Learn How to Be A Successful Blogger

Additional menu

Learn.owogram.com

Learn How to Start A Blog and Make Money Blogging

How to start your own blog today
You are here: Home / Blogging Guides / 15 GENIUS Ways to Make Money Blogging This Year

15 GENIUS Ways to Make Money Blogging This Year

posted on

If you’re here to learn how to make money blogging, then you’re in the right place. For about 5 years now, I’ve been earning a substantial amount of money from my blog (and other websites) through a combination of passive income sources and more active channels we’ll be talking about in this post.

2014 happened to be the year that I first started my first blog, I didn’t have a clue about how to make money blogging, let alone how much money was even possible to make from a blog.

Long story short, I failed woefully, my first blog didn’t last 18 months.

Flash forward to today, it’s even more shocking (still) that I’ve gone from learning how to make money blogging to now earning a couple of thousand dollars monthly (will be sharing my income report soon).

So when my readers ask if it’s really possible to learn how to make money blogging in a relatively short period of time, my answer is a resounding yes.

How to Make Money Blogging: 12 Proven Ways

Full Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and at no additional cost to you, I’ll earn a commission. Know that I only recommend products and services I’ve personally used and stand behind. When you use one of my affiliate links, the company compensates me, which helps me run this blog and keep all of my in-depth content free of charge for readers (like you).

Now first, if you’re totally new to blogging today, I’ve put together the ultimate guide to starting your own blog.

Actually getting your blog online and well-optimized is the first step to learning how to make money blogging, and my guide to starting a blog will position you best for going on to make money blogging in the near future.

While it’s great to start considering ways to monetize your blog now, this guide is speaking more to those of you who’ve already built a blog and are looking to take it to the next level.

If you haven’t yet gotten your blog off the ground, then head over to my ultimate guide to starting a blog.

The more readers you have, the more options that’ll eventually be at your disposal to positively monetize your blog.

When you fully understand your niche and positioning within that niche, you’ll begin to develop a very specific (and engaged) audience, which makes it wildly easier to get sponsorships, partners, advertisers, and deploy all of the other major ways to make money blogging.

Is it important to write consistently in order to make money blogging?

The short answer is yes, you’ll need to publish (quality) content with some regularity if you hope to make money blogging in a long-term, sustainable fashion.

Let’s say you’ve got a little bit of traffic coming in to a few blog posts that are beginning to rank well in the search engines. That’s a great start on your journey of learning how to make money blogging.

Need some more inspiration on what to write about? 👉 Check out my epic guide to the best blog post ideas you should cover today.

Trust me, I’ve been there. But as we’ve covered already, if it were that easy to make money blogging, then just about everyone would be a rich blogger by now.

Once you’re starting to get a little content success and begin ranking, you’ll slowly get more and more traffic every week, it can be easy to think it’s alright to sit back and relax.

And while blogs can sometimes be argued as solely passive income, ultimately if you want to make money blogging in a scalable long-term fashion, you have to be very proactive about getting those income streams into place… which takes a lot of real work.

If you want to make money blogging in a scalable long-term way, you have to be very proactive. That means writing a lot.

Not only does publishing regular blog content generate more traffic, it brings returning readers. And those are the people that’ll help you make money blogging over the long-term.

Moreover, it also shows your advertisers that you’re active and involved with your readers.

How many readers do you need in order to make money blogging?

Well, the answer to that question depends on how you’re making money from your blog and what your conversion rate is for each channel.

Of course, you’re not going to know your conversion rates right now, but once you start selling a product, pitching your freelance services, launching an online course, or reaching out to advertisers for blog sponsorships, you can calculate your conversion rates pretty quickly.

Here’s a quick example expanding on what your conversion rate could be when selling your own product—an online course—from your blog.

Let’s say you have 1,000 monthly readers. If 2% of those readers turn into paying customers for your online course, that’s 20 buyers. If your product is $10, that’s only $200. However, if your course runs $100, then you’ve just made your first $2,000.

Now, you can also look at this in a much more simple way.

  • Fewer readers = less sales
  • More readers = more sales

At the same time though, you can work on tweaks to get your conversion rate higher over time, and you can play with your pricing to increase average customer value as well. Sometimes math can actually be fun.

Of course, you need two key pieces of data in order to make these estimates:

  • Unique Pageviews
  • Conversions

Now that you have a basic understanding of what a blog is, how to start building a community, picking a niche to blog about, nailing your blog SEO, and tracking conversion rates, let’s get down to business and talk about how to make money blogging.

How to Make Money Blogging: 12 Proven Ways!

In all honesty, there are dozens—if not hundreds of different ways to make money blogging.

