How to Make Money Blogging in 2024 (13 Lucrative Blog Monetization Strategies Ranked)
Have you been running your blog hoping to make money online but just don’t know how to make money blogging?
As a blogger, this is probably the worst situation you can find yourself in.
Fortunately, you don’t have to live with it.
If you’re tired of the frustrations or simply want to avoid blogging for 5 years only to earn a total of $100 then read on.
We’ve written this article to show you that making money online is possible.
This is the practical advice you need to run a successful blogging business. We’ve included the steps you should follow, a list of the fastest and most profitable ways through which you can make money online and example success stories.
This article is designed to get you unstuck, help you build a profitable online business and enjoy life like we do.
How to Make Money Blogging in 2022
If you are like us and many other bloggers, you want to blog so that you can make money.
If you’re not making good money from your blog, it could be that you made the one mistake which the majority of bloggers make. A single mistake which often leads to discouragement and frustration, causing some bloggers to even quit blogging.
In most cases, to start making money through blogging, all you need to do is implement the right monetization strategy. But depending on your unique case, if you’re not making money, maybe you need to make a big change.
You might need to go back to the drawing board and pick your blog niche afresh.
You’ll also need to come up with a clear plan of how you’ll make money because blogging for money is different from blogging for fun.
Blogging for money means running an online business.
If you want to make money blogging, then understand that you’re actually going into business.
Therefore, to make money blogging, the first thing you need to embrace is the idea of doing business.
Pick Your Blog Niche Based on Market Demand, Not Just Passion
So many people emphasize the importance of passion in blogging. Passion is indeed important. But the question is, how long can you keep blogging without making any money?
If you only focus on passion, you’ll not make much money—if any. Yes, you can start a business based on passion. But for sustained earnings and maximum profits, you should make having a successful business your passion.
The success of your blogging business is largely determined by the market demand for what you’re offering.
If your blog offers something the market doesn’t demand, no-one will buy it. But if you identify a demand for something in the market and meet it, then making money will be easy.
Convert Your Skills and Passion into a Valuable Key Result
To make money blogging, you need to find something to sell for a profit.
This will however work only if you understand what your target audience is looking for.
Think of managers struggling to lead their teams. Think of obese women seeking to lose weight with no success. And what about marketers trying to gain social media followers in vain?
Such people need results. If you can show them how to achieve the results they need, they’ll pay you for it.
This is called a valuable key result. And you can only provide a valuable key result if you have the necessary skills (and some passion too).
For example, you might be very skilled and passionate about online marketing. Since not everyone is good at this, you can decide to provide a solution for the marketers who need help hitting their targets.
When you provide results using your skills and passion, you’ll keep your blogging business growing and your earnings reflecting accordingly.
What Does Your Target Audience Demand?
It’s pointless to start thinking of a solution, let alone how to sell it, when you don’t even know whether there’s a demand for it. You can end up building a great solution which no-one is interested in.
You can avoid such a situation by conducting market research.
Market research will show you what questions people are asking. These questions are reflections of the pain points of your target audience.
Understanding these pain points is key to developing the right solution and marketing it the right way.
Consider this example of social marketers’ pain points.
Out of guesswork, you would think that the biggest problem for social marketers is creating engaging content. Well, research shows that their biggest challenge is accurately calculating ROI.
Developing Your Key Result
Once you know what your target audience is looking for but not finding, it’s time to get to work.
Are your skills able to provide the solution? If yes, then develop a solution that provides the needed results in the most convenient way and in the shortest time possible.
This calls for more research. This time round, to find out what results other solutions (or apparent solutions) provide.
You can do this research by performing a simple Google search. Type the audience’s problem in the search box and check out the top solutions to see what they’re offering.
Also head over to discussion platforms Reddit and Quora as well as product review sites like Trustpilot and Capterra. Go through the discussions and see what people are saying about the products/services they use and pick out any gaps you see.
These are the gaps you need to fill using your skills. Combine your skills with your interest in the field and the passion to succeed and you’ll definitely provide results which no-one else has been able to.
In the event that your current skill set doesn’t enable you to provide the results the market demands, then it will be best to improve your skills. This shouldn’t be difficult since online courses make it very possible.
Your Target Audience Needs to Have a High Audience Revenue Potential
To succeed in your blogging business, you need to consider the revenue potential of your target audience.
Audience revenue potential is the amount of money you can make from selling your offering to your audience.
To determine the audience revenue potential, multiply the number of blog visitors with the revenue you can potentially earn from each visitor.
This gives you three levels of earning: a high, medium and low audience revenue potential.
If you have a high audience revenue potential, then you’re looking at a literal gold mine. A medium audience revenue potential is okay though you’ll need to attract more visitors to make good money.
A low audience revenue potential is bad news. You can’t make much money with that. You’ll do yourself a favor if you target a different kind of audience.
Many Visitors x High Revenue per Visitor = High Audience Revenue Potential
Many Visitors x Low Revenue per Visitor = Medium Audience Revenue Potential
Few Visitors x High Revenue per Visitor = Medium Audience Revenue Potential
Few Visitors x Low Revenue per Visitor = Low Audience Revenue Potential
Since you need many visitors and high revenue per visitor, let’s look at how you can get these.
Attracting Visitors to Your Blog
The amount of blog traffic you attract is determined by how good your content strategy is and how much you market your blog.
Your content strategy is what guides you on the kind of content you create and publish on your blog. It’s what eventually makes you an authority in your niche and helps you draw traffic to your blog.
To build your content strategy and know what to write about, you have to conduct some research.
Keyword Research
The surest way of attracting traffic to your blog is by creating SEO-optimized blog content. And you can only do this by conducting keyword research.
Keyword research will tell you what your audience is searching for through Google. With this information, you’re then able to create content which answers the questions your audience has.
When doing keyword research, it’s important that you consider both short and long-tail keywords.
Short-tail keywords are search phrases which are 3 words or less. They are very broad and attract high traffic. Long-tail keywords on the other hand are longer than 3 words, very targeted and with less search traffic but high conversion rates.
Using the right keywords is the secret to building your blog traffic for the long-term. This will give you traffic straight from Google search results.
Using keywords also helps you target the right audience (aka relevant blog visitors). Attracting relevant blog visitors is necessary for increasing your conversion rates.
Our keyword research tool of choice is SEMrush. SEMrush is a premium keyword research tool that consists of 40+ advanced tools to help you with everything SEO.
When using SEMrush for your keyword research, you’ll know which exact keywords to target in your content based on how much traffic they’re generating.
If you’re going to attract traffic to your blog, there’s no way you’ll ignore social media. And there’s no way you’ll do social media marketing and ignore Facebook.
Facebook has over 2.4 billion monthly active users and Americans earning $75,000 or more choose Facebook over other social networks.
With these users openly sharing their likes, interests and other personal information, Facebook is one of the best sources of relevant blog visitors.
Immediately you secure a domain name to start your blog, the next thing you need to do is create a Facebook business page. You can use this to market your blog for free and interact with your audience on the platform.
As a visual platform, Pinterest is the perfect place to post visual content that links back to your blog. This can be anything ranging from a beautiful image to an infographic featured on your blog.
Images are important in blogging. They significantly increase your blog posts’ engagement rates.
To drive more traffic from Pinterest to your blog, make sure you pin images which link back to your blog.
Are you among the bloggers who think that LinkedIn is only for job seekers?
With over 660 million users in more than 200 countries, LinkedIn is a prime market which you should be active in.
One of the ways you could attract traffic to your blog is by presenting yourself as the professional blogger that you are. With many businesses in need of blog content, this could easily get you some big clients.
Big clients pay big money.
Podcasts
Did you know that podcasts are highly effective in generating blog traffic?
Podcasts get their power from the fact that audio is more engaging than text. When you speak, you also get a good opportunity to convince your listeners about the results you promise to help them attain.
One of the easiest ways to get started with podcasts is by using Buzzsprout.
To help you get started, Buzzsprout gives you up to 90 days of free podcast hosting. They also make it easier for you to list your podcast in popular directories like Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts.
Ensuring High Revenue Per Visitor
To make more money, you need to implement the right monetization strategy. Implementing the right income channels can help you earn from little blog traffic.
If you want to break through the $10,000 ceiling and join the club of high-earning bloggers, you need to be strategic about your monetization.
As we always advice new bloggers, the best way to monetize when getting started is by targeting the highest-paying revenue models. Such models work best when you target B2B audiences.
In case your blog targets individuals and not businesses, then high-income individuals should be your target.
To guarantee high revenue per visitor, you should use your skills and experience to provide the valuable key result that your high-end target audience demands.
You Need to Keep Your Target Audience Engaged
When your hard work pays off and you start getting visitors to your blog, you need to keep them there.
The typical way of engaging your audience is by posting more content on your blog. But for the best results, you need to do more than that.
Email Marketing
One of the biggest mistakes you can make with your blog is to fail to collect email addresses. You might think that 21st century marketing is supposed to be done via social media only and not email.
Yes, social media is great, but email marketing provides results which social media marketing cannot match.
Email marketing is effective because your email subscribers have expressed interest in receiving more information from you. This gives you the opportunity to sell to them directly through personalized emails.
