How to Make Money Blogging – Ultimate Guide for Beginners

The most powerful way to make money online is through blogging. In this post I’ll tell you how to make money blogging. There are many bloggers who make about $100,000/month, so don’t you think that blogging is a great source of income.

Blogging is the best and most trusted way of earning online. But it requires patience, hard work and a lot of efficient thinking.

You just need to have knowledge about a particular niche, just get decent amount of targeted traffic on your blog and you are in the game of earning great bucks.

No matter if you’re a old guy or just a teenager, there are many ways to make money online from your blog. In this article I’ll outline real legit ways to make money from blogging.

Monetization means “Earning money from your blog exploring all possible opportunities including selling own products and services”. I’ll tell you ways to monetize your blog.

Before starting I’ll like to tell you a little story about myself which may amaze you. I posted my first ever blog post on this blog on 1st Jan 2017 (i.e How to Start a Blog), you know what exactly on 2nd Jan 2017 I earned $65 through my 1st blog post. Isn’t it amazing on the very second day of my first blog post I earned $65. And again on 5th March 2017 (on day 64th of my blogging) I again made $65 more. So on total I made $65+$65 = $130.

Don’t believe me? Then these Income Proofs –

Bluehost Income Proof
I earned $65 on 2nd Jan 2017 (2nd day of Blogging)
Bluehost earning Proof
$130 on 5th March 2017

The above screenshots are of Bluehost Affiliate Program or you can say I made this much by Affiliate marketing which I’ll explain in the post so keep reading.

But how? How I earned $130 with a new blog? To answer your questions go through this post and explore the real methods to make money online.

How to Make Money Blogging

Isn’t it interesting, you never know what going to happen next. Ready to turn your passion into profit, so without wasting any time let’s start making some money.


Ways to Make Money Blogging

  1. Start a blog
  2. Affiliate Marketing
  3. Selling Products
  4. Offering Services
  5. Advertising

Start a Blog

Make Money from your Blog
Make Money from your Blog

First off all you need to start a blog.

If you have a blog that’s good, but if you haven’t then don’t waste any time and start a blog today by clicking the button below.

For starting a blog you need a hosting for your blog. I recommend to go with Bluehost (officially recommended by WordPress) collectively hosting over 2 million+ domains.

I have secured a huge 47% discount on the web hosting plus you will get a free domain (usually costs about 10$-15$ per year).

Then start a blog using my step-by-step guide.

Then start creating useful content that serves your readers. Build your audience and start making money using various monetization techniques I’ve explained in this post.

Now Let’s look at the monetization techniques to monetize your blog.

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Affiliate Marketing

What is Affiliate Marketing?
What is Affiliate Marketing?

This is guaranteed one of the most reliable methods of earning passive income. It’s been one of my favorites for a while because it has an incredible amount of flexibility and so many options available.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the process of promoting other people’s (or company’s) products and get a commission for each sale you make. Means you find a product, promote it to others, then whenever you got a sale you make some commission.

Affiliate marketing is a great thing that you can do to make money online. It is like being an online salesperson. Your job is to convince your audience that a particular product is beneficial for them and they should buy them from you.

The moment they make a purchase you’ll get rewarded with a good amount of commission decided by the company.

How Affiliate Marketing works?

  1. You find a product.
  2. You promote it on various platforms like your website, Facebook groups, emails etc.
  3. Someone purchases the product from you.
  4. Bingo! You get a commission out of it.

How Affiliate Marketing Works

There are tons of companies who gives you products to sell, it can be digital products (e-books, video course etc.) or regular products like television, phones etc.

Why Affiliate Marketing is the best?

Because you don’t have to deal with the things like:

  • Shipping the product
  • Processing credit cards
  • Handling refunds
  • Customer service

You just send visitors to the merchant website and whenever they buy through your link. You will get a commission.

Success depends on how much time you invest in sending targeted traffic to the affiliate product.

Depending on what kind of affiliate marketing website you run will determine what kind of affiliates companies you end up using.

For example, if you sell Health Supplements, then your target market for Affiliates are those related to the Health Industry. On the other hand, you could reverse-engineer your decision by choosing your affiliate company first and then creating a website to promote.

