Ways to Monetize Your Blog

Starting and monetizing a blog has never been easier than it is today.

Not too long ago, creating a website would’ve cost you thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars to set up and maintain. Monetizing a website was just as difficult. PayPal was in its infancy, Stripe didn’t exist and email marketing was nowhere near as flexible as it is now.

Today however you can start, maintain, and monetize a blog on WordPress with just a few hundred dollars (this can vary based on what you need to do). But just because it’s easier to make money with your blog today, doesn’t mean that most bloggers do.

So how do you go from being an amateur blogger to one of the pros hitting six figures every year?

Well, you need a solid marketing plan, this includes content, a profitable niche, and a great monetization strategy.

Become a Freelance Blogger in Your Niche

One of the easiest ways to make money from your blog is to become a freelance writer for more prominent blogs in your niche.

Charging a fee based on the project itself means you get rewarded for finishing quicker and your clients know how much they’ll pay from the onset.

2. Sell Ebooks to Your Audience

Selling ebooks is one of the most popular ways bloggers choose to monetize their blogs. It’s perfect because it’s relatively easy to create and is usually priced adequately enough that most visitors can buy.

3. Create and Sell Online Courses

Another way to monetize your blog is by selling online courses. What holds most bloggers back from creating their own course is that they think you need to be some sort of expert to teach a course.

4. Start a Coaching/Consulting Business

Sometimes people want more detailed and personalized instructions than a book or course can provide them and so they turn to one on one coaching (or consulting depending on the type of services you offer).

5. Offer a Paid Membership Plan

Businesses with subscription models are becoming increasingly popular, so much so that some people have started calling it the Subscription economy.

Everything from Netflix, web hosting providers and membership sites are part of the subscription economy.

6. Make Money with Display Advertising (Banner Ads)

There’s a lot of hate on display ads in the blogosphere. Most people talk about how it’s a bad monetization strategy because you can’t make anything decent with it.

7. Become an Affiliate Marketer

You can’t have an article about monetizing a blog without mentioning affiliate marketing. It’s one of the most common ways bloggers make money online.

8. Generate Revenue with Sponsored Posts/Reviews

Making money with sponsored post and reviews is one of the least common ways of monetizing a blog, probably because you’ll need to have a lot of traffic and credibility to pull it off.

9. Sell Physical Products to Your Audience

Another way you can monetize your blog is by selling products directly to your audience. Some bloggers even move from selling just a few items to launching full-fledged ecommerce websites alongside the blog.

10. Sell Digital Products to Your Audience

Sometimes the best way to solve the problems your audience have isn’t with a physical product but with software and digital downloads.

11. Launch a Virtual Summit in Your Niche

If you keep up with internet trends, then you’ve probably heard or have even attended virtual summits before.

Keep in mind that virtual summits or web conferences are different from webinars.

12. Accept Donations on Your Blog

You can also monetize your blog by making it possible for your audience to make donations. This works particularly well if you’re a nonprofit.

You can accept donations with WordPress plugins like Give, Charitable, and PayPal Donations.

13. Start a Podcast

Podcasting is exploding right now. According to Paid Insights, as of April 2019, there are over 700,000 active podcasts and over 29 million episodes.

More people are beginning to listen to podcasts all over the world. Here’s the percentage of the population that now listen to podcasts around the globe:

source: https://kinsta.com/blog/how-to-monetize-a-blog/