10 Must-Know Ways to Monetize Your Blog
If you’ve ever thought about starting a blog, you’ve likely seen other blogger’s posts about how they’ve made five figures that month from their blog. The idea of making passive income from a blog and having the freedom to work on what your passionate about each day is a dream many have, but few make. The key to making good money from your blog, besides getting the traffic and creating great content, is to diversify your income streams.
So, how can you monetize your blog? Today, we’ll cover 10 must-know ways to help you start making money from your blog, or increase the amount of money you’re already making. Let’s dive in!
1. Create Digital Products
Creating digital products is one of the best and most lucrative ways to make money from your blog, so we’ll start with it. If you blog in a niche where you show others how you do something, this is a great way to generate an income. You could create and sell:
Courses—I recommend Gumroad as a platform to sell your course on because it is free to use and straightforward in its design. This is where I host my Medium Writing Course.
PDFs
Worksheets
Planners
Images and digital files
2. Use Patreon
If your audience loves your content, why not ask for donations or set up a Patreon account? This can be a great model for bloggers that are in a niche that doesn’t lend itself well to digital products. Many people are happy to pay a few dollars a month to see their favorite creators continue to put out content they love, so don’t be afraid to ask!
3. Write an eBook
While this does technically count in the “sell digital products” category, it is worth talking about separately. If you write content for your blog, you will find it relatively easy to collect that information, organize it, and sell it as an eBook. You’d be surprised, but many people are willing to pay for information that has been organized well and added to here and there.
You can sell the eBook on your site and on other eBook platforms such as Amazon KDP. This is a great way to monetize the information you’ve already created.
Alternatively, write a new book! Try reaching out to your audience via your newsletter and ask them what questions they have or what topics they’d like to see you go into more detail on. If you deliver what people are already asking for, you’ll have buyers ready and waiting for it when you finish.
4. Sell Your Services
Do you blog on something you could get paid to do? Selling services isn’t for everyone, but it is one of the fastest ways to start making good income from what you do online. Think of it this way, if you sell an ebook for $5 online, it’s going to take you 100 sales to make $500. If you charge 1-5 people to do that thing for them, you could make the same money, if not more. If you’re looking to make money soon, this is the best one to get started with.
If you have a blog, there’s almost certainly a service you can provide. Either provide done-for-you services, consulting, or coaching.
5. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing can be extremely lucrative, and is one of the key ways bloggers make money. Affiliate marketing is where you share links to products on your site and get a kickback when a visitor of yours uses that link to purchase the product.
How much money you make will depend on the affiliate network (or business) you’re working with, the product’s price, and whether it’s a one-time purchase or an ongoing fee. Doing affiliate marketing with Amazon may just make you a few cents per purchase, while working directly with a business may make you hundreds of dollars.
Regardless, make sure it’s actually something you believe in and recommend to your audience!
6. Create a Premium Newsletter
Do people absolutely love your insider knowledge on a topic? If you blog on something that is ever-changing, then there’s a good chance there are people in your audience who are ready to part with their money to hear your insights through a newsletter. I use Substack for my own subscription newsletter, and you can read my one year review of the platform to learn more. There are also many other platforms that function as suitable Substack alternatives.
7. Host Events (In-Person or Online)
Hosting events, be it in-person or online, are another great way to generate income. Events you can host include:
Masterminds – facilitate the generation of ideas and help people solve problems and think bigger
Conferences or a summit – organize for multiple experts (generally 5-20 or more) to give talks on various topics that are of interest to your audience and charge for the ticket to attend. You can also upload these behind a paywall after so other people can buy and watch days, weeks, or months later.
A Webinar (charge people to attend your lecture or live event)
8. Sponsored Posts
Sponsored posts are posts you write in return for being paid (or gifted something) by another company. For example, a interior decorating blog may be gifted a sofa in return for writing a sponsored post for them about it. In other circumstances, they may agree to pay you for what you write.