I’d like to tell you that I’ve tested all of them, but I haven’t. And after years of experimentation, there are about a dozen that’ve proven to stand the test of time and generate life-changing revenue for not only my own blog, but that of hundreds of others I know.

For that reason, we’re focusing only on the most reputable, proven, broadly applicable monetization channels, that almost anyone could try, in this guide.

These are tried and true techniques used by the most successful, most popular blogs you’ve heard of.

Make money blogging by getting paid for the content you create.

The first overarching theme I’m going to cover in this guide to make money blogging is getting paid for your content.

This is the easiest and quickest way to start monetizing your blog. Of course, that’s also why you see so many bloggers pursuing this monetization channel.

The important thing here is to stay true to your blog, your expertise and to keep your target audience at the forefront of everything you create.

Let’s dive in!

1. Sponsored Blog Content

Sponsored content is a tried and true investment for brands of all kinds, and it works wonders in the right scenarios. This makes it a clear win-win of the many ways to make money blogging.

Over and over again, this method is not only proven to work for advertisers, it’s proven to help you make money blogging at the same time.

What is sponsored content? It’s when a company pays you a fee in return for you writing an article that’s either about them—or on a topic related to them, where their product, service, or brand is prominently featured as the go-to resource for those of your readers that want to learn more.

It’s one of those sweet deals between a blogger and an advertiser where you’re both truly benefiting from the relationship.

When sponsored content is done well (and not just a plain & simple advertisement), it comes across as genuine, unique, and free of a high-pressure sales pitch.

In my opinion, if your sponsored post doesn’t lead to providing real value to your readers, then you’ve already gotten off track.

You’ve already built trust with your audience, so they trust you to recommend products that you know and believe in. That’s why I always recommend staying true to your audience when making sponsored content.

So how do you get sponsored? If you run a popular, heavily trafficked blog, you may already be getting sponsorship opportunities flooding your inbox.

If that doesn’t sound like where you’re at today, then let’s talk about what it takes to get sponsored content offers.

For starters, identify a handful of products and their companies that fit perfectly into your niche.

Often, you’ll find that it’s products or services you’re already using yourself. Make a list of at least 10 products you’d be eager to advertise and could passionately support.

Next is the hardest part, and it’s not that difficult (I promise).

Go to the websites of your top 10 products and find someone who works in either marketing or PR at the company, and track down their email address using simple blogging tools like Hunter or Voila Norbert.

Keep in mind that many companies who are open to sponsorships actively advertise a sponsorship email address somewhere on their contact pages.

Finally, it’s time to send them a cold email with your offer to partner up on sponsored content for your readers—with a heavy emphasis on why they should pony up the sponsorship dollars.

Here’s a quick example:

“Hi Mary,

My name is Steve and I love [your product]! I’m actively running a blog over at yourblogname.com, and I’d love to see if we can partner up for a sponsored post on my blog.

I reach about [number] monthly readers right now and would also promote the post to my email list of [number] subscribers. Everything I write about is related to [your niche], and [your product] fits right into what my readers are looking for.

Do you have a few minutes to chat this week about if this would be a good fit?

Steve”

This is just a rough example of what you can say when reaching out—and keep the focus on why the sponsor should be jumping at the opportunity to reach your audience.

Remember to always keep it personal too, you’re emailing a real person, not a robot.

Ultimately, if you’re planning on going the sponsored content route, you’ll need a media kit to highlight your sponsorship opportunities.

Having a media package is incredible important to not only attract the right business, but to set your prices up front.

In this next section, I’m going to walk you through the right way to make a media package that will attract and sell the right companies.

Bonus: How to Create a High-Converting Media Kit (to Make Money Blogging)

Don’t worry, a media kit is pretty simple to create using Microsoft Powerpoint or Keynote and you’ll immediately reap the benefits of having a concise single document to share with potential advertisers.

Having a media kit listed clearly on your blog (recommended that you state it on your contact and work with me pages) will let companies know that you’re open to sponsorships.

Another benefit is that a media kit also shows clear fixed pricing, which helps you avoid low-balling, bad fit advertisers.

Here are the essential elements you need to include in your own media kit in order to really make money blogging and land quality sponsors:

  1. A quick blurb about yourself. After all, you and your blog are the product. Why should sponsors invest in you?
  2. A breakdown of your readership. Who’s your audience? What are their demographics? What are their interests? What do they buy?
  3. Your traffic report. This is where Google Analytics comes in. You’ll need to show page view figures so advertisers will see how many people they’re going to reach.
  4. Advertising opportunities. What are you selling? Ad spaces? Sponsored blog posts? Podcast ads? Affiliate partnerships? Email marketing to your list? All of the above?
  5. Pricing. This can be the scary one at first, but if you make sure you’re pricing to fit your audience size (and engagement level), then you’re on the right track. Check out other media kits from bloggers in your specific industry to see how they are pricing their opportunities and how you compare.

