Blogging is a lot of work. I’m never surprised when I hear new bloggers say “I never knew how much work it was going to be!” While it is a ton of work to build a blog from nothing into something that generates revenue and maybe brings in enough for you to quit a job, it’s definitely possible if you are committed and willing to sacrifice to get there.
Lots of people start a blog mainly because the idea of making money blogging is appealing. Keep in mind that to make money blogging, you need traffic. Whether that’s traffic from search engines, social media, email, or people who have added your site to their favorites, it has to come from somewhere. While discussing monetization strategies it’s important to realize there is a ton of work that needs to be done before you make your first dollar and 99.99% of bloggers will quit before they make a dime.
With that being said, let’s discuss five different ways to make money blogging!
1) Banner Ads
Banner ads are definitely the easiest way to make money blogging, but likely won’t generate a ton of revenue for you, especially at the beginning. The easiest way to implement banner ads is through Google AdSense. It can literally take only a few minutes to get banners up on your blog, and I would recommend adding them from the get-go so that people are used to them from the start. There are also certain keywords that get higher pay per click. I’ve heard of some clicks going for as much as $15-$20 and some bloggers specifically write about certain topics because the AdSense clicks will pay more.
Another approach you can take with banner ads is to privately negotiate a deal with a company to have their banner ad placed. While I do not currently have any of these deals, I have had them in the past and I personally think they have a higher return than AdSense, but that’s a topic for another blog post.
2) Affiliate Links
When done right, affiliate marketing can be a lucrative revenue stream. For those who don’t know, affiliate marketing is including links to particular products or services where payment is received if the user who clicks the link ends up purchasing a product or service.
Thankfully there are thousands of companies that have affiliate programs. While there are a number of companies that have affiliate programs you can directly sign up for with no intermediary, I prefer to use affiliate networks like Flex Offers and Commission Junction instead. You can log into one website and browse hundreds of companies at one time versus going to each company individually. Additionally you can easily see how much revenue you made in total, as well as how much you made from each company.
While I have just started to focus on revenue from affiliate links, I have done a couple of posts recently where my primary purpose of the post is to lead to a transaction. My best “affiliate-focused” post so far is my Discover post, 10 Reasons to Get a Discover it Credit Card. I also have written about Prosper personal loans. My post about How To Clean Your Gutters Without A Ladder has also performed well.
I would recommend installing a plugin for your blog that will clean up your affiliate links, since they usually look pretty messing since they are unique to your account. I use Pretty Link.
3) Product and Service Reviews and Promotion
Product and Service reviews are becoming an increasingly popular source of revenue for blogs. As marketing and advertising evolves and internet advertising grows, advertisers look for more creative ways to get the word out.
I personally started to charge for reviews, mainly because they take time and the company benefits from their product or service being featured. When personally negotiating reviews, I never guarantee a positive post. That hasn’t deterred companies from paying, though, because if you aren’t confident in your product or service something’s wrong. An example of a paid review I’ve done on my site is my post reviewing Gift Card Rescue.
It’s important to distinguish paid reviews from other reviews. I categorize paid reviews as posts that do not have affiliate links. You could certainly review a company for “free” (i.e. you do not get paid anything from the company to write it) and include an affiliate link that could potentially generate you revenue. Of course, you could always review something with no intention of receiving monetary compensation.
4) SEO Services
The concept of SEO services is fairly simple. If a company wants their website to rank high in Google searches, they need other sites to link to their site. So let’s say you have a blog. If your page rank (you can check it here) is 3 or higher, you will start getting bombarded with emails from people wanting to contribute a “high quality” guest post to you – at no cost! In reality these people are link brokers who are getting paid to get company’s links placed on websites. Don’t let them post these links for free! It’s worth a lot of money to companies.
Some bloggers won’t touch SEO services as a way of monetizing their blog. Google doesn’t like it because it manipulates their organic search rankings, and Google updates in the past have hit blogs that have had paid text links on their site. As one blogger told me when I first started, it’s easy money but has the potential to hurt your blog long-term. Each blogger has to decide for themselves if the potential revenue is worth the risk of Google dropping their page rank in an algorithm update.
5) Selling your own product or service
To make money selling a product or service through your blog you first need to create a product or have skills to provide a service. Simply referring people would fall under affiliate marketing. Many bloggers publish e-books that cover topics relevant to their niche.
