Blogging is a great way to earn a living while enjoying the freedom and flexibility of working from home.
But how do bloggers get paid?
It’s usually one of the first questions that pops into the mind of anyone serious about starting a blog.
It’s a legitimate question, of course because, outside of it being an outlet for their passions, people want to know how they can earn extra income, or even replace their day job with income from their blog.
Bloggers get paid primarily in two ways:
Through higher involvement and more lucrative strategies:
- Sponsored posts
- Selling digital and physical products
- Membership site
- Offering freelance services
- Providing consultation and coaching services
And lower involvement and passive income strategies:
- Placing ads on their site using ad networks
- Affiliate marketing
- eBooks & guides
- Job boards
What I’m covering in this post will help you to understand how to generate blogging income and learn several ways to earn money through blogging.
How do bloggers get paid?
Before diving into the ways that bloggers earn income through their blogs, I want to start by talking about the two main ways that bloggers get paid.
You see, your approach to monetizing your blog depends on how much time and effort you want to put into monetizing it.
The two primary paths to blogging income:
- Personal involvement higher ticket ways of earning income
- Lower involvement and lower maintenance passive income
Personal involvement and high ticket offers involve a significant investment of your time, in addition to your content creation efforts.
It’s always important to remember that time costs money.
So when you’re focused on high-touch, high ticket monetization strategies that require a greater personal involvement, the value you deliver comes from the personalized attention your customers and clients get and you will be able to charge your clients appropriately.
Lower-touch passive income monetization strategies require a lot less of your time (once you have it all set up and deployed). This method will help you to earn money while you sleep, as Warren Buffet says.
“If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”
— Warren Buffett
This kind of passive blogging income involves earning money from your blog without necessarily sacrificing your time. You can sit back at home and spend quality time with your family or friends while your blog takes care of you.
The most effective ways to earn money from your blog usually start with passive, low-touch options, then grow in to more high-touch options as your blog grows and matures.
And when you’ve got a combination of high-touch, high-ticket, and low-touch passive strategies, you have the potential to really make family-tree-changing income from your blog!
How much do bloggers earn through their blogs?
Speaking of income, let’s talk a little about getting some perspective on what earning money as a blogger really looks like.
Now keep in mind, these numbers assume that you’re a serious blogger and not just dabbling. If you’re going to make money you have to commit to doing it and do the hard work.
Semrush, one of the most popular and trusted SEO tools, reports that the average amount a blogger earns monthly is $8000.
Certain factors like niche, length of posts, traffic, and the monetization strategies you employ all play a role in the success of your blog.
But if you’re serious about earning income from your blog, and you’re committed to growing it, there is a TON of potential!
Just so you have a little perspective: the content marketing industry is projected to hit $412.88 billion worth in 2021.
WOW.
How competitive is starting a new blog – is it worth it?
The number of bloggers in the United States is increasing rapidly. From 2014 – 2020, the number of bloggers increased by 10 million, so that means there is a lot more competition out there.
But it also means that there are a lot more dabblers out there too.
“Influencers” have been saying blogging is dead, but, as you can see, it’s as healthy as it’s ever been and set to continue to grow!
So making money with your blog is not only possible – it’s virtually certain when you do it right.
Now that we’ve set the foundation, let’s talk about the ways you can earn income as a blogger, starting with the active, high-touch monetization strategies and we’ll follow that with the more passive low-touch strategies for monetization.
Nine Best Ways To Earn Income Through Blogging
There are all kinds of ways that bloggers get paid.
That’s a good thing.
It gives you plenty of variety so that you can monetize your blog in a way that’s the best fit for you and your business.
High-Touch High-Ticket Monetization Strategies For Bloggers
- Sponsored posts
- Selling digital and physical products
- Membership site
- Offering freelance services
- Providing consultation and coaching services
Earn money through blogging by doing sponsored posts
One of the ways that you can earn money is by doing sponsored posts.
Sponsored posts are those that you write where you’re getting a complementary product or service, or you’re even being paid to do a post promoting a company’s stuff.
The way it works is that a company reaches out to a creator to get their product or service in front of their audience.
The blogger can charge any amount they’d like to do the piece.
