Ten Ways To Make Money from Your Blog

Written by Doreen Dilger, The Home Based Business Coach

You’ve started your blog, you’re starting to get some traffic, and now you want to finally monetize it. After all, in order to have a real business you have to bring in some money. Thankfully, there are many ways in which you can monetize your blog to start earning an income. Here's how.

1. Affiliate Marketing – Many business owners have products, software and services in which they will pay a percent of sales to people who promote their products. They typically ask you to sign up, provide some information so that they can pay you, and then provide you with some tools to promote the product such as HTML code, images, and even content. You’ll place the code on your blog and other online real estate to promote the affiliate products.

2. Sell Your Own Products – If you know your audience well enough, you have likely identified some problems that need to be solved. If you can create a product that provides solutions to them, then you can market that product via your blog. Great ideas are apps, information products, eBooks, and reports.

3. Sell Your Services – If you’ve managed to create a blog that has a lot of interest, views, followers and fans and you understand writing, content, SEO and online marketing, you can offer to act as a consultant to others who want to do the same thing. You’ve got the recipe, and you’re the magic ingredient to help others experience the success that you have. 

4. Pay-Per-Click Advertising – Most people display Google Ads on their blog posts when appropriate to help bring in some extra money. It’s easy to sign up for Google AdSense, and it’s easy to earn money from the ads delivered based on the content you have on your blog, provided that you follow the rules and create a very niche-oriented SEO-oriented blog.

5. Direct Display Ads – You can avoid ad services and simply sell ads directly to others right off your blog. There are numerous plugins for WordPress that can help you deliver ads that people pay you for. This option works best for higher-ranking blogs and in situations where you’re not worried about your competition placing an advertisement. 

WordPress Plugins link - https://wordpress.org/plugins/adspace-platform/

6. Business Resource Directory – Install a business directory on your blog where others can enter their product and/or services on the directory for a small fee. For example, if you have a blog that offers support to work-at-home moms or virtual assistants, you could provide a directory where they can be listed or where you list products and services that will help them.

Business Directory link - http://wordpress.org/plugins/business-directory-plugin/
 
7. Sponsored Posts – As long as you’ve matched the brands you’ll promote with your audience and the information you provide is true, original, and unique, nothing is wrong with offering a sponsored blog post service. It is important that both parties realize that you will always clearly inform your audience the blog posts are sponsored. You can do sponsored giveaways, and so much more.

8. Sponsored Reviews – Once your blog is established, it is more than likely people will start wanting you to review their products and/or services and they’ll be willing to pay for it. There is nothing wrong with doing this as long as you are upfront that you will be honest about your review, and that you will also let your audience know that someone paid you to do the review. 

Many sponsored reviews include letting the audience in on the behind-the-scenes experience, such as receiving a free trip to Disney for the family and then blogging about the experience with an honest review of every aspect of the trip.

9. Start a Pay Per View Premium Blog – Do you offer expert advice on an important topic where people might be willing to pay for answers? There is no reason why you should give away your advice for free. You can start a pay per view premium area of your blog where people pay for specialized access to your premium content and even access to you such as a monthly teleconference, or a special Q & A session. And yes, there is a plugin to allow pay per view content if you use WordPress.

10. Ask for Donations - PayPal offers the code to add an easy donation button to your blog. Many bloggers use the donate button and make a good living on that model. Even app makers often work from donations only. Some people have found they earn more money if people are allowed to just donate what they feel is fair. 

PayPal donation code link - https://wordpress.org/plugins/paypal-donations/

Regardless of which ways you choose to monetize your blog, it’s imperative that you understand who your audience is, what your point of view is, and how to combine the two in order to provide solutions to your audience that they are willing to pay money for. By doing so, you can earn a living from blogging.

Did you like this post?  Was it helpful?  If you have a question or a comment please let me know.   You can put them in the feed with my blog post or email them directly to me at doreen@doreendilger.com.   You’re feedback would be greatly appreciated!