How to Monetize Your Blog and Earn Income Every Month

So, you started a blog, wrote some blog posts, and you’re ready to start making money, amiright?

Then you’re in the right place!

This is our third part of the 3-part series for Becoming a Blogger.

We walked you through starting your blog, boosting your blog traffic, and now, we’re focusing our attention on how to monetize your blog as quickly and easily as possible.

You can recap here about starting your blog. And you can recap here about growing your blog traffic.

Those are the foundational things that are essential if you want to make money blogging, so be sure to bookmark them and come back for a refresher now and then!

Now, let’s talk about monetizing your blog.

HOW DO BLOGGERS MAKE MONEY?

There are two main ways that bloggers make money.

1. Promoting and selling other people’s products and services.
2. Promoting and selling our own products and services.

It is THAT simple.

Just like every other business owner, bloggers make money by providing valuable products or services to their target market.

When you first get started blogging, you probably won’t have your own products or services to sell. This is why most bloggers start out promoting other people’s products and services.

Let’s talk about your options!

Key point: bloggers make money by selling their own stuff or promoting other people’s stuff online.

SELLING OTHER PEOPLE’S PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

How do you get started promoting and selling other people’s stuff?

I’m going to show you!

You have a few options, and they typically fall into these 3 categories:

-Affiliate marketing
-Sponsored work
-Ad revenue

Let’s start with affiliate marketing. It’s the most common monetization stream among new and seasoned bloggers!

AFFILIATE MARKETING

Affiliate marketing is simply promoting and selling other people’s stuff in exchange for a commission.

Yup, that’s it.

You’ll find and join the affiliate programs that fit within your niche. When you join said programs, you’ll gain access to a trackable link called an affiliate link.

This is the link you can share with your audience when promoting the products and services you love. When someone clicks on that link and makes a purchase, you’ll earn a commission.

HOW BLOGGERS USE AFFILIATE MARKETING

Once you have joined a few affiliate programs and have some products or services that you want to promote, you’ll be ready to start creating some content.

Your aim should be to share the VALUE within the product or service you’re recommending.

No pushing products.
No spamming people’s inboxes.

Nope, none of that sleazy car salesman stuff.

Your job is to raise awareness, to get that product in front of people, and show them how the product works or what problems it solves.

Some ways you can do this:

-Pros/cons blog posts
-Review blog posts
-Video tutorials
-Social media tutorials
-List posts

You’ll notice that most bloggers (and vloggers) are just sharing their experiences, their reviews, and their tutorials.

They’re helping people solve problems, answer questions, and reach goals… and they’re doing this through their blog and social channels.

Here are some excellent articles to help you improve your affiliate marketing strategy!

–How to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing as a Brand New Blogger
–The Best High Paying Affiliate Programs for Bloggers
– How to Make Money with the Share-a-Sale Affiliate Network
–How to Make Money with the AWIN Affiliate Network
–How to Make Money as a Mom Blogger with Affiliate Marketing
–How to Properly Label Your Affiliate Links in WordPress

These articles will give you the best foundation for your affiliate marketing strategy. It is one of the best ways to monetize your blog!

AD REVENUE

Placing ads on your site isn’t *quite* the same as actively promoting someone else’s products or services, but it still fits into this category.

When you sell ad space on your site, you are being paid to put advertisements on your blog. This is essentially promoting other business’s products.

As a blogger, you want to be really careful about which ad networks you hook your caboose to!

If you use an ad network that doesn’t have some kind of minimum requirement for approval, you’re running the risk of having spammy ads on your site.

Google Adsense is one of those ad networks with very low requirements to join. Most people can join within a few months of starting their blog.

But, the pay is low, you have limited control over what ads are shown, and they majorly slow down your site, which is bad for user experience.

WHICH AD NETWORK SHOULD YOU JOIN?

My best suggestion is to wait until you can join a premium ad network!

Premium ad networks are much better for user experience, they aren’t as bad for your site speed, and they pay better.

Premium ad networks worth waiting for:

Monumetric
MediaVine
AdThrive

Although each of them do have minimum requirements to join, it is worth the wait to do things the right way!

