How to make money with a blog: everything you need to know
Is it possible to earn money with a blog today?
Of course. And a lot.
It is easy?
No, but if you stop guiding yourself by your intuition and use the right strategies, you will greatly increase your chances.
I created my first blog in mid 2013. At first it was simply a free blog where I shared my reflections on personal development and, despite all the effort I put into it, during the first 12 months of the blog's life I did not see a penny.
In fact, I was about to throw in the towel several times.
But one fine day, while I was testing my account hopelessly for the umpteenth time, I saw that I had just paid two euros thanks to the publicity I had put on the blog. Although it seems a ridiculous amount, I knew it to glory: I had finally shown that it was possible.
That's when I decided to take it seriously, learn about blogging and digital marketing and try to turn it into an online business.
Only three years later, it had already become my main source of income. Today generates nearly 4,000 euros a month completely passive, which has allowed me to quit my job, travel for 6 months a year and start other businesses online.
I have learned a lot since then. I have found ways to generate much more profitable income than advertising, I have earned more than 8,000 euros in a week and I have even published a book with the largest Spanish publisher thanks to my work on the blog.
Income online course
And I assure you that you can also make money with your blog, whether you just want to get some extra euros or if you intend to live exclusively on it.
If you are willing to try, in this guide I will reveal the strategy to create a blog with economic potential, the 10 most efficient ways to earn money and several examples of bloggers who are already getting it. It's a long article, but it's worth it.
How much money can you earn?
First, the question that many people ask themselves. And the answer is depends.
I know blogs about personal development that are around 1,000 euros a month, but there are also bloggers about travel or online businesses that bill more than 30,000 euros a month selling video competitions or recommending third-party products.
At the end of the day, a blog is just a platform where someone shares content and establishes a relationship with their readers. From there there are countless ways to monetize it.
Some require less work to start up, such as advertising, and others, but generally the economic potential of a blog is usually determined by two aspects:
The theme
Your dedication
The theme is key
The myth that the more visits a blog has, the more income is not true. There are very small blogs that invoke astronomical figures because they are in sectors where advertising pays very well (such as trading or making money online) or because they have built a reputation among their readers and offer very expensive services.
As a general rule, the less impact on the life of someone may have the theme of that blog, more visits will need to earn a decent figure. An example is the viral news websites like El Mundo Today. But a blog about health or entrepreneurship probably needs a lot less.
Depending on your topic and the profile of your readers, monetizing your website in one way or another can give you radically different results. I have seen blogs with 2,000 visits a day generating 3,000 euros per month with own products and affiliation, and others with 10,000 visits that did not invoice or 500 euros.
1. Advertising
Monetizing with third party advertising is still one of the favorite ways for many bloggers because of its simplicity.
Although there is a belief that with advertising it is not possible to get high income, generalizing like this is not correct: it depends on the theme of your blog and its volume of visits.
For example, a blog on tricks to save will surely get less income than another on financial investments, because your audience will not be too predisposed to spend money on anything.
There are many forms of advertising, but the most popular are Adsense, CPA and private advertisers.
Adsense (PPC)
It is Google's PPC advertising network, the largest in the world.
Adsense owes its popularity to its simplicity, ease of implementation and number of advertisers. You simply sign up here, and once Google has approved your application you can start putting ads on your blog by inserting a small code.
PPC stands for Pay Per Click, which means that every time a reader clicks on one of these ads on your blog, you receive money.
In addition, with Adsense you do not choose what type of ads will appear on your website: Google is responsible for doing it automatically according to the subject and the profile of the reader.
Generally, this is an advantage. Google has a lot of information about your readers, and shows them the most relevant ads for each of them. That allows you:
Maximize the money you can earn with advertising, because the more relevant and specific an ad is, the more likely the reader will click on it.
Not having to contact any advertiser directly, since anyone associated with Adsense can potentially appear.
That the ads do not seem forced. Being personalized for your reader and subject, they are integrated quite naturally in your articles.
To know what potential your theme has with Adsense, you can use the Keyword Planner. Enter your general subject or a specific article and look at the number of searches and bids from advertisers.
The bids are how much the companies that advertise are willing to pay for each click. One part is left to you (over 40%), and the other Google, so the higher the bid, the more money you can earn with this type of advertising.
For example, if you create a blog with content about emotional intelligence in children, each click of your readers would generate between 0.11 (40% of 0.28) and 0.65 euros (40% of 1.63). This is an average of 0.38 euros per click.
The percentage of readers who click on an ad is usually between 1 and 2%. Therefore, if you had two thousand page views per day, the calculation of monthly income with Adsense would be as follows:
60,000 page views / month x 1.5% clicks x 0.38 euros -> 342 euros / month
The key to earning a good sum with Adsense is to have a blog on a theme that pays very well, such as executive training, finance or health, or a less profitable but able to attract a huge volume of visits.
For this reason it is usually more useful for informative websites that offer general content on a specific topic, such as health, animals or psychology, because this allows them to attract hundreds of thousands of visits per month.
For a blog, Adsense is a very simple way to earn extra money every month, but surely it is not what will allow you to live on it.
In Skillssocial.com I decided to use Adsense only in those pages that received low-skilled traffic. That is, where most readers are curious that they probably do not end up buying any of my products.
As it is about too general items, the CPC (what I earn per click) is very low, € 0.03. I could earn more by optimizing the position of the ads or inserting them in articles where the bid was higher, but still give me between 80 and 100 euros per month that allow me some caprice 🙂
Example
Although more than a blog is a content website, Better with health invoices thousands of euros per month with Adsense. They are constantly publishing articles and, since they receive a lot of traffic (millions of visits per month), they have decided to monetize it with Adsense in the articles themselves and the sidebar.
Easy to implement
The ads are very relevant
Most blogs are not in niches that Adsense pays well
You will need a very high volume of visits
CPA (Cost Per Action)
In CPA advertising the advertiser does not pay you when the reader clicks on the ad, but when you perform an additional action, such as filling out a subscription form to receive more information or sign up for a raffle.
Logically, the effectiveness of this advertising is less, because in addition to clicking on the ad of your blog the reader should do something else on the page where you land. But that's why the commissions are much higher.
The companies that offer advertising by CPA are usually insurance companies or online dating companies. When you put your data they send you a personalized quote or several potential suitors to encourage you to end up hiring their services.
There are many companies that offer CPA, although many of them are closing since they sometimes encourage unethical practices (such as when a website forces you to put your phone number to access certain content and then resell that information). Some currently recommended options are Peerfly or Toroadvertising.
Example
This article in a marketing blog is an example of how to use the CPA to monetize. The author recommends several pages of contacts and includes its corresponding link, which will earn a commission if your readers decide to create a profile on that website.
Commissions higher than PPC advertising
Low conversion (usually)
There are few really reliable CPA companies
Private advertisers
If you are proactive, something that I recommend if you want to be successful with your blog, you can contact companies to offer advertising spaces on your blog where to place your banner with the ad.
Normally these ads are placed in the header, in the sidebar or within the content itself. Advertisers usually pay for printing, that is, for the number of times that readers have seen that page with advertising.
It would be the equivalent of an advertisement placed in the newspaper or on a billboard. The more visible, the more expensive the ad will be, so the more traffic your blog has and the better places available for the ad, the more money you can ask for it.
To get advertisers you can do two things:
Get in touch with companies related to your topic to offer them to advertise their services and products. They will be more likely to sign in if they are companies that are already advertising in Adsense or other websites, so do some research to increase your chances of success.
Encourage companies to contact you by creating a section in your blog "Anúnciate aquí", where you can find a document with your rates, the number of visitors to your blog and a contact form.
Example
My wicker basket is Marta y Bárbara's craft blog, and they offer advertising spaces in the form of banners on its side. In their advertising policy indicate the monthly prices for each creativity.
Cobras according to the visualizations, regardless of what the user does
Sometimes they are too intrusive and they break the design of your blog
To earn money you need many, many visits
Sponsored Reviews
It would be the equivalent of the infomercials in the newspapers, and although it is indirect advertising, it is still advertising.
When your blog has some visibility, some advertisers will contact you to offer you free money or products in exchange for you to write an article about some of their news.
There are also platforms such as Coobis that connect bloggers and companies that want to contract these sponsored reviews for their products.
There you will have to specify the theme of your blog, number of visits per month and economic conditions. When a company wants to hire you a review you will receive an email with all the necessary information.
This type of reviews usually pay between 20 and 500 euros depending on the theme and traffic of the blog. You can make them hidden, as if they arise from you naturally, or clearly specify that it is a sponsored article. It depends on what you have indicated when signing up for this type of platform.
Example
The doctor of my son is the pediatric blog of Jesus Martinez, where he offers advice so that the readers solve for themselves small problems in the upbringing of their baby. In this article Jesus recommends a health application, clearly indicating at the beginning that it is a paid sponsorship.
They usually pay well and do not require as much volume of visits
If you abuse them you will lose credibility
2. Affiliate Marketing
Actually, affiliate marketing does not stop being a form of CPA where the action is to buy. Thus, you will earn money every time a reader buys one of the products you recommend.