When you’re just starting out, it’s more common to command anywhere from $100 to $500 if you’ve got an engaged, growing base of readers that’ll move the needle for your sponsor. Soon, you can charge as high as $2,500 per sponsored post.

Make sure your media kit is clear, concise, and visually appealing. Advertisers will want to download it and keep it while they’re making the decision to spend money on you.

You’ll also want to have an easy way for sponsors to get in touch with you so that they can reach out and get the ball rolling with a quick email or contact form submission.

2. Affiliate Programs

Let’s talk about affiliate programs. Joining (and promoting) most affiliate programs is arguably easier than pursuing blog sponsorships if you ask me.

Companies that have affiliate programs already built in, are ready and willing to pay you money in exchange for directing them your blog readers—which means you don’t need to pitch sponsors or invest time into creating your own product before starting to make money blogging.

But, in order to generate a meaningful income from affiliate marketing, it usually takes a good amount of traffic to your blog first.

For example, I earned $650 in Bluehost affiliate revenue for the month of October 2020.

What I like most about affiliate programs, are that they skip the cold reach-out phase that other channels like sponsorships and freelancing require.

Plus, a lot of affiliate programs like the best web hosting plans (even ones with monthly payment web hosting plans) are well-automated to get you onboard and promoting quickly.

When you craft helpful guides and articles around affiliate products and services, your chances of success will be higher. Here are some examples below, where I have affiliate links in the body of the content.

Much like sponsorships, you’re getting paid to recommend a product to your readers. The best part about affiliate programs is that many companies offer them.

From the Amazon Affiliate Program to Target and eBay, all the way down to your little budding eCommerce companies with high-converting landing pages looking to jump on the affiliate train, there are tons of options for joining profitable affiliate programs.

What Are the Best Affiliate Programs for Bloggers?

The best way to make money blogging with affiliates certainly depends largely upon the niche you’re writing in. Here are a few of my picks for the best blogging affiliate programs:

  • Amazon Associates
  • CreativeLive
  • Udemy
  • Bluehost
  • Shopify
  • HubSpot
  • and many more…

There are a lot of affiliate program options out there to make money blogging from, I know.

To avoid getting overwhelmed with this channel as you’re just starting to learn how to make money blogging, my advice is to focus on just a few (proven) affiliate programs that have close topic tie-ins to the content you’ve been creating.

3. Blog Advertisements

Displaying advertisement space is arguably the easiest, most basic (and quickest) form of starting to make money blogging.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying basically in a bad way. for example, in my first-ever income report for March 2021, I made about $800 from Google Adsense on owogram.com.

I mean that simple advertising space is the core component when you’re first just figuring out how to make money blogging—and it’s the first channel I personally pursued. But because it’s so comparatively easy to do, it also tends to pay the least amount in financial return.

Of all the different ways to make money blogging that I’m engaged in, this is one of the lowest returns in terms of total dollars earned (especially for my amount of traffic).

The trade-off, however, is that it takes me zero effort on a daily basis to make money blogging with this channel since I’m an approved publisher with the ad platform Google AdSense.

Are blog advertisements still a legitimate way to make money blogging?

In short, yes. Advertising space is still an active component in many digital marketing campaigns, and for a good reason.

First and foremost, it’s mimicking ads before the digital age—billboards, magazine placements, newspaper ads, and such.

“Advertisements can still be a great way to make money blogging, but you need to choose more curated ad networks.”

And now that we’re spending countless hours on the Internet (with the average person spending 24 hours a week online), it’s easy to get ads in front of readers.

You can advertise on your blog and begin to make money blogging with this channel in a variety of ways.

The most popular, of course, is by starting with Google Adsense. You simply sign up, place a piece of code provided by Google on your site where the ad will go, and advertisers will bid on reaching your audience with relevant terms.

Keep in mind that when using Google Adsense, you don’t have a ton of control over what is being advertised on your blog.

If you want to stay very true to your brand and keep your audience engaged, try another more industry-specific and tightly controlled ad platform like (Carbon Ads) or look into other options that cater more closely to the audience you have—or want to drive in.

The 7 Best Display Ad Networks for Bloggers

If you want to make money blogging by leveraging display ad networks, here are my picks for the best ones to evaluate for your blog:

If you want to maintain a deeper control of the ads on your blog, then I recommend choosing to make money blogging with a channel like Sponsored Content (above) where you’re working individually with a sponsor who wants to reach your audience.

