Many people still fail to look beyond the PPC ads (notably, AdSense) when it comes to monetizing their blogs.
In reality, there exist seamless opportunities to make money from blogging these days. Some are traditional tactics that still deliver decent revenue, others are new approaches that have become very popular in recent times.
So if you’re a blogger, there are innumerable ways to turn your blog into a money-making machine.
Of course, not all monetization methods would be applicable to you. And the applicable ones, they might not necessarily bring you similar rewards. Depending on your niche, goals, and preferences, you have got to pick the most suitable one(s).
Let’s jump right into it. Here are 21 ways how you can make money from your blog:
Note: These are ways to make money from blog without AdSense, Pay Per Click or Cost Per Mile ads.
1. Sell EBooks
Write a short (or long) eBook related to a relevant topic, make it information-rich and exclusive, and then sell it at a good price. It’s a base-level money-making technique the majority of bloggers use.
2. Hardcover Book
Why just limit yourself to small guides and eBooks?! Why not write a full-fledged book and become a published author?! Self-publishing is easier than ever today.
If you want to know more about self-publishing, Joanna Penn is your go-to person.
3. Create a Course
If you’re really good at something, why not teach that to others at a price? Create a course, pack it with amazing materials (videos, exclusive articles, personal notes, more) and then offer it at a nice price.
Tools like Teachable make it very easy.
4. Subscription-based Forums
If you’ve formed a tight-knitted community of readers who engage a lot with you, you can easily make money from it. Create a subscription-based forum and charge people a small fee (one-time or recurring) to be a part of the private conversation.
5. Paid Exclusive Content
Not every article should be free. For a few special and important ones, you can charge some amount from your readers.
6. Affiliate Marketing
This is one of the most common techniques to make money from a blog. You sell someone else’s product and then cut a small commission.
7. Paid Guest Blog
If you’re a renowned name in your industry, there might be a lot of people interested in guest blogging on your blog for backlinks and branding purposes. You can charge them some money for it.
8. Sponsored Contents
This method has become extremely popular in the news and media industry today. Write a post on your blog yourself promoting someone’s product/brand. In return, charge some money from the company.
9. Paywall
Washington Post and New York Times are doing this very prominently. Just tease a small snippet of your article and cover the rest of its body. Ask readers to pay to see the whole article. (Read more on Paywall)
10. Paid Directory
Say you own a food blog. Now you can create a directory of other food bloggers, sorted into different categories (location, trend, type, more). To include the names of blogs in the directory, you can charge money.
11. Job Board
The most common example of this is Job Board at ProBlogger. Create a job board and have people in your industry list their open positions in return for a small fee.
12. Consulting
Again, if you’re really good at the topic you’re blogging on, you can offer a consulting service. In a matter of a few hours of a session, you can earn a lot.
13. Freelancing
The scope of this is limited to certain types of niches, but it’s worth mentioning. With this blog as a portfolio, I’ve had many people approach me for content marketing and SEO Writing. Blogging is clearly an easy way to pull clients for your freelancing journey.
14. Your Own Product
Whether it’s a digital product or a physical one, having your own set of products can bring you revenue in the long term. Create your own product and sell it.
15. Coaching
There’s a reason why people are reading your blog. Because you’re solving their pain point. You can provide them the solutions on a much more intimate level by offering personal coaching. Help your audience through their problems, step-by-step, by being by their side all the time. In short, be their personal genie.
Coaching is one of the highest-paying money-making techniques for bloggers.
16. Own Merchandise
Create and sell your own merchandise. T-shirts, caps, stationeries — customizing them with your own brand name has become much easier today. There are many online websites that can create your merchandise.
17. Donations
Donation doesn’t look good on every kind of blog. But if done correctly – if you have branded your blog the right way – you can see many people donating (big) money to you.
18. Ad Space
Offer ad space on your blog for different brands. Depending on the size of their banner, charge on a monthly basis.
19. Webinars
These days, many marketers use webinars for lead generation. However, you can treat it as your money-making avenue. Organize and host paid webinars.
20. Paid Video Tutorials
While text-based content is still just as preferred, video consumption is on a whole different level. You can leverage this.
Create video content (preferably tutorials) and then sell them to your audience. Pulling this is fairly easy. Just stack the information from your articles, repurpose it and present it in video form. If promising enough, people would definitely pay for it.
21. Product Review
There are countless start-ups out there who would pay you to (positively) review their products and services. Find a few of them and get paid.
BONUS
22. Site Sponsorship
You can have your blog sponsored by any relevant brand. You put their name on your blog – at times, promote it – and then get paid. This doesn’t have to be a long-term deal. Have short-term contracts.
Conclusion
While these mentioned ways to make money from blogging vary in scope and process, they all need you to have a good stream of traffic on your blog. If you don’t have enough visitors, you won’t make enough revenue.
So if you don’t get decent traffic every day, stop thinking about how to make money from blog, and start focusing on marketing it.
At the traffic end, if it all looks good, pick the most suitable money-making technique(s) from above and start earning big.
Also read on Spell Out Marketing: 15 Things That Will Destroy Your Blog (And Your Dreams of Being a Successful Blogger)