Along with Adsense, is one of the forms of monetization preferred by many bloggers for its simplicity. You do not need to create your own product and you benefit by recommending third-party products.
There are companies that offer their own affiliate programs, such as Amazon, and others such as FNAC or PcComponentes are integrated into affiliate networks with many more advertisers, such as Shareasale and Awin. Its operation is similar:
You register in the affiliation program of that company and wait for the approval of your website.
You search for the product you want to promote and you get a special link with your affiliate ID.
Include those links in your blog when you talk about that product in question.
When a reader clicks on that link it is redirected to the product's sales page. If you end up buying, you take a commission.
Once you have reached a minimum of commissions, the company will enter into your account the money you have generated each month.
The amount of the commission depends on the company and the type of product. In general, the cheaper it is, the less commission. Amazon moves between 3 and 10% for its products, while Clickbank offers between 30 and 70% for its digital products.
Amazon affiliates
If you are interested, I recommend you take a look at this post about Amazon Affiliates where I explain step by step how to get more than 2,000 euros a month with this system.
Amazon is probably the most popular affiliate platform in the world. And my favorite. Since you have everything from vases to ebooks, you can recommend almost any product you can think of.
The affiliation with Amazon consists of recommending products from a specific niche so that your readers or other Internet users can click on your recommendations, be sent to Amazon and buy it.
For example, if you had a blog about graphic drawing you could make an article recommending graphic tablets. Or if you had another over-the-counter kitchen, recommend espresso pans and earn commissions when people bought one.
The downside is that Amazon only gives you sales for 24 hours after the click and does not offer too high commissions, as you can see in the following table:
However, its conversion rate (the percentage of people who end up buying) is among the highest in the world. In addition, it gives you a commission on EVERYTHING that the customer purchases, not just the product you have recommended.
In my personal development blog I use affiliation with Amazon when I should recommend a book, as in this article. But where it usually works best is with specialized websites in a specific product category, such as debuceo.org.
Examples
Marcos Raya is the founder of dibujarbien.com, a blog where he offers advice related to drawing and painting. Among all the valuable information it provides, we can find items like this by recommending inking pens and pens, which allow you to earn income through Amazon Affiliates.
Very effective and easy to implement
The links are perfectly integrated into the articles
A lot of competition
Amazon commissions are low
Clickbank
Membership is not just about selling physical products. You can also sell digital products such as online courses or software.
Clickbank is a popular affiliate network that acts as a market where advertisers present their products and bloggers like you select the ones they want to promote.
For example, if you had a blog about diet and healthy life you could look for Clickbank online courses to lose weight that seem trustworthy (ideally, do them first to validate their quality).
Then you could recommend this course on your blog with an affiliate link, earning commissions for readers who sign up for it.
The high commissions, between 40 and 60% for products that are around 70 euros
Ideal if you do not have your own online course and you find one related
The conversion percentage is low
Your readers trust you more than third-party products, and you should do a good job recommending them
Affiliation with other bloggers
Another quite effective option is to get in touch with other bloggers who have digital products, such as video competitions, and offer to sell them on your own blog.
It costs them nothing more than to sign up as an affiliate in any of the platforms they are using, such as Hotmart or Sendowl. Commissions are around 50% and are usually expensive products.
If you have a loyal audience and recommend a product from another well-known blogger, you will surely get several sales with little effort. When I have sent an email to my subscribers, recommended a course because it was on offer, I managed to bill more than 700 euros in a week.
Although my income is lower because Amazon keeps 30% of the amount, I do not take a second of my time. They are responsible for sending it to customers and managing refunds and returns, so I can forget about the rest.
Good profit margin
It helps you establish yourself as an authority on the subject
If you do not work with a third party such as Amazon, you must take care of shipping
Handmade products
If you have a blog of crafts, pastry or anything else made by hand, you can also sell it through your website.
Creating a section of online store in your blog is very simple nowadays. There are plugins like Woocommerce that are automatically integrated and allow you to manage prices and stocks, or platforms like Shopify that create an ecommerce in a matter of minutes, with your shopping cart and payment methods, for a monthly fee.
Good profit margin
It can not be automated and become a passive income
Your own digital products
If you are a photographer, designer or programmer, you can sell your creations through your blog.
For example, you could sell the rights to some of your photos, or sell plugins and templates for WordPress. As no transport logistics are necessary, you can convert it into a passive income.
Example
Eduardo Blanco is a photographer specializing in travel and nature who uses his own personal blog to sell some of his large format photos for home decoration.
Excellent profit margin
It allows to automate the process
Few bloggers and themes can create digital products
Online courses
Surely the most lucrative form of monetization that exists today, because once you have created an online course it costs you the same to sell one than two hundred. It hardly has creation expenses and no distribution expenses.
An online course can be in the form of videos or downloadable documents, and if you join it to an automated sales system, such as a sequence of emails through Mailchimp or Active Campaign, you can create a very, very interesting passive income.
For example, every time someone subscribes to my personal development blog, a sequence of emails is activated. The first days you receive emails with information of free value to build trust, and after a week you receive an email presenting the premium video course in case you want to register.
In this way, I can bill an average of 1,000 euros per week on automatic pilot. Not bad!
There are online courses of almost any subject that you can think of. The only requirement is that he is able to solve a problem of your audience, offering him that for what he would really be willing to pay.
Another great advantage of the courses is that they allow you to put quite high prices: people are not used to paying more than 25 euros for a book, but they do accept to spend between 50 and 200 euros for a training course. I've even seen some 2,000 euros.
But eye! It is not easy to create and sell an online course. There are several factors involved:
You need an audience with which you have established a relationship of trust (hence the importance of the mailing list!)
You must offer exactly what your target audience needs
You will need marketing knowledge to create the need to acquire your product
You will need digital tools to automate it
Despite all this effort, if you do it well it will give you many satisfactions and offer an excellent service to your readers.
Examples
After leaving a very well paid job, Álvaro López started helping professionals in crisis to reinvent themselves professionally with his blog Autorrealizarte. There he offers a 5-week course in PDF format for those readers who want to go a step further.
Marina Díaz is a clinical psychologist with a great blog on practical psychology. On his website he has a couple of online courses on habits and therapeutic writing, which consist of recorded video sessions and a personalized follow-up of the exercises.
It allows to put high prices
The process can be automated 100%
Anyone can create a course based on their knowledge
Creating a course and its sales system requires a lot of effort
Exclusive areas in your blog
You can also protect certain areas of your blog and offer exclusive content there under a monthly subscription.
This is a typical strategy of some digital newspapers that only let you access all the content if you are a paid subscriber, but there are already several blogs that are using it.
For example, Marie Haynes's blog has a private area where every two weeks she publishes a newsletter with exclusive information about SEO for 18 euros per month.
This strategy is ideal when you have a blog on a subject where there are constant changes, such as social networks or digital marketing, because an online course could be outdated quickly.
Allows you to assign recurring payments
It's a very simple way to sell a digital product
You should create content on a regular basis
5. Offer your services
Once you have established some authority with your blog, offering your services is one of the fastest ways to start earning money.
You just have to think about the services you could offer and its format. If you had a photography blog, you could sell your fees as a photographer in person. In the case of a personal development blog, you could offer coaching sessions via Skype or e-mail.
The key is to position yourself as an expert with the contents you post. With time you will increase your knowledge, and in the end you will find many people willing to pay for your services or advice.
The counterpart is that it is not a passive system at all. Each new client you get will be an income, but it will also force you to dedicate yourself, limiting the number of clients you may have.
These are several ways to offer your services with a blog:
Conferences and workshops
Advice via Skype or email
Face-to-face counseling
Custom design or programming projects
Webinars (online seminars) in group
Content writing
Translation of contents
Online classes
Editing video or photos
Web Analytics
Search engine positioning projects (SEO)
In a US study it was found that, for positions of some responsibility, more than 90% of the companies investigate the social networks of a candidate before hiring him. They look for professionals with a good reputation and who are able to demonstrate their knowledge, and the best way to achieve this is through a blog.
A blog related to your professional activity will help you:
Position yourself as an expert in your sector. Imagine that there are two candidates with the same professional experience. One of them only tells you that he has five years of experience with SAP, while the other regularly publishes diagrams of SAP integration projects on his blog and also answers the technical questions of his readers. Which one would you choose?
Get more credibility There is a belief that only the industry leaders open blogs, so when people know you have one you will see how you begin to respect and ask for advice, even if you opened it yesterday and do not even have a visit.
Build your personal brand A blog allows you to control the image you give of yourself (or the one that people build on you), so it's an excellent way to show your values and concerns.
In the end, with a blog you open yourself to the world, and that always brings pleasant surprises.
Example
Although Max had been working as a freelancer for two years, he finally found a job in a communication agency thanks to his blog. The general manager called to tell him that he had seen his work on the blog, and that was why he had decided to propose it.
It is a totally indirect benefit, it does not involve any effort
It forces you to link the theme of the blog with your profession
The strategy to make money with your blog
I'm going to confess something:
Most bloggers who sell methods to make money with a blog never applied it to themselves.
