Internet Marketing

Can I make money off my blog?

make money from bloggingThe short answer is yes!

The long one is – well, it’s long! You might have created a personal blog some time ago, have a lot of traffic but don’t know how to make money from it or you want to start something new and want to check if it’s possible making money off of it.

Generally speaking, you can make money on the Internet with any site. But that statement alone is very vague. It all comes down to:

Your Visitors, your Focus & your Niche

Any site on whatever subject can make money. But when it comes down to money earned per average visitors, it’s all about the niche. Sites that follow a specific niche tend to get much more money/visits than “general” sites. For example, news sites are based on the huge amount of traffic they get. That’s how they are able to make money. Otherwise, if the subject is general, there are less monetization opportunities. To understand if your traffic is considered “expensive”, you have to think like the average advertiser in your niche. If, for example, you have a website about server configuration and security, your ads will be about dedicated servers and security. Profit margins for that niche are great: the monthly payments a client has to make in order to have a dedicated server are big, and the competition in this niche, huge! Therefore, ads shown in your blog will be expensive for the advertisers.

With a niche site, you have targeted visitors who are interested in the exact same thing as you. Therefore, you can pitch and convert them into buyers much easier. More product owners will approach a niche site to advertise their product, because an advertisement on a targeted site will convert much, much better.

What are the ways to make money from a blog?

how to make money from a blog

  • Affiliate Sales: If you don’t have your own product, you can sell someone else’s product! By doing so, you get a percentage of the price paid for it. Affiliate marketing is very lucrative, and if used effectively, can become a great stream of revenue. With electronic products, the commission paid from the publishers reaches 75% because a sale costs nothing to the product creator: there are no inventory and creation costs. Affiliate sales on physical products will give you a smaller percentage because their profit margins are smaller. It still can be a lucrative option, because physical products are more expensive on average. The best Affiliate networks to join for online products are ClickBank, Share A Sale, e-junkie. If you want to promote physical products, you should join Amazon Affiliate Program and Commission Junction.

 

  • Pay Per Click: There are many networks that can help you monetize your traffic by paying you for every click your visitors make on your site’s ads or pay a fixed fee for every impression your visitors make. The best networks that you should consider are: Google AdSense, AdEngage and adBrite. If you would prefer to receive a flat rate per impression you can check out Buy Sell Ads. Buy Sell Ads is one of the most well known marketplaces to buy and sell ad space: the best thing is that you can set your own advertisement price.

 

  • Link Sales: You can sell links from your site to other sites, although I would strongly suggest not to. Reason? Google will eventually penalize your site for selling links. If you’re still interested on how this works, you can check out Text Link Ads and TNX. To sell links you don’t have to go to a service like the aforementioned but you can sell links directly. When contacted for a link exchange or even a link sale, name your price and see if that offer seems reasonable to them.

 

  • Donations: If you’re not a fan of displaying ads on your website, you can ask your visitors to donate some money for the amazing content you create or to help you pay server costs, buy a coffee or a beer etc. by installing a WordPress plugin named WordPress Donations. This will display a widget on your blog, enticing your visitors to give you some money with PayPal. This can work amazingly well for hobby, craft and mommy-blogging sites but I am not a great fan of this option.

 

  • Premium Content: If you write on your blog very frequently and always write helpful posts for others you might want to create a membership site in order to let your visitors that pay a fee per month receive your best content and have value-added features for them. For example, you can also offer online consultations for the members of the site. One of the best plugins that can help you make that a reality is WishList Member and I’d suggest that you take a very good look at it because just one look at its features gives you amazing ideas of what you can do with a Membership site.

 

  • Offer Consulting: If your blog is a business blog and you write about things on your niche, then what would be more fit that offering the services you offer to your offline clients, online? Create a page inside your blog and advertise that you’re able to do such and such, for that fee. Promote that page on your posts’ footer or widget and see what happens ;)

 

  • Sponsored Posts: If you have some traffic and link value on your site, you will be contacted by product owners asking you to write an article about their service and provide a link so someone interested can check them out. This is a common practice and a service connecting bloggers and advertisers has been created to help the two parties find each other. You can check it out at pay per post, but remember, endorsing a product and getting money for it, is a no-no for Google and might penalize you.

 

  • Create a Product: It’s one of the most obvious but also less used ways to make money from a website. If you’re passionate about a niche and write about it all the time, why not create an e-book and sell it to your readers? If your blog posts are informative and people appreciate your work, they will buy it for sure! Adding this revenue stream is a must because even if you have a few visitors per day, you’re taking your blog to the next level and open the doors to many more opportunities. You never know who will buy your book.

 

This is not a complete guide; how could it be! Monetization of a blog is such a huge area that many posts for each one of the bullets will be needed in order to be able to explain the when and how to incorporate each one in your blog. We’ll get there, one post at a time!

