How To Monetize Your Blog (4 Proven Ways): The Ultimate Guide

You’ve started your blog (optional, you can start a blog if you haven’t already), and now you want to know how to make money from it/monetize your blog?. But how do you even get started with a blog? And what are the best ways to monetize?

First, there are many different approaches that work, so the first step is to find out which one will work best for you and your readers.

Second, while there’s no perfect path to making money from your blog, there are several strategies that have been proven to work time and time again by other successful bloggers just like you.

7 Essential Things to do Before You Monetize Your Blog

Before you try to make money from your website or start a business based on it, make sure you’ve taken care of a few essential things.

• Register all Relevant URLs with Google and Bing webmaster tools (submit XML sitemaps)
• Writing Few Posts
• Getting Traffic to Your Blog (Organic Traffic)
• Install Google Analytics so that you know where your visitors are coming from
• Building Relationships with Users
• Decide what kind of relationship you want to have with your users by thinking about privacy policy, contact info, etc.
• Start Making Money Blogging

Let’s get started with The Guide To Monetize Your Blog

1. Advertising (displaying Ads)

The number one way to monetize your website is through advertising. There are many ways to display ads on your site, including Google AdSense, affiliate programs, and direct banner ads from other companies that want to sell you their products or services. Displaying ads on your site is a great way to build your traffic and eventually make money from what you do best – writing! However, it’s very important to remember that there’s a fine line between displaying too many ads and not enough.

So make sure to be consistent in displaying them throughout your site; avoid placing them all in one place or all at once! For example, if you only have one small ad for an online course placed on your footer of every page (which could mean losing some readers), try putting small ad boxes within different parts of each post as well for maximum effect.

If you are starting out you can register on Google AdSense and display auto ads. Auto ads are displayed automatically on your website without you doing anything. You can as well choose other custom ads types provided. To display them you can use plugins like “auto ads inserter – for WordPress”.

Things to Consider When Choosing Advertising Program For Your Blog

1) Payout. Choose an advertising program that will give you a fair payout for your content and traffic, as well as having other monetization options. Usually, AdSense is tops on anyone’s list, but there are many options out there!

2) CPM or CPC Model. Do you want to be paid when someone clicks on your ad or when someone views it? I usually prefer CPC (cost per click), although some people love CPM (cost per impression).

3) Level of Involvement with Ads. You need to decide how involved you want to be with displaying ads on your site. Some sites choose not to display any ads and make money by selling their product or service instead. Other sites display every type of ad under the sun in hopes of making as much revenue from them as possible. Determine which way you want to go before registering and signing up with an ad network because they won’t pay you if they don’t know where/how to display ads in your specific niche market!

4) Commission Rates Paid by Advertisers. How much does each advertiser pay for displaying their ads on my website? If you don’t like a certain website because their commission rates aren’t high enough, then move on to another one.

What are the Pros and Cons of Advertising on Your Blog

Advertising on your blog is a great way to make money, but be sure you know all of the pros and cons before making a final decision.

Pros #Benefits of Advertising on Your Blog

• Monetize traffic that’s not converting into sales: Advertising works well on pages that don’t convert directly into sales — such as your blog or About page — because they’re easier to monetize than sales pages. You’re less likely to lose potential customers by placing ads in these areas.
• You can track what works and what doesn’t. Each ad network usually gives some type of report that shows you how many visitors clicked on each ad placed within your site – or at least an estimate. This allows you to see which ones work best and helps you determine where/how to place them in future posts or pages. You should also be able to see how much each advertiser pays, including any up-sells or down-sells offered within their network. However, keep in mind that CPC networks sometimes don’t give estimates unless they think an ad will be clicked on while CPM networks don’t know who actually clicks on an ad because only impressions are recorded.
• Advertising increases your traffic and makes it easier to earn money from it. No matter which program you choose, if you’re looking to make money off of your site by showing ads, you’ll have to start getting targeted traffic before you can do so. If no one is visiting your site, then no one will click on your ads either! But advertising does get people interested in reading about different topics on your website and hopefully visiting other sites with similar content as well, which ultimately leads to more traffic for everyone! Also, once people start visiting often, they are more likely to purchase something later on too.
• When you sell advertising directly to the advertiser, you control how many ads are displayed on your blog and who pays for them. You also control how much you earn per click, making it easier to build an income stream if you want to monetize your blog.
• Because most advertising networks offer free sign-up and don’t require a minimum amount of traffic, it’s easy to get started earning money right away!
• You don’t need another source of income just yet.

Depending on the type of advertising you choose, your blog will earn money whether someone clicks on the ad or simply views it. It’s a great way to make money while you sleep! Advertising is one of the easy ways to monetize your blog (or beginners).