Because the same thing happened to many of them: they created a blog for a hobby and suddenly discovered that there was an opportunity there. They did not look for it: they found it.
They succeeded because they were among the first. The first of the marketing laws is that it is better to be the first, than to be the best. When you are the first in a market, you have half the work done.
Nowadays, it is not easy to be the first. There are blogs for everything, so you are going to have to follow a strategy that allows you to differentiate and make yourself known. And it can be summarized in 5 steps:
Find your niche
Create your blog
Generate content
Build your audience
Monetize the blog
1. Find a profitable niche
This is the most crucial phase to determine the income potential of your blog.
Most people think of a blog as a newspaper, a place to share their thoughts and what happens in their day to day.
But, unless you are already famous and there are people interested in you or you have a life absolutely out of the ordinary, this usually does not work.
You must contribute something more to the people. Everyone wants something in exchange for their time, and if you do not offer any value or find your page or feel the need to revisit it.
So the first thing you should think about is what can you bring to the world?
The most common is to provide knowledge or fun. Yes, there are blogs created with the mere intention of entertaining, and if not look at YouTube, where there are many videos that are simply funny.
But the most common are blogs that offer knowledge on a specific topic. And the most successful are those that manage to satisfy a demand from their audience.
To find a topic with potential for your blog, answer the following questions:
What do you like?
If you're going to have to write for a number of years about a topic, it's better if it's about something you're good at, but also that you like it.
For example, you might be good at preparing attractive presentations in Power Point, but be tired of doing them at work.
Look for hobbies or interests that you would never tire of talking about, because they are all excellent candidates to become the central theme of your blog.
Keep in mind
It is not essential that you be an expert on the subject, far from it. There will always be people who do not have any knowledge and want to learn with a simpler and less academic vision.
That this does not stop you, because by the time your blog has visitors, you have had to inform so much to create your content that you will know more than 99% of the population on that subject.
Is there a demand?
The contents of your blog must solve a need, otherwise no one will be interested in it and much less will be willing to pay.
To find out if that need exists, ask people who respond to the profile of your target audience, research forums and use the Google Keyword Planner.
This application will let you know how many people make a search on Google every month, and it will also show you how much advertisers are bidding to show advertising in those searches.
The more searches your topic has, the more demand there is.
The more an advertiser is willing to pay, the greater business potential this topic has. That gives you an idea of the money you could earn with your blog.
If your subject has hardly any searches and the bids are zero, consider if there really is a demand.
Can you specialize or do better?
Once you have validated your subject, it is time to investigate your competition.
Search your chosen theme on Google and see if there are websites or blogs positioned there. As there are probably several (today it is very difficult to find a virgin market), think about how you could specialize.
Specializing is a way to differentiate yourself from your competitors, and allow you to be visible in a specific market niche.
Think about what types of people could benefit from your knowledge and choose one. For example, you could teach how to make powerpoint presentations to students, entrepreneurs, university professors or doctors.
Also look at how your subject deals with your competition and assess whether you can do it better or, at least, differently. You could give it another approach, more personal, motivational, humorous or scientific, for example.
In any case, let none of these three keys hold you back. It is NOT necessary that you have a great idea. The important thing is to start, because then you can always change your positioning, as did many of the great bloggers of today.
2. Create your blog
Logically, the next step is to create your blog.
First you will have to choose a name for him. You can put your own name or invent one, but do not waste too much time on this: what is relevant is its contents, not its name.
There are many domain registrars, but for its reliability and simplicity I recommend Namecheap, Godaddy or MrDomain. Simply open an account and enter a domain name that is available.
Then you will need a hosting to host your blog. Although they exist free like wordpress.com or blogger.com, in reality no blogger with minimum aspirations uses them because:
They limit the functionality of your blog and you will not be able to customize it
The domain will be of the type tublog.wordpress.com, which will detract much credibility
My recommendation is that you hire a WordPress hosting on Webempresa. For just over 5 euros per month you will have some of the fastest accommodation and with the best technical support in Spain.
Oh! And with the coupon "vidaonline25" (without quotes) you will get a 25% discount on your Webempresa hosting during the first year. Do not let it escape!
In this tutorial you will be able to create a step-by-step blog in less than 15 minutes.
3. Generate useful content
This point, together with the theme of your blog, is what will determine your income potential to a large extent.
Every day more than 3 million articles are published in blogs. This means that if you really want to be visible with your blog, you will have to create content that stands out and captures readers.
Your content must be epic. Create articles that meet the needs and solve the problems of your readers, and also connect with them. This is what will truly allow you to get the most out of your blog.
These are the 3 requirements that should be met by any article of your blog:
Well formatted, with a nice and simple design
In-depth explanations, but practical and easy to read
With stories and personal examples that help your readers to know you better
4. Build your audience
The mistake that many bloggers make is to create your blog, publish content, and wait for the visitors to arrive.
This strategy where they are the center of the world is doomed to fail.
With the amount of competitors that exist today, if you want to make money with your blog you will have to be proactive and give visibility so that your target audience knows that it exists.
Another common mistake is to focus only on the number of visits. The amount of traffic to a blog does not have to be related to your income potential, especially if those visitors are not interested in what is offered.
It is essential that you have clear who you are going to create your content for. That is, who is your true target audience and what problem will you help solve. In this way you can also know where to find him on the Internet.
These are the best ways to give visibility to your blog:
It appears in other blogs
Does your target audience read other blogs? Then you have a great opportunity to attract attention to your project by appearing as a guest author on that blog.
Simply contact your author, show him that you know his blog, and offer to write an article that adds value to his readers.
In most of my projects this is the main traffic channel. I could write for hours about SEO, but I summarize it in the three main keys to achieve visibility:
Create content that satisfies the user's search intention
Take care of your SEO on-page by making good use of keywords, titles and images
Get other websites link your blog or articles, and link your own content in your articles to derive traffic
If you want to learn the basics of SEO, I recommend this practical guide on web positioning for beginners.
Payment ads
Paying for traffic in search engines or social networks is also an option to get interested visitors, because they allow you to segment exactly what kind of people you want to be shown.
In addition, paid ads have two advantages:
They allow you to obtain results much faster than with organic positioning (SEO), since this requires time to be effective.
Every time the organic reach of the publications in social networks or Google is smaller, so it is not strange that the payment announcements are becoming increasingly important.
In order for the ads to have a good return on investment, make sure you are attracting a qualified target audience, that is, with the potential to invest in solving your problem.
5. Create a mailing list
Once you manage to attract readers to your blog, you must retain them to keep reading and interacting with your content.
Otherwise, the vast majority will arrive, read an article and never return. Not because they are not interested, but because they are saturated with information. You must make it easy for them and send them your content instead of waiting for them to meet you again.
The best way is to create a list of subscribers by email. To motivate your readers to subscribe to your mailing list, you should probably offer them something in return, such as:
A course by email
A series of exclusive videos
An ebook
A special discount
A list of subscribers will allow you to maintain a greater frequency of contact with them, which will generate more confidence and help you to position yourself as an expert on the subject.
In addition, in your list of subscribers resides the true economic potential of the blog, because it will allow you to present them by email payment services. Remember that they are readers who have already shown interest in your content!
6. Monetize your blog
Once you have your content and have built an audience, monetizing your blog is the next natural step.
Whatever they say, there is no better way than another to make money with a blog. It depends on the theme, the demand, the profile of your readers and the effort you are willing to dedicate.
In any case, you're going to need a lot of perseverance.
Nowadays it is almost impossible to start earning money with a blog until several months have passed, so you must be willing to continue working on it even when you have not seen a euro for more than a year.
Most bloggers have started the same, dedicating to our blog for pure hobby. And it is precisely the fact of not setting ourselves economic goals that has allowed us to move forward even when we did not get results.
If you are not willing to go through the same path, you will be buying many numbers to end up abandoning it. But if you persevere, I assure you that a blog can change your life 🙂
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I hope this article has helped you understand the different ways to earn money with a blog. Each of them has its advantages and disadvantages, but generally, the more effort they require, the more money you can get.
In any case, monetizing a blog so that it becomes a stable source of income is a long career. You will not get it in a month or two, so be willing and patient, think your strategy well, and do not delay it anymore!
And you, what method are you going to use to make money with your blog?
5 (100%) 20 votes
Is it possible to earn money with a blog today?
Of course. And a lot.
It is easy?
No, but if you stop guiding yourself by your intuition and use the right strategies, you will greatly increase your chances.
I created my first blog in mid 2013. At first it was simply a free blog where I shared my reflections on personal development and, despite all the effort I put into it, during the first 12 months of the blog's life I did not see a penny.
In fact, I was about to throw in the towel several times.
But one fine day, while I was testing my account hopelessly for the umpteenth time, I saw that I had just paid two euros thanks to the publicity I had put on the blog. Although it seems a ridiculous amount, I knew it to glory: I had finally shown that it was possible.
That's when I decided to take it seriously, learn about blogging and digital marketing and try to turn it into an online business.