SELLING YOUR OWN PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

After getting your feet wet… making a few affiliate sales, landing a few sponsored posts… you might have an idea for creating your own product.

Selling your own products or services is one of the most profitable ways to monetize your blog.

Why?

Because you’re in control and you get to keep 100% of the profit – heck yes!

Some of your monetization options:

-Selling physical products
-Selling digital products
-Coaching/consulting
-Providing some kind of service
-Virtual assisting
-Running a membership program

Let’s talk about two of the most common ways that bloggers promote and sell their own stuff:

1.Offering digital products
2.Offering online services

CREATING AND SELLING YOUR OWN DIGITAL PRODUCTS

Selling digital products to their audience is every blogger’s dream.

We don’t have to hold inventory. We don’t have to answer to anyone else. We can create whatever we want and charge whatever we want.

Some digital products that bloggers create and sell:

-Courses
-E-books
-Stock photos
-Printables
-Software

To create and sell an online course, you can easily use a platform like Teachable.

They make it super easy to create a well-organized course on any topic under the sun. They also handle all of the payments from buyers, so you don’t have to stress about it!

To create and sell your own e-book, you could do something as simple as creating a PDF file and uploading it to a platform like Sendowl.

This is a platform that allows you to sell and deliver digital downloads to consumers.

And just like Teachable, they are easy to use and easy to manage payments.

The ultimate goal is to figure out what your target audience needs, and then to create valuable tools that serve them.

OFFERING ONLINE SERVICES

Another great way to monetize your blog: offering online services to your audience.

The best part?

When you provide online services, you never have to leave the comfort of your home (or your favorite coffee shop with wifi)!

What is a skill that you have that other people might need?

This can be directly related to your blogging niche, or it can be a freelance service that you offer on the side.

-Proofreading
-Resume writing
-Tutoring
-Social media management
-Wordpress help
-Virtual coaching
-Ghostwriting
-Graphic design
-Pinterest pin creation
-Digital decluttering

There are so many options and ways to make money from your blog or your services offered.

Again, if you can fill a need for people, you can make money blogging.

For easy booking, you can use a tool like Acuity to schedule calls and get paid.

Keep in mind that the key to making money blogging is understanding the needs of your audience, and then filling those needs for them.

Whether you’re selling your own products and services or selling products and services for another business, you’ll be successful if you are consistent, genuine, helpful, strategic, and focused on serving your people.

EARNING $1,000 PER MONTH FROM YOUR BLOG

In order to make $1k from your blog every month, you’ll need a strategic plan.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s break down the math into a 4-week month. If you wanted to earn $1,000 in that 4-week month, you’d need to earn $250 a week.

Now that you have a weekly income goal, you can choose your revenue streams and determine how much money you’ll need to make from each of them to hit your goal.

Let’s say you’re going to focus your attention on an affiliate program that pays $50 per sale.

You’d need to make 5 sales a week to hit that goal.

But if you wanted to promote that product and also do a weekly coaching call for $100, then you would only need to make 3 affiliate sales.

Just 3 sales and 1 phone call a week to hit your income goal.

That’s the power of multiple income streams!

Read >>> How to Make $1,000 from Your Blog Ev ery Month for more suggestions about hitting that income goal!

LET’S RECAP!

Bloggers make money by selling their own products/services or selling other people’s products/services.

Some of the best ways to do this is through affiliate marketing, sponsored work, and selling your own products or services.

The focus should always be on genuinely serving your audience. You need to figure out what they need and figure out how to fill those needs for them.

For more monetization tips and tricks, check out the lists of articles below:

With this 3-part guide as your roadmap, you’ve laid the foundation for becoming a profitable blogger. Now is the time to execute!

How can I help you?

1.Be sure to join my free blogging community here if you haven’t already! I’m active in the group every week, helping bloggers just like you reach their goals.

2.Hop on my mailing list here for exclusive tips, deals, and strategic direction that I don’t share anywhere else.

3.And if you want personalized 1:1 assistance from me, you can set up a strategy session with me right here!