Probably the best example of this that I see is Spreadsheet and Database Consultants. There are some great Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access websites out there, and many were started by people who are either full- or part-time consultants. People typically get to their website by searching for an answer to a particular question. Having a “hire me” tab or a “services” tab sends leads their way. Another thing I’ve seen is an Excel VBA developer make add-ins that other developers might find useful.
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There are additional ways to make money blogging that I didn’t cover, but I hope you found this list useful. The bottom line is there are ways to make money blogging, even if it does take some work to get your site off the ground.
Check out DC’s new book Hustle Away Debt to learn everything you wanted to know about making money through side hustles!
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I just deleted the ads off of my sidebar. I figure they weren’t bringing me in enough money to be worth it. I want to try more affiliate marketing but what I really want to do is sell my own products. I made a deal with myself that if I can continually earn 3k a month freelancing then I will make and sell a course showing others how to do it. It motivates me to try harder!
SingleMomIncome I have had ads like that as well. I would rather forgo small amounts of income and have a clean-looking web page. Some of the payouts for the pay-per-click ads are pitiful.
Holly at ClubThrifty SingleMomIncome I like to keep the adsense ads because I’ve talked to a couple bloggers who have really been able to capitilize on them. It really depends what keywords are in your posts. If you use keywords that are “expensive” for advertisers, you could receive quite a bit per click. I may ditch them some day for something different but I keep them up for now.
Good stuff DC. I’ve had adsense for a while now and I’m just starting to see some results (still very small, but it’s something). I’ve also tried experimenting with some affiliate links recently and I actually just saw my first couple of orders through Amazon over the weekend. I’ve got a long way to go, but I think experimenting with some different things and expecting that it will take time is the road to success.
Matt @ Mom and Dad Money Good for you! Amazon shut down their affiliate program in Minnesota because of our state laws : / I have just started to experiment with affiliate marketing as well, and hope to do more of it over time. I want to really understand products/services before integrating them into my posts, but it hopefully will become more of my revenue over the next year.
Love this, DC. I agree that people don’t get how much work blogging is too. We just started Adsense not too long ago, and hopefully it will generate some results for us!
Laurie TheFrugalFarmer It took me over a year to decide to start this site, and it’s mainly because I had been involved in blogging before that and know firsthand how hard it is to get a site off the ground. I’m not surprised a lot of sites drop out. Best of luck with adsense!
Good post DC! I think key in a lot of this is realizing that it does take time and generally doesn’t happen overnight, which I assume why so many give up quickly. There can definitely be money to be made if you put in the hard work and diversify your income streams.
FrugalRules Good point, John. It really does take a lot of hard work. It’s easy to enter blogging, it’s difficult to be successful at it. If you want it bad enough and are willing to sacrifice, there will always be money to be made.
Oh the time it takes! It is like a full time job to have a good blog. These are certainly good topics of income generation. I just started to charge for reviews as well, but most of the companies that want them are not ones that I even want to review.
DebtRoundUp It definitely is a full-time job to have a successful blog. Most people aren’t willing to put in that kind of effort, which is good news for the people who are willing to. I like the reviews because it’s usually a product or service I am not familiar with.
Great post! I really need to work on monetizing the blog…I have adsense only and a few Amazon links here and there but have made nothing. I should probably work on getting more traffic first. But
Andrew LivingRichCheaply Getting traffic is so key. Without traffic, there is nothing to monetize. I think Google traffic is extremely important as they are the most likely to be searching for reviews, how-to’s, and in general will click out of your website.
If only I could come up with that product that on one could live without…..
Eyesonthedollar Haha I think we all wish we could do that! The nice thing is that you don’t need to, though, you can sell other products/services and still make a great living.
Good post especially for rookies like us. I am not in a hurry to start making money off my blog because I am still learning the ropes of blogging and also like you said, traffic is a big factor.
BorrowedCents I have only been around a little over a year so there’s not too much difference between you and me ; ) I didn’t make a dime the first seven months, just focused on building the site, getting people to link back to me, gaining readers, etc. I still focus on all that, actually!
Great list! There are many different ways to make money blogging. I will be focusing on affiliate sales more very soon.
SenseofCents Affiliate sales seem to have far higher potential for large pay-offs if done right, so I don’t blame you for focusing on that in the future. I also hope to focus on it quite a bit more.
I have made money with 3/5. Guess I need to get on the ball with the other two!
ayoungpro Best of luck, Nick!