Only three years later, it had already become my main source of income. Today generates nearly 4,000 euros a month completely passive, which has allowed me to quit my job, travel for 6 months a year and start other businesses online.
I have learned a lot since then. I have found ways to generate much more profitable income than advertising, I have earned more than 8,000 euros in a week and I have even published a book with the largest Spanish publisher thanks to my work on the blog.
Income online course
And I assure you that you can also make money with your blog, whether you just want to get some extra euros or if you intend to live exclusively on it.
If you are willing to try, in this guide I will reveal the strategy to create a blog with economic potential, the 10 most efficient ways to earn money and several examples of bloggers who are already getting it. It's a long article, but it's worth it.
How much money can you earn?
First, the question that many people ask themselves. And the answer is depends.
I know blogs about personal development that are around 1,000 euros a month, but there are also bloggers about travel or online businesses that bill more than 30,000 euros a month selling video competitions or recommending third-party products.
At the end of the day, a blog is just a platform where someone shares content and establishes a relationship with their readers. From there there are countless ways to monetize it.
Some require less work to start up, such as advertising, and others, but generally the economic potential of a blog is usually determined by two aspects:
The theme
Your dedication
The theme is key
The myth that the more visits a blog has, the more income is not true. There are very small blogs that invoke astronomical figures because they are in sectors where advertising pays very well (such as trading or making money online) or because they have built a reputation among their readers and offer very expensive services.
As a general rule, the less impact on the life of someone may have the theme of that blog, more visits will need to earn a decent figure. An example is the viral news websites like El Mundo Today. But a blog about health or entrepreneurship probably needs a lot less.
You will have to make an effort
The effort you are willing to invest is also a fundamental part of the equation.
Books like Tim Ferris' 4-Hour Workweek have popularized the idea that making money with a blog is totally passive. Believe it, write from time to time, and you forget.
But everything that glitters is not gold. I know many professional bloggers (myself included) who have to work even on weekends. Although at least they do it in something they like!
Keep in mind that to earn money you will have to invest many hours, especially at the beginning. Maintaining a blog is nothing passive: if you relax, you risk that the competition will overtake you and bury you in the depths of the Internet.
And is that today Internet is much more competitive than a few years ago. Although the income potential is greater because people have lost the fear of buying online, it is also more complicated to be visible.
Put another way: today it costs more work to earn money, but you can also earn much more.
According to my experience after creating several websites and talking to many bloggers, with a good theme and dedicating the appropriate time, after a year could be generating between 300 and 2,000 euros per month. But I insist: it depends.
Logically, if you only want to earn an extra each month you will not have to devote as much effort to it as if your goal was to live off your blog. But to live on it you must be willing to sacrifice much of your free time.
The 10 best ways to make money with a blog
Below you will find the 10 most efficient ways to earn money with a blog. Often you can combine several of them, but the key is to choose the ones that best suit your project.
Advertising
Affiliate Marketing
Sale of physical products
Sale of digital products
Services
Donations
Professional directories
Private forums
Sell your blog
Job opportunities
The effort you are willing to invest is also a fundamental part of the equation.
Books like Tim Ferris' 4-Hour Workweek have popularized the idea that making money with a blog is totally passive. Believe it, write from time to time, and you forget.
But everything that glitters is not gold. I know many professional bloggers (myself included) who have to work even on weekends. Although at least they do it in something they like!
Keep in mind that to earn money you will have to invest many hours, especially at the beginning. Maintaining a blog is nothing passive: if you relax, you risk that the competition will overtake you and bury you in the depths of the Internet.
And is that today Internet is much more competitive than a few years ago. Although the income potential is greater because people have lost the fear of buying online, it is also more complicated to be visible.
Put another way: today it costs more work to earn money, but you can also earn much more.
According to my experience after creating several websites and talking to many bloggers, with a good theme and dedicating the appropriate time, after a year could be generating between 300 and 2,000 euros per month. But I insist: it depends.
Logically, if you only want to earn an extra each month you will not have to devote as much effort to it as if your goal was to live off your blog. But to live on it you must be willing to sacrifice much of your free time.
The 10 best ways to make money with a blog
Below you will find the 10 most efficient ways to earn money with a blog. Often you can combine several of them, but the key is to choose the ones that best suit your project.
Advertising
Affiliate Marketing
Sale of physical products
Sale of digital products
Services
Donations
Professional directories
Private forums
Sell your blog
Job opportunities
Depending on your topic and the profile of your readers, monetizing your website in one way or another can give you radically different results. I have seen blogs with 2,000 visits a day generating 3,000 euros per month with own products and affiliation, and others with 10,000 visits that did not invoice or 500 euros.
1. Advertising
Monetizing with third party advertising is still one of the favorite ways for many bloggers because of its simplicity.
Although there is a belief that with advertising it is not possible to get high income, generalizing like this is not correct: it depends on the theme of your blog and its volume of visits.
For example, a blog on tricks to save will surely get less income than another on financial investments, because your audience will not be too predisposed to spend money on anything.
There are many forms of advertising, but the most popular are Adsense, CPA and private advertisers.
Adsense (PPC)
It is Google's PPC advertising network, the largest in the world.
Adsense owes its popularity to its simplicity, ease of implementation and number of advertisers. You simply sign up here, and once Google has approved your application you can start putting ads on your blog by inserting a small code.
PPC stands for Pay Per Click, which means that every time a reader clicks on one of these ads on your blog, you receive money.
In addition, with Adsense you do not choose what type of ads will appear on your website: Google is responsible for doing it automatically according to the subject and the profile of the reader.
Generally, this is an advantage. Google has a lot of information about your readers, and shows them the most relevant ads for each of them. That allows you:
Maximize the money you can earn with advertising, because the more relevant and specific an ad is, the more likely the reader will click on it.
Not having to contact any advertiser directly, since anyone associated with Adsense can potentially appear.
That the ads do not seem forced. Being personalized for your reader and subject, they are integrated quite naturally in your articles.
To know what potential your theme has with Adsense, you can use the Keyword Planner. Enter your general subject or a specific article and look at the number of searches and bids from advertisers.
The bids are how much the companies that advertise are willing to pay for each click. One part is left to you (over 40%), and the other Google, so the higher the bid, the more money you can earn with this type of advertising.
For example, if you create a blog with content about emotional intelligence in children, each click of your readers would generate between 0.11 (40% of 0.28) and 0.65 euros (40% of 1.63). This is an average of 0.38 euros per click.
The percentage of readers who click on an ad is usually between 1 and 2%. Therefore, if you had two thousand page views per day, the calculation of monthly income with Adsense would be as follows:
60,000 page views / month x 1.5% clicks x 0.38 euros -> 342 euros / month
The key to earning a good sum with Adsense is to have a blog on a theme that pays very well, such as executive training, finance or health, or a less profitable but able to attract a huge volume of visits.
For this reason it is usually more useful for informative websites that offer general content on a specific topic, such as health, animals or psychology, because this allows them to attract hundreds of thousands of visits per month.
For a blog, Adsense is a very simple way to earn extra money every month, but surely it is not what will allow you to live on it.
In Skillssocial.com I decided to use Adsense only in those pages that received low-skilled traffic. That is, where most readers are curious that they probably do not end up buying any of my products.
As it is about too general items, the CPC (what I earn per click) is very low, € 0.03. I could earn more by optimizing the position of the ads or inserting them in articles where the bid was higher, but still give me between 80 and 100 euros per month that allow me some caprice 🙂
Example
Although more than a blog is a content website, Better with health invoices thousands of euros per month with Adsense. They are constantly publishing articles and, since they receive a lot of traffic (millions of visits per month), they have decided to monetize it with Adsense in the articles themselves and the sidebar.
Easy to implement
The ads are very relevant
Most blogs are not in niches that Adsense pays well
You will need a very high volume of visits
CPA (Cost Per Action)
In CPA advertising the advertiser does not pay you when the reader clicks on the ad, but when you perform an additional action, such as filling out a subscription form to receive more information or sign up for a raffle.
Logically, the effectiveness of this advertising is less, because in addition to clicking on the ad of your blog the reader should do something else on the page where you land. But that's why the commissions are much higher.
The companies that offer advertising by CPA are usually insurance companies or online dating companies. When you put your data they send you a personalized quote or several potential suitors to encourage you to end up hiring their services.
There are many companies that offer CPA, although many of them are closing since they sometimes encourage unethical practices (such as when a website forces you to put your phone number to access certain content and then resell that information). Some currently recommended options are Peerfly or Toroadvertising.
Example
This article in a marketing blog is an example of how to use the CPA to monetize. The author recommends several pages of contacts and includes its corresponding link, which will earn a commission if your readers decide to create a profile on that website.
Commissions higher than PPC advertising
Low conversion (usually)
There are few really reliable CPA companies
Private advertisers
If you are proactive, something that I recommend if you want to be successful with your blog, you can contact companies to offer advertising spaces on your blog where to place your banner with the ad.
Normally these ads are placed in the header, in the sidebar or within the content itself. Advertisers usually pay for printing, that is, for the number of times that readers have seen that page with advertising.