Plus, if you want to rely on advertising revenue, you better learn how to write a blog headline that really draws in new readers on a consistent basis.

Sure, you have to find companies in your niche that want to advertise on your site, but you’ll almost always be able to broker higher-paying deals with this approach.

Plus, over time as your audience grows, companies will begin reaching out to you for sponsorship opportunities.

Selling Your Own Products and Services

Asking other companies to pay you in exchange for sharing their products with your audience isn’t the only way to make money blogging.

When you’re still figuring how to monetize your blog, it’s important to consider what you’re really excited about (probably not advertising other companies products right?), as well as what you’re personally skilled at to find opportunities where you can sell your own products and services to readers.

For example, by writing an eBook that’s filled with value, you can sell it to your blog audience.

For instance, you’re a parent that loves to share parenting tips on your blog, but you have no intention of ever selling your own products to readers one day… then going the sponsored content and advertising route may actually be your best move.

On the flip side though, if you’re a chef who’s sharing awesome new recipes and you want to build a personal brand for yourself, then ultimately it may be a better goal to start the process of learning how to make money blogging by selling an eBook that’s a simple compilation of all your best recipes with beautiful images & step-by-step tutorials.

Testing out learning how to make money blogging with an easy-to-create digital product can also pave the way for many exciting new opportunities to come.

  • Maybe your eBook catches the eye of your favorite publisher and it leads to a print book deal?
  • Perhaps a television network sees your growing following on YouTube and Instagram & wants to bring you onto a popular show in your niche?
  • The possibilities that can come from first taking the initiative to create your own products and services are endless.

These top, blogging tips will all expand upon ways you can more effectively monetize your audience by partnering with them to offer win-win digital products.

Hopefully, by now, you have an idea of what you like to do and what you’re skilled at, because from here on out we’re going to talk about how to make money blogging without needing to rely on outside advertisers.

Before we run through the many ways you can make money blogging with your own content, I’d like to caveat this with a quick pricing discussion…

We’ve talked about how to price your sponsored content and blog advertising, but this next section is a little different.

When you’re pricing out anything you’re personally selling, make sure you’re considering your overhead blogging costs, rather than just choosing an arbitrary number that sounds good.

“Want to make money blogging? You need to be thoughtful when pricing your products and services.”

If you’re pricing a digital product like an eBook or online course, you may not think there’s any overhead at all, but it’s important to understand the skill you’re contributing (how long did it take to master?), the time it takes you to create, and what it’s worth to someone who’s going to consume and take action based on your content.

You may need to try a few different prices before you hit the sweet spot.

Definitely look at what your peers are doing to gather inspiration. Diehard followers of yours may buy regardless of the price, but others will certainly price-check before hitting the buy button on your blog.

4. Sell Online Courses

Do you have a skill you can teach others? Do your readers look to you for your expertise in a particular area?

Monetize that skill by creating an online course and you’ll be on the fast track to learning how to make money blogging.

“Selling online courses to your audience is a powerful (win-win) way to make money blogging today.“

The best part? Creating an online course can be as easy as filming a series of a few short instructional videos that teach your blog readers how to do something meaningful based on your own blogging skills, experiences, and successes.

If you’ve excelled at something, there are people out there who would gladly pay to benefit from your expertise and accelerate their learning curves.

Major online course platforms like Udemy, Skillshare and CreativeLive all feature a wide variety of courses that range in length from 30 minutes up to 30 hours or more—with the longer courses naturally commanding higher prices because they’re often significantly more in-depth.

On the other end of the spectrum, an online course can be as time-consuming as you’ll allow it to be.

My advice as you’re still learning how to make money blogging with online courses, is to start with creating a short-form course (less than 60 minutes of video content) on a very specific niche topic that can be taught without too much hand holding along the way.

Take it from me… I’ve created 4 online courses over the past 5 years—all of which have been different in size, scope and topics—you’ll want to start with creating a simple course your first time around the block.

How Do You Create Your First Online Course?

First, you’ll have to determine which skill or process you want to teach (and how long it will take someone to learn it).

Then you’ll need to validate that course idea with your readers, or otherwise go out and start conversations with your target customers, to ensure there’s actually a paying audience for the course you want to create..

