So you have a blog! That in itself is a pretty big feat since most people don't even make it this far. Go ahead and pat yourself on the back!
As you build your blog and, more importantly, your audience, you have undoubtedly thought about how to make money from your blog. Perhaps this is why you started your blog in the first place or maybe you’ve had your blog for a while and only now realize that blog monetization is a great next step for you.
Either way, you’ve come to the right place! As it turns out, there are a multitude of methods and ideas related to how to monetize a blog. And while there are probably more methods than you could count, here’s an organized list of the top ways so that you can decide what is best for you.
How to Monetize a Blog
Of all of the ways to make money with your blog, there are essentially two basic categories that these fall into. Either other people or businesses pay you to promote their stuff or your readers — the visitors to your blog — pay you directly for stuff you are selling.
Both of these are great ways to reach your ultimate goal of blog monetization, so the choice is up to you. Here’s a rundown of your options.
Other People or Businesses Pay You to Promote Their Stuff
It seems that everybody is selling something online, and they are all looking for an audience of people to sell to. That’s where you come in: you have an audience.
Here are four great ways to get other people to pay you for your audience:
#1 - Advertising Networks
This is probably the most straightforward way of making money from your blog. You can sign up with an ad network, drop a little bit of code on your site and they will automatically start placing ads on your pages.
How it Works
You can choose the types of ads these networks place on your site. They can be display ads (think banner ads and images) or text ads (kind of like the ads that show up at the top of Google search results). And you can put them in lots of different places on your site, such as the sidebar or at the top or bottom of your post content.
The networks typically look at your site content and attempt to provide relevant ads to what you are blogging about (though it doesn’t always work perfectly).
Advertising networks allow you to make money based either on the number of times that people click on the ads (known as “pay per click” or PPC advertising) or the number of times the ads are shown to people (sometimes referred to as “cost per mile” advertising (weird, right?).
The most popular advertising network is Google AdSense. But you do have to apply and there’s always a chance Google will reject you. As alternatives, you can also look into Chitika, Clicksor and BidVertiser.
#2 - Advertising Space (You Sell)
Advertising networks are easy and great, but they make most of the money since they really only pay you a small percentage of the total cost of the ad. That’s why another great method of monetizing a blog is advertising that you sell yourself, cutting out the middleman.
How it Works
You would need to designate places on your site pages to place the ads. Then, you should find some advertisers who might be interested in paying you to put the ads on your blog.
It is best to seek out advertisers who closely align with the message or topic of your blog. This will provide better ad content to your readers and will be very appealing to the advertiser because, in theory, the types of people reading your blog are already in their target audience. It’s a win-win for everybody involved.
Some bloggers sell the ads based on the number of clicks, like the PPC model above. Others simply sell the ad space for a period of time. For example, you can agree on a price for one month of ad placement in the top area of your right sidebar.
As you might imagine, the biggest barrier to this method is actually finding the advertisers. But for many bloggers, you may already have a relationship or even use this as yet another networking opportunity. Plus, these relationships can lead to some of the other ways to monetize your blog below.
A good place to start is a marketplace for these relationships like BuySellAds.
#3 - Affiliate Programs
Advertising is just a small part of monetizing a blog. Maybe it’s that advertising isn’t your thing. Or maybe you want to make more money than the advertising allows and are looking for how to monetize a blog without ads. That’s where affiliate marketing comes in.
How it Works
With affiliate marketing programs, you link to other products or services from your blog with a specially-formatted link that the affiliate program provides you. When a reader clicks on the link to go to the affiliate website and completes a sale, you get a commission. Think of it as a digital finder’s fee.
You can put the links within your posts or create your own “ads” for your sidebar. But the most popular way to do affiliate marketing is to write reviews of products (make them honest reviews!) and then link to the product with your affiliate link.
Here's a helpful graphic from the Amazon Affiliate program that explains how affiliate marketing works in a nutshell:
For example, someone with a mom blog could write a post about her favorite stroller. She could list the pros and cons as well as her tips for how to use it. And the post can link to the stroller sales page on Amazon. If readers go to the Amazon link from the mom blog, the blogger gets a percentage of the sale. In fact, with Amazon, you get a commission for anything that person buys in the same transaction, not just that one item you linked to.
