think Medium is a good how to make money from home legit to start. You can also create your own blog with tools like Blogger, Squarespace, Wix, Joomla, and countless others.
What are the top blogs about how to make money blogging?
I’d like to think Smart Blogger is the best (and most comprehensive) site on the topic, but it’s by no means the only one. Not all of these talk about how to make money blogging, but together, they give you a solid foundation:
- Backlinko — Brian Dean doesn’t talk much about how to make money blogging, but he’s one of do blog sites make money top experts and educators in the world on SEO. What I love about his highly valuable content is how easy to understand it is, despite covering some incredibly complex topics. If you’re a beginner blogger looking for DIY insights, prepare for a treat.
- Digital Marketer: — In my opinion, my friends over at Digital Marketer are the best in the world at monetizing traffic. If you’d like to learn about marketing, list building, customer research, automation, or funnels, do blog sites make money, there’s no better source.
- Smart Passive Income — If you’re interested in using your blog to build passive income, Pat Flynn is a master at showing you how to build a tiny little business that can support you and the lifestyle you want. Both his blog and podcast are excellent.
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The Bottom Line about How to Make Money Blogging
Is it possible?
Absolutely, but only if you treat it like a blogging business.
Yes, you can start your blog as a side project. Yes, you can slowly grow it in the background. Yes, you can turn your blog into a source of passive, full-time income that eventually lets you quit do blog sites make money job, travel, spend a lot of time with your family, whatever you want to do.
But like anything worthwhile, it’s hard work getting there.
You have to study. Practice. Master your craft. Put in a lot of work. Hustle.
If you love writing, I can’t imagine a better business, though. Not only is blogging a great way to get your writing noticed, but it’s a great way to connect with people around the world who need you, teach them what you know, and get paid pretty damn well in exchange.
There’s never a day I regret dedicating myself to blogging. Never.
It’s not just because of the money, either. It’s because I also get to do what I love and help people at the same time.
What could be better than that?
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