The social media marketing niche is a great example for how you can make money blogging with an online course…

Let’s say you’re killing it on Instagram, and your readers want to know how you do it. You can put together a course that teaches them step-by-step how to be an Instagram pro. Different modules of your course could focus on distinct topics like:

  • The basics of shooting engaging photos
  • How to find your ideal posting schedule for your audience
  • Writing enticing captions and leveraging hashtags
  • Going from 0 to 1,000 followers in 90 days

An online course like this would be a great example of an evergreen how-to guide that students can run through and implement on their own time—meaning it can be a relatively hands off “set it and forget it” style asset, rather than something where students need to tune in for weekly live sessions.

That makes this style of course a very attractive way to make money blogging.

“Courses are a great way to monetize your blog because they require very little ongoing time and effort.” 

Health and wellness plans are another great example of how you can make money blogging in another niche with an online course.

If you’re a fitness blogger, bodybuilder, nutritionist, or anything of the sort, consider selling something like a 30-day plan for your specific practice. This could include:

  • Video tutorials of how to do specific workouts
  • Meal prep schedules and nutrition guidelines
  • Shopping pointers and cooking recipes
  • Weekly workout plans
  • Online community support

All of these different components would be designed to work together and get students to a common end goal or transformation.

The sky’s the limit when it comes to selling online courses as a way to make money blogging.

As always thought, make sure the course is actually relevant to your audience before investing tons of time into creating it.

Validating your course concept can be as simple as tweeting about your idea, talking about it on your Instagram story or sharing a short blog post that asks your readers & followers if this course is something they’d be interested in.

Feel out their feedback, ask the most engaged readers to put their money where their mouth is by pre-ordering the course at a steep discount (the only true validation is whether or not people are willing to pay for your course), and then you can confidently create your course based on the feedback you receive.

Again, focus on keeping it simple for your first online course.

As you get more courses out to your audience, you’ll fine tune your process and learn how to perfect this way to make money blogging over time.

5. Sell Physical Products

Right, right… I know you probably started a blog because you’re thinking, “I don’t want to be in the physical product space. I just want to write and make money blogging without building products and shipping packages all day every day.”

And I get that. I personally don’t sell physical on my website but hear me out on this one because a lot has changed over the past few years.

You no longer need to stock your own inventory—you can dropship your products without ever having to print a shipping label or stock up on cardboard boxes yourself.

This relatively hands-off approach makes selling products a pretty attractive way to make money blogging today.

What is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a business model you can use to run an online store without ever holding any inventory yourself.

Once you’ve made a sale from your blog, your supplier (a warehouse that packs and ships orders for sellers) will ship your products straight to your customer’s doorstep—for a fee of course. But, you’ll never have to worry about storing, packaging, or shipping your products.

If you want to make money blogging by selling physical products, let’s take this a step further… you don’t even need to actually create your own products anymore.

You can find an existing product category on the market today (with proven demand and paying customers), then find a supplier on a site like Alibaba that’ll create a private-label version of that product, so you can start selling it yourself.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to go through the (often time-consuming) process of searching for suppliers, you can go with a print-on-demand platform like Printify that gives you easy access to create & print your own designs on more than 250+ different products. On top of that, they also handle the fulfillment and shipping.

Examples of just a few private-label products you could sell include things like:

  • Vitamins, protein powder, and nutrition supplements
  • Yoga pants and women’s activewear
  • Backpacks, speakers, chargers, and other travel accessories (if you’re a travel blogger)
  • Makeup and cosmetic products
  • Check out even more ideas right here

And remember that you’ll also need to quickly set up an online store that’s closely connected to your blog in order to collect orders, gather customer information, collect payments and update your orders along the way.

Choosing to sell physical products as a way to make money blogging is a personal choice that you need to decide for yourself based on the niche you’re in and the kind of business you want to start.

Physical products are great when you’ve got a diehard group of readers—or the product aligns very naturally with your niche and there’s proven demand for it.

If you’ve got followers that’d be excited to wear your brand, then you can even go the swag route. I’m talking t-shirts, mugs, prints and other branded gear you can host online & have dropshipped by a printer.

If the product fits your audience naturally, then start testing out this way to make money blogging.

6. Release a Software Tool

Are you a software developer by trade? If not, maybe you’ve got a good friend or former co-worker who is.

In its most simple form, a software tool is something that people (your blog readers or even freelance clients) can use to automate a process—or series of processes—and avoid doing the task in more manual ways.

“If you’ve got the technical skills, building software is a great way to make money blogging.”

To give you a rather meta example of this in action right here, Alex, the founder of theforexprogrammer.com is a skilled Forex systems programmer.

He creates Forex tools, robots, and systems and he charges his clients (monthly, or one-time) for each software he creates. He makes most of his earnings from email marketing.

