How to monetize a blog in 2019 (13 Best ways)
Starting and monetizing a blog has never been easier.
Not so long ago, creating a website would have taken thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars to set up and maintain. It was just as difficult to monetize a website. PayPal was still in its infancy, Stripe did not exist and e-mail marketing was nowhere near as flexible as it is now.
Today, however, you can start, maintain and monetize a blog on WordPress with only a few hundred dollars (this can vary depending on your needs). But just because it's easier to make money with your blog today does not mean that most bloggers do.
Tired of slow WordPress hosting & bad support? We at Kinsta do things differently.
LOOK AT OUR PACKAGES HERE
According to the 2017 ConvertKit Blogging Progress Report, professional bloggers reported an average profit of $ 138,064 last year, while amateur bloggers (who made up 86% of respondents) earned $ 9,497.
This is awful, especially considering that most bloggers start a blog so they can be their own boss and quit their boring 8 to 5 job.
So, how do you make it from an amateur blogger to one of the pros who cast six digits every year?
You need a solid marketing plan that includes content, a profitable niche, and an outstanding monetization strategy.
You'll also need to do some quick math.
When should you start monetizing your blog?
There's no concrete figure for how much traffic or how much email list is required to make money from your blog, as it all depends on what you sell and how you sell it.
However, it helps a lot if you first clarify two things:
Get steady traffic: you do not need tens of thousands of visitors, but having at least a thousand visitors a month means you're doing something right.
Expand your e-mail list: Again, you do not have to go crazy. We'll show you examples of people who had a small list but used it to their advantage.
Now, these two things are important, but first and foremost, the efficient monetization of your blog is about the numbers.
For example, if you need to earn $ 6,000 on your blog:
You can sell a $ 200 (for example, one way) product to 30 people.
Or sell a $ 600 rate to 10 people.
And even with a fee of $ 6,000 for advising a customer, it works.
Monetization is math, not magic.
This does not mean that the key to monetizing is simply increasing the price of what you sell. It means that you should choose a monetization strategy that depends on where your blog is currently located or where you would like to have it in the future.
In this article, we'll show you how to monetize a blog and make money online, whether you're getting thousands of page views a month or just starting.
We'll show some solid strategies that other bloggers use to generate revenue from their own blogs in various niches, and teach you how to do the same with your own blog.
Tweet: Monetization is math, not magic. However, you must choose a strategy that suits your goals.
1.Become a freelance blogger in your niche
2. Sell e-books to your audience
3.Create and sell online courses
4. Start a coaching / consulting business
5. offer the plan for paid membership
6.Earn money with display advertising (banner ads)
7.Become an affiliate marketer
8.Generate revenue with sponsored 9.contributions / reviews
10. Sell physical products to your audience
11. Sell digital products to your audience
12. Start a virtual summit in your niche
13. Accept donations on your blog
Start a podcast.
1. Become a freelance blogger in your niche.
One of the easiest ways to make money from your blog is to become a freelance author for more prominent blogs in your niche.
Think about it, you probably started your blog because you have experience/knowledge in this area. Why should not you use this to your advantage?
Businesses are looking for people who can create content to drive their marketing, and who could produce that content better than someone who has knowledge of the niche.
Freelance blogger Bamidele Onibalusi used his blog Writers in Charge to show his content marketing skills while increasing his audience. He now does a full-time job blogging for other companies.
According to Glassdoor, the average freelancer in the US earns about $ 40,000 a year. Keep in mind that this number depends on your level of experience and the niche you are writing in.
Here is a breakdown of how much you can earn in various niches, according to the Editorial Freelance Association:
You may not be able to charge these prices at the beginning, but the more experience and credibility you accumulate, the higher your rates will be. But also make sure that you do not ask too little at the beginning.
Billing $ 10 for an article seems to be an easy way to attract customers, but in truth, this can deter high-quality customers as your skills are challenged. Apart from that, it can wipe your motivation to keep going if you ask so little.
Because we're dealing with pricing, it's better to charge your clients per project than hourly rates, as it can be difficult to determine how long you'll need to complete a task, especially if you're just starting out as a freelancer,
If you raise a fee based on the project itself, you'll be rewarded when you're done faster, and your customers will know from the start how much they'll pay.