Successful email marketing requires the right tool—a tool like ConvertKit.
ConvertKit enables you to send the right messages to your subscribers based on how they interact with your blog content. This is something you’re able to do from the very first day your subscribers visit your blog.
When you engage your audience using communication tailored to their specific interests, you increase the chances of converting their interest into sales.
Blogging statistics found that email marketing is key to blogging success.
Webinars
More and more bloggers are embracing webinars. This is mostly because of the ease of organizing one and the engagement rates they offer, mostly through Q&A sessions.
Apart from the obvious option of charging for attending the webinar, you can make it free then pitch your offerings in the course of the webinar. You can also pitch your solution during Q&A sessions.
You can easily get started organizing and hosting a webinar by using WebinarJam. WebinarJam is full of features that will help you host your webinar like a pro.
WebinarJam enables you to reach up to 5,000 people in a single presentation, host a roundtable of up to 6 experts, automatically record the webinar, flexibly schedule a session or series of sessions and so much more.
List of High-income Blog Niches
There are many blog niches and they’re all different. And when it comes to making money blogging, no two niches are the same.
The niche you choose to blog in will play a role in determining how much money you can make.
You can make money in most niches as long as you provide the key result demanded for by an audience that has a high revenue potential.
But if you want to make lots of money, you may need to consider niches with high income potential.
Here are five of the most profitable blog niches you can choose from when setting up your blogging business.
1. Making Money Online
Just as you want to learn how to make money through blogging, there are many others with a similar ambition. And when the demand for something is high, then there’s an opportunity to earn through satisfying that demand.
One of the most successful blogs in this niche is Smart Passive Income.
Pat Flynn, the founder of Smart Passive Income, started the blog in 2008. Consistently working on the blog, he’s reported to rake in a massive $200K per month.
2. Personal Finance
Personal finance is a high-earning blog niche because of the huge number of people seeking financial independence.
People need help with budgets, spending habits, investments and everything concerning finances. One blog that provides this help so well is Making Sense of Cents.
Making Sense of Cents is owned and run by Michelle Schroeder-Gardner. From her blog’s success, she was able to pay off $38,000 in student loan in a record 7 months.
On a monthly basis, Making Sense of Cents makes at least $100K.
3. Technology
You know the importance of technology. But do you know that there are so many out there who need help using tech?
More than that, people search for product review, read buyer guides and compare prices before committing to buy. Ewdison Then, founder of Slash Gear, identified this need and sought to provide what the audience needed.
Slash Gear is reported to make $80K per month.
4. Lifestyle
The broad nature of the lifestyle niche can make it challenging to pull off but there are bloggers who have done it well.
One lifestyle blog that has been very successful is A Beautiful Mess run by sisters Elsie Larson and Emma Chapman.
Through their blog, the sisters make up to $125K per month.
5. Food
The food niche is lucrative but to succeed in it, you need to understand what people want. They want food that looks and tastes good. This means that you need lots of skills and creativity as well as a strong passion for cooking.
This is what makes Trevor and Jennifer successful in this niche. They run the blog Show Me The Yummy.
With Trevor being a professional photographer, it’s easy to see how those skills contribute to the success of this couple’s blog.
Their blog makes up to $46K per month.
Other High-earning Blog Niches
There are many blog niches through which you can make money pretty easily. Apart from those we’ve featured above, others include:
- Marketing – this is mainly a B2B niche where you target businesses to offer them marketing solutions. You can also target professional marketers though that may not be as profitable as targeting businesses.
- Fashion – the same way fashion is a big industry in the real world, so it is in the blogging world. Fashion enthusiasts are always looking for inspiration and if you can provide that, then you can easily make money in the process.
- Relationships – relationships are challenging and people are searching for practical advice. If you can help people get dates, improve their marriages and even go through divorce, you can make a big difference both in their lives and your pockets.
- Health and fitness – you can take this niche as it is or break it down in different ways. You can focus on food, exercises (physical and mental) or even home remedies. As long as you’re helping people achieve their health goals, they will pay you for it.
- Personal Development – character building, habit formation, developing discipline and so much more, are what define the personal development niche. If you can satisfy this need, then you can earn from it.
13 Best Ways to Make Money With Your Blog Ranked (and Earn up to $200,000 per Month)
Now to the core of the article.
Which are the best ways through which you can make money blogging?
There are many ways you can make money online. Some ways are more established than others and can generate income faster than others.
As a general guide on the income potential, here are typical figures you can expect with various income channels:
- Donations: 0.50 – 5 USD
- Ads: 2 – 10 USD
- Digital products (ebooks): 5 – 25 USD
- Sponsored posts and podcasts: 10 – 40 USD
- Memberships: 15 – 90 USD
- Affiliate marketing: 60 – 200 USD
- Online courses: 40 – 500 USD
- Virtual summits:
- Freelancing: 30 – 400 USD
- Coaching/Consulting: 40 – 600 USD
- Niche job board: 200-1,000 USD RPM
- Physical products/E-commerce: 100 – 2,000 USD
- Webinars: 40 – 800 USD
- SaaS software: 40 – 1,000 USD
We’re going to look at 13 of the best income channels you can utilize to realize your blog-earning goals. Check them out and implement the ones which fit your blog’s niche and goals.
1. Donations (Get Support While Doing Good)
Donations are a slightly different revenue stream compared to others. And as with other revenue channels, what you’re blogging about is what will determine whether you can ask for donations or not.
Donations are common in niches where you’re blogging about something that needs people’s support to accomplish.
In most cases, it must be something that touches people’s hearts, making them want to help.
Most blogs in such niches make use of fundraising events because generally, donations alone don’t add up to much. Fundraising events enable the blogger (who often runs a non-profit organization), to raise money to accomplish the task while taking care of expenses.
Which Are The Highest-paying Niches for Donations?
Niches which utilize donations revolve around matters that evoke empathy or a sense of responsibility.
In some cases though, the blog can be about a subject of interest where the audience gives because they feel helped by the published content.
Some of the highest-paying niches utilizing donations are:
- Religion – the audience of religious blogs are usually seeking to grow spiritually or looking for encouragement during tough times. Their understanding is that the blog exists to help them and not to make money. It is this “giving” that makes the audience donate as a means of thanking the blogger and helping them take care of expenses.
- Environmental and wildlife conservation – most people are aware of the need for conservation but only a few are willing to pursue nothing else but the conservation of natural resources. Those who dedicate themselves to creating awareness and spearheading conservation efforts often get support through donations.
- Human rights – human rights bloggers are usually dedicated to fighting for the rights of the oppressed. For all the campaigning they do and their dedication, they need monetary support. Although they can get support through donations, human rights bloggers are often funded by human rights organizations.
How Much Money Can You Make Through Donations and Fundraising events?
Donations work well when incorporated with fundraising events. If you make use of donations and they don’t add up to much, you should try fundraising.
For an idea of how much money donations and fundraising can provide, check out this list of charities which received the highest amounts in 2019.
Best Platforms for Donations and Fundraising events
To utilize donations and online fundraising events as a revenue stream, then choosing the right platform is definitely important.
Some of the factors to consider in choosing a fundraising platform include security, integration with email and social media, mobile support and how fast you can access the funds.
Here are some of the most popular platforms you can choose from:
Tips to Maximize Donations
To receive maximum monetary support for the good work you’re doing, you should implement some best practices. These are tips which will go a long way in helping you capture the attention of donors and convince them to give.
Here are some tips you should implement:
- Work on first impressions – just because you’re not an e-commerce site doesn’t mean that your blog should look cheap. Make it look good; use high quality images and videos, informative and heart-moving content and highlight your story.
- Show transparency – when receiving money from people, you must show that you’re trustworthy. To do this, report on how much you have received in the past and what you have done with the money.
- Target organizations – to get more money, target organizations. These have bigger budgets than most individuals and they often want to be associated with a worthy cause.
- Encourage monthly donations – although one-off giving is better than no giving, always encourage your donors to give monthly. This will provide consistent funding for the work you’re doing.
- Collect email addresses – anyone who gives towards your efforts is likely open to hearing from you. So collect their email addresses and make sure you keep them updated.
Donation Success Story
Among the charities which received huge amounts from donors is the Wounded Warrior Project. Wounded Warrior Projects focuses on serving injured post 9/11 American veterans and service members.
In the fiscal year ending September 30, 2018, the Wounded Warrior Project received a total of $337M.
2. Display Ads on Your Blog
Displaying ads on your blog is an easy option since it doesn’t involve much work. You’re not responsible for making them look or sound good. You’re also not responsible for convincing people to take action.
There are two ways you can make money through advertising on your blog:
- Earning through ad impressions – impressions are the number of times an ad is displayed to a blog visitor. You get this number by counting the number of times the ad was loaded. Every impression means that one person has been reached.
- Earning when ads are clicked – through this method, you only earn when someone clicks on the ad. Without a click, it’s considered that the ad didn’t reach the intended audience.
In discussing ad revenue, the term used is revenue per mille, shortened to RPM. RPM shows you the revenue you can earn from 1,000 impressions.
