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How Do You Make Money Blogging?

How Do You Make Money Blogging?

make money blogging

Knowing how to make money from blogging can turn a hobby into something much more lucrative. Some of the largest, most popular blogs on the Internet make six figures or more every month. While most blogs make significantly less, there’s really no limit to how far you can climb if you have marketing savvy, great content, and know how to monetize with a few different revenue streams.

How do you make money blogging? 

Making money from your blog is not an impossible endeavor, but it’s also not as simple as it might first seem. Read on to find out how to blog for money.

Ways to Make Money Blogging

You can make money blogging by selling advertisement space on your blog, by recommending products or services, offering a guest posting service or through sponsorships with a company, through affiliate links, or in one of several other ways. The key thing to remember is that you don’t have to – and shouldn’t – rely on one way to make money when so many are available.

[bctt tweet=”The key thing to remember is that you don’t have to – and shouldn’t – rely on one way to make money with your blog when so many are available.” username=”blogherald”]

Diversifying the way you make money will help make sure that if one area doesn’t make the income you expected for a period of time, you have something to fall back on. If your ad views drop, you might still have affiliate links. If affiliate links aren’t up to snuff, you can still make money from members-only subscription content.

Don’t rely on a single way to monetize your blog when you can diversify your income streams to give yourself a more secure income. It might take a little more effort, but you’ll be rewarded with more money. Besides, when a hard month comes along, your budget will thank you.

Advertising on Your Blog

There are two important ways to use advertisements on your blog. One is through AdWords (or similar platforms), which places ads relevant to your content and readership on your blog. You have some control over what is posted but you work with the company controlling the advertisements rather than the advertisers themselves.

The other is to partner with an advertiser who wants to put up ads on your blog. These often occur when someone sees that your blog is receiving traffic that’s relevant to their marketing strategy. This kind of partnership isn’t as easy to come by as signing up for something like AdWords but can be extremely lucrative.

So how exactly do you make money blogging with advertisements?

There are two ways that advertisements through advertising companies can make money. One is with pay-per-click ads. The other is with pay-per-view ads.

earn money blogging
Google’s AdWords supports many types of advertisements.

Ad Types

Pay-per-click ads pay you whenever someone clicks on the ad. Just having views doesn’t add money to your earnings. Someone has to click the ad. These typically pay more per interaction than pay-per-view ads, but you’ll have much lower numbers of people who click on the ad than people who view it.

Pay-per-view ads pay you whenever someone sees your ad. You get paid a very small amount for each impression – which is a person looking at the ad. It takes many views to add up to a sizeable paycheck, but you’re able to get larger numbers of people viewing the ads than people clicking the ads. These are usually paid based on every 1000 views that you get.

The type of ad you should choose depends on who’s advertising with you and whether you have an audience that is likely to click on the ads displayed on your blog. If you find you aren’t getting a lot of clicks, consider switching to pay-per-view ads and seeing whether you make more money that way.

If you advertise directly with a company, you can display their ads in various locations on your website. You can also write sponsored posts where you mention a company, their products, or their services. If you’re writing sponsored posts, make sure that you’re clearly indicating that they’ve been sponsored. That way your readers know that you’ve gotten some kind of consideration for what you’ve written.

Advertising, like anything else you do with your blog, should be a constant experiment. If one thing doesn’t work, try another. If something does work, try something else on the side. You never know exactly how to make money from blogging perfectly on your first try. Instead, keep trying new things and approaching the task from new angles.

Affiliate Links

If you mention a lot of products on your blog, affiliate links might be a good way to make some money. When you mention a product, you just link to it and get a percentage of the money for each product that sells through your affiliate link. Different companies offer affiliate linking programs. One of the most popular is done through Amazon with their Amazon Associates program.

Affiliate links work best if you have the kind of blog where you give tutorials that involve using items. For example, cooking blogs often use them when they recommend pans, kitchen tools, or even linens. Your voice as an influencer is worth money – and using affiliate links can quickly help fill up your bank account while pointing your readers to worthwhile products.

[bctt tweet=”When using affiliate links, it’s important to link to products that you trust.” username=”blogherald”]

Of course, when using affiliate links, it’s important to only link to products that you trust. If you use them without vetting the products or at least conducting a review of opinions online, you risk alienating readers. Remember that you’re only as good as your word – so only recommend the best products possible. If they’re things you specifically use, even better.

making money blogging
Amazon’s Affiliate program can help you earn money by linking to products.

Creating Members-Only Content

Another way to make money is to provide content that’s only for people who subscribe to you. Doing this creates an obligation you need to be sure you can live up to before you commit to offering paid content. If you promise to deliver a certain type of content or result, make sure you can do it before you let people pay you.

When you aren’t sure what type of paid content to create, consider what draws people to your blog. If you draw comics, you could release the newest ones early for paid subscribers. When you give advice on optimizing websites, you could offer an extra article per week sent only to subscribers. Whatever you’re offering, be sure that you can create more of it and send it to people who subscribe before you accept any money.

Selling Digital and Physical Products and Services

Another way to make money blogging is to sell your time and effort – both in person and online. Writing e-books that include more information on the topic of your blog, for example, is one way to generate an additional profit. When someone is done reading an excellent post on a topic and is teased with the promise of more, they might be willing to pay to get that information. You can sell e-books or courses easily when people can see that you know your stuff.

