10 Ways To Monetize Your Blog

Blogging has become a fun hobby, as well as a great way to build a business. If you want to monetize your blog, you have a lot of options to look at. In fact, more and more businesses are taking the blogging route instead of relying completely on paid ads.

The problem is, how do you get some revenue coming in from your blog? What are your choices as far as monetizing it?

1. Affiliate Marketing

One of the best ways to monetize your blog and make money online is to earn commissions from affiliate products that others have made. On a site like Clickbank, you can sign up to market peoples' products and get paid for helping them get sales.

This is an option you should definitely look at when you are a beginner without a big brand or email list. With affiliate marketing, make sure you promote products similar to your blog's niche.

I heard a quote once that said:

“Don't find an audience for your products, create products for your audience.”

Your email list and blog audience are your most valuable assets in making money online, so make sure that you cater to them instead of trying to force something on them just because you like it.

Affiliate marketing is definitely a very easy option though because the sales page, product, etc. are all done for you.

You just need to collect leads and send people to the affiliate link, so you can get paid commissions on each product bought through your blog.

2. Google Adsense

Another great way to make money blogging is to use Google Adsense. If your blog has been around a while and has pretty decent traffic coming in every month, this will be one of the easiest ways to earn some extra cash online.

For Adsense, all you have to do is make sure your blog has been around a while, is of pretty decent quality and has at least a few thousand visitors a month (not required, but advised).

If your blog seems to meet those standards, make an account with Google Adsense and apply to get your blog approved for their ads. When approved, you can use some code to place ads on your site and get paid from them.

These types of ads, as well as search engine ads are the main ways Google makes its money.

They show ads related to websites or products that visitors may be interested in or have looked at already to make it more likely for them to click and buy something.

With these ads, you don't even have to make sales. You get paid every time someone clicks the ad on your blog.

Depending on keywords of your pages and other factors, you will make anywhere from a few cents per click to a few dollars per click. If you keep increasing traffic, these clicks add up to a decent side income.

3. Sell Your Own Products

One great way to monetize your blog without Adsense or affiliate marketing is to create your own products. Many marketing experts do this to create passive income and enjoy getting 100% of the profits made by products they sell.

Of course, this requires more responsibility with customer service, product development, returns, pricing, finding a payment collection service, etc. But, it could be worth it pretty easily.

Selling your own products not only could make you more money, it can build your brand and create a loyal following if you deliver a high quality product.

I don't want you to get the wrong idea about what making your own product means though. It doesn't have to be complicated. Just create info products on the subjects your blog covers.

 4. Amazon Ads

Amazon ads are another effective way to get some commissions from your blog. They are similar to Google Adsense ads in that you make an account and add their ads to your website.

The difference between Amazon ads and Adsense is that you don't get paid for each click, you get paid for product sales on Amazon.

So, if people go through your ad on your blog and purchase any product within 24 hours of clicking it, you get a commission on that sale.

You may not get as many payments from Amazon as you would from Adsense, but you will make more per sale. But, just like Adsense, there is no management or selling you must do, so there's little maintenance.

To do this type of advertising on your blog, you need to sign up for Amazon Associates.

5. Consulting / Services Offered

Do you have a particular skill that you could offer as a service? Maybe you are good at getting traffic, writing, conversions, fitness, nutrition, designing, etc. You can offer that as a service and get paid through your blog.

Your blog is a valuable asset in getting business through consulting because it serves as an example of your expertise.

When you are constantly writing and teaching people about something, they see you as an expert that can help them get better results in whatever niche you're in. As you build a reputation, you can charge top dollar for your services.

You can even go create a gig on a site like Fiverr and just promote that through your blog if you want to just get started quickly and keep your offered services small.

6. Selling Solo Ads

No matter what you do to make money on your blog, you should obviously be building an email list. Subscribers are always going to be your most loyal and most valuable fans.

Of course many businesses that are worth millions of dollars base their sales on email marketing, so why not do that yourself? But, what do you do if you don't have anything to sell or don't want to sell anything?

Let me tell you my friend, there will never be a shortage of businesses trying to sell products or services. So, why not give them a targeted group of loyal followers to advertise to.

When other businesses send promotional emails to your list, that is called a solo ad. You can charge per click, per subscriber, commissions for sales, or even a flat fee for allowing them to advertise to your list.

Either way, if you get a lot of subscribers from your blog, this is a great way to turn that into extra cash without selling anything. A great marketplace for solo ads is Nextmark.com.

 7. Flipping Blogs

It seems like everyone knows someone or has heard of someone that has been successful flipping real estate or flipping cars. Basically they get a house or car at a low price that could use some work, they fix it up and sell it for a big profit.

You can do the same thing with websites or blogs. You can bid on domains on websites like Godaddy.com or even just start from scratch every time, build up a great site and then sell it to someone who needs it and doens't want to start from nothing.

You can make thousands of dollars or more per site that you flip and if you get it down to a science, you can flip a lot sites and make a lot of big sales without leaving your home.

8. Guest Posts

Everyone who starts out building a brand, business, blog, etc. from scratch has to really struggle at first to create credibility. One effective way to get people some branding is guest posting.

For a fee, you can offer a chance for people to guest post on your blog and get themselves a little recognition for their growing brand. If you have an established website, you could make quite a bit from this.

9. Network Marketing

There is always a debate on whether network marketing is a good industry to be in, but I've seen countless bloggers make it extremely well in the industry.

The only difference between network marketing and affiliate marketing is in network marketing you get commissions on product sales and recruiting as well. So if others want to sell what you're selling, you can refer them and get commissions off of their sales as well.

Through this, you can eventually have a massive team of people making you money off their efforts, while you are also selling products the network marketing company provides.

Be careful in this industry though. Because of the massive potential of these companies, many have created countless new ones that don't have quality products.

Do your research and you can find a good one though and it can be a good way to monetize your blog.

10. Sell Ad Space To Individual Companies

When you have god traffic numbers coming in for your website, you can sell ad space at your own rates to who you want instead of just using Adsense or Amazon.

When you do this, you can set prices and get paid how you want. You could charge monthly fees for certain sizes of banner ads or even charge by the click. It's up to you as the site owner.

Many sites that do this charge monthly payments for banner ads to be placed on their blogs and specify costs based on sizes. The more your traffic and brand grows, the more you can charge and the more offers you will get.

Conclusion

These 10 different strategies could all turn your blog into a 6 or even 7 figure business. If you want something that is very little maintenance or selling, Amazon, Google Adsense, solo ads, guest posts and ad space are what you may want.

If you want bigger sales and don't mind a little marketing or selling, affiliate marketing, blog flipping, network marketing, consulting, and making your own products is probably the way to go.

Whether you mix and match or just focus on one of the ways to monetize your blog, keep building your site while providing quality content and any of them will work. What will you do?