It would be the equivalent of an advertisement placed in the newspaper or on a billboard. The more visible, the more expensive the ad will be, so the more traffic your blog has and the better places available for the ad, the more money you can ask for it.
To get advertisers you can do two things:
Get in touch with companies related to your topic to offer them to advertise their services and products. They will be more likely to sign in if they are companies that are already advertising in Adsense or other websites, so do some research to increase your chances of success.
Encourage companies to contact you by creating a section in your blog "Anúnciate aquí", where you can find a document with your rates, the number of visitors to your blog and a contact form.
Example
My wicker basket is Marta y Bárbara's craft blog, and they offer advertising spaces in the form of banners on its side. In their advertising policy indicate the monthly prices for each creativity.
Cobras according to the visualizations, regardless of what the user does
Sometimes they are too intrusive and they break the design of your blog
To earn money you need many, many visits
Sponsored Reviews
It would be the equivalent of the infomercials in the newspapers, and although it is indirect advertising, it is still advertising.
When your blog has some visibility, some advertisers will contact you to offer you free money or products in exchange for you to write an article about some of their news.
There are also platforms such as Coobis that connect bloggers and companies that want to contract these sponsored reviews for their products.
There you will have to specify the theme of your blog, number of visits per month and economic conditions. When a company wants to hire you a review you will receive an email with all the necessary information.
This type of reviews usually pay between 20 and 500 euros depending on the theme and traffic of the blog. You can make them hidden, as if they arise from you naturally, or clearly specify that it is a sponsored article. It depends on what you have indicated when signing up for this type of platform.
Example
The doctor of my son is the pediatric blog of Jesus Martinez, where he offers advice so that the readers solve for themselves small problems in the upbringing of their baby. In this article Jesus recommends a health application, clearly indicating at the beginning that it is a paid sponsorship.
They usually pay well and do not require as much volume of visits
If you abuse them you will lose credibility
2. Affiliate Marketing
Actually, affiliate marketing does not stop being a form of CPA where the action is to buy. Thus, you will earn money every time a reader buys one of the products you recommend.
Along with Adsense, is one of the forms of monetization preferred by many bloggers for its simplicity. You do not need to create your own product and you benefit by recommending third-party products.
There are companies that offer their own affiliate programs, such as Amazon, and others such as FNAC or PcComponentes are integrated into affiliate networks with many more advertisers, such as Shareasale and Awin. Its operation is similar:
You register in the affiliation program of that company and wait for the approval of your website.
You search for the product you want to promote and you get a special link with your affiliate ID.
Include those links in your blog when you talk about that product in question.
When a reader clicks on that link it is redirected to the product's sales page. If you end up buying, you take a commission.
Once you have reached a minimum of commissions, the company will enter into your account the money you have generated each month.
The amount of the commission depends on the company and the type of product. In general, the cheaper it is, the less commission. Amazon moves between 3 and 10% for its products, while Clickbank offers between 30 and 70% for its digital products.
Amazon affiliates
If you are interested, I recommend you take a look at this post about Amazon Affiliates where I explain step by step how to get more than 2,000 euros a month with this system.
Amazon is probably the most popular affiliate platform in the world. And my favorite. Since you have everything from vases to ebooks, you can recommend almost any product you can think of.
The affiliation with Amazon consists of recommending products from a specific niche so that your readers or other Internet users can click on your recommendations, be sent to Amazon and buy it.
For example, if you had a blog about graphic drawing you could make an article recommending graphic tablets. Or if you had another over-the-counter kitchen, recommend espresso pans and earn commissions when people bought one.
The downside is that Amazon only gives you sales for 24 hours after the click and does not offer too high commissions, as you can see in the following table:
However, its conversion rate (the percentage of people who end up buying) is among the highest in the world. In addition, it gives you a commission on EVERYTHING that the customer purchases, not just the product you have recommended.
In my personal development blog I use affiliation with Amazon when I should recommend a book, as in this article. But where it usually works best is with specialized websites in a specific product category, such as debuceo.org.
Examples
Marcos Raya is the founder of dibujarbien.com, a blog where he offers advice related to drawing and painting. Among all the valuable information it provides, we can find items like this by recommending inking pens and pens, which allow you to earn income through Amazon Affiliates.
Very effective and easy to implement
The links are perfectly integrated into the articles
A lot of competition
Amazon commissions are low
Clickbank
Membership is not just about selling physical products. You can also sell digital products such as online courses or software.
Clickbank is a popular affiliate network that acts as a market where advertisers present their products and bloggers like you select the ones they want to promote.
For example, if you had a blog about diet and healthy life you could look for Clickbank online courses to lose weight that seem trustworthy (ideally, do them first to validate their quality).
Then you could recommend this course on your blog with an affiliate link, earning commissions for readers who sign up for it.
The high commissions, between 40 and 60% for products that are around 70 euros
Ideal if you do not have your own online course and you find one related
The conversion percentage is low
Your readers trust you more than third-party products, and you should do a good job recommending them
Affiliation with other bloggers
Another quite effective option is to get in touch with other bloggers who have digital products, such as video competitions, and offer to sell them on your own blog.
It costs them nothing more than to sign up as an affiliate in any of the platforms they are using, such as Hotmart or Sendowl. Commissions are around 50% and are usually expensive products.
If you have a loyal audience and recommend a product from another well-known blogger, you will surely get several sales with little effort. When I have sent an email to my subscribers, recommended a course because it was on offer, I managed to bill more than 700 euros in a week.
Logically, the ideal is that the product is relevant to your readers. And I do not get tired of watching personal development bloggers selling marketing videos of their mentors.
High commissions
Ideal if you still do not have your own online course
It allows you to diversify by recommending courses on other topics
If you are going to launch your own product later, you can lose customers who buy now
3. Sale of physical products
Selling physical products through your blog is another excellent way to generate income, since the margin will be greater than with the affiliation or advertising and you will not be so limited to the volume of visits you have.
Of course, not all blogs make sense to sell products.
If you have a strong personal brand, surely there are those who want to buy merchandise or books. Otherwise you will have little success.
But the biggest drawback is that, as a general rule, you will have to take care of storing the products and making the shipments, which implies an associated cost and prevents this form of monetization from becoming an automatic entry (which is what really interesting about online business).
Printed books
Many bloggers sell their own self-published book through their website. This gives them a very good margin, but as I said, they must also take care of the shipments.
When I decided to write my first book, I had nothing clear to do. I was evaluating the option to publish it on my own and send it myself, but when Planet appeared I decided that the best thing would be to publish it with them and sell it through Amazon.
Book Direct Your Life
High commissions
Ideal if you still do not have your own online course
It allows you to diversify by recommending courses on other topics
If you are going to launch your own product later, you can lose customers who buy now
3. Sale of physical products
Selling physical products through your blog is another excellent way to generate income, since the margin will be greater than with the affiliation or advertising and you will not be so limited to the volume of visits you have.
Of course, not all blogs make sense to sell products.
If you have a strong personal brand, surely there are those who want to buy merchandise or books. Otherwise you will have little success.
But the biggest drawback is that, as a general rule, you will have to take care of storing the products and making the shipments, which implies an associated cost and prevents this form of monetization from becoming an automatic entry (which is what really interesting about online business).
Printed books
Many bloggers sell their own self-published book through their website. This gives them a very good margin, but as I said, they must also take care of the shipments.
When I decided to write my first book, I had nothing clear to do. I was evaluating the option to publish it on my own and send it myself, but when Planet appeared I decided that the best thing would be to publish it with them and sell it through Amazon.
Book Direct Your Life
Although my income is lower because Amazon keeps 30% of the amount, I do not take a second of my time. They are responsible for sending it to customers and managing refunds and returns, so I can forget about the rest.
Good profit margin
It helps you establish yourself as an authority on the subject
If you do not work with a third party such as Amazon, you must take care of shipping
Handmade products
If you have a blog of crafts, pastry or anything else made by hand, you can also sell it through your website.
Creating a section of online store in your blog is very simple nowadays. There are plugins like Woocommerce that are automatically integrated and allow you to manage prices and stocks, or platforms like Shopify that create an ecommerce in a matter of minutes, with your shopping cart and payment methods, for a monthly fee.
Good profit margin
It can not be automated and become a passive income
Third-party products
You can also use your blog as a platform to sell products produced by others. You buy the product from a manufacturer, you have a stock, and you sell it at a higher price.
Lately, the dropshipping system has been popularized, where you collect the order through your website, but you do not take charge of the stock management or shipping. You simply come to an agreement with a manufacturer to do it in exchange for a commission. This way you save yourself work and headaches.
There are companies (especially Chinese) that allow you to customize the brand and logo of the product if you order them from a good number of units. So you can sell products manufactured by another under your own brand.
Keep in mind
If someone manufactures in your name, do not hide it. This is what happened to a Spanish company that was popularized for launching the first Spanish mobile phone, but in reality it was Chinese mobile phones. When the users discovered it, a great commotion arose.