Good post. If only there was more time to work on all of those!
OutlierModel That’s the biggest problem – no time! You really have to make time to figure out the best approach as far as monetizing a blog. But first you need traffic, of course, which takes a lot of time and effort.
It is hard work. I have yet to figure out how to make money from affiliates. I’ve really struggled in this area and I’m hoping to learn a lot more at fincon. I’m also looking at ways to sell services or products as a way of making passive income. It’s a lot to try and figure out.
Beachbudget I agree. I haven’t had much success at all, but last week I finally sold a few credit cards from my Discover it post which was a big confidence boost. It took a lot of effort to get that post written in the right way, market the post the right way, and get a lot of support from fellow bloggers. Affiliate income is hard work, to say the least.
Thanks, David, for this list. I really appreciate those bloggers with more experience sharing their insights with everyone.
DonebyForty No problem! I owe it to other bloggers who shared the info to me in the first place. It’s always nice to hear it from other bloggers vs. hit-and-miss strategy and trying to put together random articles about the topic.
Great list David. At this point I enjoy building my traffic, but it is a lot of work. Down the road monetizing is an option.
Charles@gettingarichlife I would focus on traffic as long as you possibly can. I didn’t make a dime for over 7 months, but I was posting 5-6 times a week, every week. It was nice to finally start making some money – it helped prevent burnout!
Blogging is so so much work before you make a penny, I think a lot of people don’t understand that until they get into it themselves.
brokeandbeau And then they quit! Haha just kidding…but really, 99.99% of people quit before they make a dime. At least it seems that way.
Great ideas here, David. This is something that I need to really work on in the next few months. I’ve been waiting while my blog gets going, but I’ve realized that I should at least start looking into how to make money.
Ca$hFunny Thanks Jake! It depends what your goal is, too. My site is a content site where I plan on having many authors. If your plan is to be a CFP and leverage the site for that, I’d avoid trying to monetize it through the ways I suggested. That’s my opinion, at least.
Saving this for reference!
LisaVsTheLoans Awesome! So glad you found it useful!
I have heard lots of positive reviews on commission junction. Might have to check it out!!
moneystepper I like both commission junction and flexoffers (or linkoffers for financial-related affiliates). I had some problems with flexoffers and others have preferred commission junction. Was disappointed when cj had drastically lower payouts for identical programs that I compared, though. I’m sure it goes both ways.
Love this! The one thing that really excites me about blogging and the potential for earning some money is that the amount you can earn is directly proportionate to your creativity and hard work.
KyleJames1 So true! That’s one of the most frustrating things about a corporate job – your effort and output do not really equal your pay or bonus/raise. In blogging it really all comes down to what you can produce and how much time you put in.
Great stuff here DC! I’ve read many bloggers don’t prefer AdSense because you need so much traffic at your site to generate any meaningful income. I’ve also read they think it clutters up a blog and makes it look cheap. What’s your experience been like? It appears like it’s the natural place to start earning money but many bloggers seem not to like it. Is it just a personal preference thing?
Brian @ Luke1428 I put adsense in my design from day one so that readers would be used to them. I also have talked to some of the “old-timers” who have been around 5+ years and there sometimes are keywords that get a ton per click (think $10-$25 per click). It takes effort, of course, to implement a strategy like that and I have not targeted keywords specifically for adsense clicks. But anyway I think some people ditch it because they are trying to push people towards something else, like affiliate links in banners or just want a clean layout and will push certain products/services at one point or another. Definitely varies from blogger to blogger.
Nice tips. I really need to try and poke around to get some better money strategies in play with my site. Right now though, I want to focus on keeping consistent updates and building the readership. Some day though.
MicrosMissions I didn’t make a dime my first seven months and I posted 5-6 times a week, every week. Definitely spent countless hours commenting on blogs (and continue to!). I think most people focus on monetizing too early (you could argue I did) and should really just focus on building a solid site that gets Google traffic and has a regular readership.
$20 per click is insane! I never got more than around $2, but won’t turn my blog into an SEO bore just to make money with CPC.
RFIndependence Why not? Just kidding : P
This is so helpful! I didn’t get into blogging to make money, but now that I’ve been doing it for 9 months, it wouldn’t hurt :) And it would help me pay off debt quicker! I am still a novice when it comes to making money and understanding blogging from a financial standpoint, so I am saving this for reference!