Last Updated on October 17, 2020 by Emma
If you’re looking for get rich schemes, then reading this article is not going to help you. There are umpteen ways to make credible money blogging, but all of them take time and effort.
If you’re still reading, then scroll down for my top tried and tested ways to make money blogging.
Disclaimer: This article may contain affiliate links. If you decide to use them, my blog may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you, which helps to fund more helpful articles for you to enjoy. Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice. These are my views and the results of years of research, testing and learning.
Table of Contents
How to Start your Blog
It’s not expensive to get started blogging. You’ll need:
- A domain name (the web address of your blog’s website)
- A hosting platform
- A content management system (it gives your blog a look and feel and lets you write and publish blog posts).
My favourite blogging resources are:
- Bluehost – for buying domains and hosting
- WordPress.com for content management
- Wealthy Affiliate – a one-stop-shop that teaches you how to create a blog, hosts the blog for you and lets you participate in a community of thousands of bloggers. You can even join on a free starter membership without giving your credit card details.
How to Monetise your Blog
Two of the things I love about blogging are:
- There are so many ways that you can monetise your writing.
- Once you’ve done the heavy lifting of writing and publishing your content, it then becomes a relatively passive source of income. You can make money in your sleep – the dream!
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing involves creating content about products and services that other businesses offer. If you provide helpful content that assists someone to decide whether to buy this product or service, then the company will give you a cut of the profits.
How do I select what products to promote?
I recommend selecting products that tick the following boxes:
- They are ethical and delivered by trustworthy companies.
- The products have a valid affiliate scheme.
- The products or services fit with the niche (topic) that you pick for your blog.
- You believe in the products and services and would use them yourself.
A great place to start is with products and services that you have used personally and believe can help other people.
Google AdSense
Google AdSense is a means of businesses promoting their products and services directly on your website through advertising. You’ll receive payments in proportion to the amount of traffic you attract to your website. Each time one of your website visitors clicks on an advert you’ll get a small commission. Google AdSense is the most well-known advertising network, but there are alternatives such as MediaVine Finance.
Sell Guest Posting Opportunities
If you create great content that attracts thousands of visitors a month, then other bloggers may want to collaborate with you through guest posting. This is a strategy that supports you to increase trust in your website by getting links to it from other trusted websites (ones with a high domain authority), and helps bloggers to grow their audience size.
You have the option to charge for guest posts.
Sell Sponsored Posts
As more and more people consume content on your blog, other businesses may approach you to write content about their products and services in return for a set fee. Sponsored posts can become quite lucrative over time.
If you receive a request, ask yourself:
- Do I believe in this product or service?
- Does the company have good reviews?
- Is it something that will help my audience?
When writing a sponsored post, you will need to disclose your relationship with the company and make clear that it is a sponsored post.
Sponsored posts can be a valid alternative to using an advertising network, such as Google AdSense.
Use Your Blog to get Speaking Gigs
A blog can be an outstanding business card that demonstrates your expertise and experience in a particular area. Make sure that you include a ‘Contact Me’ section so that people can reach out to you with business opportunities, such as speaking opportunities at conferences or online events. Speaking is a great way to earn some extra income. You could expand your audience and potentially use the speaking opportunity as a cross-sell for other opportunities such as paid consultancy or coaching work.
It’s worth considering unpaid speaking gigs if they give you the opportunity to expand your audience and pick up some photography of you speaking from stage; that type of imagery is a powerful way to help build your online credibility.
Using Your Blog To Monetise A Coaching Business
Create a Digital Course
If you have a skill in a particular field such as dealing with conflict, building self-confidence, a sport, or building businesses, then other people who want to improve in this area may want to work with you!
A blog is a great way to build an audience and position yourself as an authority. People who want more in-depth support than it is possible to offer in a blog may reach out to work with you. Offering a digital course is a very time-efficient way of providing support, coaching and training to a large group of people.
Offer a Premium Coaching Programme
If you have a digital course, then you could also consider offering a premium coaching programme that you promote through your blog. You could include one-on-one private coaching or group coaching sessions with you. These programmes vary in price but are typically around £2,000 for a programme lasting three months.
You can set the price in relation to the benefits your ideal client will get from your programme.
Finding Corporate Clients
Blogging to Gain Paid Consultancy Work
Your blog is a powerful way to showcase your expertise in a particular topic. For example, a website developer can easily demonstrate his or her technical prowess on their personal website.
You can use your blog to share helpful content that supports your ideal client to understand their problem and find the solution, which may involve hiring you as a consultant. It’s beneficial to share details of the results you have achieved for your clients without breaking the terms of any NDAs you sign. You can also ask your happiest clients to leave a written, or even better a video, testimonial. Testimonials will help to build your social proof.
