The paradigm of blogging has changed since the last decade. Now a days blogging is treated as a platform to earn money more than a platform to share knowledge.
It is one of the popular way to earn money for the youngsters typically the college goers because it can be done from anywhere in the world and can be started with minimal resources.
It is popular because it does not require a degree or skill to start something new unlike the traditional offline job.
If done professionally, blogging can earn you a lot more money than a job in the market.
In fact I started writing blog in the year 2013 and started earning money from it from 2014, which is some 7 years ago.
I did it consistently, and now, I left my job to make blogging a full time career and explore new ways of making money out of it.
As far as my practical experience, knowledge and research goes, I have found the following ways in which way you can make money from blogging.
Let’s deep dive in detail to look what opportunities you have if you are into this.
Contents
Advertisements Through Ad Networks – The Biggest Source of Earning for a Blog
When you visit a website you see some advertises based on your search of some products, services or previous buying habits.
This kind of advertises are typically known as display advertises.
This is the easiest way of making money for a blog because it does not require any specific effort from the publisher or blogger.
There are the below types of advertisements typically appears on a blog:
- Display advertisements
- Video Advertisements
- Search advertisements
Display advertisement is the widely used format of advertisement and earns most of the revenue for most of the bloggers.
Below is a screenshot of two such advertises placed on different places on one of the blog I own.
Video advertisement is basically a short video of some product or service that appears in this ad placement. Video format ads are the one that is gaining popular now a days.
See the below screenshot to see how a video ad looks like:
Search ads are text format ads typically appears on the search result inside a blog. This is the least used advertisement type.
If some user has used the search bar of a blog and the owner has setup search ads for then this type of ads appear before and/or after the search results typically inside the blog.
How Advertises are Shown on a Blog (or a Publisher)?
There are these ad networks like AdSense, Media.net, Propeller ads etc. They have relations with both advertisers and publishers.
An advertiser is the one who pays money to advertise about a product or service and a publisher is typically the owner of a blog.
Various ad networks like AdSense have certain criteria to approve or reject before they allow to publish these ads.
A blog has to go through this approval process to be able to display the ads and hence earn money.
You can visit this post where I have explained how to submit your blog to AdSense to get approval.
AdSense – The Biggest Ad Network
AdSense is owned by Google and is one of the biggest ad networks known in the industry.
This ad network pays the most to a blogger in comparison to any other ad network(s).
According to a study of 1117 bloggers done by GrowthBadger, 53% do not earn any money from their blog.
And from the percentage of people earn money, Google AdSense is the biggest source of revenue for their blogs.
This is the most RECOMMENDED way of earning money for beginners initially.
The second most revenue source is the Affiliate marketing. I will talk that in detail in a later section but before that let’s look at some other ways to make money from blogging.
Direct Advertisements
In the previous section, I have already said that the display advertisements that comes from an ad network like Google AdSense, earns the most money for a blog.
On the contrary, the direct advertisement as a source of advertisement is not so popular and mostly pays a fixed amount of money per ad placement slot.
This has its own advantages and drawbacks. But this seems to be a win-win situation for both the blog publisher and the advertiser.
Typically advertisers reach you directly via e-mail or social media platforms and ask you for availability of direct advertisement possibilities on the blog you own.
Below is a real mail that I recently got from someone inquiring about a direct advertisement opportunity on one of my blog:
I had such a successful direct advertising deal with a digital marketing company back in 2019.
Find the screenshot of the mail conversation below:
That particular ad was pricing was set as CPM per number of impressions, unlike the CPC model of AdSense. I was given access to a dashboard to see the statistics of the ad placement.
As promised by the company, they have sent me money of $430 on my PayPal account. Below is the screenshot of the same:
PRO TIP: If you get such a request ever, then tell them to pay upfront that is before you place ads on your blog.
Paid Reviews, Sponsored Posts or Paid Links:
If you have an authoritative blog with good DA and PA then people may reach you out for this.
Typically the sponsor pays you some money to feature his / her post on your blog.
Sometimes the sponsor only pays you to add links of other website on your most authoritative page.
Below is a screenshot of someone who contacted me on my blog’s facebook page to add a sponsored post that is relevant to my blog.
There are two reasons why people sponsor to add such kind of posts:
- Promoting products or services of their own or of their clients
- To build quality back links for their own blog or their clients
Verify Before Accepting Any Such Sponsored Post:
Not all the sponsored posts or paid reviews have great content quality. They just write some piece of content to earn dofollow backlinks from your blog.
