How To Monetise A Blog

Wondering how to monetise a blog? There’s several ways you can make money from a blog. So if you have a blog already or are just thinking about starting a blog, this post is for you!

niche blogging

Blogging is a hugely popular way to build an online presence, but with over 6 million blogs on the internet, it’s also hugely competitive. So getting people to visit your blog is problem number one. Once you’ve managed to build a good number of daily visitors to your blog, then comes the question of monetisation.

There’s many pros and cons of blogging. One of the pros is that it’s super cheap and you can blog from anywhere. One of the cons is that it’s super competitive and you not only need to find visitors for your blog, but also turn those visitors into cash in some way. Here’s some of the ways you can do it.

How To Monetise A Blog: Google Adsense

There’s many alternatives to Google Adsense, but it’s the favourite when it comes to putting ads on blogs. With Google Adsense, anyone with a website or blog can join and place ads on their site. When people click on those adverts, you make a percentage of the advertising revenue.

Although the percentage of revenue you receive is only small, by getting a lot of advert clicks, you can make a passive income from a blog. This can be grown over time by getting more traffic to your blog.

adsense - how to monetise a blog

The money you make from each advertising click on your site depends on the topic of your blog. In a highly competitive topic, there’s more people bidding against each other for advertising clicks. Hence, in a competitive topic, you’ll earn more money from each click. However, if a topic is more competitive, it’s usually also much more difficult to get free traffic for that particular topic, too. With Google Adsense you’ll need free traffic because it’s not worth paying for ads when you only make a tiny amount from your visitors.

How To Monetise A Blog: Affiliate Marketing

Another popular method to monetise a blog is with affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a business model where anyone can refer website visitors to products and services online. There’s thousands of affiliate products you can choose from online too, so whatever topic your blog covers, there’s usually something appropriate which you can sell from it.

Amazon is one of the first stop shops for affiliate marketers because there’s such a huge array of products which you can choose from. Clickbank is another popular “bank” for affiliate products which are digital. With digital products you can generally earn a larger percentage of the sale than with physical products.

how to monetise a blog

If you’re going to monetise a blog with affiliate products, you need to find products which relate to the interests of your audience. A bad match between topic and products mean you’ll be unlikely to sell anything. Affiliates with a blog usually also offer an opt in offer on their site with some free information. Visitors can then join their email list and be updated regularly about affiliate products which they sell. This is a good idea because it helps the sales process by getting an email autoresponder. See free autoresponder for affiliate marketing.

How To Monetise A Blog: Leverage Your Blog To Become A Freelancer

Once you have some content on your blog, you can present yourself as a freelance writer in your specific topic. Depending on your niche, and the businesses who are looking for freelancers, this can be quite lucrative.

Sites such as Upwork, Fiverr and SEOclerks tend to be where many freelancers hang out. But you can also search for other freelancers in your area on Linkedin to validate your niche topic.

how to monetise a blog

You’ll need to find gigs yourself so it’s a good idea to establish your authority first before reaching out. Do this by creating a lot of content on your site and perhaps reach out to do some guest posts on other authority websites.

To find potential opportunities you can do a simple Google search for niche businesses in your area who might want the services of a freelancer. Type “your niche blog” into Google and approach businesses directly through their website.

Sell Your Own eBook

Yes eBooks are a great way to monetise a blog. It’s relatively simple to create an ebook and sell it on your website. Use your existing expertise to offer something of value to your visitors. You can even use existing content to create an ebook which you can sell. Ideally build an email list from your blog and use your marketing messages to promote your ebook.

beginners guide to affiliate marketing

Ebooks are also great lead magnets if you choose to use affiliate marketing with your blog. A lead magnet is something you use to encourage website visitors to sign up to your email newsletter.

See also how to sell a ebooks on your website.

Sell A Course

Many bloggers have a huge amount of knowledge and expertise which they can turn into courses of their own. You can ask your email subscribers what they would want from a course or come up with ideas based on your content. It’s not super difficult to create a course which you can sell. You can even upload a video series or training videos and have it hosted on your site. There’s lot of software and plugins which can help you create a course on your blog.

