How to Make Money by Blogging

Thousands of bloggers make money online by blogging and it's a hot topic of discussions today. We all will agree that today most of the new bloggers start a blog with the prime intention of making money after hearing success stories of other bloggers. But the question remains unanswered. How to make money by blogging?

Monetizing your blog through ad channels, referral programs, and affiliate programs are some of the ways to make money online. In this blog post, we will see a few more ways of making money by blogging. But, is that so easy? No, it isn't.

Blog traffic and monetization

In today's time if and only if our blog has a significant amount of traffic coming in regularly, then only we will be able to see the benefits of monetizing a blog. Only huge blog traffic can help you to sell web services or products through advertising. 

Now there are plenty of bloggers who will advise writing blog articles frequently and wait for years to make money by blogging. Well, that could be true but not necessarily has to be true in all cases.

I started this blog in mid-2017, tried deliberately to generate traffic but was disappointed to see no traffic coming in. Demoralized by this I didn't publish any new content in the coming time. For the next year, I more focused on updating the content and getting more views on the existing blog posts. 

Eventually, the efforts paid off. A few blog posts started to show up in the first 10 results for desired keywords. I applied the same strategy to all blog posts and traffic for these posts is also improving slowly. With that positive change monetization programs also have taken a boost.

To make ads work effectively on our blog, we must add good quality content. I have written a separate article with plenty of useful tips on how to write a perfect blog post. I am sure these tips will come in handy to you too. Our work doesn't end there, these articles need to be updated frequently to get more traffic.

Once you have regular traffic coming into your blog, the next process is to sell services or products to this traffic by monetizing the blog. This could be through affiliate programs, ads, paid reviews, etc.

Let us have a look at all the possible methods through which we can monetize our blog and make money by blogging.

I have divided the monetization methods broadly into two categories:

I. Basic methods of making money by blogging:

1. PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising

In pay-per-click advertising, an advertiser pays to the blog owner when a displayed ad is clicked by the visitor. Pay-per-click advertising is also known by the term cost-per-click.

A blog owner isn't paid until a user clicks on the ad. In other words, you will not earn money with your blog for displaying ads, but those ads have to be clicked by visitors. This advertising method is slower and only works when you have a good amount of traffic to a blog. 

2. CPM (Cost per thousand impressions) advertising

Cost per thousand impressions as the term itself suggests that a blogger gets paid for a thousand impressions of an ad from a blog page. An impression is nothing but a single occurrence of an ad on a web page.

This type of advertising works well for blogs having higher or mid-range traffic.

So if a blogger charges $1 for 1000 impressions, he will receive $1 on completion of 1000 views of an ad. Amazon CPM is an example of CPM advertising.

3. Affiliate marketing (most used method to make money by blogging)

Affiliate marketing is a bit different from the above two methods we discussed. This type of advertising has a huge potential to make money online. Most of the renowned bloggers use this method as a primary source to make money by blogging.

In affiliate marketing, a blogger displays an ad or link to sell a product or service from the advertiser's website. On a successful sale of a service, a blog owner receives a certain share of the sale as revenue.

Affiliate marketing ads could be successful if you have good authority over the audience. Since the audience has trust in you, they are more convinced, which helps to sell the services/products.

4. Donations

Well, this is a bit grey area and this method may work and may not work in some cases. It depends on the blog traffic and overall goodwill of your blog. If we have leadership quality and good bonding with the reader's donations ads might work as well.

So usually a blogger places a PayPal or nowadays a UPI link and asks readers to donate the blog owner. Of course, the approach has to be humble, your blog must add value to the readers and you must have a good relationship with the readers.

5. Blog Selling

You might have heard about the selling of the online businesses to a third party and earn revenue through it. The best example would be that of YouTube. It was created by three former employees of PayPal. A year later it was bought by Google in the year 2006 for US$1.65 billion.

But making money by selling a blog isn't that simple. Someone would buy your blog only if they feel it has the potential and it would be beneficial for them in the future. So, for it, you will have to work on making it popular and earn goodwill for the same.

Many bloggers prefer to work on the methods as this to make money by blogging in a short time. They create a blog, work on it to make it a brand, and then they sell it for money.

II. Advance methods to make money by blogging:

1. Writing a sponsored blog post or a review

Positive traffic flow to your blog brings all new channels of opportunities that can help you to make money by blogging. Writing a detailed and factual review is one of these opportunities.

A sponsored blog post or a review can convert your blog visitors from normal readers to a consumer.

Additionally, you can generate revenue through the lead you just converted. This is quite similar to affiliate marketing. But within this case, you write an entire blog post or review to make the sale. Though to earn readers trust a review must be unbiased and based on the true facts.

2. Paid membership service

A paid membership service may include exclusive web pages that are password protected and available to members only. It could also be a premium series of emails sent to the members only.

If your blog is about providing solutions to the problems of the readers, a paid membership service might work just well in the course. You may think of providing exclusive solutions to the reader's problem which are scarcely available in the market.

Two key points to remember while providing paid membership service are:

• Your service has to be superbly qualitative, and users must feel it valued for the money they are paying.
• There has to be regularity as to how often a visitor will be able to use the service in pre-decided time.

3. Sell eBooks, products or services

Selling eBooks, products, or services that are relevant to your blog content may also generate revenue for you.

In this matter, a WordPress like a platform helps a lot to set up space for selling eBooks, digital services, and even physical products. Various plugins make your job painless and assist you in the selling process.

4. Event marketing and making money by using a blog

Event marketing is nothing but promoting products, services, or brands through personal interactions with visitors. It could be in the form of a webinar or a live workshop.

Event marketing helps advertisers directly connect with their end-user, it enables smooth flow of interaction, question, and answers are exchanged in real-time.

Arranging such events through your blog not only creates revenue channels but increases chances of getting larger exposure to your blog on the internet.

Conclusion:

The basic methods to make money by blogging are PPC advertising, CPM advertising, affiliate programs, donations, and blog selling. These are widely used methods and may generate the least income as compared to advanced methods.

The advanced methods of making money by blogging include writing sponsored reviews, paid membership services, selling products or services, and event marketing.

The advanced methods of making money by blogging may require specific setup on your blog to sell the services or products. The earnings earned through these methods is higher as compared to the basic methods listed above.

If you think there are more ways to make money by blogging, then let me know through your comments. Let us know how was your experience reading this blog post.

Check out my new blog post on Top 5 Advertising Programs to Earn Money from Your Blog. Support me through your comments, shares, and likes. Thanks!