Software and other digital products in this vein aren’t confined solely to things like WordPress themes. Other examples of software that can help you make money blogging include things like:

  • Mobile applications
  • Productivity tools
  • Email marketing service providers
  • Customer relationship management tools (CRMs)
  • Even video games

If there’s a process or series of tasks people do on a regular basis, the software can be built to help automate or streamline those activities—and if you have an audience of readers that share in this same challenge, you can quite easily make money blogging by solving their needs through software.

The fun part will be working hands-on with a handful of readers to create and perfect your software before releasing it out into the world.

7. Selling Your Own Services

Sell your services

Selling your time, skills, and expertise as a service aligns pretty closely with selling online courses (and freelancing, which we’ll expand upon later).

However when it comes to selling your services, there’s one major difference from selling courses—you’re working either one-on-one or in a small group with a client to give individualized help or deliverables.

“Selling your expertise as a service is a smart way to make money blogging without much effort.”

The common theme though, is that you’re once again finding a clear skill you already have, and using it to make money blogging.

Services you can sell (amongst many, many other ways to make money online) include things like:

  • Consulting with companies on an hourly basis
  • Designing logos on sites like 99 Designs or Dribbble
  • Coaching individuals on a monthly retainer
  • Writing copy or blog content for brands
  • Editing podcasts and using your audio engineering skills
  • Doing search engine optimization projects for online brands
  • Making websites or software tools for established companies
  • If you’ve got a skill, it can be offered as a service…

As services are often performed on a more one-on-one basis, and include working closely with one client at a time, that means choosing this way to make money blogging won’t scale in the same way that affiliate income or course sales will.

However, it can still be very lucrative if you’re charging premium rates to established clients—making it well worth your time.

For example, let’s say you’re a business coach…

You can sell a course on how to market your business that’s priced at $150. If you’ve got a large audience, this could be a phenomenal way to make money blogging.

If your audience isn’t huge yet though, you can take the approach of instead offering a smaller group of people a one-on-one coaching package for $500, or even a done-for-you service where you charge a monthly fee of $3,000 to manage all of their social media channels and grow their following.

It’s a number’s game, and it’s up to your to determine your worth and your time.

Where to Find Clients That Need Your Services (and Expertise)

Later on in this guide about how to make money blogging, we dive much deeper into freelancing (working with companies) as a specific way to monetize your blog. But for now, here are my picks for the best places to find ready and able customers for your service offerings.

  • 36 Best Blogging Jobs Websites to Get Paid Blogging Work
  • 78 Best Freelance Jobs Websites to Get Great Clients (Fast)
  • 55 Websites to Find High-Quality Work From Home Jobs

While selling your services won’t scale as beautifully as many of our other ways to make money blogging here, it’s a very easy place to start.

8. Writing (and Selling) eBooks

We already touched briefly on why writing and selling eBooks (your own digital product) is another great way to make money blogging—largely because of how scaleable your income can be without the need to put in any additional expenses after the book is written.

With each new sale you generate, the vast majority (if not all) of the profit comes straight to you, when selling an eBook directly on your blog and collecting payments via Stripe or PayPal.

No middlemen. No publishers. No distributors. No retail stores.

This means that when you learn how to write an eBook and sell it, you’ll keep the absolute maximum possible profit margin on your eBook sales.

“Selling eBooks is a great way to make money blogging—your income scales without additional costs after it’s written.” 

Not a bad way to make money blogging, right?

Lastly, it’s important to clarify that when I’m talking about eBooks, I mean digital books in the form of downloadable PDFs. This eBook format is so simple to make and sell these days.

That being said, you can go the extra mile and take the Amazon eBook route which also allows you to sell Kindle formatted eBooks and audiobooks both on your own blog and to the hundreds of millions of Amazon customers out there.

Cookbooks, fiction, self-help, weight-loss, non-fiction: you name it, there’s a market for an eBook on it.

If you’re confident that you have the knowledge to share and can write well, then an eBook could be one of your best ways to make money blogging given your skills and experience. Just be sure to begin with writing an outline.

The fact that you already have a blog with existing readers should give you the confidence that you have something worth reading—maybe it’s time to put that content into the form of an eBook to make money blogging.

If you haven’t yet gotten your blog off the ground, then head over to my ultimate guide to starting a blog.

9. Launch a Virtual Summit

Just getting paid to produce a virtual summit for another company isn’t the only way to make money blogging with this monetization channel. You can host your own virtual summit.

Virtual summits are a lot of work, but with that work can come wild profitability.

A virtual summit is a live (or pre-recorded) event covering a specific subject with multiple guest speakers in tow. So it is important to find your tribe.

