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

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

Today however you can start, maintain, and monetize a blog on WordPress with but a few hundred dollars (this tin can vary based on what you demand to do). Only just because it's easier to make coin with your blog today, doesn't hateful that almost bloggers practise.

According to ConvertKit's 2017 state of blogging study, pro bloggers reported an average profit of $138,064 the past year, while amateur bloggers (who made up 86% of those surveyed) made only $nine,497.

This is terrible, peculiarly when you consider that most bloggers commencement a weblog and so they tin be their own boss and quit their deadening 8-to-5 chore.

Why did you start your blog?
Why did you start your blog? (Image source: ConvertKit)

So how practice you go from beingness an amateur blogger to one of the pros hitting six figures every yr?

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

You besides need to need to do some quick math.

When Should Y'all Start to Monetize Your Blog?

In that location's no physical number out there for how much traffic or how large an email list should be to brand money from your blog because that all depends on what you sell and how you lot sell it.

(Suggested reading: How Much Is My Website Worth? and 77 Proven Tactics to Drive Traffic to Your Website).

Notwithstanding, having ii things straightened out first volition assistance you lot a lot:

  1. Become steady traffic: You lot don't need tens of thousands of visitors but at least a g visitors a month means yous're doing something right.
  2. Grow your email list: Again you don't take to aim for annihilation crazy hither. We'll prove you examples of people who had a small list but however used it to their reward.

At present these two things affair, just primarily, monetizing your weblog efficiently is all almost the numbers.

For case, if you need to make $half-dozen,000 from your web log, you can:

  • Sell a $200 product (say a course) to 30 people.
  • Sell a $600 course to 10 people.
  • Get an affiliate partner with brands offer recurring commissions (hit the $6000 mark at your ain pace).
  • Or even accuse $6,000 for consulting with a customer.

Monetization is math, not magic.

This doesn't mean that the cardinal to monetization is simply increasing the prices of what you sell. Rather it means that you should choose a monetization strategy that aligns with where your weblog is right now or where you want it to be in the future.

In this article, nosotros'll bear witness you how you can monetize a weblog and make money online whether y'all get thousands of folio views a month or you're merely starting out.

We're going to show some solid strategies other bloggers have used to generate revenue from their own blogs in various niches and teach you how to do the same with your ain web log.

Monetization is math, not magic. 🧙‍♂️ Simply you need to cull a strategy that aligns with your goals. Click to Tweet

one. Become a Freelance Blogger in Your Niche

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

Call up well-nigh it, you lot probably started your weblog because yous have experience/knowledge in that expanse, then why not use that to your reward?

Businesses are looking for people that can create content to fuel their marketing then who better to create that content than someone that has knowledge in that niche.

Freelance blogger Bamidele Onibalusi used his blog, Writers in Charge, to show his content marketing chops while as well growing his audience. He now makes a total-time income blogging for other businesses.

According to information from Glassdoor, the average freelancer in the United states makes about $40k a yr. Keep in mind that this figure is influenced by your experience level and the niche you write in.

Here's a breakdown of how much y'all tin can earn in different niches according to the Editorial Freelance Association:

What average freelancer makes by niche
What average freelancer author makes past niche (Paradigm source: Contena Community)

Y'all might non be able to charge these rates when you begin, but as you gain more experience and credibility your rates get upwardly. Be careful not to charge as well low in the beginning though.

Charging $10 for an commodity might seem like an like shooting fish in a barrel way to get-go getting clients, only in truth it tin chase quality clients aways as your skills are chosen into question, not to mention charging so little tin drain your motivation to go along.

Since we're on the bailiwick of pricing, it's improve to charge your clients on a per projection basis rather than on an hourly rate since information technology can be hard to determine how long it'll have y'all to complete a task, especially when you're just starting out as a freelancer.

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

According to WriteWorldwide, here's how much you tin can charge per project in your get-go year as a freelance author, without accounting for your niche or previous writing experience.

How much to charge for writing
How much to charge for writing (Image source: Write Worldwide)

The all-time part nigh freelance writing is that y'all don't need a lot of traffic on your web log to start making money, all businesses really intendance about it that you can write bully content.

Jorden Roper, for example, fabricated $5,000 in her quaternary month of existence a freelance author and Jennifer Gregory pulls in about half-dozen figures a twelvemonth from her freelance writing business.

As a freelance blogger, your job is to create written content that attracts visitors to a business's website so some of these visitors tin can convert into customers for the business.

