Having a blog is one thing and making money with blogging is a different ball game. If you don’t do it right, you will not make a dime!
In this article, I will show you how to make money with blogging, even if you are a complete beginner. I will explain the different strategies to monetize your blog.
The idea of how to make money with blogging sounds like a beautiful dream. When you consider the fact that you can work from anywhere independently, escape from the 9 to 5 job life, and blog about topics you love.
Sometimes, it can sound like a dream, but mastering how to make money with blogging is achievable for anyone. If only you do things right and start well.
There are just a few things that you need to make your blog a money-making machine. That is what I will share with you in this article.
Note also that depending on the nature of your blog and your personality, there are several ways you can monetize your blog that I may not be able to share here. But with these once, just anyone can get started right away, they are easy and every blogger making money uses them.
You do not have to fail once or twice before you start making a decent income from your blog. All you need is to lean on the experiences of other successful bloggers.
Blogging to make money
Blogging to make money can be achieved in different ways.
Hopefully, you can implement a few of them on your blog and start making money too.
Let’s take a look at this summary of a few top bloggers, from which you will see that if you too can model your blog after these ideas, then you can begin to make money from blogging too.
Build your online presence
Without having a presence online, nobody will know if you or indeed your blog exist. And if no one knows about your existence, you won’t make money, it’s that simple.
The most effective way to build your online presence, irrespective of what you do is to blog.
Blogging involves creating content that meets needs. Not just any need, but the needs of your target audience. This means that one of the most fundamental aspects of blogging is knowing the needs of your target audience.
It is so funny that many bloggers spend a lot of time trying to write great articles, and shoot nice videos on topics that their target audience cares less about!
Always remember that people won’t read your articles because they look great, they will only read if the article is solving their problems. Not just any problem, but their problem.
So, building an online presence involves you thoroughly researching what your target audience is yearning for. Then you will create content that meets those yearnings.
Once you do these, the next thing is to let as many of them as possible know that you have content that will solve their problems. If you solve one problem, they will return.
This is simply what creating an online presence means. This is how a blog makes money on autopilot.
READ ALSO: Blogging About Travel: How To Start A Travel Blog
How a blog makes money
Your first goal is to have a blog that is bringing in an appreciable number of visitors monthly. Then you can use any or a multiple of the following to make money from your blog.
1. Selling Freelance Services
Any day, any time, selling freelance services will always be my first recommendation for anyone searching for how to make money with blogging.
Offering freelance services was my first means to make money online from blogging. I still offer my freelance services on my blogs today.
Selling services using my blog was the first way I used to get my first international clients. So I love to talk about it passionately.
Besides, in my opinion, selling freelance services is the easiest way to start making money online. If you set things right, you can start making money almost immediately.
Blogging is one primary way to take your business to the next level, even if you never cared much about digital marketing.
Selling products and services through blogging is not limited to just digital products.
Several successful business owners who sell physical products use blogging as their primary means of business expansion.
Also as a blogger who doesn’t originally have a business, you should use your blogging platform to sell freelance services.
All you have to do is to create a service around your niche, this works so well with digital products.
You can also do drop servicing if you don’t think you can offer any service of your own. Drop servicing involves offering a service, and asking another person to do the job, after which both of you share the profit, based on your terms.
You can find Freelancers for drop services on several freelancing jobs sites such as fiverr.com and freelancer.com. You can also use the service of a friend or anyone who can do the service for you.
2. Ebook and other digital product sales
Ebook sale is one of the oldest means of how to make money with blogging.
As you should have noticed, this trend is still very popular today.
This is probably because books have been a major part of our lives from time immemorial. The internet has heralded a shift from paper books into digital books as we have today.
If you have expertise in your blog subject, then there is no reason why you should not write ebooks.
All you have to do is make sure you write on topics that you are sure people in your niche will be willing to read.
And even if you feel you can’t write a book for whatever reasons, you can use private label-right (PLR) or outsource it, options abound for you.
Remember that you only create your ebook just once and you could earn from such material repeatedly for several years.
Just imagine having a few of them and allowing your blog to expose them to your blog visitors!
Affiliate marketing
Have you heard about affiliate marketing?
If making consistent passive income interests you, then affiliate marketing should interest you as well.
