There are a lot of people with a blog or website, and they are already getting traffic. However, they struggle to make money blogging. So, in this post, I am going to share with you 7 ways you can make money blogging.
If you’re ready, then let’s dive right into it.
1. Explore Affiliate Marketing
For those of you who don’t know what affiliate marketing is, it’s when a company pays you a commission or percentage of a sale that you refer to or when some purchase their product through your website. When you become an affiliate for a company, you get a unique ID that’s tied to you, and you get unique links. When somebody clicks on a link and they buy a product within a certain time frame, you get a percentage of the sale, and you get the commissions.
It’s a great way to monetize your blog without actually having to create your product or service, which can cost a lot of energy, time, and money, and all the maintenance that goes along with it. Here, you’re able to leverage big companies that put out a lot of money to create, maintain, and service products; where they do all the shipping, they do all the customer service, and so on. It’s one of the best ways for a blogger to make money.
One way to leverage affiliate marketing is through creating a review article. If you want to review a specific product or service in your niche or industry, then writing the entire article and ranking the blog on the search engine is a great way to drive traffic to your blog. Another thing is if there’s a new up-and-coming product or service, the earlier that you can create a review on it, the better it will be in terms of getting ranked. That is because not as many people are going to be doing the same thing. And then once you review the product, you can certainly put in your affiliate link at the end and throughout that article.
Another thing you can do is spread affiliate links throughout your articles. One of the most common ones is through Amazon and the Amazon Associates program. If you mention certain products here and there, like if you have a cooking blog, if you’re using certain kitchen tools, and you mention them throughout your recipes in your articles, then instead of just using the name of the tool, you use the name and put in a link so that people can go and check it out. They can go directly to Amazon’s page, see the images, see the reviews, and if they happen to buy, then you would earn a percentage of the sale.
2. Sell Your Product
Another thing you can do is to sell your products and services instead of selling them as an affiliate. You can either sell a physical or digital product, but most likely, the easiest way is to create your digital product. It can be as simple as an eBook, or as advanced as an online course, or online coaching service.
Now, this is going to depend on your business goals or your desires, and if you want to create a product or service, or not. It is important to understand that you can do pretty well with affiliate marketing alone. But if you have the desire to create your unique product or maybe sell your service, whether that be coaching or consulting services, a paid webinar or subscription group, then this is a great way to monetize your blog.
When you’re creating content about a certain product or a certain niche, then you can drive traffic, and that can lead to services where you offer them an actual paid program or something to help them achieve certain results they want. However, if you’re just starting and you don’t want to get overwhelmed with having to create a product or service, then the best thing to do is to just promote affiliate products.
With this, you have an understanding of what it takes to create a product and then you can get ideas when it comes to creating your product or service and then just leveraging what you learned from the affiliate programs. You’re not only earning money from the affiliate programs, but you’re also learning what to do and what not to do when you create your products or services.
3. Build an Online Store
This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to build a store on your website. You can go and build a store on sites like Amazon, where you can compile your favorite products, your tools, or your equipment, and you can direct your viewers or your audience to that store. Well, if they buy your products, then that way you don’t have to learn how to build your web store on your website. Since you can simply direct people to your personal let’s say Amazon store and list all the equipment you use.
For example, if you have let’s say an outdoorsy blog, you can put all your hiking and camping equipment, and compiled it in categories within Amazon, and that way it’s hosted by Amazon and all the images and stuff are there for you, and you don’t have to do it yourself. So, that’s a great way to compile all your favorite resources in your specific niche or industry into one spot, and build your store using somebody else’s platform.
4. Make Use of Google AdSense
Using Google AdSense is basically about placing Google Ads on your website. So, when someone visits your website, they see the Ads on your website which are shown by Google. When a visitor clicks on any of the Ads placed on your website, you get a commission for each click. This is because as soon as someone clicks on the Ad, Google charges the advertiser and pays you a commission. If you have the traffic coming to your blog and you want to monetize, and you already have affiliate links, then another strategy is to be able to put ads throughout your blog articles and your content.
Now, one thing you want to make sure you avoid is having too many ads. I often go to blogs and I see ads throughout the content to a point where it’s distracting from the actual purpose of the content itself. Make sure if you’re doing Google Ads, you want to do so in a way that’s not going to turn away your audience, and your viewers. This is because if they are turned away, they’re likely never to come back to your blog.
5. Consider Banner Ads
You’ve likely seen banner ads on the sidebar, or throughout the content of a blog. Somebody can pay you every month to post their banner ad to direct leads to their website, product, or service. One thing to note with banner ads is to make sure that the ad or the product or service that’s being promoted is relevant to your blog readers or your potential audience. This is because the last thing you want to do is redirect that person away from your blog, and go to a place that doesn’t have anything to do with what they’re searching for. This can cause your audience to be completely turned off, and never come to your blog again.
Make sure if somebody comes to you, and wants to pay you for a banner ad, the ad must be relevant to your viewers. Banner ads don’t have to link out to other people’s products and services. You can put your products and services there as well, or even your affiliate links.
For example, if you have a link to your domain hosting or certain website tools of how to build a website for other people who may want to start a blog, well, you can just put that up as a static piece of content that’s there and if somebody happens to click on it and buy, then you earn a commission. It’s a great passive strategy. Banner ads don’t have to lead to other people’s stuff; it can be your products or services and your affiliate links.
6. Optimizing Email Marketing
This is an absolute must if you are writing a blog. When somebody types in a search query into Google and they come into a blog, the chances of them returning are pretty slim. You want to make sure that you have a way to try to get them on your email list. With this, you have more points of contact with them, so that you can build a relationship with them, and then ultimately offer them products and services, whether they’re your own or as an affiliate.
If you’re growing a blog you need to focus on how to capture emails, and how to generate sales from one especially on autopilot, which is powerful when it comes to email marketing.
7. Sponsored Posts
As you grow your blog and get more readers, companies may potentially reach out to you, or you can reach out to companies and have them pay you to write posts about specific products that they have. This is a great way to earn money from your blog, and if they happen to have an affiliate link, then maybe you can put your affiliate link in that blog post as well. Not only do you get paid to write the blog but then hopefully get paid residual commissions there on after as people visit, read that blog article and click your link and buy.
Sponsored posts are getting very common, and it’s not just in the blog world, but also in podcasts and YouTube as well. This is because companies understand the power of influencer marketing. When you’re creating a blog, you are building influence. And rather than big companies paying other big companies for commercials, they go to influencers who already have an established audience. It is a great marketing strategy for them, and it opens the doors for many bloggers.
These are the seven strategies in how you can make money blogging in 2020 and beyond. Now, if you don’t already have a blog and you’re just thinking about how you can monetize it before you start, one thing I want to emphasize is that you want to make sure that you can blog for a long time before you go and set up a website and a domain.
This is because many people believe that blogging is the route they want to take to build an online business. And this is naturally so because when somebody searches for “how to build a business online”, they tend to go to Google, they’ll search, and what comes up it’s going to be a blog article of somebody or a blogger talking about how much money they’ve made through their blog. Naturally, somebody will assume that “hey, if they’re making money, then this is what I should be doing”. But understand that to be a blogger, you have to be a content creator, you have to be able to write articles, and publish them consistently and over a long period.
Before you start a blog, go out, pick a specific topic or industry that you want to focus on or create your blog about, and just write articles without publishing them and without buying a domain, and see if you enjoy the process. Also, you want to make sure you can write an article after an article, and not get burnt out or not feel like you’re forcing yourself to write.
Which strategy resonated with you the most and which one are you going to implement in your blog?