5 Ways to Make Money with Your Blog

Last Updated on 4 months by Christopher Jan Benitez

As bloggers, it’s only natural to want to know how to make money with your blog.

Assuming you have a knack for writing, it justifies your desire to monetize your skill.

If you’re a freelance writer for hire like myself, you can use your blog to attract the right clients and build on your brand.

This is precisely what I’ve done over the past years – I’ve tirelessly created content I feel would be useful for small businesses looking to shore up their web content needs. As a non-designer, I’ve also tried my hand at designing my website to look the way it does right now. I gained new skills to build a site that potential clients will love.

However, writing for clients every day can get tiring. You get overwhelmed by the volume of work they throw at you sometimes. There are also leads trying to hook you up as their writer for their website.

Now, I don’t want to sound ungrateful because this is a great problem to have. Some writers would kill to be in this position.

But ask yourself this question: why do you write for clients? If you take away the money you’ll get after you complete the work, would you still work for them?

CJB quote about earning from blog

This reason explains why you need to diversify your sources of income. You can’t rely on your freelancing clients because there’s only so much you can handle and earn from them. Once you get burned out from writing, your income will drop, too. You have no choice but to keep writing to support yourself and your family.

However, there is a way to get you out of this rut. Instead of working harder, you need to work smarter. You can do this by leveraging on your blog to help you increase your income. In fact, you can make a living with your blog without writing a single word!

In this post, you will learn:

  • why building a blog is more crucial than ever especially if you’re a natural writer
  • the different ways you can make money with your blog without writing posts
  • the tools you can use to drive more profit to your blog

How to make money with your blog

How to Make Money with Your Blog

Before we begin, you need to understand first how to make money with a blog for beginners.

Some of your writers built a career out of getting clients from Upwork and other online job marketplaces. This a viable option for most since the demand for writers like yourself is there. All you need to do is submit your rate and cover letter to impress the prospective client.

But here’s my criticism to this approach: you may have to lower your asking price if you want to bag the job. The competition is fierce in sites like Upwork so you might have to bend backwards just to get the job you want.

Not to mention, the platform takes part of your earnings from the clients. It makes sense for them to get a cut since they provided the avenue for you to earn money. But if you want to pocket 100% of your earnings, then you need to find another way to find clients looking for writers.

This is why I set up my blog – to attract the clients I want and charge for the price I feel I deserve. By setting up the landing pages and strategically writing the posts, I got to bag clients that know my worth!

Below are other benefits of setting up a blog as a freelance writer:

  • Showcase your writing – Since you’re a writer, it only makes sense to write blog posts. Doing so allows you to show the writing you’re capable of. Also, if prospective clients are looking for sample works, you can point them to your blog and let your words do the talking.
  • Get found on Google and Bing much easier – This is for the most important benefit that blogging brought to my freelance writing career. Even if I wasn’t actively looking for jobs, people who are looking for a writer can search for my articles on Google. It’s difficult to rank your pages on search engines, mind – you need to learn how to do keyword research first to find search phrases you can rank for easily. Once your site builds more authority, you can expect your blog posts to rank for their respective keywords. If your clients see them on search results, you’re already at arm’s reach on bagging them as clients. What’s more important is you didn’t make the effort of attracting them! They came looking to hire you.
  • Control your brand –  It’s best to control the narrative of your career. You can’t let others dictate what kind of writer you are. With a blog, you have a platform to speak what’s on your mind and make your audience recognize you are the writing they’re looking for. According to Jason Acidre of Avaris in this post, “Think of a blog page as your “virtual soap box.” It gives you a venue to share your thoughts, blog post ideas, and opinions with others who have similar interests.”
CJB quote about clients and google search

If you don’t have a blog yet, you’re already thinking of how to start a blog for free and make money. Personally, go for the paid route from the start so you have full control of your blog and its appearance. You will need to buy a domain and hosting to set up your blog. I suggest that you buy a domain from Namecheap (affiliate link) and host your site on SiteGround (affiliate link). Below are links to resources that will help you with both:

How do bloggers make money from blogging?

Blogging with Coffee - How to Make Money with Your Blog

As mentioned, I want to diversify my income streams and not depend on my clients as a freelance writer.

I love writing and blogging. Since I took my freelance writing career seriously in 2014, I can’t think of doing anything else. However, there comes a time when you’re about to outgrow something and you need to take a different direction.

While there’s still a lot in my tank with concern to writing, I feel the need to expand my horizon and put my other skills to better use. And how much better could it get with blogging? The core aspect of blogging is still writing, so I get to play with my strengths. But there are other variables that play a critical role in blogging such as content promotions, social media, email marketing, and others. Basically, a blog is a business!

