Generally, blogs are the product of passionate individuals or groups who want to share their ideas and resources with people at large. Blogs need time, efforts and investments, and over time, it can help you earn passive income. This guide explains the most actionable techniques to make money blogging.
There are multiple ways to promote your blogs and earn passive income through them. However, there’s no trick to do it instantly.
Note: This blog post is part of the “Blogging for Beginners” series.
Here are the 20 effective ways through which you can make money through your blogs.
- Make money blogging by Affiliate Marketing
- Displaying advertisements through Google AdSense
- Displaying advertisements through sponsored advertisements
- Making money through a sponsored blog post
- Writing product reviews
- Restricted content
- Make money blogging: Offer services
- Creating membership-based websites
- Selling physical goods on your blog
- By creating ebooks/digital products
- Through business directories
- By creating a private community forums
- Writing tutorials for your audience
- Make money blogging: ‘Donate’ buttons
- Selling ebooks and online training courses
- Through Discount coupons
1. Earning through Affiliate marketing
One of the most convenient ways to make money through your WordPress blogs is by including affiliate links in your posts.
Affiliate marketing includes writing blogs with “affiliate links”, that are special referral links. When these affiliate links are clicked, you receive a commission.
There are bloggers that write a product review, or comparison articles, and include the affiliate links. Such blogs/articles have double benefits for you. Firstly, your users get new and fresh content to read and secondly when they click the affiliate link, you have a chance to earn commision.
These blogs with affiliate links should be informative and not misleading. Generally, these posts should contain valuable insights for your readers along with the affiliate links.
2. Displaying advertisements through Google AdSense
You can use the different sections of your blog to display advertisements. And to begin with, you can start showing Google AdSense advertisements on your site.
While the traditional advertising process needs you to find sponsors for advertising on your website, Google AdSense is an automated tool to display targetted advertisements.
It automatically displays relevant advertisements in the designated section, based on the stored cookies in the browser. These advertisements are more effective and have better conversions.
Google AdSense is in fact, a simplified way to display advertisements and make money through your blog. Also, it lets you control the type of ads and select the sections of your blog where you want the advertisements to be displayed.
3. Displaying advertisements on your blog
You can go for Google AdSense smart advertisements, or you can opt for the traditional method of displaying advertisements on your site.
You can sell ad spaces on your websites to those who are interested. Generally, any platform or any web design allows placement of advertisements on the areas like sidebars, above the footer area, etc.
So all you need to do is ask for image/code/videos for advertisements. You can charge differently for placing advertisements in different parts of your site. An advertisement in the header can cost more than an advertisement in the sidebar.
This technique works for almost every kind of blog. The only requirement is to find sponsors. Alternately, you can display both, static ad banners as well as Google AdSense banners.
Displaying advertisement banners on your blog is the simplest way to earn through your blog site. Moreover, it is also one of the effortless ways.
4. Making money through a sponsored blog post
Blogging is a great way to promote a service or product. With an in-depth and properly planned article, you can convey your message more effectively.
If your blog is popular enough, you might get requests from such product/service owners to write a blog for them. Or you can approach relevant service/product owners and explain to them the advantages of being featured on your blog.
Make sure that such blogs are not misleading and the information you supply is verified. A sponsored blog post is nothing but paid posts that are written with an intention of converting or diverting users to a specific post or taking a specific action.
5. Writing product reviews
You can make money blogging by posting writing reviews of sponsored products.
Review websites are nothing but advanced blog site with review posts. On your blog, you can write reviews about products/services and get paid by it for the sponsors.
Earning through paid reviews is almost similar to the sponsored blog post, but the approach of writing both posts is quite different. While a sponsored blog post can be anything: a persuasive post to read a blog, buy a book, visit a park, sign up for an account, etc.
The review post is simpler. It simply lists out the features of the subject and your honest opinion on how it can help you solve your problem.
When creating a review post, make sure you provide complete disclosure that the post is a paid review. Even though it is a paid review, you must see that no misleading information is delivered through your blog.
When writing reviews, always choose quality products that are tried and trusted. After all, getting paid for writing a review that looks like a scam to your users will only reduce the credibility of your blog. It can result into loss of traffic and returning users, which eventually is a bigger loss.
6. Make money blogging: Restricted content
When you are sharing exclusive information on your blog and wish to make money by allowing access to the special part of your blog, you can create a blog with restricted content.
Using this money making strategy for a blog, you can make your users pay to access the protected part of your blog. This can be in form of a disabled download button, a login and access section etc.
However, this tactic can only work if you have some exclusive and really useful content for your visitors. It is a method that won’t really work for beginners but can work really well for an established blogger
The best example of such a website is a photographer’s blog/online portfolio where the photographer can talk about his experiences through regular blogging. Now, there is an exclusive documentary shot by him that can be accessed only by the registered users.
7. Offering services through your blog
Your niche blog can be used to write persuasive articles for your readers. These articles can be your tool to redirect your traffic to a service page.
There are many professional writers who run their own blog. The author box contains a link to the hire us section, where they describe the kind of copies they write, etc.
You can simply create a “service page” and provide its link on the menu. The service page contains service descriptions and can have multiple linked pages for each specific service.
The best example of such a blog is the astrology sites for the daily horoscope. They provide a daily horoscope for free, but to get personalized reports based on your birthdate, you will be required to submit a paid request. Once you have made the payment, the personalized horoscope result will be sent to you by email.