Good profit margin
It is relatively easy to create a section in your blog with the online store
You can automate it with dropshipping
You depend on the stock and the manufacture of a third party, and that is not under your control
4. Sale of digital products
If you have an audience and have managed to generate enough confidence with the contents of your blog, you have an excellent opportunity to sell your own digital products.
This is probably the most profitable way to make money with a blog. And my favorite. You minimize the commissions, you avoid intermediaries and you eliminate the physical distribution costs. In addition, you can convert it into automatic passive income and earn money even while you sleep.
However, creating your own product requires time and dedication, as well as a good sales strategy.
Digital books
Selling your own ebook is an excellent way to start automating a sales process. Once the system is written and prepared, you can forget about the rest.
If you're not sure how to set up ebook payments and downloads on your blog, you can use platforms like E-Junkie to sell books in PDF, or put it up for sale on Amazon.
Automated sales process
Revenues are not usually spectacular
You can also use your blog as a platform to sell products produced by others. You buy the product from a manufacturer, you have a stock, and you sell it at a higher price.
Lately, the dropshipping system has been popularized, where you collect the order through your website, but you do not take charge of the stock management or shipping. You simply come to an agreement with a manufacturer to do it in exchange for a commission. This way you save yourself work and headaches.
There are companies (especially Chinese) that allow you to customize the brand and logo of the product if you order them from a good number of units. So you can sell products manufactured by another under your own brand.
Keep in mind
If someone manufactures in your name, do not hide it. This is what happened to a Spanish company that was popularized for launching the first Spanish mobile phone, but in reality it was Chinese mobile phones. When the users discovered it, a great commotion arose.
Good profit margin
It is relatively easy to create a section in your blog with the online store
You can automate it with dropshipping
You depend on the stock and the manufacture of a third party, and that is not under your control
4. Sale of digital products
If you have an audience and have managed to generate enough confidence with the contents of your blog, you have an excellent opportunity to sell your own digital products.
This is probably the most profitable way to make money with a blog. And my favorite. You minimize the commissions, you avoid intermediaries and you eliminate the physical distribution costs. In addition, you can convert it into automatic passive income and earn money even while you sleep.
However, creating your own product requires time and dedication, as well as a good sales strategy.
Digital books
Selling your own ebook is an excellent way to start automating a sales process. Once the system is written and prepared, you can forget about the rest.
If you're not sure how to set up ebook payments and downloads on your blog, you can use platforms like E-Junkie to sell books in PDF, or put it up for sale on Amazon.
Automated sales process
Revenues are not usually spectacular
Your own digital products
If you are a photographer, designer or programmer, you can sell your creations through your blog.
For example, you could sell the rights to some of your photos, or sell plugins and templates for WordPress. As no transport logistics are necessary, you can convert it into a passive income.
Example
Eduardo Blanco is a photographer specializing in travel and nature who uses his own personal blog to sell some of his large format photos for home decoration.
Excellent profit margin
It allows to automate the process
Few bloggers and themes can create digital products
Online courses
Surely the most lucrative form of monetization that exists today, because once you have created an online course it costs you the same to sell one than two hundred. It hardly has creation expenses and no distribution expenses.
An online course can be in the form of videos or downloadable documents, and if you join it to an automated sales system, such as a sequence of emails through Mailchimp or Active Campaign, you can create a very, very interesting passive income.
For example, every time someone subscribes to my personal development blog, a sequence of emails is activated. The first days you receive emails with information of free value to build trust, and after a week you receive an email presenting the premium video course in case you want to register.
In this way, I can bill an average of 1,000 euros per week on automatic pilot. Not bad!
There are online courses of almost any subject that you can think of. The only requirement is that he is able to solve a problem of your audience, offering him that for what he would really be willing to pay.
Another great advantage of the courses is that they allow you to put quite high prices: people are not used to paying more than 25 euros for a book, but they do accept to spend between 50 and 200 euros for a training course. I've even seen some 2,000 euros.
But eye! It is not easy to create and sell an online course. There are several factors involved:
You need an audience with which you have established a relationship of trust (hence the importance of the mailing list!)
You must offer exactly what your target audience needs
You will need marketing knowledge to create the need to acquire your product
You will need digital tools to automate it
Despite all this effort, if you do it well it will give you many satisfactions and offer an excellent service to your readers.
Examples
After leaving a very well paid job, Álvaro López started helping professionals in crisis to reinvent themselves professionally with his blog Autorrealizarte. There he offers a 5-week course in PDF format for those readers who want to go a step further.
Marina Díaz is a clinical psychologist with a great blog on practical psychology. On his website he has a couple of online courses on habits and therapeutic writing, which consist of recorded video sessions and a personalized follow-up of the exercises.
It allows to put high prices
The process can be automated 100%
Anyone can create a course based on their knowledge
Creating a course and its sales system requires a lot of effort
Exclusive areas in your blog
You can also protect certain areas of your blog and offer exclusive content there under a monthly subscription.
This is a typical strategy of some digital newspapers that only let you access all the content if you are a paid subscriber, but there are already several blogs that are using it.
For example, Marie Haynes's blog has a private area where every two weeks she publishes a newsletter with exclusive information about SEO for 18 euros per month.
This strategy is ideal when you have a blog on a subject where there are constant changes, such as social networks or digital marketing, because an online course could be outdated quickly.
Allows you to assign recurring payments
It's a very simple way to sell a digital product
You should create content on a regular basis
5. Offer your services
Once you have established some authority with your blog, offering your services is one of the fastest ways to start earning money.
You just have to think about the services you could offer and its format. If you had a photography blog, you could sell your fees as a photographer in person. In the case of a personal development blog, you could offer coaching sessions via Skype or e-mail.
The key is to position yourself as an expert with the contents you post. With time you will increase your knowledge, and in the end you will find many people willing to pay for your services or advice.
The counterpart is that it is not a passive system at all. Each new client you get will be an income, but it will also force you to dedicate yourself, limiting the number of clients you may have.
These are several ways to offer your services with a blog:
Conferences and workshops
Advice via Skype or email
Face-to-face counseling
Custom design or programming projects
Webinars (online seminars) in group
Content writing
Translation of contents
Online classes
Editing video or photos
Web Analytics
Search engine positioning projects (SEO)
Examples
Oscar Fernández is a graphic designer specialized in WordPress. Through his blog he offers web design and development services tailored for digital entrepreneurs who want to redesign the visual identity of their websites.
Belén Piñeiro is a teacher of early childhood education who, through her blog Maestra de corazón, offers a consulting service via email for parents.
I myself offer face-to-face workshops at talentosocial.com, through a list in which the interested parties sign up and indicate their city. As soon as there is a sufficient number, I plan a workshop and write an email informing them.
The fastest way to start making money with your blog!
It allows to put high prices
You will be limited in terms of the clients you can serve
6. Donations
Lately, it has become fashionable to accept donations or sponsorships from individuals with platforms such as Patreon.
It is common to see it on YouTube channels or video games like Twitch, but more and more bloggers are implementing donation collection systems on their blogs. Even Paypal has created a specific plugin for WordPress that allows you to accept donations quickly and easily.
Although you may be embarrassed to ask, you will be surprised by the number of readers who will have no qualms about giving you a small tip for sharing your content with them for free.
Yes, it is always more effective to sell something, but do not underestimate donations as a source of additional income, at least until you have your own digital products.
Examples
Luis Cicerone is a blogger who lives in Berlin and works as an online marketing specialist. In his blog xixerone.com explains the adventures and misadventures of his trips, and at the end of the sidebar accepts donations under the slogan "Invite me to a beer" 🙂
You will not need to create any product
It is a passive income
You are totally dependent on the generosity of your readers
The income is usually quite small
7. Professional directories
If you have a blog about a topic where there are many professionals, you can create a payment list by organizing them by specialty or geographic location.
The idea is that, if a professional wants to appear in your directory, you can do so after paying a fee. The more popular your blog is, the more people will be willing to pay to appear within the list of professionals you recommend.
If your blog is psychology, you can create a directory of psychologists. A legal blog could do the same with lawyers, and another graphic design could also list a number of designers.
Creating a list of this type is very simple. There are WordPress plugins that automatically configure them to collect payments. It is even possible to add rating systems for readers to score each of the professionals that appear.
Examples
Lifeder, the specialized blog in psychology of Alberto Rubín, has a directory of psychologists organized by province and city. Registration is free, but if they want to access premium features and have greater visibility, they must pay a fee of 5 euros per month.
You offer a service to your readers
Fully automated
You will need to have many visits to make it attractive
Oscar Fernández is a graphic designer specialized in WordPress. Through his blog he offers web design and development services tailored for digital entrepreneurs who want to redesign the visual identity of their websites.
Belén Piñeiro is a teacher of early childhood education who, through her blog Maestra de corazón, offers a consulting service via email for parents.
I myself offer face-to-face workshops at talentosocial.com, through a list in which the interested parties sign up and indicate their city. As soon as there is a sufficient number, I plan a workshop and write an email informing them.
The fastest way to start making money with your blog!
It allows to put high prices
You will be limited in terms of the clients you can serve
6. Donations
Lately, it has become fashionable to accept donations or sponsorships from individuals with platforms such as Patreon.