If you are paid directly for your post, make sure you believe in what you tell your audience, and don’t lie about the quality of their products. Always make sure that any deal you make includes your ability to tell your audience your honest thoughts about what they offer. If you’re worried you won’t have anything nice to say, don’t work with them. Remember the money you make from your blog in the future often depends on how much your audience trusts you.
I don’t personally utilize this method of monetization, but it is a major source of revenue for many bloggers!
9. Create YouTube Content
If you create blog content, then there’s a good chance you could easily recreate it for YouTube, or as a podcast (which we’ll touch on in a moment). You don’t have to recreate the wheel here, you can simply use your past blog posts as a rough script, and adlib on top of it as you talk to the camera.
When you’ve met the monetization requirements, you can start earning money through ad revenue for your videos. Alternatively, create a members-only section on YouTube and charge for exclusive video content there. If you decide to create podcasts, simply film yourself as you record, and upload it as a video. Remember, most people have a preferred medium, so someone who reads your blog won’t necessarily watch your videos. If you adlib with additional tips that come to mind as record, they’ll likely be more than happy to hear it all again anyway!
For example, I’ve already written numerous articles about Substack, so it does not take too much additional effort to create YouTube videos explaining this subject.
10. Create a Podcast
Prefer to use your voice than sitting in front of a camera? A podcast is a great way to reach new people, advertise your blog, and other monetization methods on here. You can also charge for ad space on your podcast if you have a large enough listenership. As with YouTube, you can simply repurpose your blog content. Don’t feel as though you need to create completely original content for every new platform. You can also become a guest on other people’s podcasts to help boost your own visibility as a blogger.
How can I maximize the amount of money I make from my blog?
Of course, you can do all the things above, and still not make any money if you don’t have an audience ready to hear from you. So, what can you do to make sure you actually make money from your blog? Here are 6 tips:
Put content first, money second – it’s easy to imagine the good life, where you wake up whenever you want each morning and sit down to write a blog post, but don’t forget that you need to create great content first if you’re going to get people to stick around to read it. Ensure your writing is good, hook your readers, and share tips and tricks that will make your site a resource they want to return to.
Make sure you build your email list – If you’ve started your blog, you will have heard the advice to build your email list, so make sure you’re doing so! You can use your email list to drive your audience back to your blog where you can make money, and you can even monetize your newsletter with some of the techniques listed above, so give your audience a good reason to be on your list.
Utilize social media – where does your audience hang out? Make sure you’re active where they are and drive people back to your site. If you’re about to upload a new post, tell people about it on Instagram. When it goes live, share a link on your Facebook page. Don’t be afraid to tell people what you’ve got going on. Generally, if you’re excited about it, other people will be, too!
Make sure you’re doing SEO – search engines should be one of the core places your traffic is coming from, so make sure you understand SEO and implement it on your site and in your blog posts. This should include Pinterest, too, since it’s a search engine. SEO best practices change relatively frequently, though the core principles stay the same, so find an authority you like and check in with them every quarter to find out about any changes you need to know about.
Keep your audience experience front and center – this somewhat goes with the first point, but you can have incredible content and overlook the audience experience. Think about a site you’ve been to recently that you quickly left. What about the experience didn’t you like? Were there too many ads? Did you find the site difficult to navigate? Was the content just a wall of text? If your site repels readers, you’re going to struggle to make money from your blog.
Be transparent – don’t try to hide monetization. In fact, you’re required to tell your audience when something is an affiliate link nowadays, so it’s just good practice to tell your audience if you make money from something if it’s not obvious. If you’re building a relationship between you and your audience, and they grow to like and trust you, they’ll be more than happy to see you receive some money from a purchase they decided to make on your recommendation.
Monetizing your blog is exciting, but it’s easy to get carried away and think about the numbers rather than the readers. When you put your audiences needs first, and monetize on things you would offer them anyway, you’ll be in the right mindset to really start generating a good income from your blog!
Until next time!
Casey
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You make it sound easy! Thanks
Brilliant advice as always, thanks!