Co-ordinate to Content marketing institute's 2019 report, marketers are set to spend more coin on content creation and l% of the marketers surveyed expect their content marketing upkeep to increase in 2019.

B2B increased spending on content creation
B2B increased spending on content creation (Image source: CMI SlideShare)

If at that place are businesses making money in your niche and and so every bit long every bit these businesses are creating content then you can bet they need writers.

Observe that I mentioned that the business concern has to be making money. Ane of the worst mistakes y'all tin make as a freelance blogger is picking a niche where businesses can't afford to pay you.

For example, writing well-nigh art might be your idea of fun and y'all might have extensive knowledge of it, but how many blogs can pay you regularly to write most that?

The path to profitability as a freelance blogger is finding the right market place to position yourself in.

A quick way to test whether there's coin to be made in your niche is to detect at least ten writers that cover the niche yous want to write in. You tin exercise this by just making a search on LinkedIn with the keywords for your niche.

For case, when I search for individuals with the exact title of "freelance personal finance writer" on LinkedIn I get near 42 results. You could besides do it without quotes for a more wide search which will generate even more results.

Freelance personal finance writer search on LinkedIn
Freelance personal finance writer search on LinkedIn

This is an like shooting fish in a barrel way to validate your niche.

Nosotros've already established that you don't need a lot of traffic to make money as a freelance author only that doesn't mean people will merely observe your blog and rent you.

You have to go out and promote your service.

When yous've created writing samples on your blog and maybe guest posts on other blogs, you tin can start reaching out to businesses you want to write for.

Y'all can also apply freelance marketplaces similar Upwork, SEOclerks and Fiverr. Just while at that place are a few freelance writers that make a lot of coin, like Danny Marguiles who made over $100k a year on Upwork, the majority of freelancer writers on these platforms make very little money.

To avoid the race for the bottom that is freelance marketplaces, yous'll have to do most of the outreach yourself.

How to Find Blogs to Write For

The best manner to find businesses or blogs in your niche to write for is to simply make a Google search for keywords related to that niche and run into what comes up.

Because clearly, the blogs that show up in the get-go few pages of Google are investing a lot in content marketing.

For example, if I was looking for blogs to write for in the fitness niche, making a simple search term like "Fettle weblog" shows me this:

Fitness blog Google search
Fitness web log Google search

Yous can also search for terms related to your niche specifically, for example, in the case of fitness something like "Workout plans":

Workout plans Google search
Workout plans Google search

Now all you take to exercise is contact the blog owners and pitch them your freelance writing service.

Take Advantage of Your Ain Site

Also searching for new writing gigs, you should also take advantage of your own site, you're a writer after all.

Use inbound marketing and SEO to drive people to your site where you can then offer them your writing and blogging services.

Freelance writer, Maddy Osman does this on her freelancing site, The Blogsmith.

Maddy Osman freelance writing prices
Maddy Osman freelance writing prices

2. Sell Ebooks to Your Audience

Selling ebooks is one of the nigh popular ways bloggers choose to monetize their blogs. Information technology's perfect because it's relatively like shooting fish in a barrel to create and is usually priced adequately enough that virtually visitors can purchase.

But ebooks do more than than allow bloggers monetize their blogs quickly. Every bit a blogger selling an ebook can exist the fastest way to test if people are interested in what you're covering enough to pay for it.

Ebooks are also a depression-risk way for your website visitors to judge the value you can bring earlier buying more expensive products.

Contrary to popular belief you don't demand a lot of traffic on your blog to make money with your books. For case, David Oudiette converted the noesis he'd gained building landing pages into a 252 page $39 ebook.

He didn't have a lot of traffic on his blog equally all he did at the time was consulting, merely David was able to generate over $xiii,000 in revenue from his ebook.

The landing page cookbook ebook
The landing page cookbook ebook (Image source: your landing page sucks!)

Here's what David had to practice to sell that many books:

  • He asked his web log subscribers about their landing page, gave them gratuitous tips and then pointed them to his book.
  • He answered questions and gave feedback about landing pages on Quora and Reddit, so pitched his book as an boosted source of information.
  • David too added the book on Product Hunt.
  • Even more impressively, David common cold emailed businesses and gave them gratis feedback on their landing page, he and then answered replies and linked to his book.

Then David didn't have a lot of traffic just he did do a lot of work.

In that location'due south likewise Taylor Pearson who sold over five,000 books in four weeks and in 2015 had made over $60k from only that book. Taylor had just 700 e-mail subscribers at the fourth dimension.

