Is it possible to make money blogging? That’s a question that many people are asking themselves.
You might be among those looking for an extra boost in income or you want to get out of the day-to-day grind of your job. Blogging offers a lot of opportunities to make money online.
Take a look at these 11 creative ways you can monetize your blog and make a killing online.
1. Advertising Revenue
Advertising revenue is the easiest way to make money with your blog. There are a number of ad networks like Mediavine, AdSense, and BlogHer.
There are advantages and disadvantages to each ad network. Some networks like Mediavine have minimum traffic requirements to apply.
Do your research on each network to learn the requirements and which ones will pay the best rate.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is when you have links to other people’s products or services in your blog posts. If a person clicks on the link and makes a purchase, then you get a commission on the sale.
You have to keep in mind that you’re building trust with your audience. One bad product recommendation and that trust is broken. You’re not going to get it back.
Make sure that when you link to products, you know the products and would recommend them to your family members.
3. Information Products
Would you rather get the entire price of purchase rather than a small percentage? You should consider creating your own products.
You can create your own products for purchase. These can be ebooks, courses, or webinars. The advantage here is that you just create the product once and earn passive income from it.
4. Upsell Services
Selling information products is a great way to make money blogging. You can add value to the product and raise your income by upselling services.
Let’s say that you have a fitness blog and you sell a workout book to help men build muscle. You know that the vast majority of buyers will buy it and not apply what’s in the book. You can offer coaching services for a premium that walks people through the book and helps them reach their fitness goals.
If you have a service business like coaching or consulting, you can just sell your services through your blog.
5. Create a Membership Site
A blog can serve as the foundation of a community. You can make that community exclusive by creating a members-only site.
To make this work, you need to be able to offer a lot of value behind the scenes to make the membership worth the price of admission. Otherwise, people won’t find a lot of value in it and they won’t stick around.
6. Sell Sponsored Content
Once you get a lot of traffic to your blog, you’re likely to get offers from people who want to contribute articles to your site. The benefit to them is that they can get backlinks to their site. That will help them get results with SEO.
The benefit to you is that it can create a revenue stream. You can offer these opportunities but sell the guest posts as sponsored content.
7. Create Masterminds
A mastermind is a small group of people who offer each other accountability and support in reaching specific goals.
Let’s say that you have a personal development blog. The purpose of your site is to help people reach their full potential. You have worked hard to build credibility through your content and you want to take it a step further.
You can offer a small and exclusive mastermind group that’s focused on helping people reach their goals. Since this is a small group, you can charge a higher rate than you would for a membership site.
8. Sell Physical Products
Turning your blog into an eCommerce store is another way to make money blogging. Physical products are more challenging because you have to make sure that you have the right products at the right price. You also have to manage shipping and fulfillment for these orders, too.
One way around that is through dropshipping. This is where people order a product, and the dropshipper fulfills the order for you.
9. Email Marketing
As you build up your blog’s audience, you want to be able to communicate with them on a regular basis. You can encourage them to visit your blog or to buy products.
When your email list gets large enough, you can also sell sponsorships in your emails.
10. Accept Donations
If you just enjoy sharing information and insights online and don’t have much interest in creating products, you can ask visitors to donate to your site.
Accepting donations may help you cover the cost of hosting and domain name registration. Don’t expect it to replace your income.
11. Sell Your Site
Anytime you start a business, you should have an exit strategy. An exit strategy details how you will reduce your position in the business for a nice profit.
For larger companies, you’ll see them go public or sell to a larger competitor be their exit strategy.
In the case of a blog, your best option is to sell your business for a healthy profit. It will take you a while to get to that point but having an endgame early on will help you stay focused while you build the blog and make money.
Make Money Blogging Now
blogging offers a wealth of opportunities for you to become a trusted expert in your niche. There are also a lot of ways to make money blogging that will allow you to earn an extra income or leave your full-time job.
There is a lot that you have to have in place to make money online. You need to pick the right niche, have great content, and master ways to drive traffic to your site.
Want to know more? Check out this article about PPC advertising to learn how you can use it to get more traffic.
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