According to WriteWorldwide, in your first year as a freelance author, you can charge so much per project, ignoring your niche or past writing experience:
The best thing about freelance writing is that you do not need a lot of traffic on your blog to earn money. All companies really value is that you can write great content.
Jorden Roper, for example, earned $ 5,000 in her fourth month as a freelance writer, and Jennifer Gregory draws about six-figure sums a year from her freelance writing business.
As a freelance blogger, you need to create written content and attract visitors to a company's website so that some of those visitors can become customers for the company.
Marketers will continue to spend more money on content creation in the future, according to the 2019 report from the Content Marketing Institute, and 50% of surveyed marketers expect their content marketing budget to increase in 2019.
If there are companies that make money in your niche and as long as those companies create content, you can bet they need authors.
Note that I mentioned that the company needs to make money. One of the worst mistakes you can make as a freelance blogger is choosing a niche where companies can not afford to pay you.
For example, writing about art maybe your idea of having fun, and you may have a lot of knowledge about it, but how many blogs can regularly pay you to write about it?
The road to profitability as a freelance blogger is finding the right market to position yourself.
A quick way to test if there is money to be made in your niche is to find at least ten authors covering the niche you want to write in. You can do this by simply doing a search on LinkedIn with the keywords for your niche.
For example, when I search for people with the exact title "freelance personal finance writer" on LinkedIn, I get about 42 results. You can also do without quotation marks for a more comprehensive search, resulting in even more results.
This is an easy way to validate your niche.
We've already noticed that as a freelance author, you do not need a lot of traffic to make money, but that does not mean people just find your blog and hire you.
You have to go out and promote your service.
If you've created sample texts in your blog and possibly guest posts in other blogs, you can start looking at companies you want to write for.
You can also use marketplaces for freelancers like Upwork, SEOclerks and Fiverr. But while there are a few freelance writers who make a lot of money, such as Danny Marguiles, who earns over $ 100,000 a year with Upwork, most freelance writers on these platforms earn very little money.
To avoid the race to the bottom of these marketplaces, you have to do most of the publicity yourself.
So you can find blogs for which you can write.
The best way to find businesses or blogs in your niche for which you want to write is to simply search Google for keywords related to that niche and see what's coming.
Because the blogs that appear on the first pages of Google, clearly invest a lot in content marketing.
For example, if I was looking for blogs for which I could write in the fitness niche, a simple search term like "fitness blog" shows me the following:
You can also search for terms that are specific to your niche, such as: For example, in the case of fitness, something like "workout plans":
Now all you have to do is contact the blog owners and suggest their freelance writing service.
Use your own site
In addition to finding new writing, you should also use your own website, after all, you are a writer.
Use inbound marketing and SEO to get people into your website, where you can offer them your writing and blogging services.
Freelance author Maddy Osman does this on her freelance website The Blogsmith.
Maddy Osman is a freelance author
Maddy Osman is a freelance author
2. Sell e-books to your audience.
Selling ebooks is one of the most popular ways for bloggers to monetize their blogs. It's perfect because it's relatively easy to create and usually has a reasonable price that most visitors can buy.
But e-books are more than just a way for bloggers to quickly monetize their blogs. As a blogger, selling an ebook may be the quickest way to test whether people are interested enough in what you cover to pay for it.
E-books are also a low-risk way for your website visitors to estimate the value you offer before they buy more expensive products.
Contrary to popular belief, you do not need a lot of traffic on your blog to make money from your books. For example, David Oudiette converted the knowledge he gained when creating landing pages into a 252-page 39-dollar e-book.
He did not have much traffic on his blog because everything he did at the time was advice, but David was able to earn more than $ 13,000 with his e-book.
The Landing Page Cookbook Ebook
The Landing Page Cookbook E-Book (Source: your landing page sucks!)
David had to do the following to sell so many books:
He asked his blog subscribers for their landing page, gave them free tips, and then referred them to his book.
He answered questions and gave feedback on the landing pages of Quora and Reddit. Then he proposed his book as an additional source of information.
David has also added the book about Product Hunt.
Even more impressively, David sent an e-mail to companies and gave them free feedback on their landing page. He then answered the answers and linked them to his book.
So David did not have much traffic, but he did a lot of work.
