More and more people start blogging in order to become financially free and travel the world. With all that highly attractive income reports published by popular bloggers, blogging seems to be a money-making machine. So why not starting a blog while it is so easy to make money from it? And that was one of my thoughts when I started my blog. But I spent weeks in order to understand how I could actually monetize my blog.
Here is the list of 33 ways you can start making money blogging today:
1. Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to monetize any blog. All you need is to just pick up a product people would love to buy and advertise it on your blog. The trick here is that there is no need to worry about the production and delivery, you just sell and earn your commission. Additionally, you can change such products regarding the season and marketing demand.
2. Sidebar ad banners
Put ad banners on your blog sidebar linking to a client’s website. Such advertising is usually paid by companies on a monthly basis.
Additionally, you can offer a banner design as a service. Such a complex approach to the client’s advertising campaign will help you to make the collaboration process easier and bring you more money.
3. Email marketing
Collecting website visitors’ emails is what you should do from the very first day of blogging. Though getting a 10K email list may seem to be a hardly achievable goal from the start, you shouldn’t ignore this strategy. The earlier you start the better.
Email marketing is still a powerful tool to promote any business and this is how you can make money with it:
- Use affiliate links in your emails;
- Sell your products or services;
- Get paid for promoting other brands
But remember that your emails should look like spam. Build relationships with your readers and that will bring you much more benefits.
4. Membership site
Writing quality content for free is a great way to attract new readers to your blog. But what about offering some paid content? Start a membership site from building a community of loyal readers who will be interested in your niche. As a part of your paid plan, you can provide digital downloads, videos, guides, documents, tutorials, in-depth researches, and online courses.
5. Sponsored posts
Write sponsored posts for other companies where you can tell the details about their businesses and products. You could offer sponsored posts to companies by sending them emails with the details as to your blog traffic and target audience.
6. Product reviews
Similar to sponsored posts service you can do product reviews. There are many options for bloggers to get either products or financial rewards in exchange for your honest opinion published on your blog. Here is the list of the websites where you can register and start getting your first clients today:
7. Sell ebooks
Have you ever thought about writing your own book?
There was a time when I had an opinion that all the books are written by great and highly talented writers. But then I started to read books written by entrepreneurs just like you and I and these books appeared to be very useful and extremely practical. So why not to share your experience and sell it as an ebook?
Here is the list of topics you could consider starting to write your first ebook:
- HOW TO… (e.g. the process of how your product is created, or how to become a specialist in your niche)
- 10 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT… (cover the most interesting and important things in your niche your target audience could be interested in)
- THE HIDDEN TRUTH ABOUT… (tell about your experience and what you learned in the process of your journey)
8. Sell online courses
People love learning and that is why online education is a highly profitable niche for bloggers. Create an online course related to your niche and sell it on your blog.
Though starting an online course may seem to be a complicated process requiring technical skills, in practice, it is much easier. Here are the top platforms you can consider starting an online course:
- Skillshare (free to start)
- Teachable (starting from $39)
- Kajabi (starting from $119/mo)
- Thinkific (starting from $49)
- Udemy (free to start)
9. Consulting services
Being a specialist in a particular niche means that you have knowledge that can be easily shared with other people. For example, you can become a business coach and teach people what you’ve learned in business helping them to achieve success.
If you are not sure about the type of consulting service related to your niche, here are some ideas for you:
- strategy consulting;
- financial consulting;
- information consulting;
- operations consulting
Any of these types can be narrowed depending on your skills and experience.
10. Become a brand ambassador
Leading companies are always searching for new people to represent their brands online. In 2019 brands spend $1-1.5 billion on sponsored content.
So, you can start making money from your blog as a brand ambassador writing in-depth articles, posting on your social media, or making videos about your client’s products.
In order to become a brand ambassador, you should actively reach out to brands in your niche with the details of what you are good at and who is your target audience.
11. Sell your own products
If you are a creator and have your own products like handmade goods or digital downloads, you can easily sell them on your blog. Just create a page with an online store and start selling. In addition, you can create posts and reviews about your products that will promote your business better and attract more buyers.
12. Offer tutoring services
A blog can be a perfect springboard to the big business if you are a tutor and love educating other people. You can start with giving 1:1 private sessions and expand to your own online courses.
Read the post about building a tutoring business >>
13. Sell design services
If you are a designer or a developer blog could become a great platform for selling your services.
Actually, it was the very first step I did to market the services of my web development company. I just combined useful content with a detailed description of how my team can help clients to solve their business problems. And this strategy worked!
14. Sell webinars
Share your knowledge by selling online webinars. There are special platforms like Webinarjam or Clickmeeting, that will help you to organize everything in a proper way. Use your blog to promote such webinars. Additionally, you should create a landing page that will tell the users all the details about your webinar and why they should buy it.
