Remember back when blogs first started? They were a type of online journal or diary where you could share your stories, experiences, and thoughts with the world. It didn’t take long for bloggers to learn that blogs opened a new door to new income streams.
Stories abound of bloggers making a full-time income (or more) from their blog. This may sound too good to be true, but it’s not. In fact, many bloggers share the details of their income reports to show how much money they’re making and where it’s coming from. But this can be misleading because some new bloggers get the impression that it’s easy to make a six-figure income from blogging. And that’s not painting the whole picture.
The bloggers that make money blogging know the right strategies to use to effectively monetize their blogs. It’s not just about writing great blog posts. The following tips will help.
Ways to make money blogging
When it comes to blogging income, there are two different categories that income falls into—active income and passive income.
Active income is when you trade your time for money. You are “actively” working every time you earn money. A common example of this in the blogging world is coaching. For example, a Health Coach might have a blog to help connect with their audience. The blog plays an important role in helping build the business but the money comes from the coaching itself. In order to make money, the blogger has to trade their time for cash during coaching sessions.
Passive income on the other hand is money that a blogger makes without having to spend their time on it. This could be through ad space or selling products. The blogger might have had to spend time initially on the creation of the product or setting up the ad, but after that, they continue to make money from it even if they’re sleeping.
It’s a great idea to diversify the income streams on your blog. You don’t want all your blog income coming from the same source. Here are some ideas of how you can make money from your blog:
Affiliate income
Many bloggers make money from affiliate income such as Amazon Associates. This is where you include links in your blog posts for products or services sold by another blog or business. If one of your readers clicks the link and makes a purchase, you earn a certain percentage of the sale.
Sell products
Last week we introduced you to one of our bloggers, CutCardStock.blog. This blog shares crafts that can be made and then shows the products they sell that you can buy in order to make the craft yourself.
You can do something similar or create merchandise for your blog that you can sell.
In addition, as an expert in your niche, you can create and sell online courses. This is a great way to build passive income from your blog. Once you have your course created you can continue to sell it over and over again.
Sell Services
Having a blog gives you a great location to highlight and promote the services that you offer. Your blog can be used to educate your target market about your services while helping build authority by showing them you’re the expert.
This can work for any type of service including freelance writing, graphic design, coaching, and the list goes on and on. A blog can help humanize your business brand, which can make it easier for people to connect with you and want to do business with you.
Advertising space
This is one of the first ways that bloggers started to make money and it’s still effective. You can sell ad space on your website. There are many ad companies you can find to work with or you can sell the space on your own. Some of the larger name ad companies include Google Adsense, Infolinks, and Media.net.
Sponsored/promoted posts
A sponsored or promoted post is when a business pays you to publish a post on your website. You’ll typically see these posts with a disclaimer on top that says something like “While this is a sponsored post all of the opinions are my own”. For example, here’s a blogger with a sponsored recipe post from an apple grower.
Other ideas
You can get as creative as you want when it comes to making money from your blog.
Another popular option is to build a membership. When you have grown a community of followers on your blog, it can be a logical next step to form a paid membership that they can join. The membership could give them access to special training or resources.
Key things to remember when monetizing your blog
Some bloggers make it sound really easy to make money blogging. And while it’s completely possible to make a good income from a blog, there are some important things to keep in mind.
If you want to make money blogging, you have to think of your blog like a business. Here are some tips:
- Choose a niche: It’s important to have a specific niche for your blog, especially if you want to make money from it. If you’re writing a little bit about a lot of topics it becomes harder to find an audience. You want to use your blog to show yourself as the expert in an area and a niche helps you achieve that. Make sure you choose a topic that you enjoy writing about and talking about so you don’t get bored.
- Define your target audience: There is a saying in blogging that “if you’re writing for everyone then you’re writing for no one”. Once you have chosen a niche, you want to get specific about who you’re writing for. This will help you to direct your message so you can engage and grow your audience.
- Don’t spread yourself too thin: When you want to make money blogging, it’s easy to try to jump into everything at once. Take your time to implement one strategy at a time. This will help you to start excelling in one area before you start moving on to learn about another.
- Consistency is key: Be careful not to get so focused on the income streams that you forget to keep writing blog posts. Your posts are what is going to keep people coming back to your blog. If you only write one new post and then disappear for weeks, it’s going to be hard to keep people coming to your site. And if you don’t have anyone coming to your blog, your income streams won’t matter.
A final piece of advice for making money blogging
The online world is constantly changing and adapting. To be successful in making money blogging, it’s important that you learn how to change and adapt along with it. Make sure that you’re watching your metrics and making adjustments as needed.
It’s also wise to keep an eye on the current trends. We invite you to continue checking back on our blog. We post weekly and are committed to staying on top of the latest news and trends in the blogging world.