Impressions in this case also include clicks and not just the number of times an ad is loaded.
Highest-paying Niches for Ad Revenue
Some niches are well suited for running ads and they can be very profitable. In some cases, these niches are unable to effectively utilize other monetization strategies.
To make good money through ads, your blog needs to have lots of traffic. More traffic increases your click-through rate.
To understand the role your niche plays in determining ad revenue, check out the below numbers on ad spending by industry.
So which blog niches are best for ads?
- Consumer goods – with the retail industry spending the most on advertising, it’s obvious that your best option for ad revenue is consumer goods. Since people are always buying these products, you just have to give honest and helpful reviews.
- News niche – a news blog is also a good way of making money through ads, especially if you’re being paid per ad impressions. People will always want to be informed and so a news site will rarely run out of traffic.
- Insurance – insurance might not sound like an interesting niche but it’s very lucrative for ad revenue. Businesses can pay up to $50 to advertise on an insurance keyword whereas a keyword like “bodybuilding” can cost $1 only.
How Much Money Can You Make Through Ads?
Putting ads on your website can earn you millions of dollars. How much you make in total depends on blog traffic, the kind of ads and how many you display, and the revenue per ad.
Many bloggers run ads through Google AdSense. However, many others (including ourselves), have discovered that there are better alternatives to Google AdSense.
In the days of using Google AdSense, we would earn between 1-2 USD RPM. Like many others, we thought we were doing fine but considering we were getting 250,000 monthly visitors, we realized that this figure was too small.
After doing tons of market research on advertising partners, we switched to Monumetric.
The change was evident. In around 3 months, our ad revenue had increased by 7x, from 1-2 USD RPM to 7-14 USD RPM.
Tips to Maximize Ad Revenue on Your Blog
It’s relatively easy to earn money through Monumetric ads, especially since they handle everything for you. They also provide you with a dedicated agent and 24/7 support.
If you however want to ensure that your ad revenue remains high, especially when working with the right advertising partner like Monumetric, just focus on sustaining and growing your blog traffic.
You can do this by:
- Always publish high-quality content – publishing high-quality content is the surest way of retaining your audience. And to increase traffic, work on your content strategy by conducting keyword research for your blog content.
- Check your posts’ performance – it’s important that you check the performance of your blog posts. This will help you know which topics your audience is most interested in.
- Get businesses to advertise on your blog – businesses are eager to get their brands and products/services before the eyes of the audience they target. If you have the traffic, you can come up with ad packages and pitch to businesses or just use programmatic advertising.
Example Ad Revenue Success Story
There are probably no blogs which earn exclusively through ads since most will include another revenue channel. There are however some blogs which heavily rely on ads.
One of those blogs which is well known for its success in using ads is Engadget.
Founded in 2004 as a source of consumer tech news, it has grown to become a global multimedia company. Engadget is reported to make around $47M in annual revenues. That translates to almost $4M per month and the core of that comes from advertising.
3. Sell Ebooks
People everywhere are looking for knowledge. They want to improve their skills and get ahead in life.
Despite the popularity of YouTube and other video sharing platforms, books are still an important part of learning. And with technology, you don’t have to go through the pains of publishing a physical book.
A better option is to self-publish your book and sell it on your own blog. This way, you get to retain all the profits.
And in case you’re thinking “I’m not a prolific writer,” that should be the least of your worries.
You can hire a freelance writer on Upwork, Flexjobs or Freelancer at a one-off cost which you’ll recover through the ebook earnings.
Highest-paying Niches for Selling Ebooks
You can make money through ebooks in virtually every niche because it’s all about sharing knowledge and experience. All the same, some niches seem to have more ebook sales than others:
- Weight loss – losing weight doesn’t happen in a day. As much as reading instructions on a blog is good, you need to give your audience the convenience of accessing the instructions even when offline. Helpful and practical advice combined with convenience will give you sales.
- Fiction – people love reading stories they can relate with and if the story is good, you become their favorite author. Just one good book and you earn the “best-selling author” badge. This opens the door for more books and more sales.
- Romance – love is a big niche for ebooks and it mainly targets women. The good thing about women is that they spend money more easily as compared to men. You can also trust women to spread the word about your book far and fast.
- Self help – the number of people seeking to improve their lives is big. And they want to do it conveniently and without the high costs of personal coaching. In the self help niche, you can write about sub-niches like finances, discipline and confidence.
How Much Money Can You Make Selling Ebooks?
The Association of American Publishers routinely shares data on the state of the publishing market.
From their May 2020 report, ebook revenues increased by 39.2% compared to May 2019 with a total revenue of $113M.
A growing market proves that there is demand for the product. That means you can make money by selling your own ebook.
Best Platforms for Ebook Sales
There are several ways you can sell your ebook. The different ways come with their own pros and cons but all in all, they add up to your sales.
For maximum revenue, we advise that you at least sell your ebook on the below four platforms:
- Your own blog – selling your ebook on your own blog is your best bet if you’re to maximize on profits. To do this, use the Easy Digital Downloads plugin. This e-commerce plugin is the option that’s best suited for selling digital products.
- Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing – for additional reach, you can format your ebook into the kindle format and publish it through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. You can expect to earn up to 70% of royalty from sales on this platform.
- Google Play Books – you can also target the over 2 billion Android users by publishing with Google Play Books. You’ll earn up to 70% in revenue split for purchases made in the US, Canada, and Australia.
- Gumroad – Gumroad is quickly becoming a preferred store for many creators who want to sell their digital products. With lots of features, Gumroad is a complete e-commerce solution designed specifically for creators.
Tips to Maximize Ebook Sales
To make money selling your ebook, you need to plan well and be strategic with your marketing efforts.
To ensure that there is a demand for your ebook and that it brings in as much money as possible, follow these tips:
- Engage your email subscribers – you have to engage your email subscribers and reward them for their loyalty to your blog. Start marketing your ebook to them early and offer discounts while asking them to help promote it in their networks.
- Create a landing page for the ebook – creating a landing page for your ebook is a great way of turning normal blog visitors into your ebook customers. Use Leadpages to create a landing page which will help you build your email list as well as increase conversions.
- Offer some free chapters – consider offering your audience some free chapters of your ebook. This will create suspense and they will want to read the rest. This increases the number of customers for your ebook.
- Collect testimonials and reviews before ebook launch – before launching your ebook, give away some free copies for the purpose of collecting feedback. Use the feedback you receive to inform your marketing strategy so that you can make more sales once you launch the ebook.
Example Ebook Success Story
The Amazon Kindle publishing platform is home to thousands of independent authors. As such, it’s the best place to get information on ebook sales.
According to their 2019 Year in Review report, Amazon reported that thousands of independent authors earned more than $50K through ebook sales. From these, more than a thousand had passed $100K in royalties.
One author stood out for topping the Kindle ebook best seller list for a record 7 times. The author is L.J. Ross, famed for her DCI Ryan series.
L.J. Ross’ books are reported to have grossed over 1.2 million GBP from sales of over 4 million copies. Over 90% of the sales come from ebooks with the rest being audiobooks.
4. Sponsored Posts (Including Podcast Sponsorships)
Sponsored posts are another means by which you can make money from your blog. With the most lucrative sponsorships coming from big businesses, you should work towards increasing your audience size.
If you don’t have a following that’s big and loyal enough, you can pitch smaller businesses. They may not pay as much as the bigger ones, but you’ll still make some money.
You might be pleased to know that sponsored blog posts are not your only option. You can also get sponsorships for your podcasts. Podcasts have become very attractive and many bloggers are using them to increase their earnings.
Highest-paying Niches for Sponsored Podcasts
Looking at podcasts, you can use these as an alternative to creating text-based blog posts. It’s also easier for your audience to identify and relate with you when they hear your voice.
Podcast revenues usually come from advertising and they have been rising over the years. It’s estimated that by 2021, revenue will surpass $1 Billion.
You can create a podcast in any niche and make money through it. Some niches have however seen more success with podcasts than others.
The June 2020 podcast advertising report by Magellan AI shows that the biggest podcast sponsors are businesses.
From the top 15 podcast advertisers, you can see that technology is a lucrative niche. Podcasting in this niche opens you up to sponsorship from big firms which have big budgets.
Other notable niches include insurance, banking and healthcare.
All in all, what advertisers mostly look for is the audience size and the number of unique downloads. These reflect the potential reach the advertiser’s message could have.
Where to Get Sponsorship for Your Posts and Podcasts
The goal of finding a sponsor for your blog or podcast is to make money. There are many sponsors out there who would like to partner with you. The only problem is that you might not know them or how to get to them.
To help you with this, we’ve listed some of the places you can get sponsorship for your blog:
- Rakuten Advertising – over 150,000 publishers in 200+ countries
- Find your influence – over 500 advertising brands
- TapInfluence – sponsorship for food, fashion, beauty, and lifestyle niches
- Pollinate Media Group – 2,500 bloggers in 30 industries
- Influence Central – almost 10,000 vetted Influencers and 300+ brands
Your podcasts also need to make money. Fortunately, you can focus on creating your podcast while someone else focuses on finding sponsorship.