The traffic, readership, quality of content, power of the website domain are just a couple of the factors that determine how much leverage the blogger has when it comes to setting prices; no company will hire a blogger with zero to limited audience reach.
Here’s the deal:
No one likes ads.
As Jeffery Gitomer says, “People don’t like to be sold-but they love to buy.”
And it’s true.
Authenticity is everything in the blogging world.
You want to always be up front with your audience and community with what you’re doing.
Because one bad step can ruin your reputation, and that’s not what you want.
So if you decide that you want to add sponsored posts to your repertoire be super open and clear about it.
BuzzFeed is a huge blog, and they did a sponsored partnership with Spotify that was absolutely amazing, called “14 Bands That Probably Wouldn’t Exist Without Led Zeppelin”.
It’s a win/win for everyone because BuzzFeed got a great piece of content. At the time Spotify was still kind of new on the scene so they got a bunch of great exposure.
Earn money blogging by selling digital and physical products
This is probably one of the fastest and most effective ways to earn money as a blogger.
Creating your own resources, whether they’re large or small is such a powerful move for your business that I’m thoroughly convinced it should be a central pillar to every creator’s business.
Here’s the best part:
After you’ve created your digital product once, you can sell it over and over again without having to keep inventory or stock, like you would if you created physical products.
You can build courses and products based on your own expertise and experience.
If you want to see someone who’s really done an amazing job of selling digital products using their content creation work, look no further than AJ and the Disney Food Blog.
In my family, we’re Disney addicts and we found her blog a few years back when doing some pre-trip planning.
She’s got amazing video and blog content at her site, Disney Food Blog.
And one of the best ways she monetizes her site is by selling her Disney Dining Guide.
What an absolutely brilliant idea!
Earn money blogging by adding a membership site
When your blog has started to grow and create a little bit of momentum one of the greatest ways you can help your community to go deeper is by adding a membership to your online business.
By adding a membership site to your blog you have the ability to go deeper with your community and provide exclusive trainings, interviews, deeper content and more resources.
Membership sites provide a steady source of income each month as the recurring fees continue to get paid.
This is a great option if you’re teaching skills to your audience because it separates the tire-kickers from the serious students.
It also can serve as an additional step in your value ladder where you can introduce your paying members to small group coaching and even 1-on-1 coaching opportunities.
My friend Jonathan Milligan has done an amazing job with his business at Blogging Your Passion.
And one of the aspects of what he does is his mastermind and group coaching options.
Earn money from your blog by offering freelance services
Creating content on a blog is one of the greatest things you can do if you’re a freelancer.
Doesn’t matter what line of work you’re in – writing, graphic design, VA services, social media, or anything else.
You can funnel traffic to your blog into your done-for-you services and book yourself solid!
So many times people are searching for “how-to” information.
And when they find your blog and find great content on how to do that thing, they’ll either be grateful that you helped them find the answer they were looking for, or they will see how much work is involved and learn that you offer done-for-you services to take care of those tasks.
It’s another win/win situation.
I’ve been profoundly successful in my business doing things this way building my business to more than a 6-figure earner.
And I’m not the only one.
Shannon Mattern has done the same thing.
She’s filled up her business and been so successful creating content via her podcast, newsletter and blog, that she hardly even has time for done-for-you services any more.
Make money blogging by providing consultation and coaching services
Bloggers can earn money from providing consultation or coaching services on their blogs, depending on the niche and level of your skills.
Coaching isn’t for everyone, but if you’ve got the heart of a teacher, and you actually care about helping your students get results then this is a great option.
The important thing is the ability to get results.
If you’ve been successful in your blogging niche, then adding income streams by doing coaching can be a way to earn a lot of income, and pretty quickly.
People are always dying to get the inside scoop, and wanting to know the behind-the-scenes stuff that’s helped you get to where you are today.
And they’ll pay a premium for it.
Coaching work is high-touch and high-involvement and if you want to be a great coach you have to actually care.
Rick Mulready is an awesome example of someone who’s doing coaching through their blog.
He actually does a podcast called “The Art of Online Business” and it’s amazing.
One of his income streams is by his coaching program.
Lower-touch passive income monetization strategies for bloggers
- Placing ads on their site using ad networks
- Affiliate marketing
- eBooks & guides
- Job boards
Earn money blogging by placing ads on your site
There is a time and a place to use ads on your site and to be clear, it’s not for everyone.
