How to Make Money Blogging (Beginner’s Guide)

Wondering how to make money blogging?

I realized that it’s not a quick way to make money online.

You decided to start a blog since you’ve heard it’s an easy way to make money online, but you may probably have no idea how bloggers actually make money.

Many of these methods require some investment of money and time to get started.

And in this article, I’m going to give you a quick snapshot of how exactly you can make money from your blog, and all the tactics I used to make money with my blog!

1. Ad Networks

Displaying ads on your blog is one of the easiest and quickest ways to start making money with a blog. If you’re not familiar with hearing about ad networks, there are popular ad networks that are widely used for monetizing a blog.

• Google AdSense
• Media.net
• Mediavine

You need to have a blog with unique and well-written blog posts to get approved for Adsense and those ad networks and they will show ads automatically for your blog visitors based on the context of your article and user interest.

The screenshot below is about my AdSense account in the first few days when I got approved for displaying ads on my blog:

Google Adsense is a good way to start earning money online when you are first starting out to make money from your blog.

You can see my guide on how to get Adsense approval to get started.

However, your earnings will be depending on your monthly blog visitors. But remember, no website gets thousands of traffic when it’s new and you need to keep publishing and promoting unique content to grow your blog traffic.

2. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate advertisements are one of the most profitable ways to make money from an intermediate-level blog.

The best thing is you can make a lot more money than a single click on an ad that you’re placing through ad networks on your blog.

In fact, Affiliate marketing is the most profitable way that I used to make money from my blog since I started.

This is popular among most bloggers these days and most big brands also offer affiliate programs with their products.

All you need to do is, join with related affiliate programs in your blog niche and share your unique affiliate link of the product you are recommending for your blog visitors.

When someone makes a purchase from your affiliate links, you will earn a huge commission from the sale amount.

In the screenshot below, you can see one of my affiliate incomes from an affiliate program I’ve joined:

Here are some of the popular Affiliate marketing marketplaces and programs that you can join:

1. ShareASale
2. Amazon Affiliate Program
3. ImpactRadius
4. Fiverr Affiliate
5. CJ Affiliate (formerly Commission Junction)

There are many different types of affiliate programs, from online services to web hosting, website builders, VPNs, travel, finance, fashion, beauty, fitness, and more.

So, you can easily find the best affiliate programs in any niche to join and make money with your blog.

However, each affiliate program has its own agreement. When you join a program you need to consider how the affiliate program is working for you and you should disclose the fact that you’re an affiliate to your readers.

3. Sponsored Content

Sponsored content, blog posts, or reviews can be a great way to make money on your blog. Simply put, a sponsored blog post is when a blogger gets paid to talk about a product or brand on their blog.

These kinds of posts can be product reviews, recommendations, or an article about the service or a company with links to a webpage.

The best way to get started with sponsored blog posts is by signing up for a network that connects sponsors and publishers.

4. Sell Digital Products

Selling digital products on your blog can be a great way to increase your earnings bring in. In fact, most top bloggers sell their own products such as eBooks.

Digital products like eBooks have many advantages and it’s attractive to sell to many blog readers if you really created it with a plus value for your niche.

You and put it on sale on your blog or on Amazon and you can use other online marketplaces like Etsy to list if your products are related to some of the categories.

Here are some picks for the best digital products to sell with your blog:

1. eBooks
2. Stock Photo/Video
3. Printables
4. 3D models
5. Audios (Jingles, Ringtones, Sound effects)
6. Templates
7. Mockups
8. WordPress themes/plugins
9. Graphic elements
10. Lightroom/Photoshop presets

Moreover, creating and selling templates for a variety of purposes like social media templates resumes, media kits, logos, and printables are fairly easy and you can make money by selling things readers really needs.

A simple example of templates is these Canva Pinterest templates that I’ve listed on the Etsy marketplace.

I designed them to be used with the Canva graphic design tool for easy use, but you could also create templates to be used with Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.

5. Launch an Online Course

If you can convert your text-based eBook into a video tutorial, selling online courses is another great knowledge-based digital product to generate a new passive income.

There are plenty of courses out there on many topics so you can make more money with an online course in any niche.

But it really needs some hard work and you also need to create valuable course content in a great format.

If you don’t have any idea about how to create and launch a course, all you need to do is head over to Teachable, signup for free, and get started to create your course with no technical experience.

Moreover, another big thing is editing videos for your course content. It can be really time-consuming if you use the wrong tools.

If you’re looking for one of the best online video editors, you can use InVideo online video editor to create stunning professional-level videos in minutes with dozens of pre-made templates for all your needs.

Moving Forward

Anyone can start a blog. But only a few bloggers make millions of dollars a year. And others, make a good full-time income, some make less, and many make no money at all.

The only thing is, that you need to practice good strategies to start making money to plan your life on a decent blogging income. Always excellent blog content is the key to long-term success.

In fact, there are a lot of ways you can make money from blogging, but I would recommend not overwhelming yourself with all of the ways.

You can start your blog and publish useful content. When your blog grows with decent blog traffic you can simply start to make money blogging.

If you’re a blogging beginner, don’t forget to check out my blogging resources and tools!

Happy blogging!