There is also Taylor Pearson, who sold more than 5,000 books in four weeks, earning over $ 60,000 in 2015 alone with this book. Taylor had only 700 e-mail subscribers at the time.
Taylor attributes the success of his book to a few things:
Make fans of his blog become a beta reader while writing.
Creating a Facebook group to communicate the progress of his book with the most important readers. (Do you read: How to create a Facebook page).
Send the book to all members of the Facebook group so that they can leave an honest review on Amazon.
Keep everyone on their list on the progress of the book up to date, making the person more involved and later more likely to buy.
Sync social media messages during and after startup.
Send a personalized email to his book to each of his Gmail contacts.
Give a giveaway to promote the book.
The book became a bestseller in the Amazon Small Business section and the rest is history.
The End of Jobs e-book
The End of Jobs E-Book (Source: Amazon)
The great thing about these two examples is that they show that with the right marketing and a good book you do not need so many subscribers and that you certainly do not have to be an experienced writer.
None of these authors simply published and hoped, but instead spent a lot of work on the success of their books instead.
Where can you sell your e-book?
You can then sell your ebook either directly in your blog or on platforms like Gumroad or Podia.
Selling your ebook on your own website can be beneficial as you can keep 100% of the profit. For example, Harsh Agrawal of ShoutMeLoud dedicated a whole section of his website to his various e-books.
ShoutMeLoud e-books
ShoutMeLoud e-books
You can easily create something like this with the WordPress Plugin Easy Digital Downloads.
If you publish your ebook as Amazon Kindle, you can only withhold 70% of the profit. However, the advantage gained is that the more books you sell, the more attention you get, which leads to even more sales.
The sale of e-books is not limited to a particular niche. There are e-books about blogging, photography, fitness and everything you can imagine.
For example, if you had a blog that teaches gardening, you can sell an e-book by teaching your audience in more detail how to grow their own gardens or a particular plant.
You can even reuse some of the content you've already written in your blog for that purpose and then add more details and context.
How to do the book
If you do not have the time or ability to write a book yourself, you can hire Ghostwriter to do it.
You can find ghostwriters on LinkedIn, Scripted, Upwork and even Fiverr. Remember that you get exactly what you pay for. Experienced ghostwriters cost you more than a beginner.
You can also create your own book cover with tools like Canva, Photoshop, and Snappa, or pay for a service like 99designs and get it done by a professional.
3. Create and sell online courses.
Another way to monetize your blog is to sell online courses. What keeps most bloggers from creating their own course is that they think you have to be a kind of expert to teach a course.
This is not true. All you need to really teach a course is to know more than the people you teach and to be able to present that information in ways that add value to people.
IWT's Ramit Sethi earns millions with his courses, not because he is a certified financial planner, but because he helps people to solve problems in their lives.
finance course
Financial Share (Source: I Will Teach You To Be Rich)
You do not have to be a certified chef to create a course where people learn how to cook. If you can cook better than most people and create your course material so that people really learn how to cook, then nothing prevents you from creating your course.
More people than ever attend online classes. By 2025, the e-learning industry is expected to grow to around $ 325 billion.
You also do not have to be an influencer like Ramit Sethi to get a decent income from your courses.
There are people like Joseph Michael, who earned $ 40,000 as a freshman, teaching authors how to use the popular Scrivener writing software.
Scrivener Course
Scrivener Course (Source Scrivener Coach LLC)
Joseph had neither thousands of visitors nor a huge email list. He sold his course by turning to influencers and applying his course to webinars he spoke on.
How do I find course ideas?
If you already have an audience, all you have to do is identify a problem that many of them have in common and that you can solve.
Ways to Identify Pain Points Your Target Audience Wants to Solve:
Submit a Survey: The quickest way to find out what people are having in your audience is to ask them. You can do this by sending a simple poll by e-mail.
Here's an example from Ramit Sethi, who did just that in one of his e-mails shortly before the New Year:
How to monetize a blog in 2019 (13 Best ways)
Note: I hope you enjoy this post. If you like this post, please Share this post with your friends.
Starting and monetizing a blog has never been easier.
Not so long ago, creating a website would have taken thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars to set up and maintain. It was just as difficult to monetize a website. PayPal was still in its infancy, Stripe did not exist and e-mail marketing was nowhere near as flexible as it is now.