The goal here is to find ways on how to make money blogging without writing the post. Throughout the years of working with my blog, below are blog ideas that make money and take your blog to new, profitable heights:

1. Sell sponsored posts

If you have built authority with your blog, people will contact, and ask you to publish a sponsored post.

Sponsored posts are like a paid advertisement for a brand in a form of a blog post. What brands do is include a link to their site naturally within the post. However, it depends on the sponsored post you’re willing to publish. They are brands who want to do a full review of their product or service on your blog.

Here’s an example of an email I received this past week from someone who wants me to publish a post for them for a fee:

sponsored post example

The beauty of sponsored posts is you get paid to publish unique content from brands. You may need to edit the post accordingly to meet your blog’s voice. But it’s a win-win for your blog!

I receive these emails occasionally, but not all materialize into actual posts. Sponsored posts are a crap shoot – you can get lucky and publish high-quality content for a fee. But most of the time, people back away once they find out about your asking rate and other variables.

If you have a blog for years and are not receiving sponsored post requests, your blog’s authority isn’t good enough. Below are ways you can improve your blog’s reputation and help you make money online through sponsored posts:

  • Create SEO-friendly content – Google loves fresh content. But what the search engine loves even more is content that provides value to its readers and follows search guidelines to a tee. I have written a post on how to write blog posts that get clients, and I apply the same principles when writing for my personal blog. It’s all about providing readers with the best information about the topic with some added bells and whistles that Google loves. If you can create a steady stream of blog content, expect your authority to increase. To help make the process much easier, use a tool like Semrush, Its SEO Content Template and Writing Assistant allows you to create optimized content that ranks on Google.
  • Build backlinks – Link building is one of the most difficult things that even SEO specialists have to deal with. You need to be creative and determined to get links from high-quality sites for your blog to gain traction with search engines and your audience.
  • Foster relationships with other bloggers – Your blog is technically an outreach tool to help connect people with the right information. Leverage your blog to help you engage with the right audience. Promoting your blog post on social media is a great way to put your foot in their doors regarding building relationships. However, you need to focus on forming bonds with influencers in your industry. Conducting blogger outreach using a platform like Ninja Outreach will help you reach out to them more effectively. With the help of influencers, you can grow your traffic and turn the followers of influencers into your own.

Here’s a screenshot of my site’s “authority” using SEMrush (affiliate link) for posterity’s sake:

christopher jan benitez authority

What you need to focus on here is the Organic Search feature. Brands look into how much traffic a blog garners from organic search. They determine this by the number of keywords you blog is ranking for on search engines. The more keywords you attract, the more appealing your blog is for brands. Also, if you look at graph on the lower right of the image, there should be an upward trend to your blog’s number of keywords. Brands love blog that are constantly growing in search traffic.

You can use the information here to dictate the price of sponsored posts on your blog. I won’t tell you how much you should charge, but you shouldn’t shortchange yourself with your blog. Compare your blog with others within your industry using SEMrush (you can sign up for a free account but you have limited searches per day). Search for their sponsored post page on their blog and see how much they charge. Use those to benchmark your blog and come up with a reasonable rate.

2. Display ads

One of the most common ways on how to make money with your blog is to serve readers with contextual ads. The ads change depending on the content you have on your blog to improve your click-through rate. You can earn money from ads if your visitors click on them.

ads on blog examples

Similar to sponsored posts, the success of display ads depends on your blog’s ability to draw traffic. The more visitors you have, the more chances people will click on your ads. It’s also important to consider where you place the ads on your blog. Observing the best practices will help you increase your ROI and earn more.

To be honest, I tried displaying contextual ads using Media.net, but it didn’t yield the results I wanted. Also, they disrupted the flow of the content according to readers so I had to put a stop on it. Maybe I needed more traffic to justify placing ads there. Or it’s probably because of my niche that’s service irrelevant ads on my blog.

Despite my unsuccessful stint with ads, it shouldn’t discourage you from trying it out. Every experience is different. Who knows, your blog might earn more than mine!

There are also blogs that lease out blocks on their site pages to brands. If a brand agrees with the terms, the blogger will feature the banner ad and receive a monthly fee for keeping the ad there until the contract expires.

Here’s a post by Matthew Woodward sharing his tips on how to make money with your blog using display advertisement.

3. Create an online store

The surging popularity of e-commerce prompted people to make money online by selling physical products. The logistics of tracking inventory and shipping them to buyers can be problematic. However, if you strike it rich with your product, making money from an online store is a profitable and scalable business if you have the right system in place.