To promote affiliate products, you either need to individually register to the website of the original product owner or you can also promote products by registering to an affiliate network.

What are Affiliate Networks?

Affiliate Networks are works as a mediator which provides link between a website publisher (or affiliates) and merchant affiliate programs which allows the publishers to easily find affiliate products to promote which are suitable for their website.

So, you can find lots of products to promote by joining an Affiliate Network.

There are many networks to join and all networks are free to join and you don’t need to pay them for promoting their product.

Join most popular Affiliate Networks –

  • ShareASale:How to Make Money Blogging - Ultimate Guide for Beginners 1ShareASale is the best Affiliate network and is one of the best places to start your affiliate career and finding the quality products to promote. You can find many popular products like Genesis Theme for WordPress (One of my favorite). So, join this network as an affiliate to make money online.
  • Amazon Associates:Popular affiliate marketing program by Amazon that let you earn a commission when customer purchases product from your affiliate link.

Learn Affiliate Marketing

AFFILORAMA:

If you want to learn more about how affiliate marketing works and how you can create a successful affiliate site then I recommend you check out Affilorama.

Affilorama was the first website that helped me learn about affiliate marketing in the first place. Back when I was just a newbie I didn’t really know how to create and monetize my websites so Affilorama was definitely a great resource that helped me create an affiliate website that actually made money.

If you want to take a look, then by all means check them out.

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Selling Products

Selling Products
Make Money by Selling Products

You can earn money by creating and selling your own products. Selling your own products like E-books, E-courses, Apps, plugins or themes can be a way to make money online.

Selling other products and getting a commission out of it is called Affiliate Marketing which I have already discussed. But if you are creative enough, selling your own product (that too online) can be a great source of income. As from starting to finish, you are in full control of your products, you set your own pricing.

Many people are making money online just by selling their products, whether it be their E-book, or their online courses it is a great way to make money online.

You might be thinking what you can sell online? Below are some products I mentioned that sells at good rate and people make money online out of it.

  • Digital Products – Products like E-books, Webinars/E-courses/Online Workshops, Audio or video clips, Digital images, Apps, plugins or themes etc.
  • Physical Products – Products like Books, Handmade goods or your self designed clothes etc.

But where to sell? Where can I showcase my product, how will I get payments?

Create an Online Store

Since the days of old, the old method of setting up a shopfront so that you can sell a certain product has been the most common way people go about making money.

Technology has obviously allowed us to do the same online now. There are many ways to create an online store now.

If you have a shop, or if your website is just about selling products then it’s better to create an online store.

WooCommerce Store

If you have already started a blog on WordPress then you can convert your blog in an online store.

To get WooCommerce up and running you need to also have WordPress installed on your chosen domain name.

Setting up WooCommerce requires a bit of tinkering that any beginner can learn pretty intuitively.

It does of course require that extra bit of time to “get the look” of a popular store but with a little bit of time and effort, your website can look a million bucks.

Shopify Store

I have written a guide about how to start an online store or an eCommerce website. Make sure to read this if you want to build an online store from scratch.

The Shopify store is basically a Pre-built store. Unlike WooCommerce, everything from the design to payment processes are made intuitively available so that you can simply upload your products and set the prices.

It is a ready-to-go, works-out-of-the-box, 1-click installation type of store. Very little work needs to be done to get your store up and running and I’m 100% certain that you will approve of all the million designs they have.

I recommend you to start a store on Shopify. Get started by clicking the below button and follow the step-by-step guide on the video.

You will find a lot of Fortune companies using Shopify as well as quite a few Trending Start-Up companies and Mom-and-Pop Small businesses too. It’s hard to say no to this one.

You can also try other 3rd party websites to sell your products.

I’m categorizing the websites where you can start selling your own products. Explore the websites and check the selling section of each websites where to can register and start selling your own products.

