Blogging doesn’t have to run on passion alone. With time and effort, it has the potential to earn you a more than comfortable income. But what’s the best way to monetize your blog and turn it into a lucrative business?
Your best options will depend on the niche you’re writing for and how many readers your blog reaches. That said, there are a few tried and true methods suited for any blog type and size.
Here are some of the best ways to monetize your blog to get your site traffic working in your favor.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the practice of including links to a third-party product or service on your blog. Anytime a visitor clicks on those links and makes a purchase, the third-party business gives you a cut of the cost.
Including affiliate links in your posts is a great way to monetize your blog, but it’s success relies on a) having a decent number of visitors to your blog and b) promoting products relevant to your niche.
It’s also a good idea to only link to products you’ve personally used and recommend. This keeps your posts from seeming like sales pitches.
Some blogs also note in their footer, or within a disclaimer in their blog posts themselves, that they take part in affiliate marketing. This is so readers don’t feel like they’ve been misled.
Amazon Associates is probably the largest affiliate marketing program at the moment. Click Bank and Link Share are both popular options as well. Some businesses have their own affiliate programs run independently from larger affiliate platforms.
To figure out which programs are likely to perform the best for you, take a look at what other bloggers in your niche are promoting.
Google Adsense
If your blog is self-hosted and gets a substantial number of visitors per month then Google Adsense might be the monetization strategy for you.
Google Adsense works by displaying ads on your site. You then earn money in two ways:
- Pay per number of impressions. For example, you’d earn a dollar amount for every 1,000 page views.
- Pay per click: If a visitor clicks on an Adsense ad then you earn a cut of the ad revenue.
How much you earn with Adsense depends largely on your blog’s traffic. Google Adsense also doesn’t let you join until your blog is established, so consider this method more of a marathon goal than a quick fix.
Once established, Google Adsense is a great way to earn income passively through your blog.
Offer Coaching
Selling your expertise is one of the quickest ways to start making money through your blog. It’s also one of the most versatile.
You can offer to coach in relation to your blog’s niche. For example, if you’re running a writing blog, you can sell your expertise on writing structure, editing, or publishing. If your focus is on web development, then you can offer coaching on freelancing or coding.
Coaching can also be applied to the practice of blogging itself. There are a lot of people looking to break into blogging full time and so offering your expertise and wisdom as an established blogger can be a great way to monetize your blog.
Whichever approach you take, it’s important you sell yourself. You must offer your potential clients a strong value proposition. People need to have a very clear reason to choose your coaching over others in your field.
Coaching is a competitive industry but, done right, can be an amazing source of income.
Sell Online Courses
Blogging positions you as an authority in your field. The question of experience isn’t raised because you have the blog posts behind you to prove you know what you’re talking about. Leveraging that experience to sell online courses in your niche is one of the best ways to start earning money from your posts.
There are a number of third-party online course platforms available. Udemy is an established popular runner, but newer sites like Skillshare and Lynda are also great options.
If you don’t mind the extra time and effort, then selling and running courses through your own website is also an excellent way to keep all your revenue to yourself.
Run a Patreon
If you have a platform of loyal readers then Patreon might just be the monetization method for you.
Patreon is a crowdsourcing platform similar to Kickstarter or GoFundMe. The difference is that Patreon allows your backers to fund your projects on an ongoing basis.
Once you have backers sponsoring you and your blog, you can choose to charge them either once per month or each time you publish a post. Patreon also has its own back-end where you can interact with your patrons and offer them rewards for their involvement.
Run well, Patreon can be one of the best ways to monetize your blog.
Paid Sponsorships
Sponsorships aren’t just for Instagrammers. Sponsored posts are a great way to monetize your blog but they come with a few caveats.
It’s important you label your sponsored posts as sponsored. The FTC cracks down on sponsored articles that are passed off as organic. Your readership is also likely to feel duped if you fail to label such posts clearly.
Google also has their own way of cracking down on unflagged sponsored posts. If found out, they can penalize your own site as well as the site you’re linking to. This means a drop in your search engine ranking which isn’t something to be risked in the blogging sphere.
Approached ethically, sponsored posts can be a great way to earn money from your blog. Just make sure you’re smart about how you include the sponsored content.
Monetize Your Blog For Financial Success
Monetizing your blog needn’t be a pipe dream. Though affiliate marketing, crowdsourcing, and Google Adsense, your blog posts can start pulling their weight immediately. Attracting sponsorships and selling your expertise through online courses or coaching can then take your blog from 50 to 100.
Want to learn the ins and outs of affiliate marketing? Here are 6 qualities of the best affiliate marketing strategies.