Best Ways to Make Money Blogging for Beginners

 

Best Ways to Make Money Blogging for Beginners

1. Google Adsense

Google Adsense might be the fastest and easiest way for a beginner to start earning passive income with a blog. The basic ideas behind Adsense is that you can display Google Ads on your website and when a visitor clicks on those ads you get a percentage of the ad costs. You've certainly have seen ads on other people's websites; you can have these ads appear on your blog or website as well.

Adsense is a contextual advertising network that places partner (business) ads on your website. It’s easy to set up—all you have to do is copy and paste some code given to you from Google in the places you'd like the ads to appear on your website.

Google will then show ads from advertisers that are a match to the content on your website so that ideally your website visitors are seeing relevant ads.

Don’t worry that your blog niche won’t be able to draw quality ads to your site. Google Adsense is one of the biggest networks on the Web, so you should get a healthy enough list of clickable sites to attract your readership.

And Google is smart enough to only show ads on your website that are relevant to the content on your website, so in many cases this can enhance the user experience on your site and the ads can be helpful.

Just make sure your content is of the highest quality!

2. Amazon Associates

Amazon Associates is the long established in-house affiliate program run by Seattle-based Amazon.com—the biggest online retailer in the world today.

It offers bloggers the chance to earn commissions by advertising Amazon products on your website—provided visitors click-through from your blog to Amazon.com and make a purchase.

The basic idea with Amazon Associates is that you can get a tracking link that is unique to you that links to any product sold on Amazon.com. If someone clicks on the link on your blog and goes back to Amazon and purchases the item, you are credited with the sale.

There are many ways you can promote Amazon products on your website. You could include a product catalog (pulled from Amazon.com) on your blog, you can write product reviews and link to the products you recommend on Amazon, and you can have a recommended resources page on your website; just to name a few.

The one caveat about Associates is that it probably suits bloggers who write about merchandising, retail products and shopping a fair bit. Logically, it will help your performance if visitors arrive at your website already predisposed to buying.

The program works by getting Amazon links, banners, or widgets (e.g. slideshows, ‘My Favorites’, ‘Wish List Widget’) onto your pages.

One added benefit is that if someone clicks on a link from your website to Amazon and ends up buying multiple items (not just the item you are promoting) then you would get credit for the entire sale! Imagine you recommend a book on Amazon, your visitor goes to Amazon to buy a book - and while they're there they end up buying a new TV, a Sony PlayStation, and some other things... you get credit for all of the sales. Not only that but any sales that are made in the following 15 days from that customer are credited to you as well.

3. Affiliate Marketing for Digital Products

Just like Amazon.com is a marketplace of physical good sold on the internet; there are also marketplaces of digital products sold on the internet as well.

One of the most popular digital product marketplaces is Clickbank.com. You can search the Clickbank marketplace for products related to your marketplace and promote them on your website, write product reviews, etc.

Just like with Amazon, if someone clicks on the link and goes back and buys the product you are promoting, you would get a commission for a percentage of the sale.

One attractive feature of promoting digital information products is that the commissions tend to be higher than that of physical products; ranging anywhere from 10% to 50% or even higher. As an example, if someone is selling a digital information product for $500 with a 50% commission - you can earn $250 per sale. This is much higher than commissions on physical products due to the high profit margins.

4. Create E-books and Information Products

Regular blogging is the ideal training ground for creating e-books, still one of the most popular forms of information products being sold by online entrepreneurs today.

Consider your blogs as “free” information that you offer to readers to demonstrate your expertise. With time, they become your fans and are ready for more in-depth material. This is your opportunity to make money—by presenting your e-books for sale alongside your free blog.

Just make sure that the e-book builds on your blog output—don’t simply rehash what they have already seen! After all, these people are now paying customers and will get upset with old information. Later on, as you become more established and your archived material becomes more extensive, poll your readers to see what topics they’d be interested in learning more about and potentially what topics of e-books they’d be interested in purchasing.

Again, you can sell an ebook for a much higher price than a regular book and benefit from a much higher profit margin.

5. Offer One-on-One Coaching

This is one of the quickest and easiest ways you can turn your expertise into money. The fact that you are publishing a blog and providing information in your market makes you an expert in your niche. In many cases people want to get personalized advice directly from the expert in their market.