CategoryDescription
Audios & VideosAre you good at creating music or videos? Try Audio Jungle.
Apps, Plugins or ThemesGood at coding? If you can create Apps, plugins or themes by yourself, sell it on places like Creative Market.
DomainsYou can collect domains and sell them at a good profit. Try site like Sedo.
E-Courses, Webinars or Online WorkshopsTeach others through your E-Courses, Webinars or Online Workshops. Easily create on Teachable.
E-BooksAre you creative enough to write an good Ebook? Easily sell it on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.
Images & PhotosAre you a photographer? Do you know you can make money by selling those. Try Shutterstock.
Blogs & WebsitesThere are bloggers who sell their blog at 5 figures. You too can sell you website on sites like Flippa.
Handmade ProductsAre you creative enough to create amazing handmade products. Sell them on Handmade at Amazon.
Other Physical ProductsThe best marketplace to sell your physical products is on Amazon.

So, if your product falls into the category, go join and explore the website and start making money online by selling your product.

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Offering Services

You must have noticed there’s a services section in many blogs. Offering services like free blog setup service or consultation to your audience and attract many clients and can become a good source of income.

If freelancing is your thing, then the next logical step increasing your income would be to set up your own business website advertising your services.

Give yourself a company name and boom, you have added another avenue for your customers to find you all the while legitimizing your business with a professional face. It is very simple to set up a website that sells service packages.

Freelancing
Make Money by Offering Services & Freelancing

What is Freelancing & Who is a Freelancer?

Freelancer is a self-employed person who does work on contract basis until work is finished and is not necessarily committed to a particular employer on long term basis.

Freelancing is a great way to add some extra money in your pockets. Many people like to work from home. But, is this possible to work from home and make money online? Yes, the answer is Freelancing. This is great buzz and many people are making a living just by freelancing full time.

You can set your own working hours and also you are free to work at any time when you think you can meet the deadlines according to your comfort level. Well, you can work as a part timer too (like summer or winter break etc.) to make some extra cash or full time, it totally depends on you. Isn’t it a great way to make money online.

Freelancing offers a great flexibility to manage your own work hours. To get started on a freelancing website may be a little difficult if you haven’t got yourself enough experience.

Types of jobs that freelancers can have:

  • Writing articles
  • Website design and development
  • Technical support
  • Administrative jobs
  • Project Manager
  • Programming
  • Accounting
  • Consulting
  • And many more!

Freelancers can work from home or office and there are so many jobs available to work on like from writing, consulting, software building etc. All you need is good skills towards the work you’ll do as a freelancer.

So, how about starting your own freelancing career? Almost all type of online works (sometimes offline too) can be done by freelancers.

And Yes! here comes the best part, set up your own blog to show off your skills advertising the services you offer. Build trust and authority and you can enjoy a full time work and income from your blog.

Take example of Colin Newcomer who is a freelance writer. It is a perfect example of a blog setup with services section.

Services section example
Services section example

There are many 3rd party websites as well that helps you to connect with employers and do work for them. Set up a profile in these websites to and mention them in your blog.

So, what are you waiting for? Go join them and make some money online by freelancing.

Some popular Freelancing Websites:

  • Fiverr: Popular freelance services marketplace network starting at at affordable costs.
  • Freelancer: A freelancing network that allows employers to post various jobs that freelancers can then bid to complete.
  • Truelancer: Leading Freelance network where you can Find Freelance Jobs Online and hire Freelancers.
  • SEOClerks: This is the largest SEO (Search Engine Optimization) marketplace with many SEO experts and services. You can sell your services too.

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Advertising

Showing ads on your blog is a great way to earn. The major revenue generation by professional bloggers is via advertising and different Ad networks. Many of the bloggers they earn their major chunk by displaying Ads on their blogs.

There are two popular types of ads:

  • CPC/PPC Ads: Cost-Per-Click/Pay-Per-Click means get some fixed amount of money whenever a visitor clicks on your ad.
  • CPM Ads: CPM (Cost Per 1000 Impressions) means you’ll get some fixed amount of money for each 1000 ads impression/views on your blog.

Join Advertising Networks

By joining advertising networks you don’t need to contact advertisers to display ads on your blog. Leave that work to the advertising network you join as they will display targeted and related advertisements on your blog.

Google AdSense
Google AdSense
Google AdSense

What Is Google AdSense?

It’s a monetization program by Google for online content from websites, mobile sites, and site search results with relevant and engaging ads.