Cons of Advertising on Your Blog

While advertising can be a great way to earn money from your blog and potentially increase the number of visitors to your site, there are some negative consequences as well. The following are some of the potential cons that you should keep in mind before deciding whether or not you want to advertise on your blog.

• Advertising can interfere with the focus of your blog. If you include advertising on your blog, it may interfere with the overall look and feel of the site. For example, if your site is about recipes, having an advertisement for a dating service may be distracting to readers and make them leave the page.
• Advertising may lead to lower revenues than expected. Many advertisers track click rates, which means they will pay you only if someone clicks on their ad link. This means that you may get less money than expected even though someone may have seen the advertisement on your site. In addition, many people choose not to click on advertisements even when they see them, which can also lead to lower revenues than expected.
• When you allow ads on your blog, you don’t get to control what appears there. The ad networks decide which ads to show based on many factors, including the page content and visitor demographics. This means your readers might see advertisements for competitors or other businesses that clash with your image or are otherwise inappropriate for your niche. You have no say over what ads appear on your site other than turning them off completely.
• Advertising can take up time because you have to choose ads that go with your content, place them appropriately and keep track of what’s working. If you have more than a few ads, this can get to be quite a lot of work. And if something goes wrong with an ad, you may need to spend even more time getting it fixed. Advertisers often pay slowly as well, so you may not see money from an ad for weeks or even months after running it. The lag can make it difficult to keep track of whether an ad is doing well or not.
• Ads do distract readers from your content. Readers know that sites like yours are trying to make money, but they still don’t want ads shoved in their faces. Make sure that your ads are unobtrusive and blend with the overall design of your site.
• Some types of advertising actually cost money rather than earning it. This can happen with affiliate links and some types of pay-per-click ads. You’ll want to do your research before choosing advertising methods for your blog. And if you’re using Google Ads, for example, be sure that you set up filters so that competitors’ ads don’t show up on your site.

Ads are a way for creators to get paid for their work. If there’s an audience for your content and ad space available on your site, selling ads could give you some added income from those readers. If your blog grows large enough and pulls in enough traffic, it could become your full-time job. What are you waiting? monetize your blog now with ads to maximize your blog income!

FAQ

Does banner blindness affect your blog?

Banner blindness is the result of users training themselves to ignore adverts when surfing the net, but does it affect your blog?

Yes, when there are many banner blindness on your pages the visitors do not engage with the ads as expected and hence impacting your blog finances or ads revenue.

Does the positioning of ads affect your blog?

A blogger’s first reaction to placing ads on their website is to place them in a prominent position where they are sure to get noticed. Placing an ad at the bottom of a page or even within the body of an article may seem a little counterintuitive, but research has shown that the placement of ads can have a significant impact on both click-through rates and overall conversion rates.

Ads placed in the header of a site can have a much higher clickthrough rate than those placed at the bottom of a page.

Do the ads contribute to page load speed?

If an ad load in the browser before the rest of the content, it might slow down your site. If a browser needs to load ads from multiple networks, that can cause even more problems. The best way to determine if ads slow down your site is to test them.

You can do this by running your site through a free tool like Pingdom or GTMetrix. These tools give you a report that tells you how fast your site loads and highlights any errors or bottlenecks.

The best way to test whether ads slow down your site is to use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. This will tell you whether or not your ads are slowing down your mobile and desktop site load times.

2. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a way to make money blogging. Affiliate marketing is when you promote someone else’s product on your website or other platform and then you get paid a certain percentage of each sale. You don’t have to create your own product, which makes it great for first-time bloggers or those who aren’t comfortable creating their own products.

There are many affiliate programs you can join, including Amazon Associates and VigLink. Those two companies alone offer more than five million products each. In order to make an affiliate marketing strategy work, you need to be thorough in choosing what program to use and then put in some hard work to see results!

There are two different ways that blogs make money with affiliates:

• Getting a flat rate per referral click or earning an amount off of each product sold. Since every blogger has their own preferences as far as where they want their revenue generated from and what they’re comfortable with promoting, I’ve listed pros and cons for both methods below so everyone can determine what works best for them!

Flat Rate Clicks – Pros

• Easy to setup
• No time spent tracking and counting sales
• Work with multiple products at once.

Flat Rate Clicks – Cons

• Lower commission rates than affiliate programs that pay off of each sale
• You only get paid once a sale has been made, but it doesn’t matter if people drop out halfway through. You can be paid less than your profit margin is on a product if someone drops out after they’ve purchased it.

