Blogging has been around since the Internet took off but became popular a couple of decades ago. A blog is an informational website run by an individual or a group. It often focuses on a particular topic and provides relevant information to the reader.
As technology evolves, other methods to relay information have become available and widely adopted (for example, social media). But blogging is still going strong, and there is ample opportunity for anyone to make money through blogging.
For people interested in earning money through blogging, here are some popular methods to monetize a blog.
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Affiliate Marketing
This is the easiest way to earn money through a blog. In affiliate marketing, you promote third-party products on the blog. With affiliate marketing, there is no need to own or ship the product. The product is merely recommended to the reader; if they make a purchase, you’ll receive a commission from the product vendor.
To get started, you’ll enroll in the products affiliate program, obtain a unique URL identification, and place these links in the web content on the blog. The reader clicks the link to reach the vendor’s website, where they’ll hopefully buy!
For the audience to purchase the product, you would offer some compelling reasons why it’s a good idea. For example, if the blog post has an article about good web hosting companies, you may mention a host you use and recommend them along with a product link.
The commission varies from product to product, with some high-ticket products paying thousands per affiliate sale. Commissions ranging from 5% to 30% of the sale price are the norm.
Paid Advertising
Advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry; it is set to reach a trillion US dollars in the coming years. Advertising takes place in various mediums, from television, radio, and newspapers to the Internet.
A website or blog that potential customers visit is an excellent place for organizations to promote their company, given that almost everyone uses the Internet.
On a blog, the advert takes up some space on the page. Combining images and words, the size of the advert varies and can occupy the blog’s top, side menus, and the bottom portion. Ads are also placed among the blog post content.
Many ad networks connect blog owners with advertisers. One of the biggest and most well-known is the Google Adsense program.
To join, the blog needs to be submitted for approval. Once permission is acquired, the user can utilize the tools provided to generate codes that’ll become incorporated into the blog. These codes show ads on the blog.
Thanks to the data mining capabilities of Google, relevant ads are shown to users taking into account the viewer’s particular interests. For example, if the blog post deals with SEO tools, the ads will likely show companies in this industry.
In addition to Google, there are an endless number of other ad networks available. Paid ads are an excellent way to monetize the blog and are something bloggers widely use.
Promote eBooks
Selling eBooks is something that’s been around for a long time. It’s so popular that nearly all blogs (except those run by the biggest companies) have tried or actively continue selling digital books.
Blogs are normally niche entities; they focus on one particular topic. For example, a blog could be on digital marketing, traveling, or fashion. It is not the norm for a blog to cover a whole range of subjects.
Given the blog deals with one subject, chances are the people behind the blog are experts in the subject matter. And it’s the norm for blog owners to sell informational products in the form of eBook(s) on the subject. Creating eBooks is simple and is an excellent way for bloggers to monetize their websites.
eBooks are advertised on the blog, and regular fans who have a great deal of trust in the content are likely to buy the products.
EBooks can vary from a few dollars to hundreds of dollars. Often blog owners combine selling eBooks with email marketing, where the readers are encouraged to become subscribers, and newsletters are sent to promote the digital products.
Sell Services
It’s possible to offer services in anything from web development, financial services to gardening. The list is endless and running a blog is a fantastic way to acquire clients.
Operating a blog is a good way to showcase expertise. Viewers will read the blog posts, become encouraged by the blogger’s knowledge and potentially take up their services.
Blogging is perfect for small businesses or solo entrepreneurs. They don’t have the big marketing budgets of giant corporations and need to find alternative ways to reach customers.
Writing about their expertise is an excellent way to gain customers’ confidence. Off course, to gain clients, the blog requires plenty of traffic as it’s hard to sell services from a website with few visitors.
Sell Physical Products
Running a blog is a good way to sell if you are already selling physical products offline or are interested in this arena. It is no different from selling eBooks; you establish yourself as an authority in the niche, gain the audience’s trust, and some of them will buy the product(s).
Operating an eCommerce website is the most popular approach to selling physical items. But a blog is great if the product listing is limited to a few items.
Those without any physical goods of their own may consider drop shipping. This is where the blog or website promotes the product owned by a drop shipping company. The goods are sold on the blog as if they are your own, but the drop shipping organization takes care of the inventory and shipping of the product.
Alternative ways
For those interested in making money online quickly, there are some other ways. For instance, you can consider monetizing not so much the time you spent blogging, but rather your online activity in general. There are numerous such passive income opportunities out there, one of which is bandwidth sharing.
The way it works is that you allow a specific app to simply run in the background of your device and use tiny bits of your internet connection. The app benefits from this by essentially acting as a proxy service to various third parties. In the end, the user receives monthly compensation depending on how much bandwidth was used and how many devices were connected.
As far as concrete examples go, Honeygain is currently among the most popular internet-sharing services with a global user base.
Wrapping Up
It’s important to note blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme. For a blog to become established, it will take many months of hard work. It sometimes takes a few short years before a blog takes off.
Many people have had massive success with blogging. One example of someone earning huge sums is Pat Flynn, the creator of Smart Passive Income. Thanks to affiliate marketing, he nets well into 6 figures per month! Pat has been earning these sums for over a decade.