Taylor credits the success of his volume to a few things:

  • Getting fans of his blog to go beta readers during the writing phase.
  • Creating a Facebook group to communicate his book'due south progress with core readers (Read: How to create a Facebook page).
  • Sending the book to everyone on the Facebook group and then they could leave an honest review on Amazon.
  • Keeping everyone on his listing informed most the book'due south progress which makes them more than involved and likely to buy afterwards on.
  • Synchronizing social media letters during and after launch.
  • Sending a personalized email almost his book to every 1 of his Gmail contacts.
  • Doing a giveaway to promote the volume.

The book ended up a bestseller on the Amazon small business section and the rest is history.

The End of Jobs ebook
The Terminate of Jobs ebook (Image source: Amazon)

What'due south great about both of these examples is that they show that with the right marketing and a adept book, you don't need that many subscribers and you certainly don't have to be an proficient writer.

None of these authors published and hoped, instead, they did a lot of work for their books to take off.

Where to Sell Your Ebook

You can so choose to sell your ebook directly on your blog or through platforms like Gumroad or Podia.

Selling your ebook on your ain site can be advantageous, equally you get to go on 100% of the profits. For example, Harsh Agrawal of ShoutMeLoud has an unabridged section of his site defended entirely towards his dissimilar ebooks.

ShoutMeLoud ebooks
ShoutMeLoud ebooks

You tin hands create something like this with the Easy Digital Downloads WordPress plugin.

If you cull to publish your ebook every bit an Amazon Kindle then you tin can only go on 70% of the profits just it comes with the added advantage that the more books you sell the more exposure y'all tin get which leads to even more sales.

Selling ebooks aren't restricted to a detail niche either. There are ebooks on blogging, photography, fettle and annihilation you tin recollect of.

For example, if you had a weblog that taught gardening you can sell an ebook that taught your audience in more detail how to abound their own gardens or a item institute.

You can even repurpose some of the content you've already written on your blog and then add together more detail and context.

How to Make the Book

If you don't accept the time or skill to write a book yourself you lot can hire ghostwriters to do it for you.

You can observe ghostwriters on LinkedIn, Scripted, Upwork and fifty-fifty Fiverr. Continue in mind that, like anything, y'all get what you pay for. More experience ghostwriters volition charge you lot more than beginners.

You can as well create your book comprehend yourself with tools like Canva, Photoshop, and Snappa or you can pay for a service similar 99designs and let a professional do it for you lot.

3. Create and Sell Online Courses

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

But this isn't true, all you need to really teach a course is to know more than the people you're didactics and to be able to present this information in a way that people volition get value from.

Ramit Sethi of IWT makes millions from the courses he creates not considering he's a certified financial planner but because he helps people eliminate problems in their lives.

Finance course
Finance course (Image source: I Will Teach You To Be Rich)

You don't need to exist a certified chef to create a course that teaches people how to cook. If you tin cook better than most people and create your class textile in a fashion that tin can truly teach people how to cook then there's nothing holding you back from creating your grade.

More than people are taking online courses than ever before, the eastward-learning industry is expected to grow to about $325 billion past 2025.

You too don't need to be an influencer like Ramit Sethi to make a decent income from your courses.

There are people similar Joseph Michael who made $40k as a newbie teaching writers how to utilize the popular writing software Scrivener.

Scrivener course
Scrivener course (Image source: Scrivener Coach LLC)

Joseph didn't take thousands of visitors or a gigantic electronic mail list. He sold his class by reaching out to influencers and promoting his form on webinars he spoke on.

How to Come up upwards with Course Ideas

If y'all already have an audition then you simply demand to place a problem that a lot of them share that you tin solve.

Ways to Place Pain Points Your Audience Needs Solved:

  • Send a survey: The fastest style to know what problems people in your audience take is to ask them. You can practice this by sending a simple survey through electronic mail.

Here's an example of Ramit Sethi doing just this in 1 of his emails just before the New year's day:

Email survey
E-mail survey
  • Read weblog comments: Your comment section can exist a treasure trove of ideas if you pay attention to them. And if you don't have that many comments on your blog you lot tin read comments from other blogs in your niche.
Blog comment
Web log comment (Prototype source: Nerd Fitness)

If you don't have an audience, however, so you tin can come up up with course ideas by brainstorming a list of things you lot practice amend than near people.