Today, however, you can start, maintain and monetize a blog on WordPress with only a few hundred dollars (this can vary depending on your needs). But just because it's easier to make money with your blog today does not mean that most bloggers do.
Tired of slow WordPress hosting & bad support? We at Kinsta do things differently.
LOOK AT OUR PACKAGES HERE
According to the 2017 ConvertKit Blogging Progress Report, professional bloggers reported an average profit of $ 138,064 last year, while amateur bloggers (who made up 86% of respondents) earned $ 9,497.
This is awful, especially considering that most bloggers start a blog so they can be their own boss and quit their boring 8 to 5 job.
So, how do you make it from an amateur blogger to one of the pros who cast six digits every year?
You need a solid marketing plan that includes content, a profitable niche, and an outstanding monetization strategy.
You'll also need to do some quick math.
When should you start monetizing your blog?
There's no concrete figure for how much traffic or how much email list is required to make money from your blog, as it all depends on what you sell and how you sell it.
However, it helps a lot if you first clarify two things:
Get steady traffic: you do not need tens of thousands of visitors, but having at least a thousand visitors a month means you're doing something right.
Expand your e-mail list: Again, you do not have to go crazy. We'll show you examples of people who had a small list but used it to their advantage.
Now, these two things are important, but first and foremost, the efficient monetization of your blog is about the numbers.
For example, if you need to earn $ 6,000 on your blog:
You can sell a $ 200 (for example, one way) product to 30 people.
Or sell a $ 600 rate to 10 people.
And even with a fee of $ 6,000 for advising a customer, it works.
Monetization is math, not magic.
This does not mean that the key to monetizing is simply increasing the price of what you sell. It means that you should choose a monetization strategy that depends on where your blog is currently located or where you would like to have it in the future.
In this article, we'll show you how to monetize a blog and make money online, whether you're getting thousands of page views a month or just starting.
We'll show some solid strategies that other bloggers use to generate revenue from their own blogs in various niches, and teach you how to do the same with your own blog.
Tweet: Monetization is math, not magic. However, you must choose a strategy that suits your goals.
1.Become a freelance blogger in your niche
2. Sell e-books to your audience
3.Create and sell online courses
4. Start a coaching / consulting business
5. offer the plan for paid membership
6.Earn money with display advertising (banner ads)
7.Become an affiliate marketer
8.Generate revenue with sponsored 9.contributions / reviews
10. Sell physical products to your audience
11. Sell digital products to your audience
12. Start a virtual summit in your niche
13. Accept donations on your blog
Start a podcast.
1. Become a freelance blogger in your niche.
One of the easiest ways to make money from your blog is to become a freelance author for more prominent blogs in your niche.
Think about it, you probably started your blog because you have experience/knowledge in this area. Why should not you use this to your advantage?
Businesses are looking for people who can create content to drive their marketing, and who could produce that content better than someone who has knowledge of the niche.
Freelance blogger Bamidele Onibalusi used his blog Writers in Charge to show his content marketing skills while increasing his audience. He now does a full-time job blogging for other companies.
According to Glassdoor, the average freelancer in the US earns about $ 40,000 a year. Keep in mind that this number depends on your level of experience and the niche you are writing in.
Here is a breakdown of how much you can earn in various niches, according to the Editorial Freelance Association:
You may not be able to charge these prices at the beginning, but the more experience and credibility you accumulate, the higher your rates will be. But also make sure that you do not ask too little at the beginning.
Billing $ 10 for an article seems to be an easy way to attract customers, but in truth, this can deter high-quality customers as your skills are challenged. Apart from that, it can wipe your motivation to keep going if you ask so little.
Because we're dealing with pricing, it's better to charge your clients per project than hourly rates, as it can be difficult to determine how long you'll need to complete a task, especially if you're just starting out as a freelancer,
If you raise a fee based on the project itself, you'll be rewarded when you're done faster, and your customers will know from the start how much they'll pay.
According to WriteWorldwide, in your first year as a freelance author, you can charge so much per project, ignoring your niche or past writing experience:
The best thing about freelance writing is that you do not need a lot of traffic on your blog to earn money. All companies really value is that you can write great content.
Jorden Roper, for example, earned $ 5,000 in her fourth month as a freelance writer, and Jennifer Gregory draws about six-figure sums a year from her freelance writing business.
