Blogging is one of the best activities to do in your spare time. Some people blog as a way to share their hobbies and interests whereas some entrepreneurs blog as a way to boost their brand. Whichever way, blogging is fun, rewarding, and you can even make money from your blog if you build a following.
Some people use their blog to make a little extra income on the side whereas some make blogging their full-time income. If you work hard and gain enough readers, blogging can become incredibly lucrative for you. What’s more, there are various ways to make money from your blog. Here are 10 of the best ways to make money blogging.
1. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money with your blog. If you’re already writing about fun products that you enjoy, then you can start making money by linking to these products and making a commission for every sale. As long as someone clicks one of your links and buys something, you’ll make a profit.
Amazon Associates is the most popular affiliate marketing platform. You can link to anything on Amazon’s website and make money via people clicking your links. Even if they don’t buy the product you linked, you’ll make money if they buy something. ShareASale is another popular platform that allows you to make money from sales. Affiliate marketing works especially well if you do listicles and top lists for certain types of products.
2. Place Ads On Your Blog
Another smart way to monetize your blog is with ads. Placing pay-per-click (PPC) ads on your blog is one of the easiest ways to make money from your content as you don’t have to do any extra work. Simply post the ads somewhere on your blog and you’ll make a small amount of money for every time someone clicks on an ad.
Google AdSense makes it easy to implement ads simply by adding a small piece of code to your website. Alternatively, you might want to sell advertising space for paying businesses and negotiate a flat rate. Either way, ads can become very lucrative if you get enough readers. With that said, having too many ads on your blog will put viewers off, so be careful.
3. Add Sponsored Posts
If you want to make money by advertising but don’t want to plaster your page with intrusive banner ads, you might want to consider sponsored posts instead. Many brands will be happy to pay you to review or advertise their products, especially if you link to them and help them make more sales.
What’s more, sometimes you can make money via sponsored posts without doing any work yourself. Link building services often reach out to popular blogs and pay them to post their content. You might even want to get in touch with these services and let them know you’d be interested in adding their posts for the right price.
4. Write An Ebook
Writing and selling ebooks has become a particularly common way for popular bloggers to make money. If you can offer some kind of special knowledge or information in book form, then many people would be happy to pay for one of your ebooks. If you have a big enough following, you could even sell multiple ebooks.
Selling ebooks works especially well for blogs based on learning some kind of skill or achieving a certain goal. For example, popular fitness blogs often make money by selling ebooks with special tips, exercise routines, or diet plans. Marketing blogs sell ebooks that offer some of the best tricks of the trade. If your content does a good job at reeling people in, you can entice them to pay for a lengthy and detailed ebook.
5. Sell An Online Course
Selling ebooks isn’t the only way to capitalize on your skills and knowledge. If you’re running a blog with a loyal audience, you can also make money by selling online courses to them. All you have to do is create a course and either host it via your website or use a platform such as SkillShare. You can then make passive income as your users will pay to learn from your course materials.
Much like with ebooks, you’ll need an enticing course that helps your readers achieve a specific goal. Blogs on professional skills such as video editing, programming, or even blogging itself often sell courses helping people to learn the trade and make money themselves. However, you can also get creative with your courses. For instance, even some dating blogs sell courses on how to attract and keep a partner.
6. Blog For Other Businesses
Starting a blog yourself isn’t the only way to make money from your writing skills. If you can offer well-written professional content, many upcoming businesses will be happy to pay you to supply content for their blogs. You’ll need to learn how to write search engine optimized (SEO) blogs and use methods to convert readers into customers, but once you get the hang of it, you can make good money this way.
Many copywriters start by writing for SEO agencies or content farms. However, once you have some experience, you can reach out to companies directly and offer your blogging services. You might even want to use your personal blog as a way to show off your portfolio of writing and give businesses a way to contact you.
7. Offer Coaching Or Consulting
If you use your blog to become an established name in your field, you might find that people want to pay you for your expertise. For example, if you have an engaging and informative blog about how to make money from cryptocurrencies, people will want to pay you to teach them the ropes and give them expert advice.
As such, you might want to offer one-on-one coaching or consulting directly from your blog. As long as your content shows that you have knowledge worth sharing, then you could end up gaining plenty of clients who you can then coach via emails and calls. If your coaching or consulting services take off, then you could end up with hundreds or thousands of paying clients.
8. Flip Your Blog
When you run a successful blog, you can keep it going for as long as you like and keep finding new ways to monetize it. However, if you’re tired of writing about the same subject matter or want a break from blogging, you can also make money by selling the rights to your blog and all of its content.
Sites like Flippa allow you to sell your blog online. However, if your blog has a big enough following, you might even get personal offers from businesses who want to buy the blog from you. Some professional bloggers even regularly start new blogs on niche subjects and sell them for a huge profit. The bigger your audience, the more you’ll get paid for it.
9. Make Merchandise For Readers
Let’s say that you have a popular blog with tons of loyal readers who regularly check in to read your content. You might even end up building a community and chatting with your readers via a Discord channel. If your readers enjoy everything that your blog puts out, you could end up making money by selling custom-branded merchandise for your fans.
It’s easy to create and sell custom merchandise using services such as Printify or CafePress. They’ll handle all the posting and packaging for you, all you have to do is create the designs and promote them via your blog and social media accounts. You might want to create t-shirts, mugs, and tote bags with your brand logo. If you can build a strong brand with your blog, you could even sell merchandise using popular slogans or catchphrases that you regularly use in your content.
10. Sell Products Or Services Via Your Blog
Many businesses use blogging simply as a way of marketing the main products or services that they offer by drawing readers in and converting them into customers. However, while many bloggers use their skills to write marketing content for other businesses, you might want to create an online business yourself and use your blogging skills to promote it.
It’s easy to sell all kinds of products or services online using shopping cart plugins or platforms like Shopify. Once you’ve set up your online shop, you can start creating search engine optimized blogs to market your products. For instance, you might want to create fitness blogs to sell fitness equipment. Alternatively, you could sell professional services such as programming or graphic design to businesses and use your blog to promote your skills.
Conclusion
As long as you’re a good writer, there are plenty of ways for you to make money from blogging. Whether you use your blog as a way to sell your professional skills or use your writing to promote products and services from other businesses, you could end up earning an impressive living from your blogging skills.
These are 10 of the best ways to make money blogging and all of them can be used to either make extra income or even turn blogging into your full-time job. While you’ll need to spend time creating content and building an audience, it can pay off significantly in the long run.