Here are a few questions to aid you effigy this out:

  • What exercise your friends compliment you on?
  • What do people come to you for advice for?
  • What does anybody around you complain almost, but you lot seem to have no trouble with?
  • What have you learned from your past job?
  • What can you do better than near people y'all know?

For Joseph, he knew how to utilize Scrivener which about people found to exist too complex. In your example, it may exist playing an musical instrument or dressing. As long as you can practise it better than most people you lot can teach information technology to them.

Hosting Your Courses

You lot can choose to host your courses on WordPress with LMS hosting for WordPress, in which case yous'd keep about of the turn a profit from your form but you'd have to set everything on your own or rent a developer to help y'all with it.

There are also tertiary-party platforms you lot can host your courses on. These platforms either accuse a monthly fee or a percentage of sales and in commutation, you get a more professional person platform to host your class on.

WordPress Extension for Your Courses

  • WP Courseware
  • LearnDash
  • LifterLMS
  • LearnPress

Third Party Platforms to Host Your Courses On

  • Podia
  • Teachable
  • Kajabi

4. Start a Coaching/Consulting Concern

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

Coaching or consulting is a monetization strategy that near blog owners who've constitute success in selling books and courses turn to when they desire to create an additional revenue stream.

Information technology's non just for established bloggers nonetheless, consulting can likewise be your monetization strategy from the start.

Coaching similar most of the monetization strategy nosotros've already covered banks on you beingness able to utilise your skills and experience to help people solve problems in their lives.

Brennan Dunn for example, helps businesses sell more than with marketing automation and charges about $9k for a consultation and Nagina Abdullah makes over 100k a year coaching with clients that want to lose weight.

Here'due south a snapshot of Nagina's earning throughout the year:

Consulting revenue
Consulting revenue (Prototype source: Growthlab)

If you're already generating revenue with books and courses, consider offering one on one consultations to people in your audience.

And if you're just getting started, the low volume nature of consulting means that you tin starting time to generate revenue without much traffic.

With consulting it's not just about how much traffic y'all generate, it's more almost getting the correct kind of traffic, i.e people that need your services and tin can afford to pay y'all.

That means writing targeted blog posts on topics your blazon of clients care about, it means speaking on podcast your audience listens to and going to events where they get together so they know about you.

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

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

Subscription economy
Subscription economic system (Image source: Emma)

A membership site is a gated section of your online business where members subscribe either monthly or annually to receive exclusive benefits.

The people in your community share a common interest and the benefits they pay for tin include sectional manufactures, advice, reports, webinars, in-person meetups and just being around like-minded people.

Membership sites not only allow you to reach more people, simply it also gives everyone a sense of community and belonging.

1 thing I honey near membership sites is that everyone's part of a group whether they realize it or not.

That means that if you have an interest in something the globe is so big and the cyberspace so connected that you tin find other people only like you.

For example, Ryan Levesque loved Orchids and knew how to grow them so he created Orchids fabricated piece of cake where he offers his members exclusive content and provides them a platform where they can meet and learn from other Orchid lovers.

Ryan'south members pay $ix.95 every month and since he has i,800 members that put his revenue at a cool $18k a month.

Club
Club (Image source: Orchids Made Like shooting fish in a barrel)

Even better, based on how much you charge for your membership you might not need that much traffic.

Will Hamilton of Fuzzy yellowish assurance teaches lawn tennis players how to upward their game and he one time had 600 members paying him $25 every month. That'due south over $15,000 a calendar month from just 600 people and this was back in 2010.

You lot can create a membership site for almost anything as long as the people you're targeting accept money and are defended.

For example, lawn tennis players put in hours of practice to be practiced and then they're committed and they also spend money on lawn tennis gear, and so they accept coin to spend.

Some other dandy example is golfers. Golfers are willing to put in the endeavour to improve their skill and they likewise spend money on equipment.

Which is probably why Sean Ogle of Breaking Eighty was able to go 150 members to join his golf game membership within 8 months of starting his web log. Breaking Lxxx members pay betwixt $250 to $500 annually.

If you lot have an audience that'south dedicated and already spend money to better then creating a membership site might exist the most profitable affair you can do. You tin hands start making thousands of dollars with only a few hundred members.

When it comes to creating and managing your membership site, you can utilize WordPress plugins or third-party platforms.

Managing Memberships Sites on WordPress

  • Learndash
  • s2Member
  • Memberpress
  • Ultimate Membership Pro

Managing Membership Sites with Tertiary-Political party Tools

  • Uscreen: If you accept mainly video content.
  • Podia
  • Kajabi
  • Wild Apricot

6. Make Coin with Display Advertising (Banner Ads)

There's a lot of detest on brandish ads in the blogosphere. Virtually people talk about how information technology's a bad monetization strategy because y'all tin can't make anything decent with information technology.

