If you find that you enjoy blogging and are good at it, there are several ways to make your blog a source of income. Whether you want to earn a little extra cash from your new “hobby,” become a full-time blogger for a career, or build a business based on blogging, here are some of the models bloggers use to monetize.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the easiest way to set up a passive income and it can make a decent amount of money. This is a good option for bloggers who don’t have their own products to sell. It is not the first option for those who sell their own services, because you’ll divert prospects away from purchasing your services. However, it’s an excellent add-on stream of income when you recommend resources to your service business clients.

Affiliate marketing is a business model where you endorse or promote other people’s products or services for a commission. Many vendors offer high commissions of around 50%.

This is a passive form of income because you don’t have to do the actual selling or product creation. All you need to do is blog, build and engage with your audience, and they will check out the products or services you’re recommending.

To start affiliate marketing, the first step is to join an affiliate network like ClickBank, Rakuten, or ShareASale. Even better, look at the resources and products you personally use on a regular basis and see if they have an affiliate program. Sign up, grab your link, and create your own ‘resources’ page on your blog that you can send people to.

Selling Your Own Products or Services to Readers

If you have your own product or service to sell, you can use your blog as a lead generation machine. For example, if you’re a freelance web designer, you can write on topics of interest to website owners who might hire you for your services. You don’t need to “sell” your services in your actual blog content, but you can have a sign-up or contact form for those who want to hire you.

The way to do this successfully is to consider your reader’s buying process. You then align your content to each stage of the buying process.

The stages of the buying process include:

Awareness – This is the stage where the customer is first aware of your product or service. At this stage, they recognize a problem or pain point, gain a deeper understanding of their needs, and then become aware that there are solutions. Content that addresses this stage helps the reader identify problems and introduces and explains various solutions.

Evaluation – At this point, the customer is exploring features and benefits to see how they solve the problem at hand. They’re looking for more detailed information on the solution. They also may be evaluating testimonials and reviews. You can create content that educates the customer about the product and it solutions.

Purchase – This is the stage where the person is ready to make a purchase and this is where you can make an offer. At this stage, the customer is looking for free trials, discounts, or other special offers.

The best blog posts speak to the problems that a reader faces. These are the problems they are seeking to solve by searching the internet. You need to know at which stage your customer is, so that you can respond with the right kind of content.

There are four steps to make money by selling to your readers directly through your blog.

These match up with the reader’s buying process.

1. Write content that provides a great deal of value and engagement from other readers. Follow the steps in the previous modules and promote your content on social media.

2. Convert your visitors to subscribers. As we mentioned also in the previous module, put a clear call-to-action on your website with a high-value offer and get visitors to sign up. Once subscribed to your blog or email list, you can build a closer relationship with them. The incentive can be a “lead magnet.” This is a small information product you use as an enticement to get readers to sign up. The lead magnet is only available to subscribers and should directly address your reader’s pain points.
3. Send your subscribers content to build trust. Offer high-value content that’s exclusive to subscribers. Create a schedule for sending out emails. A sample schedule that also includes promoting a specific product or service early on might be something like this:

• Email 1: A confirmation email. This is an anti-spam email that is used as a double opt-in to ensure that the email address is correct. This is automatically sent by your email marketing platform.
• Email 2: A “thank you” email that offers access to the lead magnet for download.
• Email 3: A “get started” email with basic instructions, tips and tricks, and ideas to get started once the reader has consumed the lead magnet. These are the next steps.
• Email 4: An overview to your solution and how it helps to alleviate the pain you’ve identified through the lead magnet and previous content.
• Email 5: The benefits of your solution, testimonials, and proof that your product or service will solve the reader’s problem.
• Email 6: A special offer, free trial, free hour of consulting, free webinar, or other promotion.
• Email 7: Additional resources such as information about your products or services aligned with the opt-in, or more information on your special offer.
• Email 8: A “check-in” message, which is a personal message to touch base and ask for questions or feedback from the subscriber.
• Email 9+: Weekly emails with additional information that’s relevant to the lead magnet and core topics of your blog, including your blog updates and additional recommendations of products and services.

This is just a sample of the type of schedule you might create if you are selling something specific. Depending on your market, you may want to add multiple ‘nurture’ emails early in your schedule with lots of tips and helpful information before introducing your own solutions.

4. Sell Multiple Products or Services Your Audience Wants to Buy. You can sell multiple products or services through your blog, but the strategies for doing so are different. A good way to sell multiple products is to start with your highest-priced products first. This is called a reverse funnel.

The strategy is to blog about the specific problems your audience faces, get them to sign up for your email list, build a relationship with them there, and finally lead them to a recommendation for paid products. But start with your most expensive offering first.

The idea behind offering the highest-priced product first is the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. In other words, most of your revenue will come from a small customer base, so it’s best to focus on the few customers who will account for the bulk of your income. For example, if you have 100 subscribers, there may be between 2 and 20 of them that will buy high-priced items. As you focus on the highest-ticket items, you’ll also sell lower ticket items to your other customers along the way.

If you are going to take this approach and focus on a high-priced product, you need to make this product as valuable as possible for your target market. Look at all of the products you offer and figure out a way to make this product extra special. For example, if you are a business consultant offering a consulting package for $10,000, guarantee for the client a specific outcome. You could guarantee that your client will save $15,000 over time by investing $10,000.

Another strategy is to sell products through free webinars. Offer exclusive free webinars to your subscribers where you give them high-value training or other information. During the webinar, you can also pitch your high-value product. If you design it well, your webinar can offer a taste of the quality of your premium products, which could be coaching calls, membership sites, consulting, coaching programs, or online courses.

Getting Paid to Blog

Once your blog is well established and you have a social media following, you can monetize by blogging for clients. You can either get writing gigs as a ghost writer or as a guest or anchor blogger. Once you’re actively blogging, you may also get approached by companies to write for them. You can earn extra money by blogging or make it a full-time thing if you enjoy it.

When you blog for a living, the size of your audience is your main selling point. Your skills as a writer and expertise in your area are also important, but clients will hire you not only because you write good content for them, but because you have a big audience. Whenever you post content on their blog or website, you’ll also post on social media and bring people there.

One thing to watch out for with blogging is companies that want to hire you to pitch their products. This is a danger because you can lose the credibility you’ve accumulated with your audience by appearing like a salesperson. Until now, you’ve offered high-value information that helps your audience solve its problems. You’re an expert and a trusted friend. If suddenly you begin pushing products just for a payment, your reputation will get damaged. Your reputation is everything as a blogger, so make sure you only take jobs where they allow you to give honest, balanced reviews.

If you choose to promote products that you actually like and use, and that you think your readers would like, be transparent about it. Tell your reader that you’re receiving payment for your review.

This is not the case with ghostwriting. If you choose to pick up ghostwriting gigs, your name will not appear on them. Your social media following is not so important and what you write won’t affect your brand. However, ghostwriting tends to pay less than writing using your name and brand.

Showing Ads on Your Blog

Putting ads on your blog is an alternative but it should be your last option. The reason is that you’ll earn more with the above monetization tactics than through ads. Consider ads if you have no other products to sell or aren’t interested in the blogging for pay and affiliate options. This could also be a good option if you’re just getting started and want to make a little money while you explore other monetization ideas.

When using ads, the main predictor of success is the size of your readership. It’s a simple numbers game; the more eyes you have on your blog, the more people will click on your advertisements.

It takes, on average, three years to create a profitable blog, so be patient. Focus at the beginning on building your brand and building relationships with your readers. You’ll eventually grow your blog as an extension of your business and brand, and you’ll eventually be able to monetize.