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Never in my wildest dreams that I saw that I would one day be talking about how bloggers make money nor would reach the point where I would actually make my writing the source of my income or being employed full-time by my blog. Not this third world village girl at least.
It was just once a dream I learned how to have by following the adventures of my favorite travel blogger that I thought I wanted to be a travel blogger too. My first blog failed because I was under the impression that once you hit publish, the article given that amount of valuable information you pour in there, would promote itself and that sponsors would notice the articles, how great the stories were and would pay me to live my dream life and that’s just about it.
That was how my first ever self-hosted blog failed because I failed to find a way to grow it enough to make it earn money. My technical skills also could not save my life and I had zero patience to learn something new. I wish that time, I also started reading blogs about blogging.
Read also: 10 Things I’ve Learned After One Month of Blogging
I must admit that I was not prepared at the thought of learning something new again after getting my diploma. I was also never keen about making money nor money itself. Also, I thought learning stops there hence the personal growth niche of my other blog, This Village Girl, where I’d be basing the content of this article.
So how do bloggers really make money?
Affiliate Marketing
By promoting other company’s or people’s products, you can earn commission.
You don’t even have to have a blog to be able to start with affiliate marketing.
You can start by talking about products that you already love.
Your first option is joining different affiliate networks like Shareasale, second is by promoting products on shopping sites like Amazon or third, you can search if your favorite brands/person have affiliate programs by adding “affiliate program” at the end of the brand name when you google it.
This is in-house affiliate program where individual companies create and run their own affiliate program. Affiliate networks have several companies or brands in their platform that you can choose from.
Normally you’ll be required to tell them how you’ll be promoting their product, review your application and if they approved your application, they will give a code or a unique link that you can share on your social media accounts.
Every time someone purchases from this link, you will earn commission and voila! You just started having a passive income.
Read also: Why I Host my Blogs with Siteground
Advertising Networks
One of the ways bloggers earn money is from ad network wherein you put display ads on your blog.
First, you can earn by CPC or PPC which are cost per click or pay per click respectively. There’d be banners placed on your site and every time a visitor clicks, you will earn money from that.
Second is CPM or cost per mille or cost per 1000 impressions wherein you will be paid an amount usually called RPM for every 1000 visitors who see the ads on your blog.
Google Adsense and Media.net are popular for bloggers who are just starting out. As soon as you have the important pages up on your new site, the legal pages and even just one blog post, you can already apply.
And once you hit 25,000 sessions in the last 30 days, you can apply to Mediavine and once you hit 100,000 monthly pageviews, AdThrive.
Sponsored posts
Sponsored posts are posts that bloggers are being paid to publish articles on their sites. Payment could be in the form of goods, products, services or cash. These posts could be written by the owner of the blog or the brands, the businesses or companies that are sponsoring the post.
The amount is normally dependent to the number of readers, social media followers and subscribers the article is being exposed to. It also doesn’t matter whether the blog has really big following. You can negotiate the price depending to the amount of work the article will require such as photos, the materials, the time to put the article together and the social media posts.
You’ll need a media kit where you will highlight the number of your followers, subscribers, demographics and traffic, and a solid pitching strategy.
There are also influence networks like Blog Dash and Izea that you can join to find products and bid for campaigns you’d like to participate or work for.
When done properly, you can earn thousands of dollars each month from sponsored posts and the good news is that you don’t have to sit and wait for brands to discover and approach you. You can start pitching for the brands that you are already using.
Selling Ebooks
Selling ebooks is one of the fastest one way bloggers earn money. Whatever your expertise is, you can create ebooks, planners or any downloadable printable that you can sell on your site using platform like Sendowl. You can upload your PDF directly to Sendowl or have it password protected on your website and the password will be delivered by email service like Convertkit or Mailchimp. You just have to link your Paypal account so the payment will automatically go into it.
Creating Online Courses
Bloggers earn a lot through creating online courses and selling them on Teachable or Udemy. Online courses are so popular these days and anyone can learn new skills anywhere and everywhere. If you are good in calligraphy, coding, foreign languages, graphic designs, photography, sketching, social media or anything that you are naturally good and that you wholeheartedly love, you can create courses out of them.
With good marketing strategy, you will earn even on your sleep.
Services like Coaching
One of the things bloggers can sell on their website is services. Like blog audits, Pinterest Management, Social Media Management, Web Designing, Graphic Designs or even Life and Wellness Coaching, with all the skills bloggers have acquired throughout the time, they have mastered a lot of skills and these skills, you can definitely master too.
Flipping blogs
Blog flipping is like what the business world calls exit. A blogger purchases a domain, designs the site, grows the audience, the traffic, the social media followers or even have it approved by exclusive ad networks then sells it. Rests. Builds again. Sells it again like a real estate developer when it comes to houses and properties.
When it comes to making money online, your imagination is your only limit. Explore what feels right for you, what you truly love and enjoy doing, learn what you can about it then find the people who’d pay for what you have to offer.
It might take time but once you figure it out, you’ll be amazed by what a blog can do for you.
If you need help getting started, a little nudge or to speed up the setting up process, you can check the services I offer here.
Read Next:
How to Start a WordPress Blog from Scratch
How Much Does it Cost to Have a Self-Hosted Blog?