If you have a group of like-minded readers on your email list, each with their own communities that align with your messaging, then you’ve got the audience a virtual summit just waiting to be invited.

A virtual summit is the culmination of all the above ways to make money blogging.

You’re teaching, you’re coaching, you’re selling. Think about your audience and what drives them.

  • What do they want to learn?
  • How can you help them?
  • Do you have enough content to create a summit?

When you’re feeling confident in how you answered these questions, then start planning the event.

  • How many speakers do you want?
  • Is this going to be a live webinar-based summit or in-person?
  • Who would attend and when should it be?

Make sure to give yourself plenty of time to put your summit together.

Then promote, promote, promote.

How Do You Make Money Blogging with a Virtual Summit?

Well, there are a few different ways to monetize a summit.

The most straightforward way (and easiest to execute your first go-round) is selling tickets for admission. Anywhere from $20 to $200 is common depending upon your industry.

You can discount pricing for early birds. Ask all of your speakers to promote the event to their audiences as well.

Another way to monetize your summit is by making admission to watch “live” free and then selling an all-access pass to anyone who wants the ability to watch the speakers they missed (or watch again).

With both approaches, you can further make money blogging with your summit audience by selling them another product after the event wraps up—maybe an online course, eBook, or coaching package that expands upon the concepts covered during the live summit.

At any rate, creating a virtual summit will probably be your main focus for the quarter.

If you’re going the summit route, you’ll also want to make sure you have other monetization in place while your attention is focused solely on this project.

Use Your Own Talent to Make Money Blogging

You’re skilled. You’re experienced. Your audience believes in you.

If you’ve made it this far learning how to make money blogging—and you have a blog with real readership, you’re golden, my friend. You’ve got talent and now you’re just learning how to monetize your blog.

Maybe the monetization channels we’ve discussed so far weren’t the best fit… or maybe you’re already using them and want some more ideas on how to make money blogging.

Well, in this next section, we’re going to talk all about selling yourself (in a good way that monetizes your blog).

10. Business Partnerships

Make Money Blog with Partnerships Monetize a Blog

When you have a growing blog, you have an audience.

And when you have an audience that’s regularly coming back for more of what you’re giving them—you’ll create opportunities for unique business partnerships as a way to make money blogging and further monetize your audience.

“When you have an audience, you can create opportunities for yourself to monetize your blog with those readers.”

Business partnerships can shake out in a lot of different ways, so it’s difficult to explain just one.

A business partnership can be as easy as an affiliate relationship like we’ve already covered above.

However, it could also mean…

  • Working with a tech company to white-label their app and sell that version of it to your followers
  • Partnering with another blogger to create a product together and market it to each other’s audience

The point is, keep building your audience (long before you focus on learning how to make money blogging).

This applies just as much to establishing win-win business partnerships.

Find other companies or individuals that align with your audience, your goals, and most importantly—your plans for how you want to make money blogging.

From there, all that’s left is finding a way to work together so that all parties benefit.

11. Freelancing

Make Money Blogging How to Monetize a Blog Freelancing

Freelancing isn’t for everyone, but it’s certainly a good option when you’re still in the process of deciding how to make money blogging.

In fact, up until just a few years ago, freelancing made up nearly 90% of one of my blog’s income. As I’m into building websites and blogs, I’ve built relationships with many clients over the years.

As we’ve already touched upon, if you’re a skilled writer (or at least enjoy it enough to improve over time), then perhaps you could start freelancing on the side to share your expertise with clients who are willing to pay.

Especially if you’ve already grown your own blog to a respectable level and can demonstrate to clients that your content attracts & engages readers.

Now, becoming a freelance writer could be your shot at helping other brands, startups, and bloggers to do the same thing. That’s exactly where freelancing comes in to play. It doesn’t need to just be writing though.

You can sell your services by:

  • Consulting with marketing teams at established companies and teaching them how to create content
  • Becoming a hired gun that re-writes website copy and suggests improvements to better attract customers
  • Coaching other writers and bloggers who want to achieve the same results you have.

Never forget that you have a skill that can be used to make money blogging—even if that’s simply from trading your time for a little extra side income today.

If you’re not ready to dive into some of the more time-intensive ways to make money blogging, or if just want to make some extra revenue while you chip away at those larger projects, then freelancing maybe your best call.

Just be sure you have a smart blog layout that’s designed to route potential clients to your services page where they can learn more and hire you quickly.

12. Make Money with Coaching

Do you have valuable skills and the ability to teach them to others?

Then you should consider monetizing your blog by starting a coaching service.

Coaching is all about giving paying clients 1-on-1 advice and tips. For instance, a blogging coach can give their clients advice on how to get more traffic or build their email list faster.