It is common to see it on YouTube channels or video games like Twitch, but more and more bloggers are implementing donation collection systems on their blogs. Even Paypal has created a specific plugin for WordPress that allows you to accept donations quickly and easily.
Although you may be embarrassed to ask, you will be surprised by the number of readers who will have no qualms about giving you a small tip for sharing your content with them for free.
Yes, it is always more effective to sell something, but do not underestimate donations as a source of additional income, at least until you have your own digital products.
Examples
Luis Cicerone is a blogger who lives in Berlin and works as an online marketing specialist. In his blog xixerone.com explains the adventures and misadventures of his trips, and at the end of the sidebar accepts donations under the slogan "Invite me to a beer" 🙂
You will not need to create any product
It is a passive income
You are totally dependent on the generosity of your readers
The income is usually quite small
7. Professional directories
If you have a blog about a topic where there are many professionals, you can create a payment list by organizing them by specialty or geographic location.
The idea is that, if a professional wants to appear in your directory, you can do so after paying a fee. The more popular your blog is, the more people will be willing to pay to appear within the list of professionals you recommend.
If your blog is psychology, you can create a directory of psychologists. A legal blog could do the same with lawyers, and another graphic design could also list a number of designers.
Creating a list of this type is very simple. There are WordPress plugins that automatically configure them to collect payments. It is even possible to add rating systems for readers to score each of the professionals that appear.
Examples
Lifeder, the specialized blog in psychology of Alberto Rubín, has a directory of psychologists organized by province and city. Registration is free, but if they want to access premium features and have greater visibility, they must pay a fee of 5 euros per month.
You offer a service to your readers
Fully automated
You will need to have many visits to make it attractive
8. Private forums
Some blogs choose to include a forum section where the readers themselves can create their topics and comment.
It is an option to assess if your blog has a loyal audience and you think they could benefit from the content created by them, both to exchange knowledge and experiences and to give support.
To monetize a forum you have two options:
That access to the forum requires a monthly fee or a single payment
That just to access certain sections or Premium services of the forum it is necessary to make a payment
The second option is usually the most frequent, unless you manage to create a very strong personal brand and want to position it as something very exclusive.
With some WordPress plugins like BBpress it is very easy to create a forum section in your blog. Yes, be aware that moderate it, at least until you have the help of other participants, it requires a lot of work.
Example
Photographing you is much more than a photography blog. It is an online store, they offer courses and they also have a forum section where fans of this discipline share their concerns and experiences.
It can be an additional recurring income
The participants themselves generate the contents
Moderating it requires a lot of work
9. Sell your blog
Most bloggers have a hard time getting rid of their projects, but there may be times when selling your blog, even when you are generating money, is the best option.
It could happen that you decided to create a blog in a totally different subject, that you could not dedicate yourself to him or that your professional life would turn around radically. In that case you could use platforms like Flippa or Empire Flippers to put your blog on sale.
All kinds of websites are sold on these pages. From those who bill 50 euros a month to others generating hundreds of thousands of euros. Generally, the sale price of a website is calculated by multiplying its monthly invoicing by x20 or x30, although it depends on its theme and future expectations.
That means that if your website was generating 500 euros per month, you could get to sell it for 10,000-15,000 euros.
Even though it is not yet monetized, it is possible to sell your blog if it has good content and traffic. Logically, its market value will be lower, but it is an alternative.
Note: there are people who are dedicated exclusively to create blogs, monetize them and sell them when they are in their billing boom. And then they repeat the process with another blog. It is a way of life!
It is a way to take advantage economically if you plan to leave your blog
You must calculate if you get profitable in the medium term
Some blogs choose to include a forum section where the readers themselves can create their topics and comment.
It is an option to assess if your blog has a loyal audience and you think they could benefit from the content created by them, both to exchange knowledge and experiences and to give support.
To monetize a forum you have two options:
That access to the forum requires a monthly fee or a single payment
That just to access certain sections or Premium services of the forum it is necessary to make a payment
The second option is usually the most frequent, unless you manage to create a very strong personal brand and want to position it as something very exclusive.
With some WordPress plugins like BBpress it is very easy to create a forum section in your blog. Yes, be aware that moderate it, at least until you have the help of other participants, it requires a lot of work.
Example
Photographing you is much more than a photography blog. It is an online store, they offer courses and they also have a forum section where fans of this discipline share their concerns and experiences.
It can be an additional recurring income
The participants themselves generate the contents
Moderating it requires a lot of work
9. Sell your blog
Most bloggers have a hard time getting rid of their projects, but there may be times when selling your blog, even when you are generating money, is the best option.
It could happen that you decided to create a blog in a totally different subject, that you could not dedicate yourself to him or that your professional life would turn around radically. In that case you could use platforms like Flippa or Empire Flippers to put your blog on sale.
All kinds of websites are sold on these pages. From those who bill 50 euros a month to others generating hundreds of thousands of euros. Generally, the sale price of a website is calculated by multiplying its monthly invoicing by x20 or x30, although it depends on its theme and future expectations.
That means that if your website was generating 500 euros per month, you could get to sell it for 10,000-15,000 euros.
Even though it is not yet monetized, it is possible to sell your blog if it has good content and traffic. Logically, its market value will be lower, but it is an alternative.
Note: there are people who are dedicated exclusively to create blogs, monetize them and sell them when they are in their billing boom. And then they repeat the process with another blog. It is a way of life!
It is a way to take advantage economically if you plan to leave your blog
You must calculate if you get profitable in the medium term
10. Work opportunities
Having a blog does not mean you can only make money through it: it can also be a great boost for your professional career.
Nowadays, any job offer receives hundreds of applications, and it is enough with the typical curriculum with your training, professional experience and knowledge to stand out. Do you need anything else.
Infojobs offer
Having a blog does not mean you can only make money through it: it can also be a great boost for your professional career.
Nowadays, any job offer receives hundreds of applications, and it is enough with the typical curriculum with your training, professional experience and knowledge to stand out. Do you need anything else.
Infojobs offer
In a US study it was found that, for positions of some responsibility, more than 90% of the companies investigate the social networks of a candidate before hiring him. They look for professionals with a good reputation and who are able to demonstrate their knowledge, and the best way to achieve this is through a blog.
A blog related to your professional activity will help you:
Position yourself as an expert in your sector. Imagine that there are two candidates with the same professional experience. One of them only tells you that he has five years of experience with SAP, while the other regularly publishes diagrams of SAP integration projects on his blog and also answers the technical questions of his readers. Which one would you choose?
Get more credibility There is a belief that only the industry leaders open blogs, so when people know you have one you will see how you begin to respect and ask for advice, even if you opened it yesterday and do not even have a visit.
Build your personal brand A blog allows you to control the image you give of yourself (or the one that people build on you), so it's an excellent way to show your values and concerns.
In the end, with a blog you open yourself to the world, and that always brings pleasant surprises.
Example
Although Max had been working as a freelancer for two years, he finally found a job in a communication agency thanks to his blog. The general manager called to tell him that he had seen his work on the blog, and that was why he had decided to propose it.
It is a totally indirect benefit, it does not involve any effort
It forces you to link the theme of the blog with your profession
The strategy to make money with your blog
I'm going to confess something:
Most bloggers who sell methods to make money with a blog never applied it to themselves.
Because the same thing happened to many of them: they created a blog for a hobby and suddenly discovered that there was an opportunity there. They did not look for it: they found it.
They succeeded because they were among the first. The first of the marketing laws is that it is better to be the first, than to be the best. When you are the first in a market, you have half the work done.
Nowadays, it is not easy to be the first. There are blogs for everything, so you are going to have to follow a strategy that allows you to differentiate and make yourself known. And it can be summarized in 5 steps:
Find your niche
Create your blog
Generate content
Build your audience
Monetize the blog
1. Find a profitable niche
This is the most crucial phase to determine the income potential of your blog.
Most people think of a blog as a newspaper, a place to share their thoughts and what happens in their day to day.
But, unless you are already famous and there are people interested in you or you have a life absolutely out of the ordinary, this usually does not work.
You must contribute something more to the people. Everyone wants something in exchange for their time, and if you do not offer any value or find your page or feel the need to revisit it.
So the first thing you should think about is what can you bring to the world?
The most common is to provide knowledge or fun. Yes, there are blogs created with the mere intention of entertaining, and if not look at YouTube, where there are many videos that are simply funny.
But the most common are blogs that offer knowledge on a specific topic. And the most successful are those that manage to satisfy a demand from their audience.
To find a topic with potential for your blog, answer the following questions:
What do you like?
If you're going to have to write for a number of years about a topic, it's better if it's about something you're good at, but also that you like it.
For example, you might be good at preparing attractive presentations in Power Point, but be tired of doing them at work.
Look for hobbies or interests that you would never tire of talking about, because they are all excellent candidates to become the central theme of your blog.
Keep in mind
It is not essential that you be an expert on the subject, far from it. There will always be people who do not have any knowledge and want to learn with a simpler and less academic vision.