There are many different types of affiliate programs such as:

• Affiliates that work on your sites such as Amazon Associates or Clickbank
• Affiliates working as an agency such as Commission Junction or Shareasale
• Affiliates working with third-party companies such as Google Adsense
• Affiliates working on their own websites such as Zazzle or Etsy

Things to Consider When Choosing Affiliate Program For Your Blog

1) Commission Rate

• How much are you going to get paid for each sale? • Different affiliate programs have different commission rates. Don’t just look at one product and judge them based on how much they pay per sale. Always calculate your overall profit margin before signing up for a program.

2) Products

• What type of products will you be promoting? • It’s best if you choose a category that is related to your niche. It would also help if it’s something that your target audience would be interested in!

No matter what type of affiliate marketing strategy you decide on, don’t stop working hard! It takes time and dedication to make it successful, but once you start seeing results, it will be worth all of your hard work!

Pros  #Benefits of Affiliate Marketing on Your Blog

• One of the biggest pros to affiliate marketing on your blog is easy: it generates income. You’re basically getting paid for referrals that you make on your blog when someone clicks through your link and makes a purchase. There are many different ways to do this: from banner ads to product reviews to even social media posts, there are plenty of opportunities for generating income as an affiliate marketer for your blog.
• You can make a passive income from affiliate marketing.
• You can attract more readers with the products you choose to promote.
• You do not have to go through the process of creating your own products.
• The amount of time you spend with affiliate marketing is minimal, compared to building your own products.
• You get to see what your visitors are interested in, by seeing what products sell the most on your blog.
• You can increase your revenue from affiliate marketing.

Cons of Affiliate Marketing on Your Blog

• You don’t get paid unless you make sales. With affiliate marketing, there’s no reward until you make a sale. While SEO and email marketing can bring in passive income each month, with affiliate marketing you’ll only earn money when someone clicks your links and buys the product (and even then, usually only if they buy through your link rather than directly from the merchant). That means you won’t see any results unless you actively promote your affiliate links.​
• You have to keep track of your sales, or you will be stiffed on your commissions. If you don’t have a reliable way to keep track of all the links you post and their respective clicks and sales, then do not get involved in affiliate marketing. The merchant may choose to not pay for your commission if you don’t have a proper system in place to keep track of what sales you generate.
• You should concentrate on quality content first and foremost. Many bloggers tend to put a lot of emphasis on affiliate sales because they see it as an easy way to make money. However, if all you’re doing is throwing affiliate links around without any real content, then search engines like Google will penalize your site, which will hurt your traffic and prevent you from earning money through your blog.
• You have no control over the price or the quality of the product you are selling. If a company decides to increase their prices, it affects your income and if they decide to lower the price, your sales may drop as well. If they change the product or discontinue making it, you will be out of a job.
• There is a lot of competition in the affiliate marketing world. Most companies have multiple affiliates selling their products and there may be thousands of affiliates all promoting the exact same products on their websites, blogs, or on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. The key is to find companies that not many other people are promoting.

Be sure that you only recommend high-quality products or services, and use your own experience as a guide. If readers feel misled or your recommendations fall flat, they may stop coming back to your site — which means fewer clicks and less commission for you.

FAQ

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is when you recommend a product or service to your audience using special tracking links, and then get a referral commission for every time someone buys after clicking your link.

For example, if you have a food blog, you can sign up for Amazon’s affiliate program and include special links to products like mixing bowls, juicers, blenders, and immersion blenders. Anyone who clicks on the link and makes a purchase within a certain time frame will get you a cut of that sale.

3. SaaS / Digital Subscriptions

With technology advancing so quickly, there’s no shortage of ways to make money from your website or blog. One of those ways is through SaaS subscriptions, or software as a service. This involves providing a useful online tool—like LeadPages —to users in exchange for monthly subscription fees.

If you have technical skills and can code, consider building a platform with support for recurring revenue; even better if it’s niche-specific. For example, YouTube supports thousands of channels by renting them server space and hosting their videos for free; it also sells an ad-free version called Premium/Red that costs $11.99 per month.

Regardless of which approach you take, you’ll want to tailor your monetization strategy around how you plan on serving customers before developing anything else. That’s because content and features are often dictated by monetization opportunities.

If you need the inspiration to get started, try checking out some examples on Envato Market.

Things to Consider When Choosing SaaS / Digital Subscriptions For Your Blog

1) What’s your goal? Does your platform have an obvious use case? Will users need to be sold on its value or can it directly serve their needs?

2) Who is your customer? How big is their market and how niche-specific is your solution?

3) What’s already out there and how does yours compare on a feature level?

4) How much are you willing to sell vs. how much can you give away for free?