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In almost cases, they would be right, but there's a reason display ads are still popular despite all the bad press they get.

The reason is that they work and are the fastest, fifty-fifty if non the nigh assisting mode to showtime monetizing a website.

In fact, some bloggers outset with display ads until they can find more profitable monetization strategies. For some people, those first few dollars give them enough motivation to continue with the web log.

For example, Alborz Fallah of Auto Expert started out monetizing his website when a friend bewitched him to put display ads from Google Adsense on his web log. The ads allowed Alborz to go from making nothing on his web log to earning a steady $200 a day while he kept his full-time job.

Suggested reading: 22 Best AdSense Alternatives to Consider for Your Website in 2019.

Alborz later started working directly with car manufacturers that paid as much as $30,000 for sponsorship deals. All of this wouldn't accept been possible if that friend hadn't convinced him to monetize his blog with Adsense first.

Alborz isn't the only one that'due south found success with display ads either, and so has entrepreneur Jon Dykstra from Fat Stacks.

Here'south a snapshot of Jon'southward Adsense earnings in xxx days.

Revenue from display ads
Revenue from display ads (Prototype source: Say-so Hacker)

Not bad for a poor monetization strategy right?

Jon says the secret to his Adsense success is optimal ad placements, generating a lot of traffic on the numerous sites he owns and picking niches where display ads piece of work.

A great free WordPress plugin yous tin can employ to optimize your ad placements is Ad Inserter. With it, you can hands A/B test your Ads to see which perform meliorate and it fifty-fifty allows you to customize how and where your Ads appear on your website.

For case, if y'all want an advert to prove in your article, but only after the first two paragraphs of content, you can easily do that.

With ads, y'all don't demand a production of your own to sell but y'all do need traffic and the more of it you tin can generate the better you perform.

Information technology might take some fourth dimension for ads to commencement working for yous as you begin to abound your web log and improve your content marketing but eventually, you'll get in that location.

Ads don't even have to be permanent, it tin can just be a temporary way to make money with your blog until y'all can observe ameliorate a way to monetize information technology.

But we are living in the age of ad-blockers and they are affecting your income in a negative way.

7. Become an Affiliate Marketer

Y'all tin't have an article nearly monetizing a weblog without mentioning chapter marketing. It'due south one of the near common ways bloggers make money online.

In fact, chapter marketing powers a lot of the web, approximately 15 percent of the digital media manufacture's revenue comes from affiliate marketing and in the U.Southward affiliate marketing drives as many e-commerce orders every bit electronic mail.

With affiliate marketing, you promote the products of other businesses and get a commission for every sale you aid bring in.

Affiliate marketers work the same way as most salespeople. They help promote and sell a company's product and go a commission when someone buys.

Here's a visual breakdown of how it works:

How affiliate marketing works
How affiliate marketing works (Prototype source: HubSpot)

It's really that simple, say for example your commission is $5 for every sale, and y'all get 200 people to buy that product, you would've have made $1000.

What attracts people to affiliate marketing is that you can just piggyback on a swell product and sell that to your audition.

With Affiliate Marketing You Only Need Three Things

  1. A niche (This seems to be popping upwardly a lot doesn't information technology? 😉).
  2. An chapter product.
  3. And an audience to promote the product to.

You build your audience by writing most topics related to your niche and once yous have an audition, you tin can find products from chapter networks like:

  • Rakuten Marketing
  • Amazon affiliate (brand sure to bank check out the AAWP WordPress plugin)
  • ShareASale
  • eBay Partner Network
  • Clickbank affiliate

We also have an affiliate program hither at Kinsta. Kinsta'due south affiliate plan comes with 10% recurring lifetime commissions and many bloggers are already earning a lot of passive income through information technology.

Affiliate pie

You can also check what affiliate products other blogs in your niche are promoting, and reach out to those businesses yourself.

One thing to go along in listen when monetizing your blog with affiliate marketing is that you should be focused on providing value to your readers and not just pitching products so y'all can make a sale.

Case in signal, the best affiliate marketers don't even come beyond as affiliate marketers.

Take, for example, Ryan Robinson who makes tens of thousands of dollars in affiliate earnings every month through his blog.

