Want to monetize your blog, but you’re not sure of the best way?
5 Best Ways to Go From $0 to $10,000 per Month Blogging
In case you’re wondering… Blogging is not dead. It’s alive and kicking harder than ever.
When blogging became a thing around the year 2000, we all thought it was just weB LOGging, sharing our diary online.
Over the years, blogging shifted from being about you to being about the reader. And that was a good shift. Because it made it possible to make money with your blog.
I followed the money-bloggers back then.
Guys like John Chow inspired me. John Chow had one of the first money-blogs online. He shared his income openly month after month.
And what did I learn?
John made money in four ways on his blog. I already knew of the four of them from my own experience. And I found the fifth way later myself.
Here they are — and yes, they still work today.
Display Ads
Before there were blogs, there were websites.
And on one of my first websites, I had display ads. They came from an ad agency called Tradedoubler. And there was a huge problem with those ads.
You added code to your site to show a banner.
When the advertiser stopped paying, you had to remove the code and replace it with another code. When AdSense started — one code for all ads — I loved it. It saved me so much time.
I ended up making around $100 a day on autopilot with AdSense.
Today, we have many other, and better, options than AdSense. Google’s ad network is great for beginners, though. Because you can join with an almost new blog with little traffic.
Once you’re getting more traffic, you can switch to networks that pays you more.
Networks like Ezoic and Mediavine. Ezoic has removed their page view limit, but to join Mediavine, you need roughly 60,000 page views per month. That’s why your first goal should be to get traffic to your blog.
The best way to get that traffic to your blog?
It’s by using Pinterest. The whole purpose of Pinterest is to send you clicks through their pins. All other social media platforms want you to stay on their sites.
Thanks to steady traffic, I made a nice income with AdSense myself, but after a while, I beat that income by selling digital products.
Digital Products
You can sell digital products directly from your blog.
Popular addons to WordPress makes this easy. You can install the basic version of WooCommerce for free. This addon has all kinds of upgrades.
Some are paid, others free.
I sold eBooks and online courses. But there are many other types of digital products you can sell. Here are a few examples:
- eBooks
- Software
- Meal plans
- Printables
- Spreadsheets
- Online courses
- Digital journals
The advantage of digital products is that as long as you create them yourself, you’ll make 100% profit from them. Buyers simply download the products after purchase. You have no expenses for sending the products through traditional mail or FedEx.
You can even get affiliates to promote for you.
Pay them 50% of every sale, and they’ll find you customers who would otherwise not have known of your blog. You gain a new customer and the affiliate makes a commission. It’s a win-win situation.
Affiliate Marketing
Instead of selling your own products, you sell other people’s products and earn a commission.
Amazon was to my knowledge the first to create an affiliate program. Still today, they are among the most popular choices for bloggers. The reason for this is that you can find almost anything on Amazon.
This means that whether you have a blog about tap dancing, dog training or balcony gardening, you can find products on Amazon and promote them to your readers.
Amazon sells physical products.
You can also promote digital products and often make a higher conversion. It’s pretty normal to make 50% even from a medium or high-priced product. You shouldn’t go lower than 50% if it’s a low-priced product ($20 or lower).
That wouldn’t be worth your time and the space on your blog.
Sponsored Posts
There used to be several portals that provided connections between bloggers, who were willing to share a spot on their blog, and marketers who wanted traffic to their sites.
The deal was that the marketer got an SEO friendly link, typically with their keywords as anchor text. For that, they paid a nice amount of money. How much?
That depended on your blog and how much traffic it got.
I used to make a lot of money that way. I’ve also had marketers contact me directly to ask if they could buy a link to their site from my menu. Nice and easy and well-paying.
But when Google changed their algorithm and punished that kind of back links, I was asked to remove the links, and I haven’t received any new and similar jobs since.
Guest blogging is still in high demand, though.
And you can get paid by having sponsored posts on your blog.
Selling Your Site
Sometimes, you just fall out of love…
It happens. And the blog topic you were passionate about four years ago, now makes you want to move to a cave and become a hermit. Instead of feeling guilt…
How about selling your blog?
You can even do that much faster. You don’t have to wait until you’re tired of that blog. You can set up a quick little blog…
An Atomic Blog…
15 posts, a freebie, an autoresponder sequence and a report you sell, and you can sell it on Flippa as a starter blog.
This point alone won’t make you $10K per month, unless you create many blogs.
But all in all, it adds up. $5K per month here, $1K there, another $4K and we’re getting there.
Which one of these 5 ways has the biggest potential?
It depends on your niche, your audience, your traffic and your ability to create helpful courses and eBooks.
It’s Worth Giving It s Try
If you’re not sure if blogging is for you, though, why not start with a small project first?
As a loyal Medium reader, you can get my “1-Hour Money-Maker” for free here today by using the coupon code MEDIUM (note: clicking this link will take you offsite outside of Medium).
