How to Monetize Blogging (The Right Way)

If you are new to blogging, or even if you have been doing so for awhile and haven’t made any money, you may be wondering how you can actually generate revenue from writing articles for people.

There are several ways that you can monetize blogging, though not all ways are created equal.

And even when you have monetization set up on your blog, you may be getting pennies for your efforts compared to other bloggers, depending on the methods you are using.

In this article we will not only discuss ways to make money blogging, but what the right ways are to do so if you really want to make a living behind the keyboard.

How Do Bloggers Get Paid?

There are many ways that you can make money from your blog.

It’s usually best to choose a specific niche and focus to help build a specific audience that will be really interested in what you have to say, and to keep them coming back for more content.

Once you have your niche, there are several ways that you can make money with your site.

Google Ads

The first place the new bloggers usually go in order to monetize their blog is Google Adsense.

Here you grab a quick snippet of code and place it within your site content.

Google will serve your visitors an ad that is related to them, and you get money per view and per click.

Views barely get you any money per 1000 views (CPM), and you usually don’t get a ton per click.

These ads are usually pretty intrusive to your readers’ experience on your site, and if you are lucky enough to get a click, your reader will be directed away from your website. Not the best scenario.

Direct Ads

The next step up from placing Google Ads on your website is to broker your own deals with companies and have them pay you directly for ad placement on your website.

If you are new to blogging this will be hard for you since you haven’t built a network of relationships and likely don’t have much traffic to help drive demand for people to actually want to pay you to be on your site.

Brokering deals can be difficult, and you will also need to have infrastructure in place to track ad performance (views and clicks) for your advertisers so you can show them their Return on Investment (ROI) for buying ads with you.

Sponsored Content

If you build up a website that has good authority and ranking power, or you have other means to drive massive traffic to your site, brands may pay you for sponsored content.

Either they will send you an article to post on your website, or pay you to create content for your website that helps promote their product and helps drive traffic to whatever they are promoting.

All content like this must be clearly marked (at least in the United States) that you are being paid to put it there, so it loses a little bit of luster to readers when they see it’s paid content.

It is especially good to get sponsored content if you are also an affiliate marketer for that company, because not only are you getting paid to create the content, you will get paid for future sales made through clicks on your links.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is my go-to monetization for my blog and what I recommend for all beginners.

Essentially you make an agreement with a company to promote their product on your blog and if people click links on your page, a special ID is added to the link and you get credit for trials or paid signups, depending on the program.

You can make money by writing reviews about the product, discussing topics related to the product and showing people the product as a solution to their problem, or better yet by creating your own training or products and rolling the affiliate program in with it as part of your solution.

Affiliate marketing is great if you are just starting out, since you can sell other people’s stuff without needing a product of your own. It’s also great for seasoned marketers as a supplemental income to use for other projects.

Check out the free Affiliate Marketing Bootcamp if you want to learn more about how to monetize blogging this way.

Make a Private Community

If you are an expert at something, a celebrity, or have really exclusive and valuable information that will help people, you may be able to make some of your content protected and charge people to access it.

This is good for people who have already made a name for themselves on another platform, such as being a YouTube star or a popular podcaster. Your existing fans will want more access to you, and you can do that through your blog with exclusive content people can pay for.

You will need some kind of infrastructure on your website that can charge people monthly and also lock content so only paid members can see it.

Dropshipping

If you want to run eCommerce on your site but don’t have any products, dropshipping may be for you.

You basically list things for sale on your website without ever owning the item.

When someone buys, you order from the supplier’s website, and ship the item directly to the customer who bought from you. You never touch the item so you don’t need inventory, and you keep the markup as profit.

Blogging is a great way to talk about items and subjects related to the use of what you are selling, and can help get people to your website where you can sell them and drop ship to them.

Selling Your Own Products or Services

If you are a business that already sells a product or service, blogging is a great way to answer questions that your audience has and get them to know, like, and trust you.

If you are a blogger that needs something to sell, you can always come up with your own products, services, or courses to sell on your website.

You can provide coaching and consulting services, or even sell your own ebook.

Whatever the case, you are in control of this type of monetization because it is made by you.

Sell Your Blog

If you end up having a knack for making great blog posts and driving traffic, then there is always the option to create and grow blogs just to sell them.

You can use a marketplace like Flippa to list your blog for sale.

Please note that websites are usually sold as a multiple of the monthly income the website generates, so you would do well to monetize it and make sure it has good, steady income before going through the process of selling.

How Much Traffic Equals Money?

The amount of traffic that your blog is getting doesn’t directly correlate to the amount of money you will get.

Sorry.

It more depends on the quality of the traffic you get and what you are offering to your audience.

You can get 1,000 visitors a month to your blog and make $1,000,000 a year if you are selling offers that lead to high-ticket sales on the back-end of your value ladder.

