Most people don’t realize that you can make money blogging. It’s very similar to how Youtube personality stars make money from producing and making videos online. When I first dappled in blogging back in high school, I had no include that I could make money from writing and telling my story or experiences online until recently. While I haven’t done every single aspect of this guide, I have seen other bloggers do really well with the different choices.
The biggest thing to consider when it comes to making money from blogging is to realize that most bloggers make money from different sources. You don’t want to put all of your eggs into one basket, in case that revenue algorithm changes over time like Instagram.
Quick Answers
What helps a blogger make money?
The quick answer is that most bloggers that you see on the internet aren’t making any kind of money, but on the flip side, there are bloggers who are making 6-figures from blogging. Here’s the short and sweet version of the big difference between the two:
- Successful bloggers generate revenue from multiple monetization strategies that we will discuss in this blog post.
- Successful bloggers don’t see their blog as the source of income. They build up their brand and their email list first. Then they use the foundation of their blog as a springboard to market other forms of revenue.
- Successful bloggers are insanely creative and don’t copy the work of others. In the world full of online personalities, it pays to be different and unique from the rest.
- Successful bloggers understand that building a brand and their website will take time and patient. Blogging isn’t a quick rich-scheme, but a long-term business adventure that you have to be ready to invest in.
How to get started:
Whether you’re a new blogger or a veteran in blogging, you can start making money from your blog as you have these key ingredients set in place first.
- Have a blog
- Create a strong foundation in your niche and with others in the community
- Create useful content for your readers
- A great template for your website that is easy to read and to look at
- An email list
- A game plan of the income strategies you are going to start to do
Now, let’s cover the basics of a money-making blog in details.
Start a Blog
The first step is to actually have a blog in place (obviously!). If you are haven’t started blog yet, don’t fret! I created this step by step guide to help you get your blog up and running in less than 30 minutes. It’s honestly that easy and it’s been the best decision of my life (outside of pharmacy school).
Create a strong foundation in your niche and with others in the community
The best part about blogging is the ability to connect with like-minded people, make new friends, and the ability to learn something new every day online.
Some ideas are to participate in Facebook group boards, comment on other people’s blogs, interact with the people who leave nice comments on your blog and be interactive on social media where your target audience hangs out. You’ll eventually gain a following because people will talk about how amazing you are! Plus people love to follow people that they trust and believe in, so shoot for that.
Create useful content for your audience
Nobody wants to read the same material regurgitate over and over again. So be creative with the content that you write, but also talk about topics that people want to know about. People love reading how-to’s, personal experiences, and anything else that will solve their problems.
In order to make money blogging, you have to gain a readership (aka have blog visitors), but nobody will read your blog if you don’t have quality content available.
A great template for your blog that is easy to read and look at
The worst thing that you can do for your brand and website is to make your blog really busy to look at, hard to load, and just generally unappealing to look at. People get bored easily so if your website takes forever to load more than likely people are going to exit out and try to find something else to solve their problems. You also don’t want your blog to be cluttered with ads or large pictures where it makes it hard to read your amazing content. White space on a blog is great space!
An email list
If you’re new to the blogging world or a veteran in blogging, then you need to know that starting an email list and building those numbers are really important. An email list is important for bloggers because it’s the only aspect of communication between you and your readers that is actually yours. If Instagram or Facebook suddenly dies out, you won’t lose your followers! You would have them on your email list so it won’t even affect your income or numbers if some social media platforms die away.
Here are some posts that I’ve done so far to help you start your own email list and how to get started on building your list with the right audience:
- How to Grow Your Email with Interact
- 5 Tips to Grow Your Email List on Autopilot
- Why I Invested in Convertkit vs Mailchimp When I was Earning $0 From My Blog
A game plan of the income strategies you are going to use
Many successful bloggers utilize multiple ways of generating income, from ads to affiliate marketing to producing their own products. The reason for this is that each month your revenue is going to change because of the seasons, the months, and what’s going on in the world. So you have to be prepared for those changes, which you means you need to create a game plan of how you want to generate income from your blog.
Streams of income used by bloggers
These are the different ways that bloggers make an income from blogging, broken down into categories that we will further discuss.
- Advertising
- Selling Your Own Products or Services
- Sponsored Content
- Affiliate Marketing
- Events (Host or Attend)
- Membership or Premium Content
Advertising
One of the ways that I’ve learned how to make money is by placing advertisements on your website. You can either go through a program, such as Media.net and Google Adsense, or you can market your space by doing private advertisements, where companies will pay you a monthly fee to advertise on your site.