Your blog niche will determine the type of coaching you can offer. For example, if you have a fashion blog, you could offer coaching and consultations to help your audience develop their personal style.

You can coach people over the phone, or by email, video chat, or instant messaging. All you need to do is create a booking form so your clients can set up their first session with you.

13. Accept Donations

If your readers love your content, sometimes they’ll just give you money if you ask for it.

When you’re providing entertaining and valuable content to people for free, there’s nothing wrong with asking for donations. Even popular websites like Wikipedia ask for donations from their users.

To collect donations from your readers, you can create a donation form using WPForms.

Bonus Tip: Build an Email List

There’s one more thing you should do if you want to make money blogging—build an email list.

The #1 regret most successful bloggers have is that they didn’t start building a list sooner!

Email marketing will help you:

  • Boost affiliate marketing revenue
  • Generate sales of your ebook
  • Get more webinar registrations
  • Drive more signups for your online course
  • Sell more merch
  • And more

With email marketing, you can promote whatever you’re selling directly to your audience. The people that subscribe to your email list are the ones most interested in what you have to say, making them the people most likely to sign up for your course or buy your ebook.

So, how do you build an email list? Start by creating an opt-in form popup on your website with OptinMonster like the one below.

An option form popup will display on the screen and encourage users to sign up; all the user has to do is provide their email address to get your newsletter.

These high converting optin forms will help you build your email list quickly.

14. Turn Your Blog Into a Membership Site

Your most loyal fans will be more willing to pay to read more of your content because it’s just that valuable to them.

When you turn your blog into a membership site, it’s like locking your content behind a door; only people that have the key (a paid subscription) have access to it.

Users can pay a one-time fee to get access, or you can charge users a monthly subscription so that you can get recurring revenue from your blog. As you can see, selling memberships is a great way to monetize a blog.

Using the best membership plugins, you can easily turn your blog into a membership site in no time.

I recommend MemberPress, an all-in-one membership plugin. 

MemberPress is easy to set up, offers powerful access rules that let you decide exactly what pages or posts users can see, lets you create beautiful pricing pages and more. 

15. Get Paid for Writing Reviews

Getting paid for writing reviews is similar to accepting sponsored guest posts.

With paid reviews, you can try out a product, write a review about it on your blog, and then get paid!

Of course, you want to write reviews for products that are relevant to your blog niche and your audience.

For instance, if you blog about budgeting, reviewing budgeting software and apps makes more sense than reviewing vacuum cleaners.

And like sponsored posts, you can reach out to brands directly or you can use a platform like PayPerPost to connect with companies that would be interested in paying you for a review. 

How Will You Make Money Blogging This Year? Action Items

How are you feeling about your blog? Are you ready to take action and monetize your blog?

Your speed to action will be the largest determining factor in just how successful you become with learning to make money blogging. All the perfect blog business planning in the world won’t make things happen.

So my call-to-actions for you today are this…

  1. If you haven’t already, launch your blog right now (follow my step-by-step guide to starting a blog)
  2. Decide whether or not you’ll pursue a longer-term route to make money blogging (with a higher return)
  3. Begin taking small steps toward creating that asset, pitching yourself, or otherwise bringing it to life today.

Still Need to Start Your Blog First?

Check out my ultimate guide How to Start a Blog (on the Side today.

I highly recommend making a list of your personal picks for the best ways you can make money blogging, based on time and effort, as well as viewing these through the lens of activating your own skills & interests.

It’ll take time (months) to go from launching a brand new blog—to learning how to make money blogging, but the effort is well worth the payoff.

Once you have an idea of the time it’ll take to bring your preferred route of making money blogging to fruition—and an estimate of just how much money you could potentially make from that channel—then it’s pretty easy to decide what you should focus on.

For many new bloggers, as you just get started—it’s common to focus on low-effort, mid-profit ways to make money blogging in the early days.

It’s a good way to dip your toes into monetizing your blog, just don’t make the common blogging mistake of trying to monetize your content too early at the expense of not building strong connections with your readers.

Then once the first dollar (or $100, $1,000, and even $10,000+) hits your account, you’ll have a better understanding of the work it takes to make money blogging in your niche—and what it’ll take to accelerate to the next level.

What did you think? Which of these ways to make money on your blog do you think will suit your blog niche and blogging style?

Let’s have your comments!

About Steve@learn.owogram.com

I am Steve, a full-time blogger, web designer, and entrepreneur. Author of 'The Blogging Road Map" and "The Affiliate Marketing Road Map". I want to share my blogging knowledge to help you start your own blog and make a decent passive income online

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *