How Do I Make Money On A Blog
No doubt we know it’s technically possible to earn money online but what are the details and how significant is that income. I’m sure you are wondering how do I make money on a blog exactly?
We’ve all seen influencers online and bloggers seemingly living an amazing lifestyle all the while making an income to live off of. It sounds too good to be true, huh?
Although I must admit there are a lot of bloggers out there who do it as a hobby and do not make a full-time income, there obviously are those that make a good income without any shady dealings.
The idea of blogging is to create something to attract attention and followers, so that ultimately you will be able to capitalize on your audience to make money.
Having a blog means having some digital real estate where you share something that is of interest to others – hence how you are able to get visitors. Once you have an audience, there are multiple ways to make money and I tend to group them in big buckets.
One method is to sell something directly. Maybe you make a product or digital item or ecourse or service. Coaches and consultants might blog about topics that relate to their ideal clients and on the sidebar offer their services one on one. Almost any topic can be turned into a digital ecourse that can be sold to people for access. Or any product (real or digital) can be sold over the internet. Each method has it’s own challenges, but the idea is the same. You have a blog to attract people that would ultimately be perfect for buying xyz product you offer.
Another method is to focus on affiliate links. It’s similar to selling something, but you are actually pointing people to some other place to spend money – so your referral gives you a commission, a cut off of the person’s spend. Almost every major company offers an affiliate program – from giants like Amazon to clothing/apparel to tech services and memberships. I think of it as digital word of mouth – because ultimately you are giving reviews or suggestions to your audience about a variety of products or services – and in return you get some kickback.
Finally, there is advertising. Obviously this comes in many forms. I don’t know if branded content falls in this category or something related (basically a company paying you to blog about their product specifically) or if you just prefer to sell advertising spots on your website or hook up with a media network that serves ads onto your website. There are many variations but ultimately you are paid for advertising time/space.
Obviously, a blogger should probably consider all avenues of income and combining many different ways to make money could be a smart way to build up that full-time income.
Now, how much money could someone make? Well, it really does range the gamut – from zero to the sky’s the limit. Probably not what you wanted to hear? Although you can find income reports and examples out there, it really depends on how much traffic you can get and details of how much profit per conversion. Someone selling a $20 ebook can make thousands a month because it’s probably very high profit for a product that is done and downloadable with little to no upkeep. If you run a membership website, you might make more money per transaction, but probably requires a lot more maintenance as an ongoing service.
I’ve had a personal blog for a long time, but I never monetized it because it was a bit all over the place given my personal hobbies and random journaling. When I finally decided to test out the waters, I basically made pennies using Google Adsense. It’s probably not a huge market for advertisers. However, now that I’m up to more pageviews per month, I joined an ad network and make about $100-$200 a month.
It’s obviously not a living and I have a lot to learn and work on to improve my blog for advertising, but it’s something! It’s sort of a proof of concept, that it is possible. Certainly every industry has it’s difference as I do have personal friends with other blogs on other topics that make more with similar traffic and a lot more with lots more traffic. So it’s possible, but it does take a lot of work and income is variable because it all depends on the advertisers wanting to bid and advertise on your blog…
I use Ezoic for my blog advertising and although it seemed a bit daunting to setup, it turned out to be easier than I thought. They have an account manager that personally helps you out, so it was a smooth process from there. Now I just sit back and watch the dashboards… of course, my goal is to increase my blog traffic, so I can increase my earnings.
If you are interested here is my Ezoic affiliate link so you can try it out yourself! It’s a totally free service to get ads onto your website and they usually want blogs with at least 10K pageviews, but sometimes they accept smaller blogs too. I think it’s worth a try and they payout with Payoneer along with other options, which makes it more accessible globally.
Do you have a blog, but not yet ventured into monetization? Although profits might seem small to begin with, if you are able to test out the waters, you’ll have a better idea of what works, how much you can make and how you need to scale to make your income goals! Good luck!
