In today’s world, content creation has become a popular medium for self-expression and sharing opinions or expertise. However, many creators devote significant time and effort to their blog posts without earning much in return. Unfortunately, crafting an article requires a considerable amount of time and dedication.
Over time, you may have encountered numerous blogs that provide lists on “Making money online” or “Ten tips for a profitable blog“. Indeed, there are various methods to monetize a blog, most of which necessitate extensive efforts in attracting and retaining readers to your website. Once you have established a blog, there are multiple avenues to earn income through blogging.
On WPArena, I use various techniques to generate income. Typically, individuals begin by incorporating AdSense or sponsored ads into their blogs. In addition, I showcase and endorse several multi-level marketing programs I am a part of. Refraining from monetizing your blog immediately upon its creation is advisable, as this proves futile without consistent traffic. Once traffic increases, gradually introduce strategies for generating revenue from your blog. By doing so, the implementation of these approaches will not come as a significant surprise to your loyal visitors. It is crucial to test out multiple methods, as different approaches yield varying results for different individuals.
If this applies to you, it’s time for a change. Monetizing your blog is simple when using effective strategies and reliable methods. If you have a blog with regular content, here are various ways to generate income.
Table of Contents
1- Explore Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways for you to make money. If your website is popular enough, you can add affiliate links to your content and earn some cash. Each time when a reader accesses those links and buys the products you’ve promoted, you get a commission. Simple as that.
You find an affiliate program for a company selling a product you like. You recommend it to your viewers, provide a link or code, and earn money when they buy through your blog. It’s a simple way to make money online. Join a program, add links to your blog, and earn a percentage of sales. You can also earn through sponsored reviews. Popular affiliate plans include Shareasale, CJ Affiliate, Themeforest, and Amazon Affiliates.
List of the most popular affiliate marketplaces and networks:
2- Make Use of Sponsored Content
Also referred to as advertorials or native advertising, sponsored content is an excellent way for you to monetize your WordPress blog. You’d be surprised how much brands are willing to pay for you to publish content that is dedicated to their products.
This can be anything from paid reviews to influencer blogging. For instance, if you used a product of a brand that you liked, you can publish a post about it. The company will sponsor it, and the post will reach a wider audience. Affiliate marketing will also take the reign here, and with each purchase that is made through that post, you may generate even more income.
Sponsored review posts are a way most bloggers earn money for providing a detailed review of a product or company, including sharing positive and negative thoughts. The company or product owner is paying you to review their stuff, so you will be honest when trying the product out and write an honest review. These blog posts are so shared that you can never tell when you are reading a blog post somewhere that it’s a sponsored review.
You can also blog for money by writing reviews about an advertiser’s service or website on your blog and getting paid to do it.
Having a huge follower base and high traffic is when you should offer sponsored reviews and don’t wait for them to come your way; contact companies’ products that you have used or think your visitors will like. Make a sales pitch to them, if they bite, for a free account so you can do a proper review. We also accept Sponsored Post reviews on this blog, and please get in touch with me if interested.
3- Monetize Your Bandwidth
If you are only casually posting from your blog, chances are that you are not using your entire bandwidth. For example, if you have a day job besides your blog, there is at least an 8-hour window during which your bandwidth is not being used. In this case, sharing your excess bandwidth should bring you some extra income.
This is especially useful for you if you have an unlimited Internet connection. Each time anyone gets data and content using your bandwidth, you will get credit for it. That credit can later be turned into cash, boosting your income.
4- Use eCommerce Integration
Most blogs allow for eCommerce integration, and WordPress is one of them. Adding the right plugins to your website lets you connect your content to various online products or your own products. For instance, if you produce digital products such as eBooks or webinars, eCommerce integration can help you sell them.
Think about the products that appeal to your audience the most, whether digital or physical. They don’t have to be your products, as eCommerce strategies like drop-shipping have become popular. Each time you make a sale, you earn extra income.
5- Put Together a Subscription-Based Website
Regarding the media industry, it has become difficult to make money out of subscriptions alone. Google and Facebook are taking over everything, so you’ll need to work harder to get paid for your content.
Many big publishers, such as Times or Forbes, use paid subscriptions when providing content to their customers. As a smaller website, you may start by giving a free article limit, after which readers can pay a fee for the content. If you produce valuable pieces on a daily basis, this may be a great way for you to monetize your blog.
I am subscribed to a few blogs with a premium membership to see certain parts of their blog or access training material..etc. They charge a fee to access this “premium content.” This is an excellent way to earn money on your blog.
Some ideas for creating a premium paid section:
– Teaching a course on how to get an approved Google AdSense account, keyword looks up, where to place the ads, how to increase earnings..etc. Make it a series of videos or blog posts, and then in between, respond to comments and help each person achieve success. By doing this, they will certainly subscribe to the next training series you create.
I can think of many ways to use a membership plugin to make money off a WordPress blog.
Visit Moz.com, for example. You get excellent advice as a free member, but if you are serious about knowing SEO and making your blog rank, it’s worth upgrading your account to get all kinds of goodies.
6- Display Ads on Your Blog
Perhaps one of the easiest ways to monetize your blog is to run ads on it. Think about the types of ads that your audience may like to see. Each time someone clicks on your ad and buys a product, you will get income from it.