If you’re not up to creating your own course you can sell someone else’s as an affiliate marketer. Here’s an online course I promote which helps people build online businesses.

how to monetise a blog

See also subscription affiliate programs which are a useful way to monetise a website and earn recurring income from memberships.

Blog Monetisation

Your blog monetisation method will determine how much you can make from a blog as well as your traffic. Without traffic a blog will definitely not make any money, but unless you get your blog monetisation right, it can also be a problem.

There’s several ways you can monetise a blog and here’s the main ones used by bloggers:

  • Affiliate marketing – sell other people’s products from your blog
  • Advertising – place paid ads on your blog (Google’s Adsense program, for example)
  • Sell something you own – if you already have a business or product, a blog can be used to find new customers
  • Create an ebook and sell it from your blog – ebooks are simple to create. You can sell them hands free without posting anything physically.
  • Sell space on your blog site – marketers are interested in your traffic. So you can sell them banner space on your site

Blog Monetisation – Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to monetise a blog. With enough traffic and with enough of the right traffic, you can sell almost anything from a blog. You only need to find a product or program which appeals to your target audience.

blog monetisation

With affiliate marketing your product and target audience is really important. You can’t just sell anything to anyone. You need to find the appropriate product which is a good match for your traffic.

For example, if your blog is about motorcycles, you’ll need a suitable motorcycle related item to sell, you can’t just sell garden furniture to motorcycle enthusiasts. If you’re monetising with advertising (e.g.Adsense), it doesn’t matter so much because you can advertise in almost any topic/niche. However, your topic will determine how much you can earn from an advertising click if you use ads on your site to monetise.

Blog Monetisation – Adsense

Google’s Adsense program lets you place clickable adverts on your content which you earn from every time someone clicks on them. However, you’ll need a huge amount of traffic to make this profitable because the click value is usually very low. In more competitive topics you’ll earn more. However the more competition you have in your niche, the harder it is to get free traffic from the search engines.

monetise blog

However you decide to monetise your blog, it’s worth considering your topic before you start. With affiliate marketing, you’ll need to be very targeted with your content creation strategy. Otherwise you’ll attract visitors who aren’t interested in your products. With advertising (Adsense), you don’t have to be so specific because the ads will appear relative to your content.

In a very low competition topic, you should find you can attract more traffic more easily. However, your ads will likely only product the smallest commissions when clicked. Competitive niches such as money making online or Forex marketing will pay more for clicks but will be harder to attract free traffic for.

Selling Yourself/A Product/A Service

A blog is a great tool to sell from if you have your own business, product or service. Small business owners often use blogs to write about their topic and attract free traffic from the search engines (Google etc).

If you’re building a passion based business, blogging about your topic is a great way to answer potential customers’ questions, build content and attract an audience for free.

blog monetisation

If you have an existing business which is physically based, you can also use Google My Business which will give you a free listing. This is a great tool for more exposure of your business and it only takes a few minutes to set up. See Google My Business for more info on this.

Sell Your Own Ebook

An ebook is a great way to monetise a blog and you can even use your existing content to create it. You only need to set up a sales pages and direct your traffic to it via an image of your ebook.

To create an ebook is easy and if you don’t already have a pdf creation tool on your laptop, you can easily find a free one online.

Once you have your pdf file, you can also create an ebook cover or get one done for next to nothing. I use Fiverr.com for my ebook covers. You can then create a PayPal button on your site and automate the full download process to sell an ebook on your website.

See also how to sell a ebooks on your website.

Selling Banner Space On Your Website

You can also sell banner space on your website directly to marketers. Create an “advertise here” page on your site. You’ll need to attract the right people and you can find other websites in your niche to see their terms for selling and prices etc.

Before anyone will pay to advertise on your blog though you’ll need to have generated a considerable amount of daily traffic. So this is an option for when your site is doing really well. If you’re new to blogging, it’s unlikely anyone will pay to show a banner on your site; particularly if you’re still struggling to get visitors.

This article explains more ways to sell advertising space on your website.