Podcast advertising networks can help you land sponsorships by matching you with brands. Here are some of the top networks you should check out:
- Midroll – over 300 top-rated podcasters and over 200 successful brands
- PodcastOne – over 200 of the most popular podcasts and 90+ big brands
- AdvertiseCast – over 1,500 podcasts and 500+ advertisers
- Anchor – no minimum audience size required to join
Best Platforms for Your Sponsored Podcasts
To produce quality podcasts, you need to use the right podcasting platforms. You also need to make sure your podcasts are available in the directories which people visit to listen to and download podcasts.
For podcast creation and hosting, we recommend Buzzsprout as the best podcast hosting platform. Buzzsprout will automatically optimize your audio files, provide scheduling and give you access to advanced stats to track your progress.
You can also create a transcript of your podcast right inside Buzzsprout. You’ll use the transcript to make your podcast more accessible to search engines. This will help you build an audience faster.
Other podcast hosting platforms you can check out are:
- Podbean – unlimited hosting, publish from mobile and free podcast website
- Simplecast – unlimited hosting, multiple shows and web player analytics
- Transistor – unlimited hosting, easy porting podcast from other platforms
Once you’ve created your podcast, you need to submit to podcast directories. Although there are many podcast directories, among the top you should ensure you submit to include:
Tips to Maximize Blog and Podcast Sponsorships
Both podcasts and blog posts can earn you good money through sponsorship. What you need to work on is becoming an authority in your niche.
This is what will give you more influence over your listeners and be able to deliver results to your sponsors.
Here are some tips to help you get there faster:
- Focus on being an authority in your niche – becoming an authority increases your influence and more people will read your blog and listen to your podcast. The more readers and listeners you have, the more money you can make.
- Build a big engaged audience – whether it’s a blog post or a podcast, make sure it’s engaging. Address your audience, be conversational, speak to their concerns, ask questions, run polls, create hashtags and provide tweetable one liners. When the audience engagement is high, it drives loyalty and growth.
- Cultivate sponsor interest – since you know what your audience needs and wants, speak to them about it then pitch deep-pocketed companies which would want to get in front of your audience to drive revenue and brand awareness.
Example Podcasting Success Story
One of the biggest successes in podcasting is John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneurs On Fire. JLD, as he likes to be called, has a rich story which you can surely relate to if you’re looking for success.
Dropping out of Law School in the 1st semester, he tried corporate finance and real estate before finally making it big through podcasting.
Through podcasting, he has been able to make $171,682 in the month of June 2020 alone.
5. Sell Memberships and Maximize Recurring Revenue
Memberships are not as common as other monetization strategies but they’re profitable too. The most common way is to provide content for everyone else but preserve some premium content for registered members.
To increase the number of registered members, you can provide a teaser for every premium content you publish. Give the audience a few paragraphs they can read for free then ask them to unlock the rest using a membership.
If the content is good, many of them will take action.
You can charge a monthly fee for membership and provide members with other benefits like discounts on ebooks or other things you’re selling on your blog.
Highest-paying Blog Niches for Memberships
Memberships are best utilized in niches where the needs of the audience cannot be satisfied through a one-time solution. If the problem can only be solved by providing value over a period of 12+ months, then a membership is your monetization strategy of choice.
Here are some of the blog niches which utilize memberships:
- Online magazines – magazines are a great niche for memberships. Apart from providing content only to registered members, you can also offer members a discount on magazine sales. Monthly subscriptions will ensure money is always flowing in.
- Gyms/Fitness studios – although some benefits of exercising can be achieved in less than a month, it takes a lifestyle to sustain those benefits. This provides gyms with an opportunity to earn through memberships.
- Tutorials – tutorial sites make good money through memberships since learning often spans several months. There is also increased interest in online courses so traffic also helps them increase their revenue. With a tutorial site, you can provide basic lessons for free then provide the advanced stuff to registered members. You can also provide free access to all tutorials but then require membership for tutorial downloads and other benefits.
- Travel – the travel niche is also a good niche for memberships. With helpful content freely-available on your blog, you can provide members with negotiated discounts at hotels or airlines.
Best Tools for Running Your Membership Blog
To successfully run a membership site you’ll need a plugin for your blog. A membership plugin is the tool that will handle the membership registrations and provide the necessary features.
For the best mix of performance and functionality, the MemberPress plugin is your best choice. Perfect for your WordPress blog hosted by Bluehost, it takes all the difficult setup out of the way.
MemberPress also provides member control and categorization as well as integration with third-party solutions you might already be using like Constant Contact and ConvertKit.
Tips to Maximize Memberships Revenue
You can increase your earnings through membership sites by doing a couple of things right. These are things you’ll need to keep in mind even before launching your membership option.
- Create valuable content – the value of what you provide is what will make your audience subscribe and remain subscribed. They have to receive more of what they get from you. Valuable content will also guarantee referrals. From a McKinsey study, up to 20% new subscriptions come from recommendations.
- Provide a financial incentive – show your subscribers that by subscribing, they’re actually saving some money. One of the best incentives is discounts on any other products you sell. You can also encourage annual subscriptions by making them cheaper than 12x the monthly fee.
Example Membership Success Story
A good success story of a purely-membership site is FabFitFun. FabFitFun sends its members boxes of different consumer products either seasonally (4 seasons/year) or annually (4 boxes at a go).
If someone chooses the seasonal option, they pay $49.99 while the annual option is cheaper, at $179.99. On the surface, it may seem as though the math doesn’t add up. But once you get to know that their annual revenue is over $200M, then you realize that it’s profitable.
More than that, investors have injected $80M into FabFitFun to help expand (and make even more money).
6. Attract Paid Public Speaking Gigs at Conferences or Workshops
Did you know that you can be paid to speak at conferences and workshops?
This is an easy opportunity you should take advantage of so as to earn some money even before building a big audience.
All you need is a solution to a problem which people face.
Speaking at a conference will not only earn you money but also an audience since it provides exposure to you and your blog.
Highest-paying Niches for Conferences and Workshops
There are conferences on almost every niche and you can get paid opportunities to speak in them.
In some niches though, there are more conferences being organized than in others. Here are some of the highest-paying niches for workshops and conferences.
- Business – there is a high demand for business advice because entrepreneurs are looking for ways of succeeding in business. All you need is to offer solutions to major business problems like cashflow, marketing and customer retention. Have a clear process of attaining the results you promise and you’ll get booked.
- Motivational speaking – popular motivational speakers are some of the richest people on earth. The demand for their advice is always high because many people are frustrated with the kind of lives they live. If you can inspire people to make better choices and live better lives, you’ll always be on demand.
- Religion – spiritual matters are dear to many and they seek to be encouraged and empowered according to their spiritual beliefs. Conferences and workshops providing spiritual perspectives and solutions to life challenges are among the most sought-after.
How Much Money Can You Make Through Workshops and Conferences?
Hosting workshops and speaking at conferences can earn you significant amounts of money. You’ve probably heard of extremely expensive speeches like that of President Donald Trump costing $1.5 Million.
Although commanding such figures may be a long shot for many, there are some “everyday” people speaking and earning good money.
Take for instance Poornima Vijayashanker, the founder of Femgineer.
Having done many free talks, she decided that because preparing was costing her time, she will ask to be paid. And she did. Her first paid speaking event was at the Wharton School of Business where she got $75.
Years later, Poornima earns between $5-10,000 per talk.
Best Platforms to Get You a Paid Speaking Gig
To get you started with paid speaking gigs, here are a few platforms you can consider checking out. They will give you exposure and an opportunity to make money speaking.
- SpeakerMatch – list of events you can apply to speak at (mostly paid)
- eSpeakers – business management and marketing for speakers
- GigSalad – speakers, musicians, bands, DJs and event services
- Meetup – find local events where you could participate and speak
- TED – no payment but massive exposure for speakers
- Local chamber of commerce – exposure to business owners (high-paying niche)
Tips to Quickly Become a Paid Speaker at a Conference or Workshop
The journey to becoming a highly-paid speaker is often long; it could take years. But it doesn’t have to.
Here are some things you can do to drastically shorten that journey and make extra money from your paid speaking gigs:
- Connect with event organizers at conferences and workshops – attend conferences and workshops and connect with the event organizers. Build a relationship and it will be easy to ask them to give you a speaking opportunity in their next conference.
- Create a website for your speaking business – create a website for your speaking business and include a landing page. Make it easy for people to book you and search engines to drive traffic to your business website.
- Specify how you help your clients – to increase your appeal, be clear on the exact results you help your clients achieve. Make a strong promise statement and confidently communicate your value proposition.
- Host a “mastermind” after an event – host a mastermind to engage with those who want more information and a one-on-one interaction with you. This provides a big opportunity to connect deeper while making more money.
Example Conference Speaker Success Story
Have you ever heard of Gary Vaynerchuk? You most likely have.
But in case you haven’t, he is a very successful marketer who used the internet to grow his father’s liquor business from $3-60M in a 5-year period.
Gary is one of the most sought-after public speakers in the business and marketing niches. Currently running his own advertising agency servicing Fortune 100 clients, he is reported to be worth at least $160M.