5) Can you code? Building software may seem like something only developers can do, but that’s not true at all. If you have technical skills and can code, consider building a platform with support for recurring revenue; even better if it’s niche-specific. Many platforms start off simple but end up growing into full solutions as they add features over time. Examples include things like WordPress—which started as blogging software—and eCommerce solutions like Shopify.

6) Is your service scalable? It’s difficult to monetize something with high overhead that requires significant time to maintain. Instead, focus on offering tools that are low cost, don’t require maintenance once in place, and create passive income via subscriptions or ads. Keep in mind: Once someone has access to your SaaS/digital subscription service, it’s really hard to change their minds about using it. Make sure you have a clear idea of who would use your product and why before moving forward with anything else!

What are the Pros and Cons of SaaS / Digital Subscriptions on Your Blog

If you are looking to monetize your blog by selling digital subscriptions for a software as a service (SaaS) application or other digital product, there are many benefits.

#Pros  #Benefits

• Recurring Revenue – The biggest benefit is that you can build a recurring stream of revenue from each customer. When people sign up for your monthly subscription, you can get paid each month for their membership. Getting paid once for individual purchases is great, but getting paid over and over again from a single customer is even better!
• Subscriptions also help build loyalty among your customers. They will be more likely to stick with you if they’re already paying every month and it’s easier to get them to pay more money later on if they’re already loyal to your brand.
• Customer Feedback – When people subscribe to your service, they are giving you much more than money; they are giving you their feedback and input on how to improve your product or service. You can use this feedback to make changes or improvements that will help you retain and grow the number of subscribers to your service.
• Low Risk / Less Inventory – One great thing about creating and selling SaaS products is less inventory management on your part. There’s no need to manufacture or ship anything physical, so there’s no risk of running out of stock or having people cancel orders because their item was “out of Use”

Cons

There’s a lot of hype around SaaS and digital subscriptions right now, and in many cases, that’s justified. But the model does have some drawbacks, too. Here are some potential cons to consider.

• You need to find something to sell regularly.
• While it sounds easy, creating a steady stream of valuable digital content is difficult. You need to put your thinking cap on constantly and come up with new things to sell.
• You may not be able to charge as much for your product as you would for a one-off sale.
• Some people expect to pay less for a subscription than they would for a single item.
• Your audience may not realize how much they’re paying overtime.

NOTE! This isn’t as important if you’re selling information products or services that are provided on an ongoing basis (like coaching or consulting), but if you’re selling something like a plugin or mobile app, customers might be surprised by the cost of continuing the service over months or year.

4. Product Reviews

Product reviews are one of the most popular and profitable ways to make money blogging.

Product reviews are especially valuable to readers when they’re purchasing online because they don’t have the ability to physically touch and feel a product in person. A product review allows readers to gather important information about the product so they know prior to purchasing if it fits their needs or not.

They help them make an informed purchase decision, which will improve the chances that they buy the product from your affiliate link and not from someone else’s (like Amazon or eBay). If anyone clicks on your affiliate link and buys the product, you make money.

5 Important Guidelines to Follow When Reviewing Products and Disclosing Affiliations

Product reviews can be a lucrative way to monetize your blog. However, there are some important guidelines to follow when reviewing products and disclosing affiliations. If you stick to the rules below, you can avoid the pitfalls of writing misleading or biased reviews, causing yourself problems with search engines like Google or advertisers that have strict policies in place.

• Respect Your Audience: Respect your audience’s intelligence. Although you don’t want to bore them with too many details, you should give them enough information so they know what they’re getting into.
• Be Impartial and Objective: You should mention any perks or bonuses that come with your product recommendation but be sure to point out any drawbacks as well.
• Be Relevant: Make sure it relates to your blog content in some way so that it will attract your target audience.
• Disclose Your Affiliation: If you do have a relationship with the manufacturer, be upfront about it. Readers will appreciate your honesty and transparency, and you won’t have to worry about breaking any laws or getting into legal trouble down the road.
• Reviewing Products from Multiple Manufacturers: It is better for you to review products from several different manufacturers rather than just one or two because it can prevent readers from feeling like they are being sold something every time they visit your website/blogs.

