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Starting a blog can be an exciting journey, but the real question is: how do you make money blogging and turn your passion into a profitable blog?
Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned blogger looking to scale, monetizing your blog doesn’t have to be overwhelming!
In this post, we’ll dive into blog monetization strategies and how you can start making money blogging even as a beginner.
There are a ton of ways you can make money blogging, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re going to end up spending a lot of wasted time on strategies that don’t work and aren’t going to get you anywhere.
So sit back, grab your favorite beverage and a notebook, and let’s dive in!
How to Start Monitizing Your Blog: Top Money-Making Strategies
There are a lot of ways you can start monetizing your blog, and we’re going to lay out the easiest and most popular options here.
Here are some of the best monetization strategies to consider:
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is probably the most popular and beginner-friendly way to monetize your blog. It’s where I recommend you start out.
Affiliate marketing is when you recommend a product to your readers, and when they buy it, you get a commission.
It’s a super low-cost way to make money, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to do!
It is the best place to start out, though, because of how easy it is to start, it’s low cost, and the time spent on it is minimal.
You don’t have to spend time creating a product yourself or doing anything really extra other than creating the content you’d normally create and then putting a link to a product you love inside it!
And the only money you spend is on the product you bought, because I wouldn’t recommend a product you haven’t tried. You want to make sure it’s a good product before asking others to buy!
💡Quick Tip
If you want to get started with affiliate marketing the right way, this “Zero to Super Hero: Affiliate Marketing Bundle” is a great low-cost place to start!
It has everything you need to get started, like a massive list of affiliate programs to join and proven strategies by a pro-blogger to make passive income blogging with affiliate marketing!
Creating and Selling Digital Products
The next step after affiliate marketing might be creating and selling digital products.
I currently sell my digital products on Gumroad. It’s a free place to sell your products, and I like it way better than Etsy.
On Etsy, you have a lot more recurring fees. Like every 3 months or so, your listing “expires” and you have to pay a fee to keep it up. On Gumroad, you only pay a fee when you sell a product.
There are pros and cons to both, but Gumroad is where I prefer to be.
You can create an unlimited number of digital products. Workbooks, courses, printables, e-books. You name it, you can do it!
If you need inspiration, you can head over to Etsy for that. Type in the type of product you’re thinking of creating and see what others have available.
Obviously, we’re not looking to copy anyone’s product, but you can see if a product that you want to create exists, and if it seems to be popular enough to have a chance at selling.
Think about what you know that is worth charging for, and if it would be beneficial to your audience. Then you can use something like Canva to create it and begin selling it.
At some point, if you promote it enough in blog posts and other places, it will pretty much become passive income for you, and it will sell on autopilot!
Client work & Selling Services
Client work has been the biggest income earner for me. I have done blog coaching and Pinterest management over the years, selling my skills to help others grow and make money blogging.
It’s the fastest way I’ve made money because people always need help with things, and bloggers are always looking for ways to offload work to have more time on their plates.
If you can find something you’re good at, you can do the same for things in your niche.
The only problem with this, is it’s not passive income. You are actively trading your time for money. This is the reason I am not a huge fan of this income source long-term.
Unless it’s work you really enjoy doing, you can only scale it so far. At some point,t you run out of time to take on more clients, so the only way to scale is to raise your prices or sacrifice time for more clients (Which isn’t possible all the time!)
But, it’s still a great way to make money blogging!
Blog Ads
I am putting this lower down on our list of ways of blog monetization strategies because even though it’s a simple and easy way to make money, you need a lot of traffic for it to be worth it.
I got accepted into the ad network Ezoic, and since my traffic was so low at the time, I made $20 every 6 months or so. was literally making pennies a day. And I hated the way the ads looked on my blog.
So, I got rid of ads for a long time. I may bring them back in the future if I can get into better ad networks like Mediavine, which are way better at placing ads, and when I have enough traffic to make it worth it!
Brand Deals & Partnerships
I saved this way to monetize your blog for last because it isn’t something even I have gotten into doing yet. It’s not a focus or really something I want to do, but it can be a fantastic way to make money.
Brands love to partner with content creators to get their products out there.
In order to start getting PR, you need to have a decent following to make it worth the brand’s time to send you things. You can set up a media kit for yourself and email brands you’d love to work with to try and get a partnership with them.
Brand deals can pay a lot of money, but they usually aren’t very consistent (unless you have an ongoing partnership), so it’s best to branch out into more passive income and reliable sources like affiliate marketing.
Want more help?
If you’re ready to dive deeper into these strategies and start monetizing your blog quicker, check out my ebook: Monetize From Day One: How to Make Money With a Small Audience!
Inside, I break down the 4 simple monetization strategies I use to generate consistent income every month, without a huge following or flashy numbers. These are the exact methods I used to turn a small audience into a real income stream!