7. Recommend Software, Products and Tools With Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the high-revenue income channels many bloggers are happy to talk about. Many pro bloggers attribute more than half of their earnings to affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is an easy option because you recommend products and services which you have used and can testify to their usefulness.
You can easily talk about the features these tools have and show how they’ve helped you build a successful blog. For every blog visitor who uses your link to buy the product, you earn a commission.
Highest-paying Niches for Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing will earn you different figures depending on the niche and the affiliate programs you join.
Some niches have tons of things you can recommend while others have few. Those with many products make you money through many sales. Those with few might however make you more money due to high commissions.
Here are three niches which can earn you lots of money.
- Product reviews – the product review niche is one of the high earners when it comes to affiliate marketing. If for instance you review household products, the earning potential is very high because everything in people’s homes qualifies for reviews.
- Making money online – blogs about “how to make money online” are known to attract a lot of traffic. This is because there is an increase in the number of people interested in earning passive income. If you can show that you’re successful and recommend the tools you used to get success, people will buy.
- Personal finance – budgets, investments, credit cards, loan management etc, anything touching on people’s finances, will attract traffic. If you can show how to use certain products/services to tackle financial issues, then you can make money through it.
How Much Money Can You Make Through Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a money-making machine that many pro bloggers include in their monetization strategy.
To get an idea of how much money you can make through affiliate marketing, check out the below numbers.
As shown in the above figures, affiliate earnings can vary a lot. Be more influential by becoming an expert in your niche and more people will trust you and buy what you recommend.
Best Affiliate Programs You Can Join Today
There are countless affiliate programs you can join and start earning from. Some are however more popular than others. Either due to the high commissions they pay or the simplicity of how the program works.
Here is a list of some of the best affiliate programs you can choose from:
- Bluehost – web hosting (pays $65 per qualified sign-up)
- WebinarJam – webinar platform (pays 40% for every sale)
- Constant Contact – email marketing (pays $5 for trial sign-up and $105 for paid account)
- SEMrush – SEO/SEM tool (pays 40% lifetime commission for subscription sales)
- Buzzsprout – podcasting (pays one-time $25 for paid referral or $20 lifetime commission)
- Leadpages – landing pages (earn up to $50 recurring commission)
Tips to Maximize Affiliate Marketing Earnings
What can you do to maximize your affiliate marketing revenue?
Here are some tips that will help:
- Drive more targeted traffic to your blog – getting targeted traffic will give you blog visitors who are ready to buy. Such people increase your sales conversion rate and improve your earning potential. Conducting keyword research will help you target the ready-to-buy audience.
- Sign up for affiliate programs with longer cookie duration – most affiliate programs have a cookie duration of 30 days. This means that if your referred customer buys after 30 days, you won’t get a commission. Joining affiliate programs with longer cookie durations helps increase your earnings.
- Find affiliate programs offering recurring commissions – when looking for affiliate programs, prioritize those offering a recurring commission. Instead of paying you just once, these will pay you a commission for every subsequent purchase your referred customer makes.
Example Affiliate Marketing Success Story
If you want to know the potential of affiliate marketing, just look to Michelle Schroeder-Gardner for inspiration. An award-winning personal finance blogger earning over $100,000 per month, around half of her earnings come from affiliate marketing.
Here is a screenshot from some of her affiliate earnings.
8. Productize Your Knowledge and Sell Online Courses
If you want to make money for the long-term, one way you can do so is through selling online courses. Creating an online course is a great way of turning your knowledge into a valuable product.
Creating an online course will help you start making money from day 1. You won’t need to wait till you have thousands of blog visitors to start making money.
Before you create your online course, first determine the topic of your course. Next, conduct market research and validate your course idea to ensure there is demand for it.
Once created, start marketing your online course through your blog, email marketing and by hosting a live webinar.
Highest-paying Niches for Online Courses
Here are some of the niches where online courses bring in good money:
- Computer programming – technology creates opportunities and many people want to learn the skills which power computers and smartphones. Whether it’s website building or app development, online courses are a sure way of making money by sharing your knowledge.
- Business – over half a million new businesses are started every month but 30% of them are likely to go bankrupt within 2 years. To avoid being among those, entrepreneurs will seek to gain business skills. One of the most convenient ways of doing this is by taking online courses.
- Marketing – the top reasons why startups fail have something to do with marketing. There’s a big demand for skills on getting more customers, doing SEO right, social media marketing and everything marketing related. You can easily make money if you help marketers and business owners solve their marketing problems.
- Personal development – this niche is quite wide, covering subjects ranging from goal setting, confidence, procrastination, emotional intelligence and even conflict management. You will never lack an audience for online courses covering these subjects.
- Personal finance – almost everyone wants to make more money. How do they do it? If you can help them deal with debts, save, invest, trade in stocks or even get into crypto currency, as long as they see results, they will gladly pay you.
How Much Money Can You Make Through Online Courses?
In case you don’t know it yet, there is a growing demand for online courses.
More and more people are seeking to improve their skills without the costs associated with college and university education.
It might take you a few weeks or months to get your first students. But once they take your course and learn the skills you teach in it, their positive reviews will attract more students.
From a study done by Teachable, earnings from online courses can be impressively high. One school on the platform made $407,880 from online courses in just one month.
Best Platforms for Online Courses Revenue
Although you can host your online courses on your blog, that is not the best way to go about it. It’s simply too much work if you were to provide the best experience for yourself and your students.
Instead, consider using an online course platform that has been created specifically for this kind of revenue stream. Here you will have all the features that enable you to manage your online school stress-free.
One of the best platforms to use for hosting your online courses is Teachable. Another option to use is Thinkific. Both these platforms will provide you with an easy-to-use system which focuses on making you successful in monetizing the knowledge you have.
Tips to Maximize Online Course Revenue
Online courses are not difficult to develop. As long as you can record yourself in a high-quality video with a clear voice, you can get started any time.
Here are some things you can do to increase your revenue potential:
- Provide proof of value – for people to buy your course, they need to be sure of what they’ll get from it. Get some well-known influencers to vouch for your expertise and provide testimonials from students who took your course.
- Provide a money back guarantee – encourage more people to take your course by making it risk-free. Provide a 60-day money back guarantee to let them know that they will get their money back in case they don’t like the results they get.
- Increase the price of your course – once you have good results with 50+ students, increase the price of your course. Use the extra money to invest more into marketing and finding affiliates who will market your course for you. The marketing and affiliates will help increase your course sales dramatically.
Example Online Courses Revenue Success Story
One of the biggest names in online courses is Rob Percival. After many years working as a teacher, he learned about the lucrative niche of website development. He built websites for about 7 years then decided to teach others how to code.
His courses are highly-rated on Udemy and over 750,000 students have taken them.
Rob priced his original course on web development at $199 and made $15,000 in the first month. When he later released his course on the Swift programming language, he made $200,000 in the first month.
9. Launch and Monetize a Virtual Summit
Hosting a virtual summit is one of the ways you could make money quickly when just getting started as a blogger. All you need for a successful virtual summit is a group of experts who you’ll interview during the summit.
Unlike webinars, summits usually run for several days. And although you can charge for attendance, you can also make them free then later on sell an “all-access pass” for the recordings.
There are two ways of hosting these events: live or pre-recorded. Hosting a live virtual summit gives you more engagement because attendees can ask questions and get answers immediately.
When holding a live summit, take note of the potential extra cost due to bandwidth requirements.
Highest-paying Niches for Virtual Summits
You can launch and monetize virtual summits in any niche. Some niches have however embraced them more than others. And the earning potential in those niches is huge.
Here are three such niches:
- Marketing – marketers understand the importance of gaining market insights and always want to stay ahead of the curve. If they know that some big names are coming together for an event, they will most-likely attend.
- Cybersecurity – the cybersecurity world is one that needs a lot of collaboration. This need creates a big opportunity for virtual summits to discuss new threats and emerging tactics for countering cyber crime.
- Healthcare – medical practitioners, especially scientists, work together to solve global health problems. To understand new or current health problems and share knowledge and discoveries, those in the healthcare industry often host and attend virtual summits.
How Much Money Can You Make Through Virtual Summits?
The revenue potential from virtual summits is crazy. And the best part is that you don’t have to be an expert in order for you to make 4-5 figures from one summit.
All this comes with the added advantage of acquiring highly-engaged email subscribers. This means that virtual summits also make your future marketing more effective.
Consider how much the List Building School virtual summit made. Note that the figures only indicate revenue and new subscribers acquired in around 1 month.
Best Platforms for Virtual Summits
To conduct a virtual summit, apart from the obvious camera, microphone and lighting, you need a Live and pre-recorded video streaming platform.
If you’re planning your very first virtual summit, consider using WebinarJam as your platform of choice. It’s easy to use and enables you to reach up to 5,000 attendees.
Apart from all the essentials, they also have a feature called “Active Offer” which helps you increase conversions.
Another option you can choose is Demio. While hosting up to 500 attendees, being browser-based makes it possible for attendees to join your virtual summit 25x faster compared to other platforms.
If you’re planning to go big and interview hundreds of speakers, then Cisco Webex Events is your best choice. Webex Events allows you to have up to 1,000 panelists.
