6 Ways to Monetize Your Blog

Does your blog stem from a passion or a hobby of yours? If so, you are certainly not alone. But what many bloggers don’t fully understand is how they can use their passion as a way to generate income. That might sound like a dream come true, but for many site owners, it’s an exciting and successful reality.

Before you can begin earning money from your blog, you will want to take the time and effort to build a website that is effective and useful for your readers. Unique content, engagement with users, and thoughtful site design can go a long way in making your blog successful. If you are wondering how to make money with a blog, keep reading for ideas on how to get started.

Blogging Basics

If you want to learn how to monetize a blog, there are a few important factors to keep in mind. Your website’s content needs to drive traffic and encouragement engagement. Without enough readers (and clicks), you will have a difficult time making money from your blog.

Try to focus your blog on a specific niche, and become a leader within that field. Explore ways to bring online readers unique content that they come back to again and again.

In today’s blogging universe, it is actually pretty easy to successfully monetize your blog. As a blogger, this is a fantastic way to continue writing and posting what you love while earning extra income at the same time.

1. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a serious term for a pretty simple concept regarding how to make money with a blog. You know the popular marketing ploy that allows buyers to refer a friend and then get a small discount or gift card in return? Affiliate marketing is this concept, taken online.

With affiliate marketing, you can identify an individual’s or company’s products that may be relevant for your blog readers and link to them on your site. If you have a food blog, this might include a pretty tablecloth, kitchenware, and other useful items for cooking food. Once a user clicks the link and buys the product you are recommending, you get a percentage of the sale. Not only is this a good way to earn income, but it also gives you the opportunity as a blogger to add some variety to your blog and recommend products you love.

2. Online Courses

Online courses are more popular than ever, thanks to the ease with which users can access them. Courses offer your blog visitors to dig deeper into your services and subject matter and expand their knowledge. With Squarespace, you can sell digital products like digital downloads, ebooks, and audio files with ease. Once your customer successfully completes a purchase, they are sent a video link. From there, they can download your online course. This easy-to-use feature makes designing a course a breeze.

Bring your own unique take on your expertise to your online courses. With so much information available online, it is important to offer something that users cannot find elsewhere, especially for free. Save your most premium content for your courses, and charge users to access that precious information.

3. Online Ads

Online ads are perhaps one of the more traditional answers to how to monetize a blog. This is an attractive option for many bloggers because it does not require much effort to maintain- and you likely do not need another thing to worry about.

You will want to be thoughtful about what kinds of ads you run on your blog. After all, if you blog about food and provide recipes, viewers on your site will probably skip over ads about home renovations. With Google AdSense or another ad platform, you can define what industries and categories of ads are relevant to appear on your website.

The Wix editor makes setting up a breeze- just add the AdSense app to your website, verify your site, create your first ad, and activate the code. A few steps and you’re on your way to generating money from ads.

4. Sponsored Posts

Sponsored posts are a fun way to get creative with your website content while earning money at the same time. Seek out brands that align with your business’s values and voice, so the content remains on target and relevant to your website users.

Next, organize the sponsored content over the course of a period of time. For example, in a sponsored blog post, you can show users the value of a product and why you find it so relevant to your daily life. You can do this through a video, photographs, and compelling copy. Hopefully, you will also begin to build strong and lasting partnerships with brands you love and respect.

5. Coaching and Consulting Services

As a blogger, you likely love what you do. But many wonder how they can make money online while still writing and posting about their passion. It is very likely that you can monetize your blog by simply selling your unique knowledge and expertise through online coaching.

One-on-one coaching sessions allow you to reach your readers in a very real, intimate way. Not only does this generate income, but you can also connect with your followers and get to know them on another level. The reviews, feedback, and referral from your online sessions will only help to build your brand’s reputation and online presence.

6. Sell Online

You can monetize your blog by selling your products online easily these days with a website that is customizable and offers an e-commerce platform option. Let’s take the example of a food blog- you can sell holiday menu packets and instructions, an e-cookbook, or even ship your delicious food around the country.

Creating an online store is not the major project it used to be. Site 123 is a free website builder that allows you to create an online store and sell globally. Design your store, pick your items, and you can start to sell your products and make money online.

Don’t forget to promote your blog.

If you plan to monetize your blog, it will come hand in hand with other forms of promotion. Your blog does not exist in a vacuum, so in order to reach more people and generate website views and clicks- you will need to get the word out.

Continually promote your blog on social media channels and encourage people to visit your website. Networking is important when it comes to connecting with individuals and brands that you might be able to partner with. The online landscape changes so often- so it is always a good idea to remain flexible and open to new kinds of opportunities.

Next Steps

Now that you are empowered with the knowledge of how to make money with a blog, you are ready to start making money from your passion. As a blogger, you can make money from what you love doing if you plan and organize your plan of action correctly.  If you are ready to monetize your blog, get started today.