So, you must verify what kind of website are you linking to. Sometimes people pay you to link dating, gambling, casino sites, etc. which is a violation to AdSense guidelines.
If your site is approved for Google AdSense program then you cannot add or link to such content or website.
If you link to such a site on your blog post then AdSense ads will not be served on that page.
This kind of link building strategy is a violation as per Google Webmaster Guidelines. You may be penalized by Google for this and this may have an adverse effect on the overall SEO of your blog.
Affiliate Marketing
All the above mentioned ways of earning money from a blog is the typical way and followed by most bloggers.
But, all the highest earning bloggers you read about on the internet are earning money from this method.
Affiliate marketing can otherwise be understood as endorsement. This is not a new thing, right!
You endorse or promote certain product or service to someone to buy and you get some percentage of from the profit making company as a commission if that persons buys. Simple!
The percentage of commission usually varies. But it is enough to make huge money out of it.
Let’s take an example to understand that.
[sc_note note_color=”#F9D9D9″ text_color=”#AA4343″ radius=”3″ class=”” id=””]DISCLAIMER: I am not promoting any of Tony Robins’ product. This is just show you a demo how does affiliate marketing work.[/sc_note]Let’s say I write about motivation and success stories on my blog. I am getting good amount traffic on a daily basis.
One day I thought to promote products from Tony Robbins’ store which can earn some 15% of commission per sale.
Tony Robbins is an entrepreneur, author of six international best seller books, international motivational speaker and a mentor.
There is this product on that store which costs $249 and has 98 reviews. Just for the sake of understanding, if I successfully sell one product everyday, then I will make $37.35 daily and I will make approximately $1120 in a month.
A lot of money just by promoting one product, isn’t it?
How to Know Which Product or Services Company Provides Affiliate Program?
There are some affiliate networks like Commission Junction (CJ), JVZoo, Share A Sale, etc. which typically have lists of products and services that have affiliate program.
Once you register with those affiliate networks, you get access to promote all that is available inside.
Some companies have affiliate programs but they are not registered on any affiliate networks. To promote those earn commission, you need to directly participate in their affiliate programs.
You need to research in your own blogging niche to find such products to promote.
How to Know Which Products to Promote?
You are the right person to decide what is your blog niche. Who is your audience. What products will they be interested in.
Create a poll on your blog or social media profile to understand your readers better and then decide what to promote.
Well, this just a brief note on affiliate marketing and there is more to know about the same and how you can promote products or services successfully on your blog.
Amazon Affiliate or Associate Program
Amazon sells all the products we use on our daily life. If your blog targets in a niche for which you have products on Amazon, then you can try amazon affiliate program as well.
Amazon affiliate is available on 19 countries. You can try one or more based on your audience geo location.
You can read the full application review process for Amazon affiliate program.
But, the most important part in affiliate marketing is, it is not so easy hence not a so popular way of making money from blogging. Only a handful of successful bloggers become successful affiliate marketer in the process.
A lot of thought, experience, tactics and writing goes to promote a product successfully.
But if you are among the 1% courageous doers in the world and want to try your hands on, this is the best option for you.
Sell Your Own Products or Services (Digital or in-person)
Blogging is a platform that gives an opportunity to make money online.
When the world have seen this lock down during the Covid pandemic, bloggers never had a shut down in their business.
In fact that was the time where most businesses have already moved or planning to move completely online.
Most people now choose to learn online more than ever.
If you have such a skill where you can create your own online education courses (either an e-book or a audio visual course) and sell it to your audience on your blog, you can earn money out of it.
You can also advertise your e-products to sell it on other social media platforms to make even more money.
This is not recommended for beginners but if you are an intermediate or an expert in your domain you can take a step forward in this direction.
By Writing for Others
Having your own blog mean you have that writing skill. If you think you are professional enough, you can write for other blogs in your niche or something that interests you.
This where the guest post thing comes in.
You contribute your quality work on other popular blogs to get more visibility and a larger audience.
Writing guest post usually does not earn you any money but if you become a writer for a blog then they may pay you some money for that.
Also, you can register yourself on Fiverr or UpWork as a content writer to get work from clients and deliver it to their requirements.
Conclusion
Blogging is a platform to earn money, promote your own or others product or services, share knowledge etc.
I have shared a lot of screenshots to provide as much real data as possible.
I have shared several ways in which one can make money from blogging but this list might still not be complete.
If you know one such way of earning money from a blog that I have not added, then please let me know in the comments section.
If you are a serious blogger and want to be successful in blogging, then keep visiting InfySim for more useful information and guides.