Things to Consider When Choosing Product to Review For Your Blog

• Products that compliment something you’ve reviewed in the past
• Products you actually use
• Products that are relevant to your blog’s niche
• Products that are from a company you like and trust
• Products that are on your Amazon wish list (because if you want it, others might too!)
• Products that have high star ratings and positive reviews on Amazon or other sites like Zulily and FabKids
• A product that has been featured in a recent post of yours or is similar to something discussed in a post of yours (this will make the post more relevant to your readers!)
• A product from a company you’ve worked with before (if they liked you, they’ll likely want to work with you again!)
• A product from a company whose products have been featured in other publications/blogs/websites

5 Benefits of Reviewing a Product For Your Blog

• You are going to get a free product, so you don’t have to spend money on your blogging expenses.
• If you review products in your blog regularly, other companies may start contacting you to review their products too, and that way, you can get more free products.
• The opportunity to earn money through affiliate sales or paid reviews
• You will get compensated for your time
• Boost Your SEO with Product Review.

What are the Pros and Cons of Reviewing a Product For Your Blog?

#Pros

• You can get the product for free, or at a discounted price.
• You will receive early access to new products before they are released to the public.
• You may be able to receive additional items, such as gift cards, that aren’t available to the general public.
• The company will provide you with information about their product, so you don’t have to research it all on your own.
• It gives you an opportunity to test out a product before buying it for yourself.
• It gives your blog exposure to the company’s readers and followers, which may lead them to become your readers and followers as well.
• If a good review is posted on your website, the company may provide you with a link back to your site (called backlinking), which helps improve your website’s search engine optimization (SEO).

#Cons

• You have to spend time on it.
• There will be product testing time-wasting.
• People may not like what you have to say.
• You’ll have to deal with the odd nasty comment or email.
• It takes time away from other projects on your blog that need attention like articles, videos, and podcasts
• People who don’t like the product will leave negative feedback in the comments section which could turn off future readers from visiting your site again if they see too many bad reviews; this is especially true if there are lots of other blogs out there reviewing similar products with positive reviews instead of negative ones like yours! (Note: Not all consumers think this way though)

My Final Thought

If you are a beginner, the first thing you should concentrate on is writing a blog post that is well researched and optimized for SEO. When you start getting a decent amount of organic traffic to your website, then I recommend signing in with Google AdSense. With Google AdSense, it is easy to get accepted to their advertising program and start generating revenue for your new blog. You can start with auto ads and create your custom ads. You will not generate huge money from it but sufficient to motivate you to push on.

If you feel you are well equipped with organic traffic and a few blog post, you can consider doing affiliate marketing on your website. Join different affiliate programs like amazon among others. At first, the results might be tiny or small as before are still building trust with you. With time you can generate up to 10 times more than what you get in your ad revenue.

After scaling well in ads and affiliate marketing, you can expect more by creating your online course and selling it to your readers or visitors. This can be easily done using an email list and reminding them once a week right into their inbox.

After following all these strategies, am sure you can now make a few dollars into your new venture! 

Conclusion

Hopefully, this post has provided some food for thought. The sky is the limit for what you could monetize your blog for, this guide has given you four different ways to monetize your blog. No matter what you’re selling–it’s currently possible to do it on your blog. You’ll need to come up with a plan for how to generate income because the content isn’t free and your time is valuable.

Some of the ways to monetize your blog as mentioned above include affiliate programs, advertising, and subscription services. It just takes some ingenuity and a little bit of elbow grease.

Optimizing your blog is one of the most important parts of creating the success you want from the platform. Just having a blog isn’t enough these days. You need to take action to drive traffic, increase your reader base, and turn them into long-time customers/readers/subscribers.

FAQ SECTION

Can You make money blogging about my life?

You bet! It’s not easy though. Lots of people think it is. They read about some kid making hundreds of thousands a year by just writing about his life online. They think, “Hey, that’s easy! I know all about my life!”

And then they try it and find out how hard it is to build an audience, drive traffic to their website, sell advertising, get rich or even start monetizing at all. The problem is that everyone thinks they have a story worth telling. But the truth is that only a few people do.

Can a beginner earn more than 100$ blogging?

The answer is yes, but it will take time. A lot of blogs are making a few hundred dollars a month or more at the beginning. But most of them, after a year, one year and a half are making 5 figures per month.

If you have no money for blogging or for paying for content, then you will have to write it yourself. Writing articles yourself is not that difficult. At least at the beginning and if you are writing about what you know and what you like to do.

Can you blog even with no writing skills?

Yes, there are some people who can make money even without writing skills, but they would need a translator to translate the articles they wrote in their own language into English so that they can publish them on their blog and make money from them.

You don’t need to be an expert in any field of knowledge in order to start earning money with your blog. You just need to be interested in something enough that you would like to write about it and share your knowledge with other people who also want to learn new things every day.

What are the best blogging platforms for a beginner?

For Beginners, I will only recommend these three sites which are free WordPress, Blogger, and Squarespace. I personally use WordPress but you also need hosting and domain for your website.

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