How do bloggers earn from blogging

Almost every blogger who starts out, wants to know if their hobby can be profitable. Is it possible to have a regular income from blogging? In this post, I teach you how to earn from your blog and the different ways that bloggers can monetize their blog.

One of the most common questions I get from bloggers is this:

HI! I have been blogging for XX months/years but don’t make an income from my blog. Can you offer me some tips on how I can get started?

If this is you, read up.

You can start earning from your blog right away. There are many different ways and most of them have nothing to do with your traffic or how long your have been blogging. It all depend on your content and the way you market.

How Do Bloggers Earn From Blogs

Some of the ways bloggers make money from blogging are as follows:

1. Ads:  

Placing ads on your site is the first thing that you should consider as soon as you have at least 15 posts and have been blogging for at least 6 months. Most people think that Adsense is the only way to monetize your blog. That’s not true. In fact, there are quite a number of different  Ad types.

• You can sell your own Ads space. Find people in your niche or brands who are interested in your audience and content. Reach out to them yourself to ask if they are interested. Write a good email giving them your blog’s purpose, the stats, your social media strength and a few reasons how you are a perfect fit for them. Many brands are looking for cheap advertising opportunities. Trust me on this, buying ad space from you is a very good option for them if you have the exact demographics of audience they need.
• You can place ads of affiliate products that you are part of.  I will talk about affiliate products in a while but in short, treat them like a good opportunity to sell those products too!
• Your own products should have a space on your blog too. If you are selling something or have a service to offer, shouldn’t you be advertising your stuff on your blog first? This is another mistake most bloggers do. They head to social media to promote their stuff but I have often seen that their products aren’t talked about or even visible on their blogs as much. Create attractive graphics of your product and place them in the relevant posts or your side bar. Remember: the people who are interested in you and your content are the ones who will want to buy your stuff more.
• Join an Ad network. If you have been blogging for sometime and have good traffic i.e at least 25K page-views per month, consider joining an Ad network. An Ad Network is a company that has experienced staff who will manage the ads on your site. You will be assigned an Ad Manager who will handle your Ads. They will bid for the highest paying ad and post those on your site. To join an ad network you must own your domain name. It doesn’t matter if you are hosted on Blogger or self hosted WordPress – either will work. You must have good quality posts and the traffic the ad network requires. Some ad networks ask for at least 25K while others ask for 60K. If your traffic has been consistent and in that range, good idea to apply. You will get a regular ad income from your blog.

2. Affiliate marketing: 

This is one of the most profitable form of earning money from your blog. Affiliate marketing means that you are selling a product that you did not create but you support them. In return, behind every product you sell, you will earn a percentage.

Whenever I say affiliate marketing, I hear people say ‘Oh… but I am already an Amazon associate. I don’t earn anything from it.‘ Umm… Amazon is not the only affiliate network out there.  Amazon gives you just a tiny percentage anyway…  There are many bloggers and brands  who offer affiliate partnerships too.  I have found that they give out much higher percentage compared to these ‘networks’.

If you know someone who has product that you think is a perfect fit for your audience or you have bought something from someone and they have an affiliate program, reach out to them and enroll.

I will tell you a little secret here, in the past 6 years I have saved lots of money on courses and services by reaching out to the brand or blogger. Some of them give you their product for free in return of reviews and links. They will even offer you 30-50% commission on every product you sell. It is a very profitable partnership, you know? You get the free product + you are always earning from sharing their link.

3. Create your own product or service:

When you have been blogging for a while, if your ‘blogging voice’ is right, you will see that people are considering you as an expert on a certain topic. Create a product or service once you understand what you’re an expert at. Test it out a few times by keeping your selling price low. See what garners the most interest. Create a bigger product and sell that.

Selling your own products is one of the easiest thing to do. Yes, I agree there is a little learning curve to it but once you overcome that, you learn and create more easily. Selling your own stuff gives you confidence and stability.

4. Blog for other people: 

The one thing that I have seen in many bloggers (even the ‘seasoned’ ones), is that they don’t know the power of their own skills.

If I ask you what it is about blogging that you do best, do you have an answer for me? If yes, sell that. Shocked? This is what I meant to say.

Many bloggers don’t realize that they can sell their blogging skills to other bloggers. Some will gladly pay you for it. Writing blog posts, SEO, graphic designing, creating printables, making videos, slideshows, illustrations, technical stuff, social media handling… there are so many things that go into blogging. Nobody has time to do everything. We all want to cut some time somewhere so we can focus on what do best.

What are YOU good at? Sell that. This is called providing Virtual Assistance. There are many more things that VAs do but for now, just remember that you have a skill and people will pay you for it.

5. Sponsored Posts:

I have purposefully placed this earning method at the last. Many bloggers I know, couldn’t wait or cannot wait to get sponsored post. In fact, some even start blogging for the free stuff. Umm… we aren’t talking free stuff here. I mean earning from Sponsored Posts. If you own your domain and have a good DA (domain authority), this is something you should look into.

Sponsored posts are posts that you are paid to write. It could be a review of a product, talking about a brand in an ever green post or an awareness that you are creating about some issue.

Brands, generally pay good money for it. Depending on your Domain Authority, you can expect to be paid as less as $50 (that’s ridiculously low for a blogpost!!)  to 1000s of dollars! For example, someone with a domain authority of 23 can charge $150 or more. That’s just a rough number I am throwing at you to say how much you can earn. It depends on a lot of factors, including your Social Media strength, email list and the quality of your posts but… that’s how much you can expect to earn.

Now, there is one BIG drawback to sponsored posts that many bloggers don’t openly say. Sponsored Posts are very time consuming and hard to write. Brands expect you to really work for the money they are paying you and get them the results. It is really helpful to have a Media Kit and what you’re offering clear upfront with them. When you nail that bit right, Sponsored Posts can be a lot of fun.

6. Social Media: 

If you have a good following on one or two Social media channels, monetize that!

I am sure you are already receiving DMs with people requesting to send you free stuff, DON’T offer to do it for free! Charge them, because trust me, if they are a brand or they are selling their stuff well, they have a budget for advertising. YOU are their advertising. If you have the audience and demographics they require, they will pay you handsomely to get a word out about their product. You can charge as low as $10 to as sensibly high as you like. Of course, the rate you can charge depends on the number of followers you have.

I hope these 7 ways helped you see that there re some easy ways for you to start earning from your blog. Tell me in the comments, what do you think will work for you?

Have doubts? Need to brainstorm ideas that will work for you and your particular blog? Reach out to me… I offer blog consultations!

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