Tips to Maximize Revenue From Virtual Summits
By just selling an “All Access Pass,” you’ll be able to make good money from your virtual summit. But that’s not all you can do. There are things you can do to further increase your revenue potential.
These include:
- Earn affiliate commissions – it’s very likely that in your summit, you or your speakers will mention the tools you use. Instead of promoting other people’s products for free, why not make some money out of it?
- Implement an order bump – include an order bump on your checkout page. When someone buys your “All Access Pass,” offer them something complementary. It could be your course, an ebook or anything else you have. The extra sale will increase your revenue.
- Offer coaching services – hosting a virtual summit will greatly improve your brand image and further your expertise in your field. As an expert, you should promote a one-on-one coaching service. Coaching services are usually expensive and getting just a couple of people signing up can make you very rich.
Example Virtual Summit Revenue Success Story
We cannot talk about virtual summits without mentioning Navid Moazzez. Navid is a highly-successful virtual event host and full-time lifestyle entrepreneur.
You might be surprised to know that Navid has helped many industry leaders generate millions using virtual summits. Some of them include Neil Patel, Chandler Bolt and Caitlin Pyle.
From one of his summits, he generated over 26,000 new email subscribers and made around $180,000 from “All-Access Pass” sales only.
He went ahead and introduced his email subscribers to his virtual summit online course. From the course sales and some affiliate earnings, he made an additional $700,000.
10. Sell Consulting and Freelance Services
For a long time, bloggers have been mistaken about consulting services. They’ve believed that they must attain a certain status in the eyes of their audience before calling themselves consultants.
We insist on bloggers selling consulting and freelancing services at the very beginning instead of waiting to attain some status. Otherwise how will they make money while they’re still building an audience?
Even if you just started your blog today, you can immediately start providing results to businesses using your skills. And if you’re highly-skilled and full of experience, you can command high rates.
Highest-paying Niches for Consulting and Freelance Revenue
You can potentially earn a living from any niche. Some niches however provide bigger earning opportunities than others.
Here are some of those:
- Entrepreneurship – with startups almost becoming the norm, established businesses feel threatened. The established businesses aside, startups are also feeling the heat. 33% of startups fail within 2 years and about half within 5 years. Such numbers guarantee the demand for entrepreneurship consulting services.
- Accounting and bookkeeping – a lot of accounting is done periodically and so many businesses are turning to outsourcing. There is also the need to handle taxes accurately. If you have accounting skills, then you can easily earn some money through them.
- Software development – software programming is an important skill which many are looking for, especially at the expert level. Whether Python, Java or C++/C#, being good at popular and widely-used programming languages will guarantee income opportunities.
- HR consulting – HR work has always been challenging; creating a win-win solution for both business owners and employees is not easy. If you can solve problems around recruitment, employee turnover, training, compensation and compliance, then you should use your skills to make money.
How Much Money Can You Make Through Consulting and Freelancing?
You can make a lot of money through consulting and freelancing. The biggest names in consulting charge very high rates for even 30 minutes consultation. These people are millionaires and they live a hustle-free life.
A study by eBiz Facts shows that there are freelancers on Upwork earning at least $1,000 per month.
Upwork itself reported that skilled freelancers have a median rate of $28 per hour compared to $18.80 which is the median in the U.S. overall. On an hourly basis, there are skilled freelancers earning more than 70% of workers in the overall U.S. economy.
Best Platforms for Freelancing
Becoming a freelancer is simple, and as a blogger, your blog will give you more exposure. With an SEO-optimized blog, clients can search for your skills online and land on your blog.
To get started though, even with little to no organic traffic flowing to your blog, you’ll have to make use of some of the best freelancing platforms available.
The best freelancing platforms include:
Sign up at any of these sites and start offering your skills and experiences for some money.
For every job you complete, ask your client for a testimonial and post it on your blog for social proof.
Tips to Maximize Your Freelancing and Consulting Revenue
If you’re just starting out as a blogger, you’ll find freelancing and consulting to be a viable income generator.
And with some tips, you can be on your way to running a highly-profitable freelancing and consulting business.
Here are some things you can do to increase your revenue potential.
- Focus on one high-end consulting offering – instead of promoting different offerings priced differently, focus on your high-end offering. Customize your pitch for every client you target, show them what problem you’ll solve and the results they will get.
- Collect testimonials and case studies – with every client you help solve their problems, request for a testimonial or case study. When you show that you have previously provided results and your clients were happy to talk about it, your prospects will see the value you deliver.
- Subcontract what you don’t need to handle – subcontract the parts of the business which are taking too much of your time and can be handled by someone else. Get someone to handle things like admin stuff, contract bidding and marketing.
Also, if you have broken down your offering into a step-by-step process, you can subcontract some predefined steps to freelancers. This will scale your time and help increase your earnings.
Example Freelancer Success Story
If you want to know that freelancing can earn you good money, consider Angie Mansfield as an example. Attracting clients through casestudywhitepapergeek.com, she has become an authority in the white paper niche.
Here’s an example of her success: blogging for a software company, she was writing two articles per week for $125 each. After some time, she was writing for the same company one blog post of 350-500 words for $225.
With that post taking her around 1 hour to write, her pay translates to around $200 per hour.
11. Create a Niche Job Board and Sell Job Ads
You may have quit or are thinking of quitting your job to blog full-time. There are others who are still deep into employment, either because they don’t know about blogging or they’re just not business-minded.
You can make those people the target audience of your blogging business. If you know their true needs and can help them achieve their goals, running a career blog can be rewarding.
You can create a niche job board which will make it easier for job seekers to find relevant jobs while helping you build a highly-engaged audience.
Highest-paying Niches for Job Board
The highest-paying niches for career blogs are those in technical industries. Some niches are however not technical but are still profitable.
Here are some niche career sites showing you the niche and an example job board.
- Engineering: Engineering.com
- Web development and design: Smashing Magazine
- Finance: eFinancialCareers
- Healthcare: Healthcare Jobsite
- Media: Mediabistro
- Hospitality: Hotellerie Jobs
- Internships: Chegg Internships
How Much Money Can You Make by Selling Job Ads?
Job boards are very lucrative because there are millions of job seekers and hundreds of thousands of companies with vacant positions.
With some job boards, companies get charged for posting jobs on the site. Some job boards however charge job seekers a fee to register or apply for a job.
One niche job board that can give you an idea of potential earnings is InsuranceJobs.com. This niche site has over 2,500 open jobs and almost 2,000 company profiles.
With those figures in mind, take a look at their pricing packages.
Here is an example calculation to show you how much revenue is possible with InsuranceJobs.com.
Assuming that only 1,000 jobs have been posted under the bronze package, the income from those jobs comes to $249,000 in one month.
Best Tools for Selling Job Ads
Setting up a niche job board is pretty straightforward. You don’t need any technical skills, just the knowledge of your target audience and their needs.
With these, the other things you need are a web host, a website theme and a job board plugin.
For your hosting needs, we recommend using Bluehost because of their affordability and reliability. For the best look and feel of your job board, check out Theme Forest. They have beautifully-designed blog themes to choose from.
To increase your job board’s functionality, you can use WP Job Manager as your plugin of choice. WP Job Manager gives you job filtering, frontend job submission, an ability to build your own plugin and theme, all with the familiar WordPress user interface.
For more job board plugin options, check out this job board plugins list.
Tips to Maximize Job Board Revenue
Here are some tips you can implement to increase your job board’s revenue potential:
- Attract leading employers to your job board – when getting started, offer free job ads to some leading companies to help populate your job board. Once they are on board, approach other companies and show them that your job board is trusted by leading employers. Charge them a small fee for job ads.
- Attract job seekers through alumni networks – to keep employers paying to advertise jobs, they need to see that your job board has highly-qualified job seekers. You can leverage alumni networks and colleges to build a big database.
- Add value to your job board – your job board should not be about jobs only. Increase engagement with both job seekers and employers by publishing relevant articles.
Provide employers with advice about recruitment, hiring, labor laws and other related subjects in the context of your niche. For job seekers, provide them with advice on career growth, nailing interviews and tips from experts in your niche.
Example Niche Job Board Success Story
If you’re looking for inspiration to start your own job board, look no further than the bloggers currently advising you about it.
Yes, that’s us.
We run another blog called Cleverism which we started in 2014 as a side hustle (while working full-time jobs).
Six years down the line, we get more than 1 million job seekers per month and make more than $20,000 per month.
12. Sell Physical Products and Earn Money With E-commerce
You can also choose to sell physical products as a way of making money from your blog. These can be products you have created yourself or products created by others which you buy then sell at a profit.
You can implement this income strategy in either of two ways:
- Focus on the blog while selling some products through an online shop on your blog.
- Establish an e-commerce site which has a blog providing relevant content.
If you have many products to sell, setting up an e-commerce site is better. This will ensure that you focus on customer support.
Highest-paying Niches for E-commerce
Here are some of the best niches for high e-commerce earnings:
- Beauty – the beauty niche is full of blogs selling beauty products which promise their audiences the results they’re looking for. With the beauty industry being one of the most profitable, implementing this monetization strategy in your blog will give you significant earnings.