Simply put, affiliate marketing involves you recommending products, (both digital and physical), and services of companies (or individuals) in exchange for a commission.
With companies popping up every day looking for people to help spread the word about their products and services across the world through referral programs, the number of affiliate marketing opportunities abound for you.
Popular examples of affiliate programs include Clickbank, Commission Junction, Impact, and Amazon affiliate just to mention a few.
How to make affiliate commissions is to refer prospective buyers from your blog visitors to the product or service you are promoting. Every successful sale will give you a commission.
Just make sure that you’ve understood the conditions of the affiliate programs that you are signing up for before you begin.
Click Here; Full Beginner Course on Affiliate Marketing
Advertising
Advertising as a means of getting passive income from blogging can be dicey. For instance, most large networks won’t consider your blog for placing ads if you are not getting tons of monthly visitors.
That being said, advertising can be a good way to get a good amount of income from your blog, especially if you are in niches such as fashion, news, or recipes.
These are niches that easily command large page views.
Google Adsense
Google Adsense is a great way to incorporate third-party advertising into your blog. With Google Adsense, you don’t need to have hundreds of thousands of monthly website visitors before you can be approved and start making money.
Anybody can apply and be approved for Google Adsense. As your blog gets more established, you can begin to select your preferred Advertising networks to work with. You can even approach brands directly to place ads on your blog pages.
Online courses
You can also monetize your blog by running online courses(memberships and subscriptions), coaching and consulting, speaking gigs, etc. This might not be the best option for beginner bloggers, but with a little hard work, you can make it happen.
There are several learning management system plugins on WordPress that can help you create and host your courses. And if you prefer, you can also host your courses on established sites such as Udemy and Skillshare.
How To Make Money From Blogging(Beginner Step-By-Step Formula)
So as a beginner, you want to ask;
“how do I also make money from blogging using any of the methods above ?”
Are there any mysterious tools or skills on how blogs make money that successful bloggers are using that I too can adopt?
I do mention every time that when it comes to blogging, the most important skill you must have is what I coin as FCA.
What do I mean by FCA?
- Find out
- Copy
- Apply
FIND OUT what is working for others, COPY their strategies, and APPLY them to your blog. Success is assured!
It’s so simple that its simplicity becomes a problem for many bloggers.
I will do my best to hold you by the hand and give you a step-by-step process on how you too can make money with your blog.
All you need is to understand these easy steps which have been used by numerous successful bloggers. Apply them on your blog, and with a little patience and consistent work, you will be blown away by the results you too will start getting from your blog.
1. Choose a Profitable Blogging Niche
I have seen trainers all over the internet claim how they can help anyone become successful in whatever topic that interests them.
You too might have come across one or two marketers making such claims. Well, when it comes to how to make money with blogging, it doesn’t always work like that.
A bitter truth you must know is that passion and hard work are not enough to give you success as a blogger.
There are few fields of human endeavors where only passion, expertise, or hard work are not enough to guarantee success, blogging is one of them.
One factor that can make or break your passion and hard work is the niche that you are blogging about.
Imagine yourself blogging on a topic that people are not interested in. It won’t matter how hard you work, only you and maybe your best friend will get to see your blog articles.
The point I’m making is that not all blog niches are profitable, except you are just blogging for fun.
For you to be able to make money using the methods I discussed in this post, then you must be certain you are blogging on topics with a large audience who are interested.
This is where it all starts from. Get this wrong, I’m sorry, nothing else will matter.
Take for instance MartBlogger.com, I blog about blogging and I know that bloggers need a lot of tools to succeed.
Let me illustrate it better;
Bloggers need training that can come in several forms. Bloggers need SEO tools, Web Hosting services, email marketing services, themes, plugins, etc.
You should also think about your blog subjects and how your followers will need your help. This can then be presented to them in any of the methods already discussed.
If you don’t do this before you set out, getting to monetize your blog becomes a problem. And even worse if you are blogging topics that people don’t give a damn about.
If you can pick a profitable blog niche, the only problem you will face of course is the competition within that niche, which you can always deal with.
READ ALSO: 9 Best Free Tools For Keyword Research
2 Look for viral topics in your niche, then improve on them
Choosing to blog profitable topics will naturally lead to a new challenge…competition!