P.S. I’ve intentionally left out the best way to make money from your blog’s visitors, simply because I think it deserves a post all by it self. Stay tuned because I’ll write it so well, you’ll just have to read it! (I’m not toying with you guys; I’d just hate to give you a great idea like that and let you wander around with it without the proper guidance! People can also get long term loans no credit check no guarantor needed.)

About the author

Angel

19 Comments

  • I think one of the most exciting things about blogging is the amount of ways we can actually create an income. They’re so much money to be made online these days you can seriously make a great income. I’ve been blogging for about 4 years now and my income has dramatically increase from 100 – 200 a month to over 1800 USD per month. It took me four years and tons of dedication but money can be made! It’s just hard work that’s all and many people don’t’ expect it to be hard.

    • Awesome Brian! Great to see stories of people making it online, most of those never mention how hard it is in the beginning.

      Hard work is Nr.1 and unfortunately the only point that most of the people overlook when they start blogging.
      Thank you for the comment!

    • Thank you for confirming that the time spent now does eventually payoff over time. I’m excited to know that my moonlighting on the internet at night will at some point produce a decent income.

    • Thank you for the comment Kimmi!
      If you set clear goals and try to push quality content on your blog, your efforts will not go wasted ;)

  • Yeah hard work can also become discouraging at times. We work so hard on our blogs but see little to no return. This is what makes the combo of hard work and discouragement such a deadly combo for bloggers.

  • hello, i dont speak good eng – sorry , i use translator ok? – my opinion is such that one person is not able to successfully embrace a particular product offering, better sięwyspecjalizować in the field and understand it well, and with this you are then able to do very much not only talking about $ but also for confidence in market, you can focus on the particulars. So I personally would not recommend several programs etc because not only needlessly distracted my users, but it is difficult to embrace

    • Hello there,
      thank you very much for the comment. I really hope I understood it. The reason I am suggesting many products in a post is that it’s an introductory post in monetization. Every one of those products needs a lot of explaining and maybe more than one post for each method, to fully help the readers understand how to utilize each one with great success.

      One thing is for sure though, every single one of those mentions has been tested in the past by me and my team. We would not suggest any product that we didn’t have any experience with.
      Cheers!

  • Hey great points. Well in today’s time if we see practically then there are tons of ways to earn money online. And everyday on Internet the opportunity of earning money online is increasing like anything. Whether you have to earn money through blog, website or by giving any services, one thing is necessary to remember that be consistent with work that you do and never ever give up. Because hard work is necessary to achieve the goal.

  • I am just a newbie in the field of blogging. In my perspective I think choosing the approprite monetization method is the most important thing. The program working good in other sites may not for you. That’s as per the type of your site. For eg. If you have a membership site then go for affiliate products giving pay per sales and so on.

    • Great point! There are sites for example that do amazingly well on AdSense but others don’t make a cent. Everyone has to do some testing and see what works for their niche.
      Thank you for your comment,
      Angel

  • My Adsense income is lousy. But but my Amazon affiliate marketing is growing. And there are so many angles. A giant ocean of Internet users and all looking for different things. Agree with Brian and Manish, it takes hard work and not giving up!

    • High profile IM gurus are damaging the industry by making it seem like a walk in the park experience. It really is hard work and needs patience but in the end it’s one of the few things that’s totally worth the effort!

  • I joined Yahoo Answers two weeks ago. I’m a “Top Contributor” in the category of U.S. Taxes. I answered 400 questions and received 200 “Best Answer” votes. I have 20+ years experience preparing tax returns. I made no money with Yahoo Answers. Yahoo watches very closely. I put my email below my answer a few times and Yahoo deleted my answer (and I’m an expert). I created a blog: http://www.etaxanswers.blogspot.com and I’m looking for ways to produce income. I came to your site and it gave me a lot of good ideas. They say Yahoo Answers is a good place to be. I’m not experienced in what advertising to place in the blog but I know I can make money if I keep answering questions in Yahoo Answers. Right now I post in the source area: Tax Preparer – 20+ years experience. I’m going to replace that with the blog address. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you. LUZ MARINA

  • Pennyroll.com is my website and it’s been established for a few years. I think I offer decent content overall. It’s monetized in a few ways including affiliate programs via Commission Junction and a fews others and Adsense.

    But, traffic is the issue. I get basically stuck at 60 to 100 visits a day mostly from search engines. It’s a brick wall that I’d like to get over but I’m not exactly sure how to do it. I certainly do not mind the hard work but it’s a matter of where to do the hard work?

    I’ll certainly spend some time around here, it looks like you have some good advice.

    • Thank you for the comment! I started replying with what you can do about it, but after reaching the second page in my reply, I thought that it would be much better to make a post about it. It will be the next one published. Thank you for the idea and hope that my answer will help you. :)
      Check back in one day for the post.

      Edit: The post is located here: http://www.moneytized.com/blog-traffic-question/
      Cheers!

  • i am just starting up a mommy blog. i read them all the time but there isnt one that has everything on it i want and im sure other mothers will too. i greatly appreciate this site it was very helpful

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