In this post, I want to show you how you can monetize your blog with 7 streams of income.
If you’re new to blogging, looking for new ways to generate additional income through your blog, or you’re simply wondering how bloggers get paid and make money online, then the list below will hopefully give you new ideas.
Before I get to the list, please let me first say that it’s okay if you’re still just trying to get to one stream or two streams of income. We all have to start with one.
When you’re just starting out, it’s actually a good thing to not focus on the money. You want to focus all your efforts into helping your audience…
…Providing value and creating content that’ll help your audience.
Later on, the money will follow. As you get to know your audience more, you can easily create new products for them, or package services to help them reach their goal. A lot of times, your audience will ask you for help.
In addition, as you’re building your blog and focusing on creating amazing content, you’ll start to get offers from brands or companies willing to pay you to feature some of their products. So, the important thing is to focus on creating massive value at scale when you’re just starting out.
Forget about making money for at least 3-6 months. Because you’ll just get discouraged when you don’t make any the first week or two and think there is something wrong with you or your blog.
Most successful bloggers didn’t make a penny from their blog for months or even years. So keep that in mind as we go through the list…
Related: How to start a blog from scratch
Monetize Your Blog With These 7 Income Streams
Advertisement
You can start making money from your blog very fast by placing ads on your blog. The easiest way to start with that is through Google Adsense. You can sign up easily, link your website, and set up ads to show automatically.
However, I actually recommend you wait until your blog is getting enough traffic so you can sign up for a premium ad network such as AdThrive or Mediavine. I personally have Mediavine ads on my first blog and they are an amazing company to work with.
The threshold to apply for Mediavine ads is 25k sessions per month. So once you reach that, you can apply. I recommend you wait until then because you won’t be making much if you have fewer sessions or pageviews than the threshold anyways using Google Adsense.
From my experience, Adsense didn’t really work for me. I didn’t like the ads they were placing on my site (some were pretty disgusting which I couldn’t block), and I waited a whole year to reach $100. Totally not worth it in my opinion.
Affiliate Marketing
One of the easiest ways to monetize your blog is through affiliate marketing. There are a ton of programs you can sign up for, join, and start promoting their products on your blog right away.
I recommend you only promote products you personally use. Never promote a product you’ve never used or tried to your audience as you can quickly lose their trust if the product is low-quality or doesn’t work.
You can get started with Amazon Affiliate program in the beginning. Amazon is a company that has already built trust. When people are transferred from your website to Amazon, they’re not worried to purchase from their website.
So that’s a good advantage of being an Amazon affiliate member. In addition, when a person makes a purchase using your link, you get a commission from anything else they purchase from Amazon.
Make sure to place a proper affiliate disclaimer in your posts. And again, only promote products you personally use, love, and appreciate.
On my health and fitness blog, I even use the products I promote in my videos. My audience sees that I actually use them.
If you can’t find the product you’d like to promote on Amazon, you can go to the product’s website, scroll to the bottom of the page to see if they have an affiliate program you can sign up to.
Many companies have their own affiliate programs (with higher commissions also) that you can sign up for. So definitely reach out to them and see.
One-On-One Coaching
I know you probably started your blog so you can be free from ‘working’ or having to work with people on an hourly basis. However, when just starting out, especially if you have a skill or you’re a coach…
…You can get started by providing a coaching service. It’s the easiest way to generate money from your online presence. And you don’t need a lot of customers to make a full-time income.
To make enough income from your blog selling products or through affiliate marketing, you need traffic. When starting out, you’re probably just building that foundation.
Coaching allows you to start making money quickly while you’re building your blog traffic and audience. You don’t have to do it forever. Once you work with a few clients, and you’re in full capacity, you can turn your coaching program into a group coaching business.
Or, you can even turn your coaching program into a course. You can add group coaching or not. Totally up to you!
Coaching also allows you to know your audience at a deeper level. Nothing replaces direct conversations with your audience and target clients. You can read my post here if you need help starting your coaching business.
Workshops
Workshops can be online or offline. You can host online workshops to provide a service or teach something to your audience.
There are great tools such as Zoom where you can host a workshop online and provide a lot of value to your audience for a cheaper price.
Instead of purchasing 1:1 coaching, many people would prefer to join a group workshop, pay once and get direct access to you for a bit of time to ask questions and get your feedback.
You can price your workshops anywhere between $39-$99 for an hour and a Q+A after 1-3 times a month and start generating income right away.
While you do need an audience to promote the workshop, it shouldn’t be hard to sell because you can limit the number of people that gets to join. Even with a small audience, I’m sure you can sell a few spots if you’re selling message is clear and there is a need for what you’re going to teach
Courses
Many bloggers start creating courses right off the bat and it’s a big mistake.
Your blog will pivot. You’re going to probably switch to a different niche or blog focus as your blog progresses.
Wait until your message gets clearer and you build a solid audience.
Once you have an audience, start by communicating with your audience to see where there is a gap.
What do they need help with?
Where are they stuck?
You can ask them to get on a phone call with you to ask them questions.
You can also survey your audience, but as I explained in my here about why starting a coaching business first, a lot of time, people don’t do what they say they’ll do.
So they may say they’ll buy your course, but when you actually launch your course…don’t be surprised if no one buys it.
I had so many failed launched that were based on surveys. I didn’t know why people didn’t buy even though the programs were exactly what they said they wanted.
Sponsored Posts
Sponsored posts are different from affiliate posts in that you work directly with a brand. You can either approach a brand and ask if they’d like to be featured on your blog…
…Or, as your traffic grows, you’ll be approached by brands asking you to try their products and either include them in your blog posts or review them.
Some brands can as you for a product feature in exchange for a gifted product. Be selective. Don’t underestimate the amount of time it takes to try and write a review for a product, especially if you’re making a video as well.
You can sign up to networks such as Izea who connect creators with brands. I worked with Izea many times and they’re really great to work with. In all instances, they send me direct offers.
Printables
I know many bloggers who are making a great income by simply selling printables. If you love designing and creating PDFs, you can sell your printables on your blog (or have a separate store on Etsy) and start making money.
You can create printables about almost anything…meal plans, exercise programs, nutrition planners, exercise planners, habit trackers, grocery lists. The possibilities are endless and people love printables!
You can set up your online shop on your blog very easily with services such as Gumroads or Easy Digital Downloads.
You can always get creative with your blog income streams. Don’t restrict yourself to this list.
For example, you can do freelance work and promote your services on your website. The possibilities are really endless, you just have to be creative.
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