There is an endless stock of blogs on the internet. To proffer some perspective, out of the 1.7 billion websites on the internet, a whopping 505 million are blogs. At least 4 million additional blogs are posted each day.
Most of these blogs go unnoticed by the online crowd.
Blogging is a powerful tool that enables you to deliver value to a global audience, and in turn offers a lot of perks – credibility, popularity and probably the most important of all: money.
The internet is a hub for walkthroughs and tutorials – resources that help individuals learn everything from crafting a website from scratch to constructing their garage. Others utilize the web to stay informed, to communicate, or for entertainment.
Everyone is an expert in finding quality resources online for whatever they desire. The value of online search and the demand for online information today is primeval thanks to search engine giants like Google and Bing.
There are 409 million WordPress blog readers. According to Invive, 77% of the internet reads blogs and treats them as a beacon of knowledge and information. It indicates that we have an eye for good, informative content. That’s where the money is!
Most bloggers quit because they don’t realize that building an empire takes much time.
This fact is overshadowed by the hype created by countless internet marketers – that a money-making machine generating thousands of dollars a month can be built overnight.
Not true! Most blogs generate maybe a few dollars in income a month.
Blogging about your interests, or about the field you work in is easy. However, driving traffic and monetizing it is the tricky part.
To help guide you through the process of monetizing your blog, we have compiled a list of the best ways to make money from your blog in 2019, which will put you on the right track – passive income.
There are multiple ways to make money from a blog. Surprisingly, some of them are not dependent on the internet to generate income. Let’s have a look:
1. Get Featured on Another Popular Blog Site
Get your work on Medium or Thought Catalog, or even try to approach sites like Huffington Post and see if they like your work.
This is by no means going to make you money. Barring Medium (with their Partner Program), other well-known blog sites including the ones mentioned above do not pay for the content you submit. Further, the money that you make from Medium is not going to sufficient enough to make a living.
However, the point of putting up posts on another blog is not to generate revenue (directly) in the first place.
The idea is to build rapport and create an image for yourself or your business on these platforms. By doing so, it generates more traffic for your blog site and more leads for your business portal.
More traffic means more ad views, more clicks, and more acquisitions.
Collaborating with other members in the same genre as yours is also an excellent idea for both parties. Keep in mind though, some guest blogs either don’t pay or don’t let you plug your details at the end of the blog – sometimes both.
Discussing the terms of the collaboration beforehand is a must.
2. CPC/CPM Ads
There are multiple ways of incorporating ads on your blog (like Media.net), but Google AdSense is the most popular of them all.
Displaying ads with AdSense is as easy as adding a script to your site provided by Google.
The revenue your blog then generates is based on two factors:
- The amount of times a visitor clicks on an ad on your page. It is called Cost Per Click (CPC).
- The number of ‘impressions’ made. Impressions refer to the number of times that an ad has been displayed on the screen. Impressions are typically tracked in thousands, hence Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM). ‘M’ being the Roman numeral for ‘thousand’.
Another unique method involves selling/subletting part of your site to a company. Only their products are advertised in specific areas. It is significantly more complicated than just using AdSense since you have to approach the company and negotiate the rates yourself. Such companies always look for high traffic numbers.
3. Affiliate Links
According to IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), affiliate marketing in the U.S. alone will grow to well over a 6.8-Billion-dollar industry in the coming decade.
It is but natural for the majority of blogs to implement affiliate marketing since it is one of the best methods to generate revenue. The idea is to promote a product as an affiliate, and when someone buys something from the link you provide, you earn a commission.
Amazon has its affiliate network called Amazon Associates. It allows bloggers and e-Commerce maestros to get paid via advertised by these means. Almost every product can be found on Amazon, and even if the product you use isn’t on there, Googling their site should bring up an affiliate program for the product.
Being genuine is promoting what works for you is best, considering that your blog’s reputation is at stake. Coupling this with email marketing produces stunning results.
Here is a list of popular affiliate platforms to help you get started.
4. Sponsored Advertising
Some blogs do not focus on passive advertising at all! They sought out active sponsors.
This trend caught on for a few reasons. However, the main reason behind it is that some bloggers believe that ads are intrusive and annoying and that more and more people are using adblockers anyway.
Sponsorships are an alternative way to monetize your blog. Just like on TV, you are paid by some company to represent and review their products and promote them to your readers.
Typically, the blog has to approach the company in question. It is a good idea to put together a single page on your website or otherwise, that details your audience’s demographics and traffic stats, along with any other data that makes your blog look more appealing to advertisers. It makes approaching companies easier.
It comes down to either a direct promotion on your blog or selling a particular company some area of your site to display their ads individually.
Sure, it pays a bit more than Google does or Media.net will. However, it is up to you to decide if it is worth the hassle since advertisers come and go, and you have to spend time deleting the old adverts and putting up new ones.
5. Digital Products
You don’t need to employ other methods of monetization if you have products and tools to develop yourselves and sell. Not having a physical product that you can sell is not an issue. If your blog is doing well, the readers will tell you what they want.
A right way of creating a product is to look at the trends and available products and ask yourself if you can better cater to the same audience. You can create whatever you like.
However, these are the most common product ideas that can be implemented with relative ease:
- Writing an eBook about your area of expertise and insider knowledge. A good book increases traffic on the site, and you’ll know if you’re doing well if good traffic comes in for the book.
- Consulting beginners and novices with one-on-one sessions is also a very effective way to increase traffic and build credibility.
- Checklists, for instance, a crisply written list like “Top 10 best web development practices” are not only useful but also informative.
- Services that help your visitors set up their site, or polish it is a great source of direct revenue.
- In-demand apps and tools
- Paid Podcasts etc.
