It never fails. Every week, I listen to bloggers in groups or get messages that say the same thing:
“I am not making any money blogging.”
I’ve heard lots of people say that spending time on blogging is a waste of time and you’ll NEVER make any money.
But is that really true?
Sure, we have all heard that the majority of bloggers make about $100 per year. But there is another side of that story:
You can make money blogging. There are countless ways to make it happen.
Lucky for you I have 5 ways that you can use as your roadmap to earning an income with your blog.
Here’s How to Make Money with your Blog in 2018
So, over 6.7 million people blog. Do you know what that means?
There’s a lot of repetitive stuff and mediocre junk on the Internet.
What can you do about it?
Be strategic about how YOU will stand out!
Let’s dig in.
1. Make Money Blogging with Advertising
When starting out, many new blogger gravitate to advertising. It’s simple to get started and if you get some decent traffic, you can make money.
There are a few advertising networks that you can use.
Google Adsense is the most popular.
It’s not easy to get approved and you’ll need to get a ton of traffic coming through to make money.
Let’s do some math. To make $100 a day using Google Adsense, this scenario is based on $1 CPC (cost per click):
$100 equals 100 clicks at $1 per click.
If CTR (click through rate) is 5%, you need 2,000 visitors per day. (100/.05 = 2,000)
That is 60,000 visitors a month.
That’s an example with a high per click payout rate. The truth is you’ll end up with about 20 cents per click. To make that $100 per day, you would need 5 times the number of visitor over and above the example.
There are other advertisers that may be better suited for you.
Infolinks In-Text Advertising
How does 70% revenue share sound to you? In this PPC (pay-per-click) ad model, ads are text that is double-underlined. What’s nice about this ad model is that your website doesn’t end up with images that don’t match your brand.
The in-text links are not intrusive and they are highly relevant to your readers.
Media.net Contextual Ads
Media.net is a Yahoo: Bing Network that has a large array of advertisers. That’s good for you! Their ads will stay relevant to your content due to their innovative algorithm that helps figure out the best keywords based on your audience.
They offer a number of different ad types to choose from too!
The best part?
Media.net has dedicated account reps who can work with you.
Chitika Online Ad Network
Chitika has been around since 2003 and is the second largest ad network of its kind. Serving up contextual ads, Chitika also has a CPC program. They also support payouts to over 200 countries!
You can see that there are other alternatives to Google Adsense. Be sure to check them out.
2. Make Money with Affiliate Marketing
Imagine if you could earn a commission by promoting other people’s products?
You can with affiliate marketing!
This method is how I have and continue to make the majority of my income. It’s an effective way to make recommendation to your audience.
I like it better than ads because you get to choose products that are congruent with your content and your audience interests.
That’s where the power is!
My most successful affiliate marketing efforts have been with blog posts that I wrote with a purpose. That is: find a great product that offers an amazing commission, then write a post that aligns with the product and audience needs.
Be very selective about the affiliate programs you participate in and the products that you offer.
Take it from Jason Stone of Millionaire Mentor. He generated $7 Million in retail revenue from affiliate marketing during June 2016 to June 2017.
How did he do it?
He promotes products that are in line with his personal brand and niche.
Learn the beginning steps to get started in my recent post about Affiliate Marketing for Beginners.
Video: Ways to Make Money Blogging
3. Sell your Own Services to Make Money with your Blog
What is your expertise? Surely there is something that you excel at!
If you can provide a service that you market through your blog, you can make money!
You can coach, design, or be helpful in another way. I even know someone who promotes birthing methods through her blog.
If you have a phone, email, video chat and other ways to communicate with people, you can make it work for you.
There are tons of services you can offer.
But make sure you are proficient at it before you jump in. I’ve seen too many bloggers offer services for things they are truly not an expert of or even too knowledgeable about.
My first clue is: they ask questions about how to do these things in a group, but are offering that as a service on their site.
Here’s a list of ideas for you. Which one of these resonates with you? What can you add to this list?
- Editing and proof reading
- Pinterest image creator (I need this, bad!)
- Content writer
- Social media manager
- Ebook creator
- Virtual tutor
- Coaching for something you are an expert at!
- Photographer
- Setup websites
I’m sure there are many other services you can think of to offer on your site!
4. Create and Sell your own handmade products
There are lots of cool ways you can use your knowledge to create your own products. These can be digital products or physical products.
Either way, you can sell them through your blog.
For example if you are great at creating hand crafted jewelry, you can create offers on your blog and sell through etsy.
I love success stories and Coralie Reiter has one! She got started when she took a bunch of different colored thread and started wrapping it by hand. The result was colorful, unique textile jewelry which she now sells online.
Here’s a few ideas to get your started:
- Author a book and make it available for sale on Amazon. You can use CreateSpace to create your book. They are a self-publishing company owned by Amazon.
- Can you teach something and offer real value to your readers? Create a video training series. Use an online course platform like Thinkific to distribute to your audience.
- Create downloadable graphic designs and printables that you can sell to individuals or companies like iStockPhotos.com.
- If you are the creative type, you can design apparel and accessories and sell it through an online company like CafePress.com.
5. Create YouTube Videos
Did you know that YouTube advertising pays you for video views? If you have the ability to bring in an audience, you can definitely monetize with videos.
The good news?
You can repurpose existing blog content into a YouTube video. Then you embed that video into the blog post to start building your YouTube audience and getting more engagement on your blog posts.
What could be better than a traffic and monetization twofer?
It takes a lot of view to make it happen. Average YouTube revenue per 1,000 views is about $6. What I love about it is that after you create, upload and optimize your video, you can forget about it!
I’ve made tons of videos about a variety of topics and they all bring in a little bit of money each month. All those little bits of money add up over time.
Final Thoughts
The Internet has provide endless opportunities to make money online with your blog. I’ve given you five ideas to get cracking on.
Which of these resonated with you? Let me know in the comments!
Leave a Reply