The Amazon Affiliate program is a good place to start. But there are literally thousands of sites that offer affiliate programs. Try searching Google for your primary area of expertise and include the word “affiliate” in the search terms as a way to get started.
#4 - Sponsored Posts and Reviews
By the time you have reached a good size audience for your blog’s niche, you will likely have become an authority figure in the area. That’s great because now advertisers and product makers will see your blog as the perfect spot to promote their products through sponsored posts or product reviews.
How it Works
In this scenario, someone pays you to write a blog post. As a sponsored post, it could simply be about a certain subject and you mention in the post that it was “brought to you by XX.”
In the case of reviews, a company might send you a product for which you can in turn write an honest review. Sometimes you can keep the product and sometimes you can get paid to write the review.
Just remember, it is always a good idea (and often legally required) to disclose that a post is being sponsored or part of a paid review.
As with advertising you might sell on your site, this method is going to take a little legwork on your end to reach out to potential companies and offer your audience to them through a sponsored post or review.
Your Readers Pay You for YOUR Stuff
The first four methods for monetizing a blog involve other people paying you to essentially “rent” space on your blog in one way or another. But what if you could get paid to blog without them? That’s where these next three ideas come in. With these, you’ll be able to think of ways you can sell directly to your readers, often resulting in far better margins than other methods.
#5 - Sell Your Products (E-Books)
Once you have a blog and an audience that reads it on a regular basis, you may be in the perfect position to begin creating products and selling them.
How it Works
While your product could be any number of things, an easy one to get started with is e-book creation. With this, you create an e-book which can typically just be a nice looking multi-page PDF file. The book could be about your blog topic in some way or perhaps your guide to solving a common problem.
You can also combine existing blog posts into a longer e-book and sell it, effectively repurposing the content you have already worked so hard on. Tools like beacon.by are a great start for this.
Of course, you will need to implement ways to actually sell the e-book (or any other product for that matter). Check out tools like Gumroad and Sellfy to get started.
#6 - Sell Your Services
Now that you’ve been blogging for a while and are an expert in your field, another great way to generate money with your blog is to use it to sell services that you can provide.
How it Works
Think of something that you can offer to your readers as a service. It could be an online course. Or maybe private coaching. No matter what it is, your blog can provide the sales leads for your service business.
Remember that ad space (see #2 above) we talked about selling to others? In this scenario, you give that space to yourself to promote your services. Only this time you get to see all of the money and not just a pay per click fee.
There are a lot of directions this can take, but consider looking into Digital Chalk if you want to get started with an online course or good ‘ol Paypal to collect money for your private coaching.
#7 - Promote Your Existing Business
You might not need to create anything at all if you already have a business in place. In this case, you can use your blog to promote that existing business and reap the rewards.
How it Works
Think about what your business sells and how your blog can relate to that. Use blog posts to answer common questions your customers may have. Or write about the problems they may have in their everyday lives. Think of it this way: what might people search for online and what can you write to provide them with that answer?
Be sure that all of your blog posts include a clear call-to-action that is relevant to the post so that it doesn’t feel out of place and is a natural progression for someone reading what you’ve just written. Buttons tend to work really well for this, so be sure you have a great blog theme or plugin like those at Thrive Themes that allow you to easily include nice looking call-to-actions in your posts.
The monetization looks a bit different in this method. In this case, your blog is providing indirect value to you as it builds up your existing business. But nonetheless, it should prove to be a very worthwhile addition to your monetization strategy.
So Which Method Is Best?
Well, that is largely up to you, your audience and how much work you want to put into it. But the best part is that you can apply any combination of these to create a money-making powerhouse of a blog (just be careful not to get too greedy so that readers see that your blog is only focused on making money and not helping them).
Whichever method you choose, be sure to stick with it. There are very few overnight successes in the world, so be sure to not get discouraged if the money doesn’t come pouring in on day one. But with a little effort and a continued focus on providing the best content possible to your readers, you’ll be well on your way to monetizing your blog!