5 Ways To Make Money With Your Blog
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Imagine a world where your passions paid you back. Imagine you are able to teach something to others you are really enthusiastic about and it benefited you as well as your audience.
This is the reality of running a blog.
A few reasons I like blogging as an income stream is because the schedule is flexible, you can give attention to it when you have the time, it acts as an outlet for your creativity and it’s a way to make money while you sleep.
Once you have your blog up and running, there are a variety of ways you can monetize it.
While some experts say “don’t blog for the money,” I think you certainly should. Blogging for money can pay off and you get to do something you enjoy.
To blog for money, two major things I suggest you have is a joy for writing and a joy for reading, as you’ll be doing a lot of both. If you like these activities, blogging should be on your list of side hustles to start.
Let’s talk about why a blog should make money.
Even if your blog is focused on a topic that you enjoy and you would do it for free, there are costs with maintaining a blog.
The domain name, the website hosting, the email service, the internet you use, the products you feature and the tools you need to photograph them aren’t free. Someone needs to pay for those things, so it may as well be the blog itself.
When monetizing your blog, begin by aiming to make your blog a net zero situation. You make enough money to cover your costs.
Once you reach net zero status, the next goal is profitability. You make enough to cover your costs plus little extra to reinvest back into the blog.
Finally, the end game goal is to pay yourself and others for running the blog.
This takes time, effort and patience, but you will be rewarded with income for your persistence and commitment to your goals.
At the time of this writing, I’ve developed 5 blogs, 3 of which are still in operation and earning money every day.
A 4th defunct blog is still making money beyond the grave, too, through affiliate links that have been leaked on the web somewhere, but I’ve never figured out how.
The 5th blog, my first, is long, long gone, it’s been over a decade since it was shut down to focus on another property.
One of the blogs I run has been in continual operation since 2013 and Useful Roots, while on the newer side, has been in operation for 5 years - since 2019.
Below are a few easy ways to make money with your blog. The sooner you implement these ideas, the sooner you can start your journey to profitability.
5 ways to make money with a blog
1 - Advertising
Advertising on your blog is something I consider a must have. Advertising provider networks will begin showing ads on your site when it is as young as 90 days old with just 30 blogs.
In order to get approved to show ads, you need enough content and time in existence for the bots to decide what type of content your blog makes, to pair the best ads to it.
If you have less than 10,000 sessions (individual website visitor experiences) per month on your site, your best bet is to start serving ads from Google Adsense. The pay is generally considered the industry’s lowest, but low pay is better than no pay, and it will get you closer to net zero.
You’ll most likely start by making pocket change per day and earn $20-30 USD a month. You will be paid once you reach $100.00 USD.
When you reach 50,000 monthly website sessions, you then want to apply to the full service Mediavine platform, which will allow you to earn even more.
Depending on the time of year and the traffic, in full Mediavine, you could earn anywhere from $30-100+ USD per day in ad revenue, which could mean $600-2,000 per month, potentially more.
Regardless of which of the above advertising platforms you qualify for, they pay out once a month, as long as you’ve reached $100 USD for the month. If not, the pay is rolled over every month until it has accumulated to that amount.
The advertising pays per view, meaning the more traffic you get, the more you make. But even if your traffic is low, don’t fret. As we’ll discuss below, there are other ways to increase your ad revenue besides more traffic.
2 - Affiliate marketing
As you blog about your topic, you’re going to naturally recommend products, materials and resources that you use in your area of expertise.
Find out if these products, materials and resources have affiliate programs. When you join an affiliate program, you will earn a commission on qualifying sales you make when your readers click on your affiliate links.
You can make significant money with affiliate links - you just have to find the right products and stores to recommend to your audience.
One of the easiest affiliate programs to begin with is Amazon Associates.
You simply apply to join, add the website and social media accounts you’ll be using your affiliate links on, and begin adding affiliate links to your blogs as the products fit in.
After you set up your account on both of these platforms, begin experimenting with adding affiliate links to your blogs, making use of the appropriate FTC disclosures and sponsored link tags.