Bloggers like yourself may not be too keen on building an online shop to diversify their income. However, if your concern stems from not having physical products to sell, then shouldn’t worry at all. You can sell digital products you created through your online store.

Below are examples of products you can create and sell as writers or bloggers:

  • E-books – If you can write blog posts, then you can whip up an e-book in your sleep! E-books are much longer and contain more information than blog posts, but it shouldn’t stop you from creating one (if not more!). You can sell e-books on your blog at the price you deserve. An example of a blogger who’s made a living selling e-books from his blog is Ryan Biddulph. As a side note, he’s also written posts on my blog. Click here to check them out! However, since the goal is for you to not write at all, you can hire a ghostwriter to get the job done for you.
  • Courses – If you want to provide more in-depth information about a pain point of your audience, it’s best to create a course about it. The course can come in the form of a drip campaign via email. If they subscribe, you can send them emails regularly that teach them about the subject. However, creating video content is the best way to communicate your ideas through a course. The videos show the exact process of doing something instead of just saying them. I have a course on guest posting tutorial that teaches people how to establish their brand and generate more income through guest blogging. I haven’t monetize the course yet but it’s an example of the course you can create on your blog.
  • Consultation – If you’re an expert about a subject, then don’t just hand out your exclusive knowledge for free.  Create a consultation program where they can schedule a call with you and provide them with everything they need to know. For your consultation program to work, you need to have an established brand online so you can attract more people to take your offer. If you’re a relative unknown, start small by giving consultations at a lower price until you build enough equity.

If you have physical products to sell on your blog, then you need to learn the proper management and distribution of your products to customers. There’s a Shopify guide that covers the subject of fulfillment thoroughly. There are also third-party fulfillment providers if you want turnkey solutions to everything related to packaging and delivering the orders.

4. Join affiliate programs

Among the different ways on how to make money with blogging, affiliate marketing has the most potential to diversify your income.

You need to search for affiliate programs to join. I’ll leave it to Anil Agarwal to share with you the top affiliate marketing programs to join. Once you’re signed up, you can choose which products to promote from the marketplace. Ideally, you must promote products related to your niche to optimize your ROI. Find out what problems your audience has and find the products from the affiliate programs that best answer their needs.

Commission Junciton
Commission Junction is one of the biggest and most popular affiliate marketing platforms online.

Upon choosing a product to promote on your blog, you will receive the link that directs people to the product’s landing page. If your visitors click on the link and successfully buys the products, you will get a cut from the total sales.

How much money can you make blogging through affiliate marketing? It depends on several factors such as the price of the product you’re promoting, the commission rate, minimum payment threshold, and others.

I have been trying my hand at affiliate marketing for years although not seriously. However, I have been earning a steady amount of commissions from MissingLettr!

missinglettr payout

I assume I got the commission from the sales I made from the review post I wrote about the tool. The review wasn’t a glowing one, but it encouraged readers to subscribe to the tool. Thankfully, they haven’t cancelled yet!

You may scoff at the amount I’m getting. I know I am! But the point stand – it’s possible to make money from affiliate marketing! To help you create the types of blogs that make money with affiliate marketing, read this post by Steve Scott.

5. Create memberships

An online membership may be a pipedream for bloggers who are barely getting by the day. Unlike creating digital products to sell, online memberships take time and effort to maintain and keep an engaged audience. You need to conduct regular calls with the members, take Q&As 24/7, and continue creating exclusive content to members to justify keeping their monthly subscription.

A great example of an online membership is Freelance Lift by Liam Veitch.

Freelance Lift

He has created a portal where freelancers looking to improve on their craft converge to learn how they can make the most of their careers. Liam does this by creating modules that help freelancers set the foundations for a successful career and a Slack support group to further discussion about freelancing.

As mentioned online memberships are a pain to maintain. You need to commit yourself in making this work because members gave you their hard-earned money to help them. However, if things go your way, you can generate more income you can ever imagine.

To help you prepare for building a paid membership and turn your site into one of the top money making blogs, read this post by Ali Luke at CopyBlogger.

Did you learn how to make money with your blog?

The five tips should help how to make money from blogging for beginners. At first, you will be out of your comfort zone because it won’t require to you write. However, once you got in the groove, everything will operate like clockwork. In fact, you as a writer have a distinct advantage in making money from blogging because you know how to create killer content. Even if you don’t write, you can get someone to write for you and the results will be just as great.

What’s important is consistency. You need to implement the tips and advice on the different ways regularly to reap the fruits of your labor faster. Again, the journey will be difficult because you won’t be making money right now. But focus your attention on the money you will make from your blog to keep you from veering away to your destination.

Thanks for reading my post about how to make money with your blog. Comment below if you have questions or opinion about the post!