As a freelance blogger, you need to create written content and attract visitors to a company's website so that some of those visitors can become customers for the company.
Marketers will continue to spend more money on content creation in the future, according to the 2019 report from the Content Marketing Institute, and 50% of surveyed marketers expect their content marketing budget to increase in 2019.
If there are companies that make money in your niche and as long as those companies create content, you can bet they need authors.
Note that I mentioned that the company needs to make money. One of the worst mistakes you can make as a freelance blogger is choosing a niche where companies can not afford to pay you.
For example, writing about art maybe your idea of having fun, and you may have a lot of knowledge about it, but how many blogs can regularly pay you to write about it?
The road to profitability as a freelance blogger is finding the right market to position yourself.
A quick way to test if there is money to be made in your niche is to find at least ten authors covering the niche you want to write in. You can do this by simply doing a search on LinkedIn with the keywords for your niche.
For example, when I search for people with the exact title "freelance personal finance writer" on LinkedIn, I get about 42 results. You can also do without quotation marks for a more comprehensive search, resulting in even more results.
This is an easy way to validate your niche.
We've already noticed that as a freelance author, you do not need a lot of traffic to make money, but that does not mean people just find your blog and hire you.
You have to go out and promote your service.
If you've created sample texts in your blog and possibly guest posts in other blogs, you can start looking at companies you want to write for.
You can also use marketplaces for freelancers like Upwork, SEOclerks and Fiverr. But while there are a few freelance writers who make a lot of money, such as Danny Marguiles, who earns over $ 100,000 a year with Upwork, most freelance writers on these platforms earn very little money.
To avoid the race to the bottom of these marketplaces, you have to do most of the publicity yourself.
So you can find blogs for which you can write.
The best way to find businesses or blogs in your niche for which you want to write is to simply search Google for keywords related to that niche and see what's coming.
Because the blogs that appear on the first pages of Google, clearly invest a lot in content marketing.
For example, if I was looking for blogs for which I could write in the fitness niche, a simple search term like "fitness blog" shows me the following:
You can also search for terms that are specific to your niche, such as: For example, in the case of fitness, something like "workout plans":
Now all you have to do is contact the blog owners and suggest their freelance writing service.
Use your own site
In addition to finding new writing, you should also use your own website, after all, you are a writer.
Use inbound marketing and SEO to get people into your website, where you can offer them your writing and blogging services.
Freelance author Maddy Osman does this on her freelance website The Blogsmith.
Maddy Osman is a freelance author
Maddy Osman is a freelance author
2. Sell e-books to your audience.
Selling ebooks is one of the most popular ways for bloggers to monetize their blogs. It's perfect because it's relatively easy to create and usually has a reasonable price that most visitors can buy.
But e-books are more than just a way for bloggers to quickly monetize their blogs. As a blogger, selling an ebook may be the quickest way to test whether people are interested enough in what you cover to pay for it.
E-books are also a low-risk way for your website visitors to estimate the value you offer before they buy more expensive products.
Contrary to popular belief, you do not need a lot of traffic on your blog to make money from your books. For example, David Oudiette converted the knowledge he gained when creating landing pages into a 252-page 39-dollar e-book.
He did not have much traffic on his blog because everything he did at the time was advice, but David was able to earn more than $ 13,000 with his e-book.
The Landing Page Cookbook Ebook
The Landing Page Cookbook E-Book (Source: your landing page sucks!)
David had to do the following to sell so many books:
He asked his blog subscribers for their landing page, gave them free tips, and then referred them to his book.
He answered questions and gave feedback on the landing pages of Quora and Reddit. Then he proposed his book as an additional source of information.
David has also added the book about Product Hunt.
Even more impressively, David sent an e-mail to companies and gave them free feedback on their landing page. He then answered the answers and linked them to his book.
So David did not have much traffic, but he did a lot of work.
There is also Taylor Pearson, who sold more than 5,000 books in four weeks, earning over $ 60,000 in 2015 alone with this book. Taylor had only 700 e-mail subscribers at the time.
Taylor attributes the success of his book to a few things:
Make fans of his blog become a beta reader while writing.
Creating a Facebook group to communicate the progress of his book with the most important readers. (Do you read: How to create a Facebook page).
