Monetizing a Blog: Your Guide to Blogging and Making Money

monetizing a blog

You’re blogging every day, but the money isn’t rolling in. Wondering why? It’s because blogging alone doesn’t generate income.

Monetizing a blog is how you see those results.

There are several ways you can use your blog to make money. The more of these strategies you incorporate into your blog, the more income you’ll make.

In fact, it’s a good idea to choose more than one way to monetize. That way, you have several streams of income from different sources. It all adds up!

Quick Start Guide: Monetizing a Blog

For anyone who’s already blogging, it makes sense to use it to generate some income. These ideas for monetizing a blog have proven to be very effective. Take a look and get started, now!

1. Start Freelance Blogging

If you’re already writing blog articles for yourself, chances are you’ve got the skills to write for someone else, too. Freelance blogging gives you an opportunity to turn your writing skills into a new stream of income.

You can search freelance writing job boards for potential writing jobs and clients. Or, look around your local community for businesses that could use a blog to market their products. Offer to build that blog for them.

Here’s where your blog comes in. Use your blog as a portfolio by sending a link to prospective freelance writing clients. They can see your writing style and decide if your skills work for their needs.

Most clients will allow you to include an author tagline. Write a good tagline that includes your blog address so people who read the article can find you. You’ll also be able to include a backlink to your own blog, in some cases.

2. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a program that allows you to monetize a blog by promoting products from a specific vendor.

Here’s how it works:

You put an affiliate link to a recommended product directly in the text of your blog. When your blog followers click on the link, they are taken to the vendor’s website. If they purchase the product, you get a commission from the sale.

Some good general places to sign up for affiliate marketing programs are Amazon, Groupon, and Clickbank. Each of these has a variety of products you can recommend.

However, it’s more important to follow your niche and recommend products from companies that support that area of business. You don’t need to stick to a big brand to be an affiliate. Even smaller companies have affiliate programs. Just ask!

One more word of advice: only recommend products you would actually use. If you recommend a product that is poor in design or function, it could generate negative attention for you and your blog. You don’t want that.

3. Use Google Adsense

In this program, you make money by displaying ads on your blog. You can set it up so that you get paid per click on each ad or by the number of visitors to your site.

This is a good option if your blog gets a lot of traffic. Even if it doesn’t (yet), you should still check it out. Your goal is to increase traffic to your blog, after all.

4. Sell Online Courses

The amount of people learning online has skyrocketed! If you know a skill or topic that can be taught, you should create and sell an online course.

Think about what you know how to do and what skills you could share with people. Look at the niche for your blog, past work experience and even hobbies for good ideas. Pick from a number of online learning platforms, and create your course!

Once you’ve created your course, you’ll get paid when new students enroll. Use your blog to market your courses. This can generate more income by driving traffic in both directions.

5. Offer a Coaching or Mentoring Program

If you like to help people through problems they are facing in their business, personal lives or another specific niche, then consider offering a coaching or mentoring program. Use your blog to promote this service to your followers.

Some ideas include life coaching, career coaching or business mentoring programs. Just make sure you know what you are talking about and you have skills and experience to back it up.

Decide on some session packages you might offer, or you can charge clients per hour or per session. Just keep it simple and make sure the client knows exactly what service it is they are getting.

Coaching and mentoring are different, so make sure you know which service you are offering. But, both can generate a decent income.

6. Write eBooks

You’ve got knowledge about your niche, business skills, past education and even hobbies. Use it to write an eBook, and then market it on your blog.

You can write a non-fiction book on just about any topic. Sit down and make a list of a few things you could write about. Then, create outlines!

Once you’ve written your book, it’s time to publish. You can format it yourself and save it as a .pdf file. This is fine if you are just going to sell it via your blog. But why stop there?

If you want to sell it through an online bookstore, it’s beneficial to publish through a self-publishing company. If you do, you can be certain the formatting is correct for any eReader applications or devices your readers might use. You’ll also get an ISBN number for your book.

Self-publishing is a popular and easy thing to do. Plus, you can reach a greater audience if you use one. Be sure to read the details about what publishing service you are paying for and how your eBook will be formatted for readers.

You can promote your eBook on Kindle, Amazon and any number of online bookstores. It’s a vast market and a great way to generate income!

It’s Time to Act

Monetizing a blog can take it to the next level! Start building streams of income by monetizing your blog, now. Choose one, two or all of the tips listed above and you will see income based results.

Need More Information?

Looking for more interesting articles and information about how to build a better blog? Check out these articles to learn more, today!