by James Sowers |
Last Updated: August 29, 2019 This post may be sponsored or may contain affiliate links, which means we may receive a commission, at no additional cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link. Read the full disclosure.
If you’re looking for proven ways to make money with your blog, then you’re reading the right article.
That’s because you’re about to discover the 8 most profitable ways to monetize your blog + real-life examples of people who’re killing it.
And the good news is that these methods work even if you’re totally new to blogging.
Table of Contents
But First, Can You Really Make Money Blogging?
This is a question that many new bloggers often ask me and why wouldn’t they?
In fact, I had the same thoughts running over my head when I was eyeing on starting a blog.
I used to debate with myself whether I should take the plunge or assume that blogging is fake and nobody really makes money with it.
Thankfully I did it.
And that’s why I am able to tell you now whether it’s possible to make money with a blog or not.
I’ve mentioned it several times before and it’s totally worth saying it again:
IT IS TOTALLY POSSIBLE TO MAKE MONEY WITH A BLOG.
I make a decent amount of money per month from my 3 blogs and it helps me live a happy life working from home.
However, it’s nowhere near to what some of the other bloggers earn.
There are bloggers making as much as 5-6 figures a month and it’s all passive income.
For example – Lindsay Ostrom from PinchOfYum.com. As per her last income report, she made $95,197.34 in a month writing about food.
If that sounds interesting, let’s check out how YOU can make money blogging.
8 Proven Ways To Make Money With Your Blog
1. Digital Products
Digital products are the hottest thing right now and they sell like CRAZYY!
On top of that, they’re easy to create.
If you think you have knowledge about a certain thing that needs to be shared with the world, you can create and sell:
- eBooks
- Guides
- Online courses
- Webinars
- Audiobooks
If you want your audience to take action on something, you can create and sell:
- Workbooks
- Printables
- Planners
- Checklists
If you have a skill that can be turned into a product, you can create and sell:
- Music/Songs
- Stock photos
- Stock videos
- WordPress themes
- WordPress plugins
- Photoshop templates
- Fonts
- Smartphone apps
- Printable coloring books
A real-life example of someone selling digital products online would be my friend Ana from TheSheApproach.com.
She makes a whopping $3,500/mo selling eBooks from her blog. Read the interview I did with her recently where she reveals some of her secrets.
2. Physical Products
I don’t see many bloggers selling physical products on their blog, but it is an effective way to monetize your audience.
Yes, it requires much more work to start selling those as compared to digital products because there is storing, packaging, shipping etc.
But don’t let that frighten you.
There are other ways to go about it without having to take care of those things.
First let’s have a look at some of the physical products that you can sell on your blog:
- Books
- T-shirts and other clothes
- Mugs
- Caps
- Rings
- Phone cases
- Pens
- Detox tea
- Paintings
- Crafts
- Etc.
There are endless more physical product ideas that you can sell depending upon your niche.
Now, there are 3 ways to go about selling those.
#1 On your own
The first way to sell and fulfill physical products on your blog is to manage everything on your own.
Which means, you’d be creating, packaging and shipping the products all on your own.
This method works best with products like books, paintings and crafts because these products need to be created by you.
#2 Print-On-Demand sites
There are a lot of third-party sites such as CafePress that let’s you create your own products and sell it to your audience.
Here’s how it works: You get to choose from a wide range of products like t-shirts, mugs, cards etc and print your own designs onto it. Whenever a customer purchases the item, it gets shipped to them and you get paid.
Except the marketing part, everything is taken care of by these print-on-demand sites.
#3 Dropshiping
Dropshipping is another great way to eliminate the labor work out of selling physical products and only focus on marketing.
For those of you who don’t know what dropshipping is, it is method of selling physical products without keeping it in stock.
All you do is list the products on your blog/online store, and whenever a customer purchases the product, you ask the supplier to directly ship it to the customer.
As a result, you never see the product. The labeling, handling and shipping is all taken care of by the supplier/manufacturer.
It’s kind of similar to print-on-demand but with dropshipping you can choose any type of products to sell. You’re not limited to only mugs and t-shirts.
Dropshipping works best for products that you cannot create on your own. Such as – watches, detox tea, clothes, bluetooth speakers, LED lights, makeup etc.
My friend Franklin makes a full-time income dropshipping products online and he’s totally KILLING it!
And the good news is – he has a fantastic course called eCom Elites to teach you everything about it.
The course has over 150 step-by-step videos that goes into everything from setting up an online store to finding the best suppliers to making sales fast using little-known strategies.
If you want to make money dropshipping products online, I highly recommend enrolling in this course.
3. Affiliate Marketing
This is hands down my favorite way of making money with a blog, especially because I’ve been doing it since the very first day of my blogging journey.
Affiliate marketing means promoting other people’s products for a commission per sale.
For example, if you run a beauty blog, you can easily promote beauty products like makeup, face wash, serums, moisturizers etc. Whenever someone purchases the product through your affiliate link, you earn a commission.