Affiliate earnings
Affiliate earnings (Image source: Ryan Robinson)

Ryan creates a lot of valuable content for his readers and pitching products he likes and uses feel like a natural office of that.

Since more and more businesses now have affiliate programs yous can start promoting products no matter what niche you're in.

Making money with sponsored post and reviews is one of the least mutual means of monetizing a web log, probably because you'll demand to take a lot of traffic and credibility to pull it off.

With sponsored posts and reviews, a blogger will charge a company a fee to write most their product on the blog and requite their opinion of it. The product gets exposed to the blogger's audition and the brand gets more exposure and new customers.

When you recollect about influencer marketing, your mind quickly pulls upwardly images of the influencers you know on Instagram and Youtube.

But writing sponsored posts on your blog is influencer marketing and it's exploding correct at present. More than 63% of businesses who already use influencer marketing, plan to increase their spending this year.

Influencer marketing has already experienced tremendous growth and is expected to have a market size of about $vi.five billion in 2019.

Influencer marketing growth
Influencer marketing growth (Paradigm source: Influencer Marketing Hub)

When featuring a production on your blog make sure to requite your honest feedback virtually it because it's not worth losing the trust of your readers for a few bucks.

For example, Michelle Gardner of Making sense of cents, who charges effectually $5,000 per sponsored postal service and makes $10,000 to $twenty,000 a month from sponsored posts writes mainly on products and services she uses herself. That way she tin can ensure that the people in her audience will dearest it too.

Hither's a comment from a product she reviewed on her web log that shows what I mean by this:

High quality review engagement
High-quality review date (Image source: Making Sense of Cents)

As I've mentioned earlier, the only downside to sponsored posts is that yous need a to have a solid online presence before you can get companies to pay you annihilation substantial.

Companies need to know that paying for a sponsored postal service will atomic number 82 to sales to arrive worth the investment. So sponsored posts may not be the all-time monetization system for beginners but are swell for more than established bloggers.

If your weblog is already generating traffic you can start reaching out to businesses in your niche whose products or services you already apply and offering to write a sponsored mail service or review.

For example, if you write about technology you can do sponsored reviews for companies that make smart doorbells, laptops, cameras, etc.

Alexis Schroeder of Fit Financials writes most fitness and personal finance so when she started generating enough traffic she reached out to companies in personal finance and fitness space.

Alexis charges around $750 to $1500 per post and makes an boilerplate of $3000 per month from them alone.

ix. Sell Concrete Products to Your Audience

Another way you lot can monetize your weblog 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.

The popular due east-commerce store Beardbrand, for example, started out as a blog where founder Eric Bandholz wrote about beard preparation before he started selling the beard grooming products Beardbrand is known for today.

Eric turned his bristles blog into a business that's been featured on the New York Times, Inc, Shark Tank and now makes more than than $100k a month.

Beardbrand
Beardbrand (Prototype source: Beardbrand)

Eric isn't the only i to discover that selling products to your audience is an excellent manner to monetize your blog.

Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal makes about $375,000 a year selling trade related to the comic he draws on his weblog.

Both Eric and Matthew tin monetize their blogs this way because they had congenital a dedicated community that truly wanted what they offered.

If you've already built upwards an audience, one of the most assisting fashion to monetize it, is to sell products directly to these people.

They already trust you and since you cater to them yous probably know more about them than almost manufacturers and retailers.

Shari Lott started Spearmint Baby equally a web log for mothers and every bit she grew her online presence she began to larn more about what her audience of mothers wanted.

Shari launched Spearmint Dear, an ecommerce shop that sold baby clothes and in less than v years grew information technology into a business organization that made $1.5M in 2016.

Baby clothes ecommerce site
Babe apparel ecommerce site (Paradigm source: Spearmint LOVE)

If you lot already have an audience, then start paying attention to the problems that they take and come across if yous tin sell something that'll assist them solve it.

10. Sell Digital Products to Your Audition

Sometimes the all-time way to solve the problems your audition accept isn't with a physical production but with software and digital downloads.

Clay Collins got the idea for Leadpages through his weblog where he wrote well-nigh optimizing landing pages. When Clay started giving away landing page templates for gratis he found out that people wanted more from it.

They wanted to customize information technology, integrate it with their tools and fifty-fifty to carry out separate tests and so he created Leadpages. A business that now has $38 million in funding and generates $25 million a year.

If y'all have other skills, beyond just blogging and creating ebooks, don't permit them go to waste. If you lot know how to lawmaking yous can create software or WordPress plugins and and then sell them to your existing audience.