- Health – everyone is concerned about their health and that of their loved ones. If you can sell some effective products or manufacture your own if qualified, then your earnings can be very high.
- Bodybuilding – for all the big muscles which men want to develop and the lean bodies women want, workout products are necessary. Bodybuilding provides a ready market for physical products which are always in high demand.
- Technology – we’re living in a technology-driven world and tech products will always be in demand. The technology niche is also fast-paced and many people want to acquire the latest products either for maximum productivity or just to stay ahead of others.
- Kids – selling kids’ stuff is also lucrative since there will always be a need for parents to buy what they need to raise their children. From clothing, diapers, food to toys and infant safety seats, selling kids’ stuff is a sure income earner.
- Fashion – this niche is highly profitable because fashion is a part of people’s lives. Fashionable dressing and accessorizing is a norm for both men and women. This guarantees that there will always be customers to buy products which enhance people’s looks.
- Home improvement – there is a lot of potential in the home improvement niche. Many are embarking on DIY projects as they remodel and renovate their homes. With a high demand for products to facilitate home improvement, you can make money by selling the right tools for the job.
How Much Money Can You Make Through E-commerce?
The e-commerce path will always lead you to money, and if done right, lots of it. This is one area of business that is growing and will continue growing over the years.
Statista forecasts the e-commerce revenue to be more than $3 Trillion by the year 2024.
You can tap into this growth right now to position yourself for the future.
What does this look like from a blogger’s point of view?
Eric Bandholz was blogging and wanted to make money. He had a very unique niche: beard. He even coined the term beardsman.
Blogging about beard grooming, he grew a community of beardsmen (men who have facial hair). But the big break in revenue came after he launched his e-commerce site.
Now, Beardbrand makes over $100K per month.
Best Platforms for Generating E-commerce Revenue
Instead of developing your e-commerce site or hiring someone to do it, take the easy and sure path and use an online shop software like Shopify. Shopify is first of all very affordable, starting at only $29 per month (there’s a 14-day free trial).
They also give you lots of customization options to make your store look and feel the way you want. They know that you need a beautiful store to make a good first and lasting impression.
Other e-commerce platforms on which you can sell products include:
Tips to Maximize E-commerce Revenue
To maximize on your e-commerce sales and profits, here are some things you can do:
- Start with dropshipping – dropshipping removes every major challenge when it comes to starting an e-commerce business. You don’t need to buy stock, pay for a warehouse, track inventory or even handle returns. Since these are handled by a third party (wholesaler or manufacturer), you can focus on increasing sales.
- Work on SEO – SEO is what drives traffic both for blogs and e-commerce sites. As the market gets more crowded, the only way to distinguish yourself from others is through great SEO.
- Evolve with the customer – customers are really king and they decide where to buy, how much and when. Customer tastes and trends change and if you’re to keep them on your site, you have to know where they’re headed and be there fast enough.
- Test and keep testing – you need to familiarize yourself with A/B testing and test everything all the time. Don’t just test button colors and sizes, test everything from content layout and page navigation to pricing and promotions.
Example E-commerce Success Story
There are many e-commerce success stories which can serve as motivation. You most likely know the Amazon story; from selling books to selling almost everything, even cars.
But Amazon is so big that it may feel unrelatable. Are there other easy-to-relate-with stories of e-commerce success?
One such story is that of David Wolfe, co-founder of Leesa. Leesa deals with luxury mattresses (talk of targeting a high-paying audience) and sells them directly to customers.
David was busy building a custom e-commerce site when he realized that there is a better option: Shopify. He knew that there would be costs like maintenance which he could avoid for peace of mind and higher profits.
He halted the development of the custom site and opted for Shopify Plus. In the first month, Leesa made sales worth $800,000 and in the first full year, $30 million.
13. Sell Your Own Software
Have you seen a gap that needs to be filled using a software solution?
Software solutions are what businesses are now embracing and the revenue potential is huge. Starting and running costs have also come down due to the accessibility and affordability of cloud computing resources.
Using cloud infrastructure, you can develop a SaaS solution hosted by another SaaS provider. This makes it cheaper for you to start and grow your software business.
This works well for both desktop and mobile solutions. Developing a mobile solution is also a good idea since smartphones are quickly becoming the devices of choice for accessing information.
Highest-paying Niches for SaaS Solutions
Selling a SaaS solution can work in almost any niche. Here are three which work pretty well:
- Real estate – real estate businesses need help managing homes, collecting rent, creating and managing lease documents, among other things. If you can provide a solution to these challenges, you’ll definitely make money.
- Customer Relationship Management – it’s the desire of every business to have a perfect picture of who their customer is and how they interact with the business. Any tool that helps with this has a ready market.
- Education – traditional learning may not go away soon but there is a demand for online learning. If you can develop software solutions for the education niche, you'll make money through it. Example solutions include online learning platforms and mobile learning apps for universities.
How Much Money Can You Make by Selling Your Own SaaS Solution?
Selling your own SaaS solution is the best way to future-proof your business.
Many companies are shifting to SaaS solutions since they’re cheaper and take away the headache of systems maintenance.
Gartner projects that revenue from SaaS companies will surpass $151 in 2022. This is in line with the steady growth that has been witnessed since 2018.
Great Tools to Build and Test Your Software Idea
To develop software that will sell and serve its purpose well, you need a set of tools that will help you achieve your goals. From the coding language, database to hosting platforms, you need to use the best for your project.
Here are three types of tools you’ll need and some examples:
- Cloud hosting platforms: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud
- Content delivery networks: Amazon CloudFront, Cloudflare, Akamai, MaxCDN/StackPath
- No-code platforms: AppSheet, Appy Pie, Airtable, Betty Blocks
Tips to Maximize SaaS Revenue
Selling your software isn’t a difficult thing to do. But for sustained earnings, here are some tips you should implement.
- Become a Search Engine Marketing expert – the business of SaaS solutions is growing as more people get into it. To stay ahead of the competition, you’ll need to utilize both organic and paid traffic to generate more sales.
- Target small businesses – how fast you make money also depends on who you target. Bigger businesses have longer sales cycles (9-18 months) and so could take you longer to close deals. With smaller businesses, you’ll close deals faster.
- Solve a real problem – there are many software solutions in the market but some don’t offer real value. Conduct market research to discover pain points and develop a solution that solves those problems quickly and easily.
- Use scalable pricing – instead of charging your customers a fixed price, use a pricing strategy that grows with your customers. If they need more users, they pay more. This guarantees growth in revenue over the long term.
- Offer free trials – give potential customers the opportunity to test your full-featured product. As they get the feel and experience its functionality, they’ll be more interested and likely to buy.
Example SaaS Success Story
If you are a developer or an IT person, you most likely know Stack Overflow, a programming Q&A site co-created by Joel Spolsky. As a blogger with coding skills, he co-founded Fog Creek Software (now called Glitch) together with Michael Pryor.
Glitch is the company which developed Trello, Copilot and FogBugz.
When Trello was being spun off as it’s own company, it raised $10.3 million in funding. Trello was later acquired by Atlassian for $425 million, with Joel and Michael retaining the majority stake.
How to Make Your First $5,000 Blogging Fast?
How fast would you like to make your first $5,000? What if we told you that you can make that within 90 days?
Yes, you read that right.
Generally speaking, the success of your blog largely depends on the amount of traffic you receive. The more the blog visitors, the higher the number of those who will convert and buy your offering.
But what if you’re just getting started and don’t have the traffic?
You can still make good money even as a beginner blogger. The secret is in focusing on selling consulting and freelance services. This way, you can generate a sizable income even with little blog traffic.
Let’s break this down for you.
1. Pick a Profitable Niche
Being the identifying theme for your blog, you must choose the right niche for your blog. Your blog’s niche determines almost everything else; from your target audience, the kind of content you publish and even the income streams you can implement.
Getting your niche wrong can cost you a lot of time, energy and money. If these are the things you hope to save for a more fulfilling life, then you’ll end up discouraged and frustrated.
There are niches which already enjoy a lot of interest from many people. This makes it easy to make money blogging in those niches. It simply comes down to how well you differentiate yourself from the crowd.
Differentiating yourself from the crowd involves creating a superior solution than what others are offering. To achieve this, you’ll need to understand your target audience and the problems they face.
If you can give them the results they desperately seek, they will love you and pay you for solving their problems.
And when deciding which niche to blog in, remember to consider your audience’s budget and willingness to spend. Try your best to target an audience with a sizable budget and a willingness to spend. That way, your earning potential will be high.
2. Launch Your Blog
Once you’ve made the decision to start a blogging business, you should go ahead and launch your blog without delay. If you postpone it to a later date, you might end up in the cycle of analysis paralysis.
Analysis paralysis: overthinking and overanalyzing a situation to the point where taking action or making a decision is “paralyzed” and no action is taken.
The first step in launching your blog is picking the right web host and choosing the plan that is best for you. Don’t make the mistake of choosing a free blog hosting plan. As much as you want to cut down on costs, avoid this since it will negatively affect your blogging business.
There are many restrictions which come with free web hosting plans. Remember that blogging for money is actually running a business. You need to make some basic investments.