Passive Income Blogging: The Key to Successful Strategies
One of the most attractive aspects of monetizing your blog is the potential to create passive income with your blog. But what does passive income really mean in the blogging world?
Passive income refers to earning money with minimal active involvement once your blog is set up and monetized.
This can include earnings from affiliate marketing, display ads, or digital products that continue to sell while you’re sleeping.
To make passive income blogging a reality, here’s what you need to:
Focus on Evergreen Content
Write blog posts that remain relevant over time and continue to attract traffic. For example, how-to guides, case studies, or product reviews.
You also want to make sure you are conducting SEO keyword research to find the correct topics. If you’re writing posts that no one wants to read, and you’re not getting decent traffic to your blog, you’re going to have a harder time making money blogging.
Traffic isn’t everything, like you don’t need hundreds of thousands of pageviews to start monetizing your blog, but the more traffic you have, the better chances to sell things!
💡Quick Tip
Not sure why no one is reading your blog or how to write your first post? Check out this post here: What Should Your First Blog Post Be About?
Focus on One Income Source at a Time
When you are just getting started, it’s tempting to want to do everything at once. The start is so exciting, but so hard because you just want to get to the point where you see success.
But unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. You have to have focus if you want to monetize your blog.
I didn’t do this at all in the beginning. I had no strategy (At least not one I stuck with for long!), and I would frequently switch things up, change plans, and jump all over the place.
That led to slow growth and heavy burnout, which turned into me deleting over 64 blog posts and updating the remaining 40. I talked about it in this video below:
Create a Blogging Strategy and Stick to it
The best advice I can give you is to come up with a blogging strategy and stick to it. Be consistent if you want to see growth.
If you post once a month, you aren’t going to see growth.
If you don’t have a way to drive traffic to your blog, you won’t see growth.
If you’re posting blog posts no one wants to read, or posts with no affiliate links, you won’t see income.
The strategies laid out in the “Zero to SuperHero” Affiliate marketing bundle will really help you nail the affiliate marketing side of things, which is why I recommend it.
In this bundle, you’ll get:
- “The Making Your First Affiliate Sale” Ebook
- The Affiliate Programs Masterlist (AKA 900+ Affiliate programs you can join!)
- Quick video tutorials of strategies to help you make money
- Access to a private Facebook group to get help, ask questions, and connect with other bloggers!
Definitely worth checking out!
Blog Monetization for Beginners: What You Need to Know
If you’re just starting your blog and thinking, “I want to make money blogging but don’t know where to begin,” don’t worry!
Here’s a simple action plan to get started:
Step 1: Set Up Your Blog Properly
The first step to making money blogging is setting up a profitable blog with the right hosting and platform. You want a strong foundation to start from.
Bluehost Web Hosting is what I recommend you go with to set up your blog! You can start a blog for as little as $2.95 a month for 12 months!
Step 2: Focus on Content and SEO
Great content and SEO are the foundation of your blog’s ability to generate revenue. Focus on creating helpful, search-optimized content that speaks directly to your audience’s needs.
You can use platforms like Pinterest to help you drive traffic to your blog. Check out this post to get started with driving traffic to your blog!
Step 3: Monetize Strategically
Start small and gradually implement monetization methods.
You don’t have to jump straight into client work or selling products immediately. Start with affiliate marketing and focus on building traffic before adding other income streams or launching digital products.
It really doesn’t matter where you start trying to monetize your blog, as long as you pick one you think you can do and stick with it until you have good cash flow from it, and then you can move on to other methods for making money!
Step 4: Track Your Progress
Use tools like Google Analytics to track your traffic, revenue, and audience engagement. Regularly evaluate what’s working and adjust your strategy as needed.
I also use Google Sheets to track the money I make each month.
Once you start making enough money, you need to keep track of what you earn in order to pay taxes at the end of the year. An annoying but necessary part os money money online!
Conclusion: Monetizing Your Blog for Long-Term Success
Monetizing your blog is entirely possible with the right strategies, and it can eventually become a passive income blogging machine.
Whether you’re just starting or looking to refine your blog’s monetization efforts, the key is to stay consistent, optimize your content for SEO, and gradually diversify your income streams.
By implementing blog monetization strategies like affiliate marketing, digital products, and display ads, you’ll be on your way to building a profitable blog that supports your long-term goals!
Remember, success doesn’t happen overnight—but with patience and persistence, your blog can become a reliable source of passive income.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure to share it and check out other posts on my blog below for more help!
Great article and a really useful read. I liked the way you presented the information in a simple and organized manner without making the topic unnecessarily complicated. There are some valuable points here that readers can easily apply or use for further research. Thanks for taking the time to put this information together.
Thanks for reading!