Even if y'all don't know how to lawmaking, y'all tin can e'er rent a developer. Omar Zenhom of Webinar Ninja built the first version of his product with developers he hired from Freelancer.

You lot can even sell digital products similar templates, themes, and even audio recordings to your audience if that will aid them solve a problem they have.

For example, Relaxing White Noise sells audio tracks that aid their listeners relax and autumn asleep. The Luxe Lens sells Lightroom and Photoshop templates to photographers. Photographic camera gear website Shotkit sells Lightroom to earn a committee.

The Luxe Lens
The Luxe Lens

You lot tin can fifty-fifty sell printables similar Jennifer of lifeismessyandbrilliant who sells digital planners and stickers on her blog.

11. Launch a Virtual Summit in Your Niche

If yous keep up with cyberspace trends, so y'all've probably heard or accept fifty-fifty attended virtual summits before.

Go on in mind that virtual summits or spider web conferences are unlike from webinars.

The main distinction is that virtual summits are a lot more than interactive and engaging. They're essentially conferences you tin nourish online with a host, Q&A sessions and multiple speakers covering a specific topic.

At present while the virtual summits themselves are usually gratuitous to attend, yous can merely access them for a limited time period. The organizer makes most of their revenue from selling an "all-admission pass" that allows attendees to go over the briefing fabric someday they want.

Tom Morkers who runs the $100k Launch School superlative made more than $20,000 from selling all access passes after one meridian.

$100k Launch School summit
$100k Launch School pinnacle

Hosts of virtual summits also brand money past selling related products such as membership plans and courses on the topic afterwards the summit is over.

The part most virtual summits that makes them a great monetization strategy even for newbies is that you don't demand to be a well-known blogger to host i. Generally because you lot're pulling credibility by interviewing other influencers in your space.

Jon Schumacher for example only had about 2,000 email subscribers when he launched his Webinar Mastery Meridian.

The top not only resulted in close to $26,000 in sales after just 10 days, only it too added 2,854 subscribers to his electronic mail list.

Virtual summits exist for almost whatever niche you can recollect of. For example, in publishing, there's the Best Seller Superlative that teaches how to write and publish a all-time selling book.

And Membership Site Summit teaches entrepreneurs how to launch and grow a successful membership site.

If y'all've already congenital upwardly an audience fifty-fifty if it'south not large, yous tin can create a virtual summit by partnering with influencers in your space.

The best fashion I know to find influencers you can connect with on any niche is to employ a tool similar Buzzsumo.

All you'd accept to do would be to go to the Buzzsumo abode page and type in your niche keyword.

For instance, if I wanted to hold a virtual height on book publishing, I'd blazon in book publishing in the search box.

Enter keyword in Buzzsumo
Enter a keyword in Buzzsumo

Then make sure to click on the influencers tab:

Buzzsumo influencers
Buzzsumo influencers

Yous tin can and then filter past follower count, reply ratio and any criteria matter to y'all.

When y'all've plant the influencers in your niche it might exist tempting to reach out to them immediately and ask them to speak at your summit but that rarely works.

Instead, y'all want to build a relationship with them slowly before you make any kind of ask. Start by following them on Twitter, then read, comment and make guests posts on their blog. In other words, you want to deliver value before making an ask.

12. Take Donations on Your Blog

You can likewise monetize your blog by making information technology possible for your audience to make donations. This works particularly well if you're a nonprofit.

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

Here's how the Charitable donation plugin looks on the Uganda H2o Project entrada page:

Uganda Water Project
Republic of uganda Water Project

At present while accepting donations are the norm for non-profits they can also be used to monetize blogs that aren't non-profits.

You might exist a little skeptical about how well donations can work for a web log, and then was I until I started reading well-nigh bloggers like Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex who makes $2493 every month from just 410 fans on Patreon. Continue in mind that Scott only blogs role-time and yet has a day job.

Patreon
Scott Alexander is creating blog posts (Image source: Patreon)

There are likewise bloggers like Tim Urban of Wait Simply Why who makes over $12k per month on Patreon lone.

This doesn't mean that any weblog can brand money with donations though.

It took most of the bloggers I mentioned quite a bit of time to kickoff getting substantial income from donations.

That's considering y'all demand to have a really dedicated audience to make donations work for your web log and that requires giving a lot of valuable content for costless first.

For instance, Tim Urban spends betwixt 40 – 80 hours writing and researching to create i of his web log posts, some of which are longer than the ebooks people sell.