You can also get 100,000 visitors to your blog every month and barely make anything if you are simply offering a $20 affiliate offer from Amazon that nets you $2 per sale. Especially if you don’t have a back-end in place to make more money with additional offers, or don’t work to build your email list.

Traffic doesn’t equal money, but I made a free guide to help you get traffic and give it your best shot to structure your writing in such a way to make money from your blog.

Do Bloggers Make a Lot of Money?

There are a lot of variables that go into how much money bloggers make.

It really depends on what niche you are in, how you are monetizing your blog, and what amount and type of traffic you are able to drive.

According to Glassdoor, the average blogger makes $33,074 per year starting out.

While this is a nice statistic to know, I wouldn’t count on that happening because it all depends on how much effort you put in.

If you blog daily, do your keyword research, have a good monetization strategy, and publish multiple, really helpful posts every week, then you have a good chance of making a living at blogging. You could even make a lot more than that amount if you are good at building your audience and helping people.

But if you are blogging part-time, don’t put any thought or effort into what your audience wants or how you are going to sell to them, only putting out a post every week or two, you likely are going to get very discouraged by the lack of revenue you are generating.

Being a blogger isn’t as easy of a lifestyle as you would want it to be, but if you do it right you can have many freedoms that you wouldn’t otherwise have working a normal 9 to 5 job.

The takeaway here is: Effort + Knowledge = Revenue.

How Long Until My First $500 Blogging?

It’s hard to imagine you would make $500 in your first few months blogging.

Unless you already have a following from another source, you likely are going to have to start from scratch in building up your website, getting Google to like you, and gaining a following.

There is also a lot to be said about your monetization strategy for your blog.

If your plan is to make $500 via Google ads on your site, it’s not likely going to happen for many months or a year. You need a ton of traffic for Google AdSense to be worth it, and good, organic traffic takes time.

On the other hand if you have an affiliate program that pays you 40% of front end sales and then 20% of everything that person buys on the back-end, with the possibility of recurring monthly payments, you will reach your first milestone of $500 a lot faster.

Sorry there is no hard and fast answer with this. It all just depends on your knowledge and how much effort you want to put into it.

And also how long it takes Google to deem your site and content worthy enough to rank where people can see it.

How Soon Should I Monetize?

Some bloggers out there say to build your following before you monetize.

That’s not my view on it.

If you are going to be blogging for the long-haul you should start monetizing your site immediately.

If you don’t have any method to monetize, start with Google Ads.

Quickly start applying for related affiliate programs, and then start linking to these products within your articles.

Then move into creating your own products and services to offer your audience.

People are clicking on your article and reading what you wrote to find a solution.

It doesn’t make much sense not to have something for them there to buy to help solve their problem just because you don’t want to seem salesy.

It’s almost a disservice not to sell them something that will help.

Start monetization the minute you write your first article.

Is Blogging Worth It?

Blogging is very rewarding on many levels.

It is awesome to be able to share your knowledge with the world and become the center of a community of like-minded individuals.

That said it does take a lot of work and dedication.

In order to be competitive with your blog you need to have a full-focused plan for monetization and content creation.

Blogging is competitive, as is SEO. Other companies have teams of writers, or even outsource the writing so they can produce content and grow their blog really quickly.

You have to be dedicated to your blog and your subject. You also have to pick a topic you won’t burnout on and that has market demand.

Blogging is very rewarding if you do it right.

How NOT To Monetize Your Blog

There are several things you should avoid when monetizing your blog.

First, take it easy on the ads.

If you plaster your website with advertisements, no one is going to want to read your content.

I would also avoid charging people just to read your content.

Nothing drives me more crazy than clicking on a news article only to find that I have to subscribe to the website to even read the content.

Nothing except not being able to read an article because of a bad UX on the website. You know the sites I’m talking about. You can’t even read the content because of all the popups and moving pieces.

Don’t be the blogger that has a ton of popup ads or cover ads that take up all the space above the fold until the user scrolls down past them.

These are very distracting and will ruin your reader’s experience.

Lastly, I would say a goal to strive for in monetization is to not have another companies ads on your blog sidebar or site header.

There are better ways to monetize.

The Best Way to Monetize Your Blog

I am very guilty of still have other people’s offers in my sidebar, but know that it’s important to build your own products and your own materials to help your audience, and then sell your affiliate offers as part of the solution you provide.

This is the best way to monetize your blog and help your audience while building your brand and your expert status in your business.

Your job isn’t to hock software or retail deals.

Your job is to really get to know your target market, what their problems are, and devise ways to fix them.

You do this through your content. Through your products. Your courses. Your affiliate offers.

You can start with ads, but make sure to have a plan to move away from that into more lucrative and helpful means of monetizing your blog.

And if you want my guide on how to turn traffic into dollars, be sure to check out Make 100k Count where I discuss steps you need to take to turn a theoretical 100,000 blog visitors into revenue for your business.