Best Ways to Make Money Blogging for Beginners
Can you really make money blogging by turning your personal passions, knowledge, or experience into a real income on the internet?
More than a decade after the Wall Street crash, people are still struggling to recoup past losses and make ends meet. Fewer and fewer of us can count on stable, lifetime employment, and for those fortunate enough, the salary and benefits (if any) are barely enough to meet our basic needs.
Second job, anyone? In America, two-income families are the norm but think of the devastation this wreaks on your daily life. You are so exhausted when you come home from work; You barely have enough time and energy to cook dinner and help the kids with their homework. Again, this becomes difficult when you work in multiple locations, be it on nights or weekends.
Earn More Money With a Side Job Like Blogging
The reality is that we are moving into a freelance and gig economy where more and more people are making money through a side job on their own terms. And one of the most popular side hustles is building an online presence and making money from blogging.
It's no surprise that more and more people are looking for information on how to start an online business to generate an additional income (or even a full-time income) on the internet.
The internet has made blogging mainstream to the point where there may be more than half a billion blogs online as you read this article. While generating income isn't the only reason (or even the best reason) for blogging, there are ways for people to generate additional income from blogging.
If you're new to blogging or just started a blog, congratulations! I hope that your primary motivation is to provide your readers with valuable content as this is how you establish long-term expert status in your niche.
How to Make Money Blogging
However, there's nothing wrong with blogging to make some extra money, and there are several easy methods to get you rolling.
It goes without saying that the best way to start making money from a blog is by choosing a profitable niche market. Something where there is a proven market that intersects with your own passions, interests, and experiences.
Once you've done that, it's all about getting website traffic, building your email subscriber list, and making money online. Let's take a look at some of the fastest, easiest, and most profitable ways to make money online from a blog.
1. Google AdSense
Google AdSense is possibly the fastest and easiest way for beginners to earn passive income from a blog. The basic idea behind AdSense is that you can display Google ads on your website and when a visitor clicks on those ads, you get a percentage of the advertising cost. Surely you have seen advertisements on other people's websites; You can also have these ads appear on your blog or website.
AdSense is a contextual advertising network that places ads from (business) partners on your website. Setup is easy, all you have to do is copy and paste the code provided by Google in the places where you want the ads to appear on your website. Google then displays ads from advertisers that are relevant to your website content, ideally so your website visitors see relevant ads.
Don't worry about your blog niche failing to drive quality ads to your site. Google AdSense is one of the largest networks on the web, so you need to build a healthy enough list of clickable sites to attract your readers.
And Google is smart enough to only show ads on your site that are relevant to the content on your site, so in many cases, this can improve the user experience on your site and the ads can be useful.
Just make sure your content is of the highest quality!
While AdSense is a popular option, I believe affiliate information marketing is also a great way to generate virtually passive income online.
2. Amazon Associates
Amazon Associates is the long-standing internal affiliate program managed by Seattle-based Amazon.com, now the world's largest online retailer. It offers bloggers an opportunity to earn commissions by promoting Amazon products on their website when visitors from their blog click through to Amazon.com and make a purchase.
The basic idea of Amazon Associates is that you can get a unique tracking link pointing to every product sold on Amazon.com. If someone clicks on your blog link and goes back to Amazon and buys the item, you will be credited for the sale.
There are many ways to promote Amazon Products on your website. You can blog a product catalog (from Amazon.com), you can write product reviews and links to products that you recommend on Amazon, and you can have a recommended resources page on your website. Just to name a few.
The only caveat about Associates is that it's likely to cater to bloggers who write about merch, retail, and shopping. Logically, it helps your performance if visitors come to your website ready to buy.
The program works by placing Amazon links, banners, or widgets (e.g. Slideshow, My Favorites, Wishlist Widget) on your pages.
An added benefit is that if someone clicks a link from your site to Amazon and ends up buying multiple items (not just the item you are promoting), you will be credited for the entire sale! Imagine you are recommending a book on Amazon, your visitor goes to Amazon to buy a book and ends up buying a new TV, Sony PlayStation, and a few other items there. You will receive credit for all sales. Not only that, but you'll earn from all sales you make from the customer over the next 15 days.
Another way to make money on Amazon is to publish digital books on Amazon Kindle.
3. Affiliate Marketing for Digital Products
As I mentioned before, one of my favorite ways to make money online is by promoting digital information products as an affiliate.
Like Amazon.com, it is a marketplace for physical goods sold on the Internet; There are also markets for digital products sold on the internet.
One of the most popular marketplaces for digital products is Clickbank.com. You can search the ClickBank marketplace for products related to your marketplace and promote them on your website, write product reviews, etc.
Just like Amazon, when someone clicks the link and comes back and buys the product you are promoting, you receive a commission for a percentage of the sale.
An attractive feature of advertising digital information products is that commissions tend to be higher than for physical products; in the range of 10 percent to 50 percent or even more. For example, if someone sells a $500 digital information product with a 50 percent commission, they can make $250 per sale. This is much higher than commissions on Physical products due to the high-profit margins.
4. Create e-books and Information Products
Regular blogs are the ideal training ground for creating e-books, which remain one of the most popular forms of information products sold by online entrepreneurs today.
Think of your blogs as "free" information that you offer your readers to demonstrate your expertise. Over time, they will become your fans and be ready for more detailed material. This is your chance to make money by listing your e-books for sale along with your free blog.
Just make sure the eBook is based on your blog post and not just repeating what you've already seen! After all, these people are now paying customers and will resent the old information. Later, as you get established and your archived material grows, you can poll your readers to find out what topics they want to learn more about and what they want to buy.
Again, you can sell an e-book at a much higher price than a regular book and benefit from a much higher profit margin.
5. Offer One-on-One Coaching
It's one of the quickest and easiest ways to turn your experience into money. The fact that your blog provides information on your market makes you an expert in your niche. In many cases, people want personal advice directly from experts in their market.
You can just set up a page on your blog that offers personal advice to answer their questions or give them advice for a good fee.
Please note that I have avoided putting a specific dollar figure on how much you can earn from blogging. It all depends on your work ethic, writing skills, ability to generate targeted traffic, and good luck. It's a bit like baseball: everyone played it as a kid, only a small fraction make it to college baseball, an even smaller fraction go pro, but only the cream of the crop makes it to the major leagues.
You have to decide where you want to land in the blogging "league".
The reality is, that as more people get online around the world, it becomes harder to gain exposure and generate income online. This is why it's so important to focus on building your email list so you can track your visitors, build a relationship, and increase sales.
However, there are countless success stories and the formula for success is surprisingly simple it's up to you to do it!