Commercials may be inserted on your website in different ways. They can be pop-ups, static ads, and even native ads set on your page. Plenty of programs and plugins can run suitable advertisements for your readers when they visit your blog. This may earn you a lot of passive income, especially if you get plenty of traffic.
Selling advertising space is a great way to make monthly or weekly money. It depends on the terms you select for people buying advertising space on your blog. When you get a good amount of traffic and popularity of your blog, do what all bloggers do, they create an Advertise with us page to list how to buy an advertisement. Look in our sidebar for an obvious example.
The more traffic you get, the better you can charge. When I buy advertising space, I ask the blog owner for Google Analytics stats because I want to see how much different traffic they get. I don’t want to pay a high fee, and the blog does not get much traffic. My investment would not work in my favor. The key is traffic; a lot of traffic means most of the time, the buyer will be any fee you set. Below are some networks to use to sell ads right on your blog.
7- Consider Paid Guest Posting
Guest posting has become a very popular way for bloggers to reach new audiences, increasing their traffic. In fact, 60% of bloggers write around 1-5 guest posts monthly. Getting backlinks from reputable sources proves to Google that your website is trustworthy, improving your search engine position. The higher you rank, the more traffic you will get.
You can monetize your WordPress by asking a fee for any guest post you get. As a website owner, you spend a lot of time and resources growing your audience. Therefore, if bloggers want to benefit from it, they’ll have to pay. This is a good option if your website has many visitors.
8- PPC Advertising Networks
Google AdSense is the most popular way to make money online as getting your blog approved is typically easy. Ensure that you have a lot of blog posts on the blog before applying. That’s the secret to getting accepted. Here is an easy way of installing Adsense on your WordPress site. Also, read this Google Adsense Checklist before applying. Finally, here is an excellent list of WordPress Adsense Themes to help you boost your earnings instantly. Besides Google AdSense, there are other ad networks to consider if Google AdSense rejects your blog. Some of these websites have minimum traffic requirements to apply, so read their rules before joining so you can not waste time registering.
After careful thinking, here is what I recommend to use as an ad network to display ads on your blog where you earn money per click.
- Google Adsense
- Media.net
- BidVertiser
- Chitika
9- Buying and Selling Blogs
A few friends make a living from buying and selling WordPress blogs. They mastered this science, but I have never got into this method as it’s long-term. First, you look for blogs that you know have the potential to be great blogs with a bit of work on your part. Look at blogs on flippa.com.
This method will work for you if you are an SEO expert and have some web development experience. Buy upcoming blogs, do the SEO changes on them, so it gets high search engine rankings, and tweak the current theme to make it a lot better and more appealing. Publish content on the blog or hire a writer to do this to get quality blog posts. Then, put up AdSense to earn money from it. When you earn a decent income with top rankings in a few months, sell the blog for at least double what you paid for it or more.
I have not gotten into this, but this is a general idea of what my friend does; he builds the blog up as it has more value when he is done with it.
10- Adding A Donation Button
Believe it or not, adding a PayPal donate button can get people to donate a few dollars to you. For example, if you run a non-profit blog, donations pay for the blog’s operating costs, and the remaining contributions are sent to a particular charity. In a nutshell, this is how charities work; they give your donations to the cause they are for.
If you are a theme or a plugin developer, add a donate button to your blog. Because when you release free themes and plugins, you don’t get paid for your development time. So people should donate something to give thanks for not charging money for the developed theme or plugin.
Notice for a lot of WordPress plugins, some authors mention donating.
2 Notable Plugins
11- Offering Consulting & Related Services
If you are good at doing something online, such as installing WordPress blogs and setting up the basic essential plugins for best performance, then offer up a service for a specific fee. If you can design logos, offer your services by creating a page explaining what you offer and how to get in touch for more information. Look at our services page for a good example.
Having your blog at WordPress can assist you to get money via customization services. Various people are earning a lot from performing themes, website or plugin customizations. This has happened to many Freelancing blogs and Up Work.
Although WordPress itself does customization services, they can also be done on a website or blog. In any way, several WordPress users can install a theme but do not have the technical know-how to update the layouts and the nature of custom posts. In this case, a blog can offer the services on an hourly variable cost rate.
12- Building Up An Email List
Have you heard the term “The Money is in the list” before? It’s true; over time, as you learn more about how to operate a newsletter, you will soon find out that it’s a money-maker with a huge list or a way to drive traffic to 1 blog topic with a mass email. There are many ways to use an email list. We talk about a few on this blog already. I want to share a few email subscriber businesses that work well with WordPress.
Extra tips
Here are some additional tips to consider if you want your blog to be successful:
- Make sure that it has a proper domain name;
- The quality of your content should remain high – do not spam with keywords or pop-up windows. Customers appreciate a good user experience today.
- If you are selling something, try to provide decent customer service. This is a key point of any marketing nowadays.
This blog post was a beginner’s guide for earning revenue from blogging. As you learn more and more about blogging, there are endless ways to make money from it. This list is a continuous work in progress. So check back every so often for new methods.
The Bottom Line
Letting it go without making money would be a shame if you have a WordPress website. Each post you make requires time, effort, and skill. So, if your audience likes what you post, use the strategies above and take the opportunity to make some passive income.
If you have any questions, I am more than happy to answer them in the comment section below.