Then, anytime a product, service or resource comes to mind that you think your audience would like, research whether or not the brand has an affiliate program or if the store the item is sold at has one.
Apply to those programs and continue adding affiliate links to your website and social media platforms wherever they could be helpful.
Once you have a suite of affiliate programs up and running, take note of which programs and products pay the highest commissions. If these brands and products sell well, promote them more to boost your earnings.
3 - Blog for High RPM Keywords
In the website advertising world, you are paid per 1,000 views, or “revenue per mille,” also known as RPM.
Certain keywords are associated with higher sales conversions and as a result, these keywords command a higher RPM rate.
When you write about these special keywords, your readers may be more likely to buy what you’re recommending and the ads served on those pages will command a higher price. Advertisers will pay more to have their marketing shown alongside high conversion keywords.
To increase your advertising earnings, and potentially increase your sales of products you recommend on these pages, blog with a strategy to use these high bidding keywords in your niche.
If you can blog about anything, it makes financial sense to blog about the topics that pay the most.
To begin finding your high RPM keywords, sign up for Google Keyword Planner.
It may ask that you enter billing information but don’t worry, the Keyword Planner is an ad-planning tool that's free to use and you don’t need to buy ads after you use it.
Once inside, click “Discover New Keywords,” then click “Start with a website.” Enter your website URL and click “Get results.”
Once your keyword spreadsheet is pulled up, sort the page by the “Top of page bid (high range)” column. The highest paying keywords will display at the top of the list.
From there, scroll through your high paying keywords list. Choose a few blog topics that you’re knowledgeable on and create blogs around them.
These keywords will change. It’s a dynamic list, based on demand, seasons and trends, so you want to revisit this list anytime you write a new blog post.
Now you’re blogging with a strategy for higher RPMs.
This is one way you can give yourself a raise as a blogger, as the ads served on those blogs will be those that advertisers are willing to pay more for - resulting in higher earnings for you and your blog.
4 - Add services
Service based income streams can add an extra layer of personally tailored engagement with your audience.
You can offer private coaching to teach what your blog is about. You can create a live class that dives deeper into the most popular topics on your blog. You can offer paid content campaigns to brands that want to get their products or services in front of your audience.
These are a few ways you can provide services on your blog. You may think of another service you can provide and if so, list it on your blog.
Once you have single services covered, you now want to consider retainer or subscription services. Think coaching bundles, monthly and annual added value packages, or course series, like a 6 week class.
5 - Add products
There’s two types of products to think about - physical goods and digital downloads.
The downloadable goods you sell will be directly related to your highest traffic blogs. Once you have at least 100 blogs, look at the blogs that are doing the best traffic-wise and brainstorm a paid downloadable you could create from it.
Your options will depend on your blog’s niche but it could be eBooks, eCourses, Audio Courses, Planners, Journals and more! Once you create your downloadable library, notice what sells and create more of that.
Next, consider selling physical goods.
You could sell branded merchandise you create or resell items that would appeal to your audience like thrifted items, artifacts related to your topic or wholesale inventory.
So to recap, 5 ways to make money with your blog are:
Advertising
Affiliate marketing
Blogging on high paying/high conversion keywords
One-time and subscription services
Digital and physical products
I suggest setting up advertising and affiliate marketing first.
Once you have these two income streams in place, then begin rolling out your next income stream, which could include blogging to increase your income in your ads and affiliate revenue, or adding services and products.
Eventually, your blog will make money through a patchwork variety of these income streams, meaning if you lose a stream, your blog will be diversified enough to survive the hit.
As this blog comes to a close, I want to add that your blog becoming profitable helps everyone involved.
It will help you continue to share your wisdom and allow your readers to continue to enjoy your insight and expertise. It will also give you the funds to invest back into your blog to create a better user experience and dedicate more time to its growth.
All in all, a blog that makes money is an asset and it’s possible to create. If I can do it, so can you.
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