I have dappled with both programs, and I truly love Google Adsense. It takes a little work to get accepted into Google Adsense, but I totally think it is worth it. Last month, I was able to make $145 just off of the ads that Google was displaying to my readers. While I’m not sure what they are, but they seem to enjoy it enough to click through the ads. With Google Adsense, you have the option to determine what ads are or are not shown to your audience.
You can also offer private advertisements where companies will pay you a set fee to display their ads to your audience. Either way is a great option to make money from blogging.
Sell your own product or services
Another great way to make money through your blog is by selling your own products or services. Some of the ideas of this are by selling an online course, e-book, or services that you offer on your blog.
When you’re first starting off with this idea, go ahead and start small to test the waters and to see what works best for your audience. I wrote an E-book this summer, but I needed up taking down the book to create an online course so I could tell my students more information and be more interactive with them.
You do typically need to promote your ebook or course online often to generate a lot of income from it, but they are a great way to make money.
If you are interested in creating an Ebook, SendOwl is a great program to use that deals with the payments and actually delivering the product. On the other hand, if you are interested in creating a course, I highly recommend Teachable. It’s super easy to use with customizable landing pages, sales pages, and even a thank you page. You can also utilize the affiliate program aspect to get more people to help you promote your course. I’ve created a course using the Teachable platform for my Student to PharmD course, and I’ve been loving the platform every since.
Sponsored content
Have you seen those blog posts where it says, “sponsored by so-so brand, but all opinions are my own”? Well, typically that means the blogger got paid to write that blog post and usually receive the products for free to use in the blog post. Sponsored content is a great way to make income, especially with brands or companies that you actually enjoy.
When you are looking for sponsored content, there are two routes that you can take: pitching to brands yourself or joining a program that does the work for you.
We’ll talk about the programs first. Some of the programs require you to have a certain amount of page views per month or a certain amount of social media followers, but there are programs who welcome in newbie bloggers if you are in that category. The cool part about joining a program is the ability to upload your stats to the website, and the companies pitch to you if they think your audience is a good match for them. Some programs allow you to customize how much you get paid for each kind of promotion, such as Instagram post, a blog post, or a shout out on twitter.
Here are some great programs to join, if sponsored content is something you are interested in:
The other way to get sponsored content is to actually pitch to companies yourself through emails or through social media. I’ve done this quite a few times where the companies agree to my terms and sends me really cool products to tell my audience about. Remember when you are pitching to companies, you need to make sure that you truly enjoy the brands, the brand aligns with your brand, and you only give honest reviews.
Don’t agree to blog about a product that you think sucks. For one, your readers will be able to pick up on the difference of your writing, and two, you will lose the trust of your readers, which is a big no-no. When pitching to a company yourself, make sure you have a media kit ready that outlines your general audience, the information about your blog, and your average states (pageviews, unique audience, etc)
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is when you are promoting someone else’s product, such as a hair mask or online course. You then make a commission every time someone uses your link to buy the product. Many bloggers have made over 6 figures through affiliate marketing, such as M Griffin.
I won’t go into many details here because I haven’t fully dappled in affiliate marketing yet.
Just make sure before you start using affiliate links to make sure you have a full disclosure on your website, a privacy policy, and that you include somewhere in your blog posts that you have affiliate links in the post itself.
Events (Hosting or Speaking)
Another great way to earn an income through your blog is actually hosting an event or speak at an event. Bloggers are influencers in the online/social media world so a lot of people look up to you or want to learn from you.
So, if you like public speaking or meeting your readers in person, then events are a great way to earn some extra cash and have a lot of fun in different cities. But don’t estimate the work that comes with hosting or planning an event on your own. If you like event planning or extremely motivated, then hosting a conference or an event might be great for you and your audience.
Membership or Premium Content
This used to be a really popular way bloggers would make money, but I think this aspect of monetization has kind of dyed away a little. But regardless, it’s a great way to make money because a lot of people want the inside scope and get more knowledge that they can’t get anywhere else.
You can create a membership login in on your WordPress blog where people have to login in, pay for the premium content to get access to it and get to access the premium content. When you are starting to create your membership, make sure that you are splitting up the material of what you want to give away for free and what you want people to pay for.
Too Many Ideas?
No worries! Pick one or two options to test the water first, then add on once you feel comfortable with the other options. You can also see what other people in your niche are doing. Are they running ads on your website? Are they doing sponsored blog posts or hosting events in their area? See what works for you, your audience, and budget. Some of the choices take a lot more work than others, but at the same time, some of the options can generate more income than others. You can start from anywhere at any time. You don’t have to be a big time blogger with 100,000 monthly pageviews to generate an income from blogging is the key to this blog post.