If you show your expertise on your blog, you can get hired to do related jobs. For example, you can consult on the topic, help someone with a project, or do work they need in your field. In a lot of ways, your blog is a resume and a personal advertisement – all you have to do is let your talents shine. People will become interested.

So What’s the Most Important Thing?

[bctt tweet=”The most important thing you have to do to make money blogging is to have great content that draws readers in.” username=”blogherald”]

So when it comes to how to blog for money, what matters the most? The most important thing you have to do to make money blogging is to have great content that draws readers in. No matter how optimized your blog is or how great your advertisements or affiliate links are, no one is going to click them if you don’t have an audience. Your audience will grow as you put out more excellent content that strikes a chord with your readers. Both retention and attracting new readers is important.  

See Also

How do you optimize your blog content for monetization? Simple: provide something your audience wants. Listen to feedback that you get from your readers. Find areas to improve that will not only bring back people who are aware of you, but that will encourage them to share your site and attract new readers. If someone asks, “How do you make money from blogging?” you can confidently answer that what you create is more important than any other single factor. 

Social Sharing

If you don’t already have sharing set up for your site, do it now. The easier it is for someone to share your posts with friends, the more likely they are to do it. Many blog platforms have social sharing plugins where you can easily post buttons to your blog to help people spread your content. Remember that every share is a potential new reader — or more. These are people who can view your ads, subscribe to your members-only area, or buy products from your affiliate links.

Content that’s designed to be shared can help increase your views. Depending on your blog topic, posting recent news, tutorials, or interesting round-ups of popular topics may help you get more shares. As always, though, it’s the content of your blog that really makes or breaks how often people share your posts with others. So make your posts interesting, decorate them with appropriate photos, and write in a way that draws people in.

how to make money blogging
You can use social sharing to raise awareness of your blog.

Advertising/Promoting Your Blog

Advertising your blog can help you attract new readers – and it doesn’t have to be expensive. The money you pay to bring people to your blog can pay for itself. All they have to do is look at advertisements, purchase products and services, or click affiliate links. The old adage that you have to spend money to make money holds true especially when it comes to attracting more readers to your blog.

If you advertise on related blogs, people interested in those topics will be sent to your blog. Once there, they can be impressed by the content you have to offer.

Mailing List

Retaining readers is essential. One way to both market what you’re selling and keep people coming back to your blog is signing users up for a mailing list. Part of how to make money from blogging is knowing how to market what you’ve made. 

There are so many websites in the same niche that it’s easy to lose track of which ones you like best. By offering a mailing list option, it’s easy to remind readers that you exist. You can also use it to advertise sales, promotions, or new posts. It’s important not to spam your mailing list — but a large list that you’re in close contact with can help put money in your bank account.

How Long Does It Take?

So how do you make money blogging quickly? You usually don’t. It takes time to establish excellent, branded content, build a base of followers, and get the hang of monetization. For example, the food blog Pinch of Yum makes hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as of 2017. They didn’t start out making that kind of money, though. According to The Huffington Post, the site only made $21.98 the first month they posted their profits online. With time, great content, and attention to detail though, the people who run the blog learned how to make money blogging and now make a very solid income with their blog.

Pinch of Yum went from $22 per month to more than $400,000 per year in profit by slowing improving their monetization and blog.

What Topics Make Money?

Write about what you’re genuinely interested in and you’ll make more money than writing about something else. Knowing how to make money blogging is really all about creating great, regular content. If you don’t enjoy blogging about a topic, it’s going to be difficult to keep it up enough to even learn how to make money from blogging. The trick is to find a topic that interests you and will interest others as well. When you’re excited and passionate about the work you’re doing, it shows – and it attracts readers.

[bctt tweet=”Don’t start a blog with the sole intention to make money.” username=”blogherald”]

Don’t start a blog with the sole intention to make money. Blog because you love what you’re doing and want to build an audience. If you do that, money will definitely come your way. There are always ways to improve your content and hit on trends that draw views – but start from a place of personal interest and passion. 

So how do you make money blogging?

Create content that excites you, share it with passionate people, get your blog in front of new readers, and use several different monetization strategies to create revenue streams. Even if you start small, you’ll see your income increase as you keep it up and try new things. One day, you may find that the blog you start is your primary income – and stays that way for years to come.

View Comments (6)
  • Hey Laurel, I totally agree – sometimes making money from your blogging can seem like an impossible task.

    But you’ve hit the nail on the head when you say “don’t start a blog with the sole intention of making money”.

    If you stay consistent and nurture your audience (no matter how small), your tribe will start to grow. And I can say from experience, there is a huge demand from brands and businesses for bloggers with genuine audiences.

    If you persist, the commercial offers will eventually start coming in.

    If you are only doing it for the money, you will become disillusioned before that happens.

    Thanks for the great read!

  • Hey Laurel,

    This is really a fantastic read. So, thank you very much for sharing.

    I just started blogging. My blog is still very fresh. The primary intention of starting my blog was improving my writing skills and for fun but, now I feel like all the fun and education parts are fading away and money making comes to the play slowly.

    Yes, of course, we all need to earn something but, it is too early for me. What should I do? Is it ok or I have to ignore money making at least for now. Really love to hear from experts like you.

    Thanks again.

  • Content is the soul of blogging & sharing unique & useful content for the readers is the first step of money making process. So, wherever you are or whatever you are planning just focus on the content, this is the first rule.

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