You can simply put up a page on your blog offering one-on-one coaching to answer any questions they have or give them advice for a handsome fee.

Notice that I avoided putting a specific dollar figure on the amount you can make from blogging. It will come down to your work ethic, your skills as a writer, your ability to generate targeted traffic, and plain old good luck. It’s a bit like baseball: everyone played it as a kid, only a small fraction make it to college ball, an even smaller number become professional, but only the cream of the crop makes it to the majors.

You have to decide where in the blogging “big leagues” you want to end up.
The reality is that as more and more people from all over the world come online, the harder it will become to get attention online and generate income. That's why it's so important to focus on building your email list, so you can follow up with your visitors, build a relationship and increase sales.

That being said, there are countless success stories out there, and the formula for success is surprisingly simple. It’s just up to you to get it done!

What will you need to make money Blogging

 

What will you need to make money Blogging

Now that you have done your research and worked out what niche you want to enter it is time to start bringing all of the different elements together for starting and monetizing a blog.

1. Get a Blog
If you’re planning to make money from blogging then it goes with out saying that you will need
to start a blog. :)

When anyone asks me about starting a professional money making blog I always recommend them to use self hosted WordPress as it’s the best platform for bloggers. I always recommend to new bloggers to use BlueHost to host their new blogs. You can get BlueHost’s high quality hosting for  $2.95 per month (36 months sign up) Use this link to get a free domain name with your hosting.

2. Create Great Content

So now that you have built your blog you are ready to create some blog posts for your readers.
The reason this section is called “Great Content” is because your content really does need to be of a high standard. Everyday millions of blog posts are published on the internet and with so much competition for our limited attention spans you really have to be creating blog posts people are going to want to read and perhaps even share on social media or on their own blogs.

Make sure your posts are:

• Well formatted and look good with relevant images
• Are in-depth and entertaining
• Offer links to other posts to expand on points
I have created a guide to coming up with interesting blog post ideas which may help you here and this post covers some tips to writing great blog posts.

Useful Resources:

Free Stock Image Sites

3. Build Up Your Audience

I started my first ever blog by writing on a consistent schedule about myself, my hobbies and interests.

People found me via Google, Facebook, social media and my readership gradually grew over time to where it is today.

Once I had built up an audience, making money from blogging became an afterthought.

When you have a large group of fans interested in what you have to say, the money will come. Trust me on that.

The hard part is finding and gathering your fans.
Promote your blog
No matter how great your articles are no one is going to know about them unless you take time to promote your blog.

SEO

I know enough about SEO to probably be wrong about a lot of it. I could probably write a series of articles on SEO tactics I have learned over the years but as I am not an expert I’ll point you in the right direction to some good articles on the subject.
P.S. SEO is not dead, it’s one of the best traffic sources for people who will buy your products/services or sign up to your email lists. SEO is a lot harder than it once was but don’t ignore it.
Social Media

From my experience, the social media sites that send the most traffic to blogs in general are:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+
• Pinterest
• LinkedIn
• Reddit

The results will vary depending on your target audience.

If your blog is aimed around professional readers and business people you might have more potential traffic from LinkedIn and Google+. If your target reader is more visual it might make more sense to focus exclusively on Facebook, Pinterest and
Instagram for promoting your blog.

A great social media management tool for all this is Sendible. Try it for free for 30 days or check out my review on Sendible.

WordPress also have a variety of plugins that make it easy to put social sharing buttons on your blog posts. Some people like to limit the number of plugins they use on their WordPress blog because it can slow the blog down and it can open your blog up to more attacks, butt a social sharing plugin is one that should have high priority if you do choose to use plugins.

THESE ARE THE TOP SOCIAL SHARING PLUGINS FOR WORDPRESS:

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/sharebar/
• http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-socializer/
• http://wordpress.org/plugins/scrolling-social-sharebar/
• http://wordpress.org/plugins/digg-digg/
• http://wordpress.org/plugins/flare/
• http://wordpress.org/plugins/share-this/

Those are six popular sharing buttons. There are many more. Whichever you choose make sure you limit the number of icons that appear and also make sure the plugin doesn’t slow down your page speed dramatically. If it does you’ll lose readers.