For a complete guide on this subject, read our in-depth article on web hosting services.
If you want the best experience and the best results, choose Bluehost as your hosting provider. Pick a WordPress theme that best reflects your niche and personality then start publishing relevant and helpful content.
Still unsure, then read this guide on the best and worst reasons to start a blog.
3. Position Yourself as an Expert by Publishing Different Content Types
What you publish on your blog matters a lot. Your blog posts are what will tell your audience what you have to offer. As such, they must be top-notch.
Your content also reflects your personality, something that will determine how well you connect with your audience.
One of your goals in publishing any content on your blog should be to show yourself as an expert. When your audience sees you as an expert in the field, it becomes easy for them to trust you and take advice from you.
When your audience trusts you, they will buy from you, be loyal to you and refer others to your blog. This is exactly what you need to make more money.
The best way to show your expertise is by publishing different types of content. Instead of plain writing, you can also include images, videos and even case studies as part of your content strategy.
Check out the results of this 2020 marketing study about the top content types used by B2B marketers.
Utilizing different content types improves your blog’s performance. Your posts will enjoy high engagement rates and the shares will bring in more traffic.
4. Design Your High-end Freelancer or Consulting Offering
The smartest way to make money with your blog when getting started is by offering consulting and freelancer services.
Depending on your level of expertise, you can position yourself as a high-end freelancer and command higher rates than the average freelancer.
This works for two reasons:
- You don’t need a lot of traffic – getting traffic to your blog is not easy and you’ll have to work hard at that. It can take many months and even years before Google recognizes you as an authority in your niche and starts directing traffic to your blog. If you were to wait till then so as to make money, you might give up on the way. Indeed many bloggers have given up. You don’t have to be part of that statistic. Use freelancing and consulting to quickly start making money with your skills even when getting zero traffic from search engines.
- You have a say in how much you earn – one of the beautiful things about freelancing and consulting is that you have a strong say in pay discussions. This is contrary to what happens in employment. Being the person with the expertise the client needs, you can set prices according to how much you want to earn for a project. You can also design several packages which clients can choose from and make negotiations easy for both yourself and your clients.
5. Earn Money Through Platforms and Via Direct Outreach
You can start earning money through freelance platforms where you can find clients who need your expertise. Although there are many such platforms, Upwork, Flexjobs and Freelancer are undoubtedly the best you can join.
When you set up your account on either of these platforms, remember to continue building your blog by directing traffic back “home.”
Write about your past freelance work then add a link on your profile pointing clients to your blog.
This increases your chances of getting more freelance gigs since clients can see more of what you offer.
Another way of landing gigs is through direct outreach.
Direct outreach: Reaching out to prospective clients using personalized emails and phone calls. Direct outreach works well when you introduce yourself, show interest in the client’s business and offer value before selling your offering.
Very few bloggers are using direct outreach nowadays as a way of getting new clients.
One reason is that direct outreach feels so much like cold calling, something people have come to hate. There is also the fear that sending out emails to potential clients could come across as being spammy.
The secret to succeeding in direct outreach is simple. Instead of targeting as many clients as possible, just target a few high-end clients (quality, not quantity). And instead of sending lifeless and irrelevant emails, personalize them and speak to the clients’ pain points.
This will require some research into the prospective clients so as to know what problems they’re facing. As long as your email is personalized, addresses the problem and shows you can deliver the needed results, your efforts are likely to pay off.
How to Make Money Online with Blogging FAQ
We’ve covered the best ways you can make money with your blog and even showed you how to build your blog as a business. You might still have some questions in your mind.
Here are some of the most common questions asked by bloggers who want to make money blogging.
There’s no limit to the amount of money you can make with a blog. If you have a high-end target audience, provide the key result the audience demands and implement high-paying revenue channels in your blog, you can easily make millions with your blog.
Many bloggers make little money because they chose the wrong blogging niche when getting started. Others focused too much on passion instead of what the market demanded. Avoiding these mistakes and working on your blog can earn you $5K per month within your first year.
The other thing you need to do is improve your skills. This will improve the key result you deliver to your audience. Continually improving your offering will make your audience see you as being committed to them and they will reward you with more loyalty, purchases and referrals.
Yes, you can easily make a living blogging. There are many bloggers who quit their 9-5 jobs to start blogging full-time. Once they set everything up and built their audiences and started making good money, they embarked on fun activities like traveling.
Whatever you’ve been earning from your full-time job, blogging can earn you the same figures and even higher. Instead of working hard to become the CEO of a big company earning $250,000 and have no real life, you can build your blog for a few years, make up to double (even more) of that amount and live a more fulfilling life.
Many beginner bloggers join the Google AdSense program so that they can make money through ads. This strategy keeps them at the starting point and they never get meaningful earnings. The reason is that they don’t have enough blog traffic to benefit from ads.
Some beginner bloggers have however learned from the mistakes of others and have done better. They have focused on using monetization strategies which earn them big money quickly. This helped them avoid frustrations and get motivated to add even more revenue streams into their blogs.
If you want to make money as a beginner blogger, just implement a high-earning revenue channel like consulting or freelancing. This will ensure you make money even without a big audience. This will motivate you to keep building your blog because you’re already enjoying the fruits of your hard work.
Blogging is a high-profit and highly-satisfying business which many people are opting for. The possibilities are simply crazy, especially when you consider that there are bloggers making more than $1,000,000 per month.
Another proof that blogging is very profitable is the sheer number of blogs. There are over 600 million blogs worldwide. In the US alone, it’s estimated that by the end of 2020, there will be 31.7 million bloggers.
The key to realizing blogging profits is to get started on the right footing. Identify an audience which has the budget and is willing to spend, provide better results than others and monetize the audience using high-paying strategies.
It’s pretty difficult to know who is the richest blogger because not all bloggers publish their earnings.
There are however some figures which have been collected and some estimates made to show who the highest-earning bloggers are.
One of the well-known high-earning bloggers is Timothy Sykes. Timothy, who traded penny stocks for 20 years, is estimated to be making $15-20 million every year. That’s over $1,000,000 every month.
Monetization strategies are one of the things which set high-income bloggers apart from the others. If you check out the blogs of high-earning bloggers, you’ll realize that they do less but earn a lot.
This is because they identified the sweet spot between monetization strategy and target audience.
For most of them, having built themselves as authority figures and influencers in their niches, they focus on consulting and coaching services. While they do the consulting and coaching, they’ll also be earning through high-priced online courses on their blogs.
This is a very important question which many beginner bloggers don’t ask. Unfortunately, many successful bloggers also don’t share details of how hard they worked to build their blogs before they started making money from them.
Despite what you’ve heard, the truth is that you might not make any money from your blog in the first few months. But if you pick the right niche, target the right audience, provide the results which your audience needs and monetize well, you can start making money in less than 6 months.
Remember that if you’re blogging for money, you’re actually running an online business. When starting any business, you’ll need to do a lot of work. Once the foundation is well laid, you can happily start reaping the benefits.
A blogger creates and publishes text or visual content on the internet. He does this on his own blog or one he has been hired to create content for. Generally speaking, a blogger will create content based on his area of interest, expertise or life experience. For more on this, check out our article What is a blog?
In the 1990s when the first blogs were being created, bloggers were only writing about their experiences and sharing their interests on the internet. Today, things have changed. Although there are bloggers still writing about their personal interests and life experiences, many are using blogs to run online businesses.
High-paid bloggers put a lot of focus on SEO. This is because they have realized that SEO is the key to driving traffic in the long term. All their blogging is centered on SEO; from blog design to the blog content they create, everything is SEO-optimized.
But SEO is not everything and they need to advertise their services for them to make more money. So what do they do?
They create a high-priced offering (e.g. online course, consulting or freelancing) which they sell to a high-end audience. With the money they get, they go into paid advertising on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and Google AdWo rds.
This guarantees more blog visits which in turn increase the number of people buying their high-priced offerings. The more people buy, the more money they make.
Start Earning Money With Your Blog
Making money with your blog should not be difficult. Neither should you wait till you have attracted thousands of blog visitors for you to make a living through blogging.
The first thing you should do is to pick a profitable blog niche. It’s important to ensure that your blog has the potential of making money even before you get started.
Immediately you settle on a profitable niche, head over to Bluehost and purchase your hosting plan. Launch your WordPress blog and write some foundational articles to show your expertise. Use SEMrush to conduct keyword research so you know which search phrases to target.
Use direct outreach to get opportunities to write some guest posts and acquire backlinks to improve your blog’s authority and performance in search results. You also need to grow your email list because this will be important for engaging your audience. ConvertKit can help you do this.
When you’ve done these basic things, then it’s time to create and offer your high-end consulting offer. Pitch this to your email subscribers and use Leadpages to create a landing page to sell your offering on your blog.
To increase your revenue potential, add more income channels to your blog. Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways of getting others to market your own offerings for you. Another income stream you can add is an online course.
Create an online course and host it either on Teachable or Thinkific. Remember to market your course on your blog too.
When you focus on these few and simple steps, you’ll see the first blogging results (visits, email subscribers, recurring monthly revenue) quite quickly.