If a blog niche is doing well, you should expect that there will be many bloggers in that space all trying to cut their portion of the cheese.
Before now, you might have been told to avoid competitive niches, but that doesn’t sound very wise. There are reasons why no one is blogging those niches with no competition. There are also reasons why people congregate around the more competitive ones.
One thing I want you to take home from this piece is that as a blogger, especially one wanting to know how to make money with blogging, competition isn’t a bad thing, you should only avoid saturated niches.
“Don’t avoid competitive niches, only avoid the saturated ones”
There is a way to make your voice heard in a niche no matter the level of competition.
How do you achieve that? Simple, do what others are doing, I mean writing on topics that they are writing about that are receiving huge page views.
But then, try and do yours better than what is already existing out there.
You can always give a unique voice to your blog in a competitive niche by being an awesome content creator.
3. Hunt For Your Traffic
Without eyeballs on your blog posts, the bulk of your hard work becomes a waste.
This is the reason why in learning how to make money with a blog, you must take the subject of traffic sourcing very importance.
There are tons of traffic sources that you can target as a blogger, some of these traffic sources include:
- Search Engine Optimization(SEO)
- Quora traffic
- Social media traffic
- Pinterest traffic
- Engagement in other blogs
- Youtube traffic etc.
It is worth mentioning at this point that when it comes to discussing traffic sources, two giants stand out from the rest. These are Google traffic(SEO) and Facebook.
The chat below show a general view of traffic sources to websites. Though this data usually vary between website niches and different focus of the blogger.
Mastery of any of these traffic sources will be well-spent energy. You must also understand that where you focus will also depend on the niche topics you are blogging about. For example, a lot of niche topics also do so well on Pinterest.
Some topics do well on Facebook for instance and then some are better with Google search.
You must be able to ask yourself which of these sources will perform better for your blog topic and then focus your energy on that traffic source. One source at a time.
Apart from Facebook and Google, you can also get an appreciable amount of traffic from other sources such as Quora, Pinterest, Reddit, Youtube, and other sources.
But make sure you focus on a traffic source once at a time so that you can measure your result. This will help you to make better decisions on which source is pulling the most eyeballs to your blog posts.
4. Grow Your Email List
If you don’t have an email list, then you are not in business. Of course, I’m referring to digital business here.
Imagine someone just stumbled on one of your blog posts and enjoyed your content, what happens afterward? Maybe go away and never return! That’s exactly what you don’t want to see happen.
If you believe you are dishing out great content on your blog, then you want to make sure you keep reminding people to check up on your blog whenever you publish a new post, this is where email lists come in.
Besides, for every viewer that you allow to leave your blog without getting their contact information, the chances are that you are letting money go.
So make sure you keep building a vibrant email list for your blog. That is where the money is!
5. Copy Effective Strategies, But Be Unique
“Copying” and “being unique” might sound like a contradiction, but allow me to explain my thought.
One easy route to blogging failure is trying excessively to be unique.
No, what you want to focus your energy on are trends that are already popular in your niche. Chances are, if people are engaging with those content, they will do the same with your own.
Now that the issue with copying is settled, you also want to make sure that you bring your uniqueness into play.
While you are trying to establish yourself in a competitive niche, you also want to stand out and bring your unique personality to the fore.
There are different ways to come out from the crowd. But like I already established, the best of these ways is to offer contents that are richer than what already exists.
Always serve your blog visitors with content that is much richer than what already exist
Let your content come out with more explicit details, descriptive videos, explanatory infographics, and relevant images, and create channels through which your audience can give you feedback.
These are some of the ways you can come up with uniqueness even while discussing topics that already exist in your niche.
Conclusion: How To Make Money with Blogging in 2022
Making money from blogging is achievable. I’m doing it, lots of bloggers are doing it so, you too can.
You can easily monetize your blog using strategies such as Affiliate marketing, Advertising, Freelancing, and selling online courses.
You must also copy the blogging lifestyle of other successful bloggers as I have explained in this article.
Stay on it, keep improving, be patient and consistently blog on the right niche. I assure you that before long, you too will boast of a blog that proudly brings you a regular income that you never dreamt of.