Sharing your blog content on social media is an art. There is no right way to do it. People have success sharing blog content in their own unique ways. Some will share only their blog links on social media. Others will share a high percentage of unique content on social media.
As is with most things in life, sometimes the best approach is somewhere in the middle.

Paid Advertising

Paying for clicks and traffic on social media or in the search engines can be a great option to market your blog. A lot of the information about blog marketing covers the organic options. While some of these can turn your blog into a popular destination quickly the more likely scenario is that it will take time for you to build communities to promote your blog content.
With paid methods, you have the opportunity to pay for traffic and clicks right away. And if you do well in targeting your audience on the right channels you can easily build your audience with advertising to supplement your organic efforts.

Facebook – Depending on your niche you can expect to pay about $1 per click to your blog, but there are many variables that can influence how much you will pay. Depending on the nature of your business this can provide some excellent ROI in terms of initial sales, but the main focus of this ad campaign is to get people to your blog. Wow them with your content and get them to opt-in to your email list for more updates.
Twitter – has a variety of ad options like Facebook and other social networks. The best one for your blog marketing efforts is the Promoted Tweets option. You can expect about $0.50 to $0.75 estimated cost per engagement, which is Twitter’s way of telling you what your cost per click is.
Reddit – ads appear on the top of the various pages. They are obviously ads so users don’t feel tricked into clicking on them. When people choose to select an ad they usually know it. So there is little chance of upsetting customers this way.
LinkedIn – has traditional online advertising that appears in the sidebar, but the Sponsored Updates options is much more advantageous for content producers.
Build Your Email List

You will see lots of bloggers who proclaim that the money is in the list. In my early days I didn’t buy in to this ideology but now it’s one of the most important things I focus on.

Once you’ve developed your fan base, it is essential to retain them as you continue to build your personal brand.

In the case of my blog, about 99% of my early readers would come, read a single article, and then leave forever. So instead of missing out on a potential regular, I started gathering email addresses using a service called Awebber, but these days I prefer

GetResponse.
In return for a reader’s email address, I would give away a free 7 day email course via email. About 85% of the time, that reader would stick around after the mini course to check out my new articles and updates.

In fact, I have readers on my blogs that have stuck with me for over 6 years!?!

The key to growing your mailing list is to keep your existing fans while at the same time as attracting new readers. This way, your audience will increase month on month.

If you are not sure about which list building software to use I have reviewed a variety of email marketing services for you.

How To Make Money Blogging With Affiliate Income

Part 4: – How To Make Money Blogging With Affiliate Income

You’ve probably asked yourself the same question. Can I do it too?

Yes!

When I started blogging in 2015, I never planned on making money with my blog (making money with your blog is called monetizing). I had other ideas I wanted to pursue that would financially support my business:

• writing books (did that)

• building online courses (haven’t had time to do this yet)

• advertising on my podcast (not pursuing this right now)

• public speaking (did that)

• building a membership site (undecided on this one because it’s a bit time consuming)

Then I started learning about affiliate marketing and how easy it was to monetize a blog. Eighteen months after starting my blog when I first focused on monetizing it, I made $11,400 in my first month.

I share that with you because there is plenty of opportunities for new bloggers to make money. The thing that gets me is if I had known then what I know now (and what I will share with you), I could have made money with my blog much sooner. Lesson learned!

Keep this in mind – I’m new to blogging too. While I’m not new to online business, I’ve never had a serious blog like I do now. And I’m just getting started. That’s proof new bloggers are still making money.

I’ve met bloggers at conferences that made $50,000 – $100,000 in their first year! It’s crazy, and it’s possible.

It doesn’t matter how crowded you think a particular topic is (there are thousands of personal finance bloggers like me) there is room for you to carve out a piece of the pie for yourself.

How can you make money blogging?

I’m going to walk you through each of these topics in the upcoming lessons. But let’s look at the many ways you can make money with a blog:

• Affiliate marketing (which is free to do)

• Selling ebooks

• Advertising on your blog

• Freelancing and writing for other blogs and websites

• Having sponsored posts on your blog

What’s nice about some of these are they are passive income streams. Meaning your blog has the potential to make money 24 x 7.

• while you sleep

• while you’re on vacation

• while you’re watching TV

Katie & I have spent weeks away from home traveling the world – Egypt, Greece, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland to name a few – all the while our online business continued to make money for us.