Blogging for Freelance Work
A blog is a great way to land freelance gigs. It’s a powerful way to share your freelance portfolio, that is, an overview of projects you have completed for clients and the results they have achieved.
You can blog around topics that businesses will be searching for when they are looking to hire freelancers that have your skillset.
Offer a Suite of Digital Products
Sell an Ebook
An Ebook is a great way to earn passive income over time. You can base your Ebook on some of your blog content, but it should give additional insights and depth so your website readers see value in spending money on it.
If you don’t have the design skills to format an Ebook, then you can hire an inexpensive graphic designer through a freelancing site such as Fiverr.
Offer Digital Courses
You can also turn your content into a digital course that gives your audience the step-by-step method to improve a skill or solve a problem. It’s a nice to touch to include video content within an online course. You can record yourself teaching the lesson, or even provide on-screen instructions for how the course participant can practically do something, whether it’s a sports drills, setting up a website, or a meditation exercise.
You can host your digital courses on the following platforms:
- Kajabi
- Thinkific
- Teachable
- Udemy
- Skillshare
Run Virtual Events and Record Them
If people get value from your articles, then they may want to join a live event where you offer some live training, or perhaps answer questions live. You can charge a fee for joining the event and run it through a software such as Zoom.
If you record the event, you then have the option to offer it as another paid digital product, or to add it into your existing digital products as a bonus.
Create a Membership Site
As you create a following for your blog, you will create fans who want to get closer to you. You could consider creating a membership site that gives additional content, and perhaps virtual events, in return for a monthly fee.
WordPress has a plugin called MemberPress, which is a good starting point for members-only content on your blog.
Blog to Sell Physical Products
Publicise Your Amazon Affiliates Store
As you gain more traction with your blog, you will be able to join the Amazon Affiliates Programme which allows you to create a store of products that are relevant to your audience. WordPress (in my opinion, the best content management system for a blog), offers a range of eCommerce plugins that you can use to integrate your Amazon store with your blog. The most popular plugin with this functionality is WooCommerce.
Create a Dropshipping Store
Dropshipping is another way to sell physical products without having to buy them in bulk and store them. Instead, you take orders and then ship them to the customer directly from your supplier. Your blog can provide helpful content about the products that you offer through dropshipping and generate sales.
If you blog on WordPress, you can use a plugin called WooCommerce Dropshipping to automate this process for you. Just be sure to pick a reliable and high-quality supplier in order to protect the reputation of your business.
Sell Blogs
Build a Blog and Sell It
Once you know how to build and monetise websites then you have the recipe to a successful business. You could run your blog for the long term and receive monthly earnings, or you have the option to sell it through a site such as Flippa for a lump sum.
The more traffic your blog receives, the more valuable it will be in the marketplace.
Become a Website Reseller
As you build your skills and expertise in online businesses, you could buy websites that have an existing audience, but that you can see will thrive if you apply your expertise to them. Once you’ve added your magic touch and got results, you could sell the sites for a profit.
In the same way, some people decide to buy domain names that they believe they can flip for a profit, with or without an active website attached to them.
It’s essential to do your research on this way of making money before making a financial investment to avoid losing money on a website or domain name that you are unable to sell at a profit.
What is Your Favourite Tried and Tested Way to Make Money Blogging?
So, that’s a wrap; you’ve read my top tried and tested ways to make money blogging, and you’re ready to start implementing!
Which one if your favourite?
What have you tried so far?
What questions do you have?
Hi there! Thanks for sharing this article on tried and tested ways to make money. It’s a very detailed article, very educative and highly informative. You’ve done a commendable job, well done. I have a blog already but I’ve had issues with monetizing. I tried google Adsense but it didn’t work. Seemed like I was doing it wrongly. I didn’t really think of affiliate marketing. After going through this article, I’ll try out the other options on how to monetize and as well try out the google ad sense again. Thank you.
Hi Sophie, great to hear that you enjoyed this article. I recommend trying out a few methods of monetising your blog and seeing which ones work best for you. Good luck!
Hello there, thanks a lot for sharing this wonderful piece of information here with us. I must say i really did enjoyed going through your review as it contains valuable information’s that can be very helpful to me. I just finished my affiliate training and i will soon create my website, i am going to follow these processes listed in monetizing my site and hope for the best, thanks
I wish you every success with monetising your blog!
This is exciting. I honestly didn’t know there were so many monetization options. I would like to be hired for Speaking Gigs. But I didn’t know I could use my blog to achieve that.
I also liked the concept of affiliate marketing. It seemed pretty straight forward. I like it! Thank you very much for this in depth explanation of all the options we have to earn money.
Thanks for your message Paolo, Yes your blog is a great business card to get speaking gigs. If this is something that you are interested in, I would recommend writing some content that is optimised to appeal to people who are looking for speakers in your niche. All the best!