Send the book to all members of the Facebook group so that they can leave an honest review on Amazon.
Keep everyone on their list on the progress of the book up to date, making the person more involved and later more likely to buy.
Sync social media messages during and after startup.
Send a personalized email to his book to each of his Gmail contacts.
Give a giveaway to promote the book.
The book became a bestseller in the Amazon Small Business section and the rest is history.
The End of Jobs e-book
The End of Jobs E-Book (Source: Amazon)
The great thing about these two examples is that they show that with the right marketing and a good book you do not need so many subscribers and that you certainly do not have to be an experienced writer.
None of these authors simply published and hoped, but instead spent a lot of work on the success of their books instead.
Where can you sell your e-book?
You can then sell your ebook either directly in your blog or on platforms like Gumroad or Podia.
Selling your ebook on your own website can be beneficial as you can keep 100% of the profit. For example, Harsh Agrawal of ShoutMeLoud dedicated a whole section of his website to his various e-books.
ShoutMeLoud e-books
ShoutMeLoud e-books
You can easily create something like this with the WordPress Plugin Easy Digital Downloads.
If you publish your ebook as Amazon Kindle, you can only withhold 70% of the profit. However, the advantage gained is that the more books you sell, the more attention you get, which leads to even more sales.
The sale of e-books is not limited to a particular niche. There are e-books about blogging, photography, fitness and everything you can imagine.
For example, if you had a blog that teaches gardening, you can sell an e-book by teaching your audience in more detail how to grow their own gardens or a particular plant.
You can even reuse some of the content you've already written in your blog for that purpose and then add more details and context.
How to do the book
If you do not have the time or ability to write a book yourself, you can hire Ghostwriter to do it.
You can find ghostwriters on LinkedIn, Scripted, Upwork and even Fiverr. Remember that you get exactly what you pay for. Experienced ghostwriters cost you more than a beginner.
You can also create your own book cover with tools like Canva, Photoshop, and Snappa, or pay for a service like 99designs and get it done by a professional.
3. Create and sell online courses.
Another way to monetize your blog is to sell online courses. What keeps most bloggers from creating their own course is that they think you have to be a kind of expert to teach a course.
This is not true. All you need to really teach a course is to know more than the people you teach and to be able to present that information in ways that add value to people.
IWT's Ramit Sethi earns millions with his courses, not because he is a certified financial planner, but because he helps people to solve problems in their lives.
finance course
Financial Share (Source: I Will Teach You To Be Rich)
You do not have to be a certified chef to create a course where people learn how to cook. If you can cook better than most people and create your course material so that people really learn how to cook, then nothing prevents you from creating your course.
More people than ever attend online classes. By 2025, the e-learning industry is expected to grow to around $ 325 billion.
You also do not have to be an influencer like Ramit Sethi to get a decent income from your courses.
There are people like Joseph Michael, who earned $ 40,000 as a freshman, teaching authors how to use the popular Scrivener writing software.
Scrivener Course
Scrivener Course (Source Scrivener Coach LLC)
Joseph had neither thousands of visitors nor a huge email list. He sold his course by turning to influencers and applying his course to webinars he spoke on.
How do I find course ideas?
If you already have an audience, all you have to do is identify a problem that many of them have in common and that you can solve.
Ways to Identify Pain Points Your Target Audience Wants to Solve:
Submit a Survey: The quickest way to find out what people are having in your audience is to ask them. You can do this by sending a simple poll by e-mail.
Here's an example from Ramit Sethi, who did just that in one of his e-mails shortly before the New Year:
How to monetize a blog in 2019 (13 Best ways)
Note: I hope you enjoy this post. If you like this post, please Share this post with your friends.
Thank you So Much For Visiting My Blog
Nice
ReplyDeleteAmazing
ReplyDeleteFantastic bro
ReplyDeleteMonetizing my blog has really been a big issue for me because I still didn't get the guidelines on do that, until I came this blog today. This blog is really one great piece loaded with accuracy and excellent tips to start monetizing blog and I am glad I came across it. I would be so glad if you could check and give a feedback on my article about ZEDGE. It would be highly appreciated. You have a nice piece here, thumbs up for this one. I will surely bookmark this article, just so I came new updates on your blog often. Nice one.
ReplyDeletePost a Comment