That's a lot of work that goes into creating something he'due south giving abroad for gratuitous.

His audience realizes this and loves Tim's work so much that they support him with donations. Tim wouldn't have been able to go donations if he merely churned out 100 words listicles every week.

How to Accept Donations on Your Blog:

So far I've pointed out examples of people accepting donations with the Patreon platform or using WordPress donation plugins.

But which should you utilise? That depends on what matters well-nigh to yous.

Accepting donations on Patreon can be more expensive because they take a 5% fee on your incoming revenue and y'all also accept to pay another 5% in transaction fees.

In return, you have a platform that'll handle all the chargebacks and declined payments. Plus it'due south easy to have donations and manage your donors with minimal try. Patreon even has a WordPress plugin to assistance you lot make money from your blog's content.

If yous choose to use WordPress plugins, on the other hand, you lot'll pay fewer fees but you'll have to do about of the prepare up on your own. You'll also have to handle the transaction errors and create a style to manage donors on your own.

So essentially, if you want to get started every bit apace as possible and don't mind paying extra for an already built platform, Patreon is a bully option. If yous don't mind setting up donations on your own and managing donors yourself, and so WordPress plugins are perfect for you.

thirteen. Start a Podcast

Podcasting is exploding right now. According to Paid Insights, as of Apr 2019, there are over 700,000 agile podcasts and over 29 1000000 episodes.

More than people are beginning to mind to podcasts all over the globe. Here'southward the percentage of the population that now listen to podcasts around the earth:

The State of Podcasting
The Land of Podcasting (Paradigm source: Statista)

If you already take a web log, including a podcast can be a really smart way to go more than traffic past piggybacking off the growth of podcasts.

Podcasts are bang-up especially when you're a newcomer because almost of the established blogs in your niche have more written content than yous practise.

But how many of them have a podcast?

Podcasts are what immune John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur on Burn down to go from making $69,879 in revenue in 2012 to $i,545,090 in 2018.

Entrepreneur on Fire podcast
Entrepreneur on Fire podcast (Fire Nation)

Podcasts are doing then well that fifty-fifty popular bloggers like Noah Kagan and Darren Rowse now have podcasts alongside their regular web log content.

Podcasts don't only assistance you get your name out there and generate more than traffic for your blog. It can also be another source of revenue for your web log.

With a large plenty audience, you can get-go selling sponsorship slots on your podcast to businesses that want to attain the people in your audience.

Andrew Warner from Mixergy generates additional revenue past offering companies a gamble to reach his audience of entrepreneurs through his podcast.

Here are two of his sponsors for an interview he did with the founder of Codementor:

Podcast sponsors
Podcast sponsors (Image source: Mixergy)

Where to Host your Podcast?

To get started with podcasting you'll need a place to host your audio files much like how your website is hosted.

A media host is a company that allows you to store your audio files and then they tin be streamed and downloaded by listeners.

A few media hosts for podcasts include:

  • Libsyn
  • Blubrry
  • Buzzsprout
  • and Transistor

There are also WordPress plugins that can help yous manage and even host your podcasts like Seriously Simple Podcasting, Smart Podcast Role player and Simple Podcast Press.

What You Need to Get-go a Podcast

Most people overestimate what they need to start a podcast and and so never begin, but if you lot already have a computer you'll demand just a few more things to go started, such as:

  • A microphone: Yous can go 1 for every bit little as $10 on Amazon.
  • A headphone: You probably have this already.
  • Audio editing software: There are free options like GarageBand (Mac) or Audacity (Windows).
  • Podcast hosting: You can get plans as low as $12 a month.
  • A Skype or Zoom account: If y'all program to do interviews on your show.

That's information technology, you lot can now first creating episodes for the world to mind to.

Summary

While it'due south easier than ever to start a blog, almost bloggers, as the ConvertKit report shows, have trouble monetizing it. Blogging lone doesn't generate acquirement unless you can find a monetization strategy that works for your web log.

And as most of the examples take proved, y'all don't demand that much traffic or leads to kickoff generating income from your blog. And while your niche does matter, it's not the near important factor that determines if you'll succeed.

We've seen people make money with tennis, beards, golf game, baby clothes, cars, and even orchids.

What yous do demand is an understanding of the numbers needed to make your monetization strategy successful and the determination to work hard to promote what you lot accept to offer.

Reading this is the showtime step, we hope y'all now have the strategies and tools to start making money with your blog.

Have whatever other cracking tips on how to make money from a blog? If so, share them below.


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