Going ahead and offering such products will turn your blog into a business. Also, this is the way it should be since, to sell a product, you need authority and credibility.
However, you will need a handsome digital marketing budget as the competition is fierce and costs per click are high on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, especially in highly-converting western countries.
6. Host Giveaways
Reach out to a business in your niche and offer to host a contest or a giveaway via your blog or social media outlets. When done right, it increases your rapport in the community you’re catering to and also increases awareness of the business that is sponsoring the giveaway. This translates to tons of leads for both businesses.
This win-win scenario that a giveaway creates is often overlooked since it is considered to be a long and bureaucratic process.
7. Create and Sell Premium Content: Subscriptions
This model of making money is based on the fact that the more people love your work, the more they want of it. A membership gives just that – carefully curated content for a price.
Your plan of action should look something like this:
- Decide what exactly you’re going to offer. Being vague won’t help.
- Create a membership area, or if you’re a video content creator consider signing up at Patreon.
- Finally, focus on marketing what you’re exclusively offering. Again, email marketing is beneficial. Also, spreading the word with a small banner in areas of your website works well.
After all, if they liked your content, they will love to look at the premium content you put out and consider supporting you.
8. Sell Software
The Software As A Service (SAAS) model aims to solve your reader’s problems. It doesn’t have to be a technical problem, either.
For instance, if a particular blog caters to students from ages 16-20 and supplies them with quality studying tips, then this blog is perfectly positioned to sell them a “Career pathfinder” for a few dollars which takes note of their interests and their ambitions and spits out a career that’s best suited for them.
Again, it doesn’t have to be a desktop application. It can be based entirely online. The idea is to create demand by exciting the problem and supplying the solution.
The prices of such virtual products are susceptible to small changes in online behavior. Charging just a few dollars more can result in a significant loss in sales since there are plenty of free alternatives or sources. Products like these are usually designed to be marketed to the impulse buyer and go for volume rather than high ticket size.
9. Email Marketing
Building an email list is one of the most potent ways to make money. It is versatile since it makes you money in more than one way – you can directly promote your blog or products (be it yours or as an affiliate marketer) or delivery free reports or ebooks that drive potential customers back to your site where you can make money by other means.
Initially, it was difficult for bloggers to get people to sign up for their mailing list. However, with the advent and extensive use of lightboxes, pop-ups that offer value to the reader in exchange for their email address, email marketing has become more converting than before.
Another more modern way of getting someone to give them your email is by implementing a squeeze page. Instead of a pop-up, you put up a separate page on the site that offers coupon code, or an ebook that is delivered to them via email.
10. Webinars/Courses
The people who continually visit your blog take your work seriously. This traffic can be retargeted and pitched paid workshops, webinars and courses.
Having instructional video content removes a layer of obscurity, and your people can see how you do what you do, and learn from you by following along and implementing your methods at their speed.
You don’t just make a singular amount from the webinar or course since you can sell more courses that cover more advanced aspects of your subject of choice.
It is a great way to teach and make money at the same time. However, you can expect lesser support if the course is too sharply priced and if competitors offer the same value for a better price.
Knowing what the most popular blogs do to generate profits will give you a good idea as to how to frame a revenue model that works best for your blog.
Keep in mind that what has worked well for them might not work as well for you. Therefore, keep making tweaks to make your models unique.
What the best in the industry do:
- Huffington Post ($50 million in 2014): This ultra-popular blog site conjoint with Jonah Peretti’s epic traffic-generating strategies generates the highest monetary value across the board.
The site makes revenue mainly from sponsored advertising through banners. - Engadget ($47 million a year): Also owned by AOL, the wildly-popular site aims to provide sound advice on every type of gadget. They make a majority of their revenue from CPC/CPM advertising.
- Moz ($45 million annually): Moz is, by all means, the world’s most successful blog about search engine optimization. It was formerly known as SEOMoz.Several injections of venture capital have funded an impressive amount of their income. Also, the site makes money from a subscription that provides members with professional tools for SEO.
Remember, the longer you take to create an advertising solution of some sort, the more money you lose. Nevertheless, following some best practices help keep things in line for future developments.
Do’s and Don’ts When Setting up a Blog:
- Don’t use numbers in the address you’re setting up. It will only make you harder to reach.
- Make sure you know the exact audience you’re catering to, and strategize accordingly.
- Create an email list right from the beginning. It is 40x more effective than social media.
- Don’t improvise. Stick to a schedule.
- Stay on topic. Relevance is a balanced mix of a personal context and core concepts.
- Cater to the search engine. The people will show up. Also,
- Don’t put out bland posts. Make sure it is engaging and persuasive.
As reported by Time, the average reader spends 15 seconds or less on your blog page. Therefore, writing good hooks, and keeping a persuasive tone throughout is critical if you want the reader to stick with you.
Blogs are a great source of passive income, and if you run a business, you should know that the content marketing industry is worth $32.1 Billion. 71% of bloggers working to attract more business to their portal, report an upward trend in terms of visibility and leads.
The industry is still seeing progress, and with all the money waiting to be made, more and more people want a piece of the pie.
There are 31.7 million active bloggers that write enough to cover every niche that could exist. However, as with every field, there is a point of saturation, and it will only get more and more challenging to gain momentum and create a brand as strong contenders make empires, seemingly out of thin air.
Having a proper schedule and precisely planning what you want to put out each week helps you stay on top of things and keep churning out quality content. Competition is cut-throat and can only be beaten by being consistent.
Putting out content that offers serious value and proverbially packs a punch is the only way to succeed in the industry. Success won’t come quickly or easily, and being persistent on off days and working hard on better ones will ensure that you make your mark on the web.