It is the most popular advertising network used by bloggers to earn lot of money with their blog. Their minimum payout is – $100.

However getting approved for Google AdSense may be not easy if you have a brand new blog. Your application may get rejected due to some reasons as Google Adsense is strict in terms of approving applications.

Make sure that you comply with their terms and policies.

Google AdSense Alternatives

Looking for best AdSense alternatives, because Google cancelled your AdSense account? Or, your website is not accepted by Google for AdSense service?

Whatever may be the case, you don’t have to worry. There are a number of sites who provide Google AdSense like services or Google AdSense alternatives.

These sites are equally good as AdSense, even better in some cases. If your blog generates good amount of traffic, then with strategic placement of Ads from these AdSense alternatives will generate a much better revenue.

I recommend you start with the programs with less payment threshold i.e Chitika, Viglink. You can use both at a same time on your blog.

PROGRAM NAMEMINIMUM PAYOUTAD TYPESIGN UP LINK
Media.net$100Text Ads
Display Ads
Infolinks$50In text ads
In Tag ads
In Search ads
Adversal$20Display Ads
Chitika$10Contextual Ads
Viglink$10Text Ads (Affiliate Ads)

Direct Advertising

This method works by finding advertisers to display Ads on your blog. If your blog gets good amount of traffic then advertisers may contact you to display their Ads on your blog and in return they will give you a good amount of money for the Ad slot of your blog you sell.

BuysellAds
BuySellAds
BuySellAds

It is the market for advertisers and publishers where one sell ads and other one buys that. In easy words we can say that advertiser buy ad slots and publisher sells them on BuySellAds.

When you sign up for this program and after approval you have to setup ad slot rates for your blog. Whenever an advertiser search for the blogs relate to your niche,find your blog and interested in showing his ads on your blog then he will offer you. You will be then informed by the Buysellads team and after that it depends upon you that you accept or reject that offer. Better thing is that accept those offer that are related to your niche.

How does BSA Program works

As I mentioned earlier that it is place where both publishers and advertisers are working, So if advertisers want to advertise on your blog, they need to buys ads slots. From these slots publishers earns money.

Things Needed For BSA Approval

BSA is not an easy job for bloggers get it easily as it is not like other networks like adbrite, tribal fusion etc they have certain standard. So to get approved from BSA as a publisher you need to meet the following conditions:-

Pageviews :- 50k per month

Blog Design :- Professional & Attractive

Blog Content :- Unique and Fresh

Payment Option

According to the earning type you can earn money by monthly fixed amount per advertisement where the amount from revenue share 25% goes to BSA itself and 75% to you. Their payment methods are paypal, check and wire transfer.

Minimum payment from paypal is $20, $50 for bank transfer and $500 for wire transfer. Payment will be pay to publishers at the end of every month.

Private Advertising

In a similar vain to Google AdSense and AdWords, you may elect to select who advertises on your website or blog.

Sometimes third parties may contact you to ask if you could promote their product on your website. But that may require sitting on your hands a little.

A method I have found to work particularly well is advertising vacant ad blocks on your website. There are actually plugins you can download to entirely streamline the process to even set up essentially an “advertisement store” on your site, which customers can then access and purchase your vacant ads, with final approval belonging to yourself of course.

OIO Publisher

OIO Publishers
OIO Publishers

The OIO Publisher plugin is fantastic because it allows you to essentially sell blank space on your website.

Obviously, the more traffic your website generates, the more chance a reader will want to advertise their product on your website.

Just remember that the more authority your website has in a particular niche (no matter how competitive it is), the more people will actually trust what you have to say.

The next best thing about OIO Publisher is that you get to charge your own prices for the ad spots and subsequently keep 100% of the profits, and won’t have to share a percentage of the profits with a third-party middleman!

With this the advertising part is over. Hope you’ve got some good ideas to make money blogging by displaying Ads on your blog.

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Conclusion

Blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme. If you have started blogging to make plenty of dollars without investing plenty of time and hard work.

Developing a successful blog which earns decent money takes time. Hard work is the cornerstone of every successful blog.

Passion, hard work, discipline, patience and little amount of investment (money) are the ingredients of making money from blogging.

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Happy blogging 😀

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