15. Sell content writing services
If you are a content writer your blog is your portfolio. Isn’t it perfect? Definitely! All you need to sell your services is just to start writing.
16. Offer virtual assistant services
The virtual assistant business is a highly profitable niche because it can be easily expanded and scaled up.
Read more about starting a successful virtual assistant business >>
17. Sell premium content
Have you thought about being paid for the opportunity to read your content? Not yet? It is the time!
If you always create highly useful content based on deep research and your true experience you have a chance to share it for some bucks.
How it works: you create two types of content on your blog – free and premium. Your free content is visible to everyone in order to generate traffic and attract more website visitors, while your premium content is restricted and can be read by only paying users.
18. Paid directory listings
Create a business directory and sell an opportunity for businesses to join it. Contact the companies that can be interested in additional promotions on your platform and get paid! You can consider local businesses as well as international companies depending on the geolocation of your target readers.
19. Create job boards
Just similar to the directory listing you can create a section with job boards on your blog. Companies usually pay for publishing job opportunities on different platforms in order to attract the best employees for their positions.
20. Host events
If you are in the event planning industry blog could be a great platform for promoting your events and attracting more potential visitors.
Read more about how to start an event planning business >>
21. Sell digital downloads
Creating and selling digital downloads can be a profitable strategy for any niche. For example, you are a lawyer who helps clients with documents, so, create the document templates and sell them on your blog.
22. Sell photos
If you are a professional photographer you can sell your photos not only on photo stocks and special marketplaces but also on your blog. People love visual content, so you can target both people and businesses.
23. Provide Coaching services
Coaching is my favorite blog monetization way. I love coaching people on starting a business and generate creative ideas together with them watching how they grow. Moreover coaching is a profitable business, so you should also consider it as a part of your blog monetization strategy.
By the way, if you need a coach to support you on a business journey contact me now and we’ll discuss the best opportunities for you.
24. Accept donations
Accepting donations is one of the ways to make money from blogging. Is the “Buy me a coffee” button dead? Actually not yet. But if you want to get financial support from people you should create content that stimulates positive emotions, for example, personal life stories and “happy endings”. Such emotional content always makes people be more sensitive and evokes the desire to support.
25. Start a podcast
More and more bloggers think about starting a podcast because of the great financial opportunities they can get from it. For example, the podcast Entrepreneur on Fire generates thousands of dollars monthly.
Here are some of the ways of how you can start making money online with a podcast:
- Sponsorships;
- Selling coaching services
- Selling your products
- Selling books
- Affiliate marketing
So if you are just thinking about starting a podcast take the first step to a blog monetization today.
26. Help new fellow bloggers to start
As an experienced blogger, you always have something to share with those who are just starting their journey. Sell consulting sessions or organize group challenges with new bloggers supporting them on the steps you went through.
27. Meditation services
Promote meditation services on your blog. You can start by building a community by providing quality content and sell live meditation masterclasses.
28. Healthy recipes and weight loss challenges
The wellness niche is highly popular and fast-growing with wide opportunities for monetization. If you are in this niche here are some blog monetization ideas for you:
- sell diet programs with professional support during the period;
- organize group challenges helping people to lose weight;
- sell healthy recipes for different target groups – moms, office workers, travelers, kids, etc.
29. Sell drop-shipping products
Dropshipping model allows bloggers to sell the product they don’t own. All you need is to create an online store functionality on your blog and earn a commission.
Very often a drop-shipping commission is up to 40% from a product cost.
Read more about starting a dropshipping business >>
30. Get paid for social media posts
Being a blogger means growing your social media pages. So why not starting to make some income from posting on Facebook or Pinterest?
You can offer other companies to advertise or make social media posts with affiliate links. Both ways will bring you some money.
31. Promote your offline business
If you own a business your blog can help you to increase your revenue and promote it online.
32. Sign up with ads platforms
Probably posting online ads on a website was the first thing you thought about talking about a blogger’s income. But the truth is that such a method works only when you have good blog traffic. If you are a starting blogger with 3000 pageviews a month there is a sense to sign up with Google Adsense.
Anyway, I would like to share a list of the most popular ads platforms for bloggers:
33. Get paid for guest posts
Last but not least. A number of bloggers make money online by selling guest posting opportunities on their blogs. Guest posting is a huge part of the SEO strategy for every blogger, so you can easily find clients who would like to contribute content and get a backlink from your website.
By the way, we accept guest posts for free, so if you would like to contribute a quality article just follow the guidelines.
Finally…
As you can see there are many ways of how you can start making money blogging.
Select a couple of directions and put all your energy to achieve your financial goals. If you need a mentor’s support just let me know.
Tetiana is a business coach and owner of IStartHub, a business media for ambitious female entrepreneurs and small business owners.