That this does not stop you, because by the time your blog has visitors, you have had to inform so much to create your content that you will know more than 99% of the population on that subject.
Is there a demand?
The contents of your blog must solve a need, otherwise no one will be interested in it and much less will be willing to pay.
To find out if that need exists, ask people who respond to the profile of your target audience, research forums and use the Google Keyword Planner.
This application will let you know how many people make a search on Google every month, and it will also show you how much advertisers are bidding to show advertising in those searches.
The more searches your topic has, the more demand there is.
The more an advertiser is willing to pay, the greater business potential this topic has. That gives you an idea of the money you could earn with your blog.
If your subject has hardly any searches and the bids are zero, consider if there really is a demand.
Can you specialize or do better?
Once you have validated your subject, it is time to investigate your competition.
Search your chosen theme on Google and see if there are websites or blogs positioned there. As there are probably several (today it is very difficult to find a virgin market), think about how you could specialize.
Specializing is a way to differentiate yourself from your competitors, and allow you to be visible in a specific market niche.
Think about what types of people could benefit from your knowledge and choose one. For example, you could teach how to make powerpoint presentations to students, entrepreneurs, university professors or doctors.
Also look at how your subject deals with your competition and assess whether you can do it better or, at least, differently. You could give it another approach, more personal, motivational, humorous or scientific, for example.
In any case, let none of these three keys hold you back. It is NOT necessary that you have a great idea. The important thing is to start, because then you can always change your positioning, as did many of the great bloggers of today.
2. Create your blog
Logically, the next step is to create your blog.
First you will have to choose a name for him. You can put your own name or invent one, but do not waste too much time on this: what is relevant is its contents, not its name.
There are many domain registrars, but for its reliability and simplicity I recommend Namecheap, Godaddy or MrDomain. Simply open an account and enter a domain name that is available.
Then you will need a hosting to host your blog. Although they exist free like wordpress.com or blogger.com, in reality no blogger with minimum aspirations uses them because:
They limit the functionality of your blog and you will not be able to customize it
The domain will be of the type tublog.wordpress.com, which will detract much credibility
My recommendation is that you hire a WordPress hosting on Webempresa. For just over 5 euros per month you will have some of the fastest accommodation and with the best technical support in Spain.
Oh! And with the coupon "vidaonline25" (without quotes) you will get a 25% discount on your Webempresa hosting during the first year. Do not let it escape!
In this tutorial you will be able to create a step-by-step blog in less than 15 minutes.
3. Generate useful content
This point, together with the theme of your blog, is what will determine your income potential to a large extent.
Every day more than 3 million articles are published in blogs. This means that if you really want to be visible with your blog, you will have to create content that stands out and captures readers.
Your content must be epic. Create articles that meet the needs and solve the problems of your readers, and also connect with them. This is what will truly allow you to get the most out of your blog.
These are the 3 requirements that should be met by any article of your blog:
Well formatted, with a nice and simple design
In-depth explanations, but practical and easy to read
With stories and personal examples that help your readers to know you better
4. Build your audience
The mistake that many bloggers make is to create your blog, publish content, and wait for the visitors to arrive.
This strategy where they are the center of the world is doomed to fail.
With the amount of competitors that exist today, if you want to make money with your blog you will have to be proactive and give visibility so that your target audience knows that it exists.
Another common mistake is to focus only on the number of visits. The amount of traffic to a blog does not have to be related to your income potential, especially if those visitors are not interested in what is offered.
It is essential that you have clear who you are going to create your content for. That is, who is your true target audience and what problem will you help solve. In this way you can also know where to find him on the Internet.
These are the best ways to give visibility to your blog:
It appears in other blogs
Does your target audience read other blogs? Then you have a great opportunity to attract attention to your project by appearing as a guest author on that blog.
Simply contact your author, show him that you know his blog, and offer to write an article that adds value to his readers.
Keep in mind
The same target audience may have several needs, so make sure that the blog where you publish your guest article does not compete directly with yours in your value proposition.
For example, if in your blog you help university students to make impressive presentations, you could look for a blog about professional outings since their audience is likely to be very similar.
Provides value in specialized forums
Does your target audience participate in certain forums? Surely, so identify them and provide value to establish yourself as an expert on the subject.
Most forums are very scarred with spam, but if you participate in conversations by providing information of interest and then present your blog as a place where people can expand information, it is very likely that you get a good handful of interested readers.
The same target audience may have several needs, so make sure that the blog where you publish your guest article does not compete directly with yours in your value proposition.
For example, if in your blog you help university students to make impressive presentations, you could look for a blog about professional outings since their audience is likely to be very similar.
Provides value in specialized forums
Does your target audience participate in certain forums? Surely, so identify them and provide value to establish yourself as an expert on the subject.
Most forums are very scarred with spam, but if you participate in conversations by providing information of interest and then present your blog as a place where people can expand information, it is very likely that you get a good handful of interested readers.
Choose your social networks
Another common mistake in many bloggers is to try to be present in ALL social networks. That consumes a lot of time and does not allow them to focus on what is really important: creating content and promoting it.
You must choose and focus. Depending on your topic and content, there are more appropriate social networks than others, such as:
Visual content (photography or travel blogs): Instagram and Facebook
Contents for professionals: Linkedin and Twitter
Personal development content: Facebook and Twitter
Health content: Facebook and Instagram
Facebook or Linkedin groups are like forums: opportunities to put your content in the eyes of an interested public. Just make sure you add value and do not fall into spam, or you will not last long.
Optimize your SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO is about making your articles as visible as possible within search engines like Google or Ping.
If you make your articles appear in the top positions of these search engines when people make a query, you will ensure a constant (and free) flow of visits.
Traffic sources
Another common mistake in many bloggers is to try to be present in ALL social networks. That consumes a lot of time and does not allow them to focus on what is really important: creating content and promoting it.
You must choose and focus. Depending on your topic and content, there are more appropriate social networks than others, such as:
Visual content (photography or travel blogs): Instagram and Facebook
Contents for professionals: Linkedin and Twitter
Personal development content: Facebook and Twitter
Health content: Facebook and Instagram
Facebook or Linkedin groups are like forums: opportunities to put your content in the eyes of an interested public. Just make sure you add value and do not fall into spam, or you will not last long.
Optimize your SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO is about making your articles as visible as possible within search engines like Google or Ping.
If you make your articles appear in the top positions of these search engines when people make a query, you will ensure a constant (and free) flow of visits.
Traffic sources
In most of my projects this is the main traffic channel. I could write for hours about SEO, but I summarize it in the three main keys to achieve visibility:
Create content that satisfies the user's search intention
Take care of your SEO on-page by making good use of keywords, titles and images
Get other websites link your blog or articles, and link your own content in your articles to derive traffic
If you want to learn the basics of SEO, I recommend this practical guide on web positioning for beginners.
Payment ads
Paying for traffic in search engines or social networks is also an option to get interested visitors, because they allow you to segment exactly what kind of people you want to be shown.
In addition, paid ads have two advantages:
They allow you to obtain results much faster than with organic positioning (SEO), since this requires time to be effective.
Every time the organic reach of the publications in social networks or Google is smaller, so it is not strange that the payment announcements are becoming increasingly important.
In order for the ads to have a good return on investment, make sure you are attracting a qualified target audience, that is, with the potential to invest in solving your problem.
5. Create a mailing list
Once you manage to attract readers to your blog, you must retain them to keep reading and interacting with your content.
Otherwise, the vast majority will arrive, read an article and never return. Not because they are not interested, but because they are saturated with information. You must make it easy for them and send them your content instead of waiting for them to meet you again.
The best way is to create a list of subscribers by email. To motivate your readers to subscribe to your mailing list, you should probably offer them something in return, such as:
A course by email
A series of exclusive videos
An ebook
A special discount
A list of subscribers will allow you to maintain a greater frequency of contact with them, which will generate more confidence and help you to position yourself as an expert on the subject.
In addition, in your list of subscribers resides the true economic potential of the blog, because it will allow you to present them by email payment services. Remember that they are readers who have already shown interest in your content!
6. Monetize your blog
Once you have your content and have built an audience, monetizing your blog is the next natural step.
Whatever they say, there is no better way than another to make money with a blog. It depends on the theme, the demand, the profile of your readers and the effort you are willing to dedicate.
In any case, you're going to need a lot of perseverance.
Nowadays it is almost impossible to start earning money with a blog until several months have passed, so you must be willing to continue working on it even when you have not seen a euro for more than a year.
Most bloggers have started the same, dedicating to our blog for pure hobby. And it is precisely the fact of not setting ourselves economic goals that has allowed us to move forward even when we did not get results.
If you are not willing to go through the same path, you will be buying many numbers to end up abandoning it. But if you persevere, I assure you that a blog can change your life 🙂
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I hope this article has helped you understand the different ways to earn money with a blog. Each of them has its advantages and disadvantages, but generally, the more effort they require, the more money you can get.
In any case, monetizing a blog so that it becomes a stable source of income is a long career. You will not get it in a month or two, so be willing and patient, think your strategy well, and do not delay it anymore!
And you, what method are you going to use to make money with your blog?
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