There are a lot of affiliate programs/networks you can join and start promoting products.
Some of the best ones are:
As a matter of fact: 70% of my blogging income comes from promoting products as an affiliate.
And it’s not just me, most of the bloggers monetize their blog through affiliate marketing.
One of them is Carly Campbell who is a full-time blogger at Mommyonpurpose.com.
She blogs about parenting tips and has a huge reader base of new moms trying to figure out the “parenting” tactics.
Carly earns around $10,000/month from her blog and I believe a major part of it comes from affiliate marketing.
And because she knows what she’s doing, she launched a detailed course on Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers that you should definitely check out so you can hopefully replicate her success.
4. Sponsored Posts
Once your blog starts to pick up some traffic and engagement, you should look into monetizing it right away by approaching brands for sponsored posts.
A sponsored post is basically a blog post for a brand where you promote their service/product and get paid for it. (INSTANTLY!)
Sponsored posts are one of the least time-consuming ways to monetize a blog. You don’t need to expect anyone to buy a product or sign up to something. You just approach brands and get paid for every sponsored post.
And in most scenarios, brands come directly to you.
The best part is, you don’t need a MILLION views a month to start doing sponsored posts.
I’ve heard a lot people say that you need a very established blog before you can start doing sponsored posts, which is not true at all.
Pete McPherson from Doyouevenblog.com lined up two sponsors for $150 in his very first month of blogging.
Another example is my friend Tracie Fobes who makes a well over 4-5 figures from sponsored posts alone. (And she’s been doing it for YEARS!)
She now has a full-blown course called Sponsored Success to teach you how to go about making money from sponsored posts on your blog.
The course literally takes you from ground ZERO to the most advanced strategies that she uses to make 5 figures a month.
If you’re ready to start doing sponsored posts on your blog, be sure to check out the Sponsored Success course.
5. Ads
There are a lot of networks such as AdSense which pay you to display advertisements on your blog.
I am sure you’ve come across ads on a blog before and you might find it irritating sometimes, but then it’s an effective way of making money.
There are a lot of blogs that solely depend on ads to make money from their blog, mainly because their niche is tough to monetize. (For example “News”)
Ads are the easiest money maker because you don’t have to sell anything. You get paid for every click and impression that your ads generate from your blog.
However, to make a decent amount of money from display advertising, you would need at least 10k-25k pageviews per month. (Which is not that tough!)
Debbie Gartner from Theflooringgirl.com makes over $22,000/month from her blog, out of which $7,000+ comes from ads alone.
Another example is Amit Agarwal from labnol.org who makes over $10,000 from ads.
6. Services
If you have a skill that can be turned into a service, then you can make a good amount of money promoting your service on your blog.
The service can be anything like freelance writing, graphic designing, coaching, consulting etc.
A great way to go about doing this is to add a “Hire me” or “Services” section on your blog. Just like how Elna Cain did:
She makes a full-time income from her blog + her freelance writing service combined.
If you want to offer services on your blog but not sure if you have a great skill yet, you can check out Skillshare.
They have 18,000+ courses on various topics like writing, photography, video editing, social media marketing and MANY MORE that’ll help you build a skill and offer the service on your blog.
The best part? You can get 2 months of FREE premium membership that’ll give you access to ALL of their courses. Be sure to get your FREE membership.
7. Membership
Another very popular way of making money with a blog is to offer memberships.
Which means, your readers pay a monthly/yearly fee to get access to exclusive content or service or software that provides much more value.
For example: If you run a fitness blog, your membership area can offer your main content such as “Getting shredded in 30 days” or “Building six pack abs under a budget”. Something that is beyond free advice.
Kaelin Poulin from Ladyboss.com built a multi-million dollar EMPIRE by helping women to lose weight through her online weight loss membership program.
If you want to know the secrets behind her success, she’s offering a 100% FREE training that shows you how she did it.
This training will absolutely leave you feeling that if SHE could do it, so can you!
8. Donations
If you’ve noticed, a week ago I added a small donation button to my sidebar Here’s what it looks like:
Whenever a reader decides to click the button and buy me a coffee, I receive $3.
Though it’s not much, but it’s an awesome way to let your readers appreciate your content. (And get paid for it!)
I personally know people who earn as much as 80 coffees a month at the rate of $3 each. After doing the math, that ends up at $240 extra a month. Not bad at all.
You can increase the price to more than $3, but I prefer to keep it as low as possible.
If you want people to buy you a coffee on your blog, then check out Ko-Fi. They have a great FREE plan as well as a GOLD one that comes with better features.
Your Turn
Now it’s your turn to try out these ways to make money with your blog.
Don’t just read it, take action immediately.
Maybe you want to start selling digital products, or how about attracting sponsored post opportunities? Go and get it done now.
And if you haven’t started a blog yet, be sure to read How To Start A Blog Within 15 Minutes
Don’t forget to leave a comment below if you enjoyed reading this post. 🙂
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