Other types of blogs are professional blogs like neilpatel.com. He regularly publishes new and interesting articles on how to enhance the SEO of your blog and make it more effective. However,
8. Creating Membership based websites
If you are going to provide high quality, exclusive content on your blog, you can create membership based websites. Here, you can have exclusive content in form of posts, articles or downloadable documents.
The protected content can be accessed by membership participation. Such membership websites cab be for choirs, health & sports club, academic institute, Alumni Association, and other groups, where certain content is only for the members.
For example: For an educational institute, there can be exclusive study material can only be accessed by members. You can create membership packages and allow the visitors to choose from them.
9. Selling physical goods on your blog
Selling products online has become easier with the advanced eCommerce systems. Integrating eCommerce into your existing blog/website is easier with the modern eCommerce systems. Especially when you are running a WordPress blog, integrating eCommerce features is easier than ever.
All you need to do is to install the WooCommerce plugin and start selling online. On your blog, you can create a separate page for selling products or use WooCommerce sales widget to show the product on a page/post. You must have seen many blogs with an attached eCommerce store.
Your blogs can be a way for content marketing with the purpose to promote your products. The example is a fashion blog with a fashion store section.
10. By creating ebooks/digital products
One of the flourishing business is selling software. It can be different software products like video or music editing software, etc. If you don’t want to sell physical products online and have them shipped, you can start selling downloadable products.
The best example of such a website is an author website, where the author’s blog and write posts, and on the other hand, also sell ebooks on their site. Or an entertainment based website with blogs that also allows registration and
You can write blogs, tutorials and informative articles about this software and use some WordPress plugin like WooCommerce, or Easy digital downloads plugin to sell your digital products.
11. Through business directories
With the internet being the best source of all the information, business directories have become more popular than ever and it can be your best bet to make money blogging. If you have a successful blog with enough traffic and want to give it a boost, you can start a business directory.
Business directories are great for two causes. Firstly, it lets you boost the traffic of your blog and secondly, you can make money through it.
There are multiple WordPress Directory themes that let you create full-fledged directories with multiple money-making features. One of the best ways to make money through your blog site is by allowing paid listing submission.
Online directories are the best way to set up an online business and make money online. They can run parallel to your blog and subsequently help attain more traffic and make money.
12. Creating Private Forums
The Internet is the place in the modern world, that answers almost all the questions. There are online forums and communities where the users can post the questions or answer the questions posted by other members.
Membership to such communities can be paid. The interested visitors can pay the fees and subscribe to the available membership plans. The visitors can choose the plan and become a member of the community.
The best example of such paid online communities is matrimony sites or job board where the recruiters can post their requirements.
The private forums can be for a particular subject like PHP coding, where you can post articles on the subject and involve users within the community. On the advanced level, becoming a member of the forum can require a paid subscription.
However, for such paid subscription, you must keep in mind that the subject should be interesting and exclusive for the users to be interested.
13. Through ‘Donate’ buttons
Alternately, you can just add a donate button to your website for those who would want to fund your blog to keep it going. These blogs for those who entertain their readers, and present them with desirable content. Mostly, the donate buttons are ideal for a non-profit website where the visitors are allowed to donate online.
For example, you are a short story writer and the readers love your fiction stories, they would not want your blog to perish due to lack of resources. Alternately, you can also allow your visitors to make a voluntary donation if you are supporting some cause.
Also. when you are providing your users with free resources like code snippets, free software, free ebooks, etc. you can place a donate button for those who are interested.
14. Selling ebooks and online training courses
This is also one of the most common ways to make money through blogging is by selling ebooks and online courses. If you are running a niche blog, you can collect the resources, combine the curate the content of your blogs and create an ebook.
This ebook can be anything, a manual/tutorial, a collection of poems, a photo album, etc. Ultimately, it should be something that your readers might get interested in.
There are many motivational speakers and counsellers who do this. They have beautiful blogs already in place, but they come up with new ideas and add new resources into the ebook. This ebook can be made available for download at an affordable price.
Your blogs can serve as a medium of promotion for your ebook. You can use the different spaces on your blog website to display banners for your ebooks. If you have a mailing list for your blog, you can also include this information in your newsletter to make the readers aware of your ebook.
Also, if you want to provide online training, you can promote them using your blogs. This typically works when you are an expert in your niche and want to prepare a course for delivering your expertise. With WordPress blogs, integrating additional features into your website is easier.
To start selling courses online, you can use the plugins like LearnDash or Sensei.
15. Make money blogging: Discount coupons
Your blog can be turned into a deals website by writing product reviews with discount codes. Such websites are more likely to attract traffic looking for exclusive deals and discount on the products they wish to buy.
There are blogs that provide you with an exclusive discount code, which can be used to avail a discount on products. You can use affiliate links in your discount & deals post. The visitors looking for a discount on a product are most likely to buy them when they find a deal. Therefore, this strategy works well. You have a higher chance to earn sales commision when your users buy the discounted products recommended through your blogs.
Time to take action now
If you are a new blogger, here is an complete guide on Blogging for beginners. This guide will help you to prepare the groundwork and start off your blog. Over time, you can use the potential of your WordPress website to make money blogging.
All these methods to monetize your blog mentioned here are the basic. These are the most common ways through which you can earn through your blogs. While implementing these tactics, you must keep in mind that it takes time and continued efforts for a blog to be recognized by the search engines and your users.
Also, your monetization tactics will only work when your blogs get enough traffic. Here are the simple things you can do to grow the traffic on your website.
Read: How to promote your blogs?