In the past, a blog took a lot of time and money to set up and maintain. Making money from it was almost out of the question. Stripe didn’t exist, and PayPal had no history.
Those days are gone. Now, it costs almost nothing to set up, maintain, and monetize a blog. Still, not all bloggers make money from their activity.
To monetize a blog, you need a reliable marketing plan, which includes a strategy, a lucrative niche, and valuable content. Here are six ways to start making money.
1. Start Freelance Blogging
Writing for well-known blogs in your niche is a common way of making money from your blog. After all, you probably decided to create a blog because you have knowledge or experience in a given area. You should take advantage of this. Companies are always seeking talented writers who can create content to power their marketing. An expert in the niche is the best person for the job.
Companies are only looking for quality. To start making money, you don’t need a lot of traffic to your blog.
2. Launch a Consulting Business
Consulting or coaching is a monetization strategy many bloggers turn to when they want to generate extra income. They include bloggers who have been successful in selling courses or books. It’s not necessary to have prior experience with books and courses, though.
Coaching and consulting bank on using your experience and skills to help people solve problems. You don’t need a lot of traffic to generate revenue because of the low-volume nature of consulting. The right kind of traffic is more important. You want such from people who are willing to pay for your services.
In return, you create targeted blog posts on subjects your customers are interested in, attend events to gain exposure, and use podcasts to attract listeners.
3. Sell Ebooks
Ebooks are not hard to create and are usually affordable. This makes selling them one of the most effective ways to monetize a blog.
If your ebook sells well, it’s a great way to find out if people are interested in your writing. It will do more than let you monetize your blog.
Visitors to your site will be able to perceive the value you can bring without risk.
An easy way to get your book published is through Amazon Kindle. While you don’t keep all the profit, you have the added benefit of greater exposure, leading to even greater sales volume.
Another great thing is that ebooks aren’t limited to a specific niche. You can write about anything you want. If your blog is about arts and crafts, you can sell a book explaining how to master a certain art or craft.
It’s also possible to reuse content you’ve already published on your blog. Just add a bit of context and more details, and you’re all set.
4. Organize a Virtual Summit
A web conference or virtual summit isn’t the same thing as a webinar. Virtual summits are much more engaging and interactive. Essentially, they are conventions you can attend online with several speakers, a moderator, and Q&A sessions.
Summits are accessible for a limited period of time despite usually being free to attend. The organizer makes money by selling passes that let visitors go back to the material covered when they have time.
5. Take up Affiliate Marketing
This is one of the most common forms of marketing bloggers use to make money. Hence, it should be on every such list.
Much of the internet is powered by affiliate marketing. It accounts for almost 15% of earnings in the digital media industry. In the US, email and affiliate marketing drive an equal number of eCommerce orders.
What is affiliate marketing? You market other businesses’ products and earn a commission on successful sales. If you get 100 people to buy a product and your commission is $5 per sale, you make $500. It’s that simple.
People are drawn to affiliate marketing because of how effortless it seems. All you need is to find a good product and sell it. There are three prerequisites:
- A niche
- An affiliate product
- An audience to promote it to
6. Sell Physical Products
Finally, you monetize your blog by selling physical products directly to customers. Some bloggers start with a few products and eventually add an eCommerce site to the blog.
Sell products directly to members of your audience if you’ve already built one up. These people trust you, and you probably know and care more about them than most retailers and producers.
If you don’t have an audience yet, you can build one by writing about niche-relevant topics.