For instance, you will probably never see an ad on this site.
It just doesn’t fit with my overall blog strategy here.
But if you have the right kind of blog ads can make a big difference.
I’ve got ads running on other sites that I own and they’re a perfect fit for those kinds of sites.
If your blog is a niche site blog then ads can be a great way to generate income like Dirt Bike Planet has done.
A few of the most popular ad networks you can get started with to display ads on your site are:
There are different requirements for the various ad networks so check to make sure your blog meets the minimum requirements for traffic and pageviews.
Google Adsense is the most popular ad network and numerous top-earning bloggers with substantial traffic use Mediavine for ads.
Sell private ads on your site to earn money from your blog
This is under the same concept umbrella as using an ad network to serve ads on your site, but it’s slightly different in that you’re working directly with the advertiser.
I’ve used this personally to great effect on my other sites and it can be a great way to earn income.
Earn passive income through affiliate marketing on your blog
Affiliate marketing is probably the most popular monetization method for bloggers.
The way it works is that you promote products and services by doing reviews – honest reviews – on your blog, and place a special tracking link in your blog post that will send the visitor to the vendor’s website.
If the visitor makes a purchase, you earn a commission.
Commission can range anywhere from just a couple percent of the sale – up to even 100%, depending on the company you’re featuring.
Some popular affiliate marketing programs are:
- Amazon Affiliate Program
- Commission Junction
- Linkshare
- Sharesale
- Linkconnector
- Clickbank
Affiliate marketing is one of the ways I monetize this blog. I talk about products and services that I use and when I think it would be something helpful for my community I will include an affiliate link, along with a full disclosure, to that product.
Some people have made an entire career out of affiliate marketing.
Spencer Mecham is one of the top affiliate marketers in the world and has earned more than 7 figures just by employing affiliate marketing in his business.
Create eBooks & guides to make money blogging
When Michael Hyatt released his book “Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World” it was a huge hit for him and his community.
And what makes that book so unique is that it really wasn’t much more than a collection of his best blog posts on creating what he called a “platform” for content creators.
People will pay good money for content delivered in various different forms.
I’ve used this approach too. My book, the “The Ultimate WordPress Blueprint” is a transcribed guide of my video series that goes by the same name.
You can repurpose all kinds of different things and even create new stuff.
Allie Bjerk has created some fantastic resources that she calls “tiny offers” that she sells through her site.
For your blog it could be a a checklist, a cheatsheet, a swipe-file, a shared Asana checklist, or something else. The possibilities are endless, and you can really move the needle quickly with this kind of monetization strategy.
Another great option is to create digital goods that you deliver through Amazon’s Kindle Book Publishing system.
Create a job board to earn money from your blog
Depending on your niche, this could be a fantastic option.
It’s one of the strategies I use on one of my niche sites, and it works.
If you’ve got a site that creates content for a specific industry, it’s a no-brainer that you can connect companies with people who are looking for a job move in that industry.
You can sell job listings yourself or you can earn pay-per-click income by linking to the big name job boards online.
One of my favorite job boards is called Authentic Jobs and it’s one that grew organically from people reaching out to its creator asking if he knew anyone who was looking for work.
Another great example is the Pro Blogger Job Board that connects writers with opportunities.
Is it possible to get paid blogging?
There’s no doubt that you – yes you – can get paid for your blogging efforts.
Here’s the catch:
You have to commit to it and work hard.
There may have been a time when it was easier to earn money blogging, but even if there was, those days are long gone.
Blogging is competitive.
But if you find the right opportunity, you can really earn a great income from your blog.
There is no ultimate formula or secret that guarantees quick income.
To the rest of the world it will look like you’ve become an overnight hit.
What they won’t realize is that you spent an enormous amount of time and effort creating something awesome.
But it doesn’t have to take a long time either. Sometimes, you can see success and start earning money in just a couple months.
It’s happened to me and many others.
It just depends on your niche, your content, and your monetization opportunities and your commitment to publishing tons and tons of high-quality content.
It’s like I tell my daughter all the time – if it was easy everyone would be doing it.
So embrace the challenge, you can do it!
Next Steps
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