We all have opinions. Whether we agree with the status quo or go against the grain, it’s likely to have a personal response to various topics. Getting paid for those opinions, however, is a different story. There are tons of online resources to get information. If you happen to be more interested in sharing your thoughts, you can look into blogging. There is a lot of time to be devoted to maintaining a quality blog. But don’t worry, you can get paid from your blog experiences.
Making Money From Your Blog
Here are 35 ways to make money from a blog.
1. Sell Your Ad Space
Regardless of your domain provider, there’s a great chance that there will be ad space somewhere on your blog. It could be on the landing page or off to the side but advertisers will pay to be able to promote their materials and services through you.
2. Establish a Strong Platform
People aren’t exactly lining up to just throw money at anything that crosses their path. But if you present valuable, relatable content with consistently high quality, you’re more likely to appeal to your fan-base. Build your reputation on positive experiences with the general public. You’ll find that the more people like you as a person, the more they’ll want to help you succeed.
3. Publish Posts and Reviews for Money
Rather than writing for your own personal blog (though you can still make money off that), team up with an online publisher. The publishers will help find you topics to write, as well as profits to be earned from the writing. If you’re using one space for paid and personal blog posts, understand how to navigate and present this so it doesn’t negatively affect your viewership.
4. Use Affiliate Marketing
When done properly, affiliate marketing can be a great passive way to gain income. You’ll get a profit from any sales that resulted from your blog. Joining an affiliate group will also put you in the mix with other types of publishers and bloggers. Programs like these are set up to partner you with online advertising agencies. They’ll do the work of providing the ad content; all you have to do is write.
5. Ask for Donations
This is probably the easiest of ways to get money for your blogging ventures. Crowd-funding is an extremely popular source of generating income nowadays. However, because it’s completely voluntary, you can’t really depend on this option as a sustainable source.
6. Create a Social Media Presence
Without consistently high traffic coming to your blog, it’s unlikely that you’ll generate a strong income. However, you can use social media to sell yourself and your ideas. Connect with other bloggers or even your fans. You’ll want to use multiple social media outlets in order to have access to a larger potential audience.
7. Use a Light-box or Pop-up Box
This is something we’ve all seen but probably don’t know the name of. When people go to your blog, this is an overlay that can promote either other aspects of your blog or any advertising plug. Oftentimes, this isn’t used to directly sell anything. Additional features to increase site traffic or content sharing, for example a subscription list, are showcased using lightboxes.
8. Write Product Reviews
This works the same as affiliate marketing. It’s better to tailor the products you write about to the other content being listed on your blog. So if you’re normally blogging about cooking, your readers probably won’t be interested in the latest trendy makeups.
9. Create and Sell Merchandise
Much like baseball mascots or pop stars, you can also have your ideas placed on tangible merchandise. You can sell t-shirts or posters with quotes from your blog. There are a variety of websites that offer the chance to create and profit off your creations.
10. Put Together an eBook
Put together a collection of your previously written work or create a new one altogether. You can sell it on various popular online marketplaces for use with e-readers. And if you really want to keep the profits without losing to the service charge, you can sell your book directly off your site.
11. Write Step-by-Step Guides
If you can provide answers via your blog, you can make money writing guides. Usually, these are in list form so that the reader can go through each slowly and follow the directions without getting lost.
12. Join a Blogging Network
By joining together with other bloggers, you’ll get more exposure as people routinely use one source before choosing something specific. The pay scale on this varies, however, based on how the blog networks pay.
13. Offer Personal Consultant Services
You can offer one-on-one time with your readers. This works best if you’ve already gained a large following and are seen as a reliable source of information.
14. Sell Your Skills
If you hold a set of skills that you want to share with others (and get paid to do so), then you can offer these skills through your blog.
15. Be an Online Teacher
By offering training classes, you can get paid for your expertise. Have different sessions that span over time with a limited number of spaces.
16. Throw a Sponsored Party
Hosting parties or events lets you connect with your readers in real life. You can get sponsors who will fund the party because it’s a means of advertising.
17. Try Email Marketing
Through an email subscription, you can sell or recommend products, promote yourself, your blog and any upcoming event and even promote your advertisers’ services.
18. Create a Paid-Only Forum
On your blog, offer a section where you readers can connect with you and others who enjoy your work. The key is to make it exclusively paid-only access.
19. Have a Job Board
Much like selling ad space, a job board allows companies to promote the vacancies in their workforce.
20. Use Surveys
Companies will pay you for the opportunity to ask your readers a few questions about how they feel about the company.
21. Do a Live Workshop
One of the best ways to generate income from your blog is to take your knowledge into a real-time situation. Make this is a paid event where you can sell tickets. This would also be a great time to sell some of your merchandise.
22. Have a Paid Membership Following
Keep some of your more basic blog posts viewable freely to anyone but make the more in-depth posts locked content. Offer things to your paid members that they couldn’t find otherwise.
23. Create and Sell Design Templates
Blogs have to be attractive not only in content but also visually appealing. If you have the talent and know-how to make your own web templates, you can sell them for a profit.
24. Have a Directory
If you want to earn money without doing much, you can offer a paid directory. This can be a list of potential providers that your readers can use. The companies being displayed will pay if you can guarantee high enough site traffic for them to have possible business generated.
25. Have In-Text Ads
Unlike the general ad space being sold on your site, this will put advertisements directly into your body of text. This means they will be a little easier for your reader to see.
26. Text-Link Ads
This is a good way to partner with another company or blogger and promote them (while getting paid) in your work. Use hyperlinks that will direct your readers to the source of your topic.
27. Use PPC
Pay per click (PPC) is a method of generating revenue from just how many times people click on one of your links. It’s easy and the code is provided by your advertiser and you’ll get content-related ads.
28. Audio Advertising
If you’ve ever gone to a site and immediately heard a video playing, that was audio advertising. The turnover rate for this is high and can generate a lot of consumer leads.
29. Offer a Webinar
Much like a workshop, a webinar is a web-based seminar. So you can charge for people to digitally watch you.
30. Have Downloadable Content
Offer the full versions of your materials available for purchase and download.
31. Have a “Hire Me” page
Just like selling your skills, having a page where people can hire you to complete various tasks can help you earn money. Use this section to showcase any previous freelance experiences.
32. Sell Your Site
This may seem like giving up, but there comes a point where either you’ve made enough money to start a new website venture or you’re just never going to make enough money from your blog.
33. Try RSS Advertising
RSS feeds are great because they connect a lot of people. There are a few feed generators that offer the options to include ads in it.
34. Use an Advertising Widget
Much like the weather widget on your phone, this is a dedicated micro-app designed to show ad content.
35. Find the Right Income Stream
While some types of advertising might work for certain blogs, they might not work for you. Try out a variety until you find your best fit.
