You want to make money blogging. You’ve started your blog and everything’s looking good, but now what? What’s the next step? How do you monetize your blog?
It’s possible to monetize your blog from day one.
However, let’s be real, you can’t expect to earn thousands of dollars when you’ve just created your blog. Blogging won’t make you reach overnight.
For you to make a real amount of money blogging, you have to put in the work and figure out what’s the best strategy for you to achieve your goals.
There are several ways you can monetize a blog and what you choose will honestly depend on your preferences.
One thing I can tell you though, is if you’re willing to put in the time and effort, you’ll achieve a life of financial freedom with your blog!
Monetizing your online business is not that hard. There are several ways you can start making money, even if you’re just a beginner.
In this post, I’m going to show you how you can make money blogging, from day one.
This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my links, at no extra cost for you. Please read my full disclosure for more information.
But before we get into this subject, I have to ask you, do you have your blog already?
If not, I’ve got good news for you. You can get your SiteGround hosting for only $1.99/month as you can see below.
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You can read this guide on how to create your blog. You’ll find everything you need to launch a successful blog!
Now, let’s learn more about how to make money blogging, shall we?
Affiliate Marketing
What is affiliate marketing?
I find that Affiliate marketing is the best way to monetize a blog when you’re a beginner.
With this type of monetization, you’re getting paid to refer products to your blog. You promote other people/company’s products/services on your blog, in exchange for a commission.
The way it works is: on your blog post you place a link for a product or service you want to promote and, every time a reader purchases through your link, you earn a commission, at no extra cost for the buyer.
You can use affiliate marketing on whatever type of blog you have. You can refer to several products/services like an online course, an e-book, makeup, clothes, or anything related to your niche.
Why should you start with affiliate marketing?
The great thing about this type of monetization is that once you start to have a significant amount of traffic on your blog, and once you nail your affiliate marketing strategy, you’ll be creating your very own passive income stream.
That’s what people mean when they say you’ll be making money in your sleep.
If you do the initial work of creating quality content, referring to your favorite products/services, and promoting the hell out of your blog posts, you’ll be setting yourself up for success.
Affiliate marketing will allow you to make money with your blog, even if you don’t have your very own products/services to sell yet, which is amazing!
You also don’t have to worry about customer support, collecting payments, or creating a marketing kit, because the merchants you’ll be promoting will do this for you.
You have to redirect traffic to a product or service, and earn money whenever a purchase is made!
A few Affiliate Marketing terms
Affiliate: This is the person who is promoting. In this case, it will be you.
Affiliate link: This is a specific link that the merchant gives you so you can promote their products. It’s what indicates to the merchant that the purchase was made through your referral.
Merchant: The person/company who owns the products/services you’re promoting.
Affiliate Network: Some companies choose to have their affiliate programs managed through a third-party company. In this case, this third party will be called an affiliate network. An affiliate network will manage several companies’ affiliate programs from which you can choose.
How do you start with affiliate marketing?
To become an affiliate yourself, you can either refer to products or services directly from a merchant, or you can also promote them from an affiliate network.
Joining some of the top affiliate marketing networks is free, which is great when you’re just starting your blog and don’t have much money to invest in it.
The process of becoming an affiliate for a product or service is pretty simple. You simply search for the affiliate program you’re interested in and submit a request to become their affiliate.
You’ll be asked to fill out your business information. Plus, they may ask you some other questions that are important as part of their affiliate selection.
After you submit your request, you’ll either have to wait for an answer from the network or merchant, or you’ll be automatically accepted as an affiliate for their programs.
Some examples of affiliate networks that accept beginners are:
- Share-a-sale
- Amazon affiliate program
- FlexOffers
- Impact Radius
Or you can also apply to become an affiliate directly for a merchant if they have an affiliate program of their own.
Advertising
Another great way to make money blogging is by displaying ads on your pages.
However, keep in mind that you have to have some level of traffic to your blog if you want to make a significant amount of money from ads.
It’s also important to be aware that too many ads on your pages can hurt your traffic. Not only will it make your pages look too confusing, but it can also drive some people away.
This is part of the reason why I decided not to use this type of monetization on this blog. I want people to easily navigate through my content without feeling confused by ads.
Often I see bloggers pack their blogs with ads to a point that everything becomes so overwhelming that I end up just clicking away.
So, if you’re planning on using ads on your content, be very cautious about it. Your content should always be the star of your blog!
If you want to place ads on your website, it’s best that you do good research to find ad networks that allow you to have some sort of control over where their ads are displayed on your pages, as well as, which type of ads are shown to your readers.
Keep in mind that some companies require you to have a minimum number of monthly views on your blog, to approve you for their ad campaigns.
Some examples of ad networks a lot of bloggers use are:
- Google Adsense
- Mediavine
- Adthrive
Sell your services
Another great way of monetization is to sell your services.
If you have a special skill or if there’s something you’re good at, why not make use of it? You can offer your skills as a virtual assistant, life coach, business consultant, or proofreader….
Take advantage of something you excel at, and the skills you’ll learn from your blogging journey to provide your audience with valuable services.
Another great idea is to guest post for other blogs. As a blogger, you’ll be developing amazing writing skills which you can use to guest post for somebody else’s blog.
This is a great way to get your brand out there and reach more readers from other blogs. These readers might even become your readers in the future. Which is awesome, right?
Create Your Products
How about creating your products?
A lot of bloggers create their products, like eBooks, online courses, WordPress themes, Canva templates, you name it.
Let’s say you’re an expert photographer. Why not create a course teaching your readers the basics of photography? Or maybe you have a cooking blog. How about compiling some of your unique recipes and selling them as an e-book?
Whatever you decide to create will depend on your audience and your niche.
You can ask people what they would like to learn from you and use your skills and expertise to create your product.
Just make sure you’re offering a lot of value to your audience. It’s also important to know your readers and what their needs are so that you can create products that meet their expectations.
Otherwise, you won’t be making much money because people won’t be interested in your product.
Sponsored Content
A sponsored post is when someone or some company pays you to review their product or service on your blog.
This is another great way to make money blogging.
Companies need to have their products promoted, and you need to earn money, so it’s a win-win situation for both of you.
You don’t have to have a huge amount of views on your blog to be able to do sponsored posts.
Some companies are more interested in having their products placed in front of their preferred audience’s eyes. If your readers match the type of audience these companies want, then they’ll be reaching out to you to promote their products on your blog, even if you don’t have a lot of traffic.
Just make sure you are sponsoring products or services that make sense in the context of your blog.
Now, for you to make serious money blogging, driving traffic to your content is the key to success. You can read this article to find out how you can drive traffic to your blog.
There are many ways you can monetize your blog. You have to test out which one will be best for you. Every blog is different, and each one will have its monetization strategy.
Start experimenting with different ways to make money and see what works best for you and your business.
What forms of monetization do you use or plan on using on your blog? Tell me all about it in the comment section!
See you in my next post!