How long does it take to make money blogging?

I’ll never forget when Katie & I launched our first digital product in 2007 and started selling it using PayPal. She made seven sales at $50 each on the first day, all the while she was working at an internship.

I want you to have realistic expectations, though. Those results are not the norm. My first month of monetizing my blog I made several thousands of dollars. But that occurred after I had been blogging for eighteen months. But do the math – I’m estimating my business will earn six-figures in ** the second year**. And I’ve never monetized a blog before!

Realistically I could have made money much, much sooner, but I focused on other parts of my business (like my podcast Financial Rock Star, and then writing my best-selling book 99 Minute Millionaire).

Yes, you can make money blogging, but it isn’t a get-rich-quick business. It’s like building any business. It takes time, effort, and persistence. But the more you invest in yourself, the faster you’ll become successful.

I’ve read a story in Forbes magazine about a mother on welfare who built a 7-figure online business in a little over a year. There are some bloggers that earn six-figures after one year, and others that earn several thousand dollars on the side after a few months of blogging.

Anything is possible.

If you’re a hard worker and a go-getter, you can really shine.

Making Money Blogging With Affiliate Income

Let’s start making some passive income from your blog through affiliate income.

I love affiliate income. It’s simple – your blog acts as a salesperson selling products. But there is:

• no inventory

• no costs of any kind

• no shipping of products

• no investment

• no fees to sign up and get started

It sounds almost too good to be true – but it’s real and 100% legit.

Let me give you an example. Let’s start with the biggest affiliate program in the world – Amazon.

Here is a link to a cookbook on Amazon (go ahead and click it). 

A new window will open up and take you right to Amazon where you can buy the book. If you bought that book, I would earn an affiliate commission from Amazon. Let’s call it $0.50.

If you’re over at Amazon, you might decide today is the day you’re going to spring for that new T.V. that costs $400. If you buy it, I get an affiliate commission on that too. We’ll call it $25 because I sent Amazon the referral.

All I had to do was put a link in my blog to the cookbook. That’s it. Someone visits your blog where you talk about the Joy of Cooking, and they click the link. The link takes them to Amazon. If they buy the Joy of Cooking (or anything else), you earn a commission.

It’s free to sign up and become an Amazon affiliate (it’s called the Amazon Associates affiliate program). You can earn up to 10% in commissions.

Affiliate income comes from links on your blog where you mention products you love. You might review a product or include a link as part of a personal story – I bought this awesome shirt on Amazon for my upcoming trip!

Here are some of the things on my blog I have Amazon affiliate links for:

• lightbulbs

• medical kits

• my favorite business books

• energy efficiency products for your home

• podcasting equipment

No matter what you blog about, there are going to be products for which you can have an affiliate link.

And the best part is the links on your blog may be around for years. You can end up earning money from an affiliate link for something you wrote about three years ago. That’s the great thing about passive income – it just keeps coming.

How to get started with Affiliate Income

Here are the step-by-step instructions to get started with affiliate income. Remember all of these programs are FREE to join.

1. Join affiliate programs

I mentioned Amazon in our example, but there are many other affiliate programs available.

• Amazon Affiliate Program

• AvantLink

• Commission Junction

• Flex Offers

• MaxBounty

• ShareASale

Some product websites have an affiliate program which may not be listed. If you have a product you love contact the company directly and see if they have an affiliate program.

You just have to click the link and go through the sign-up process. Amazon is the easiest and has been around the longest. You should at least sign up for Amazon to get started.

2. Promote the link on your blog

There are different ways to promote a product:

Product reviews

Consider doing a book review or writing an in-depth product review. In the first month of blogging, I did a few in-depth product reviews. These pages are some of the most highly visited on my website.

Product comparisons

Comparing two different products side-by-side helps your readers weigh the pros and cons of each. By helping them make a decision, you help build a loyal fan base.

You can see an example of where I compared two budgeting software products here.

There are many photography bloggers that talk about camera equipment. Camara equipment can be very expensive, and the affiliate commissions can be much larger.

Resources/recommendations page

Many people will be interested in what tools and resources you use to do stuff. For example, I have a resources page for all of the blogging tools I use. You can see an example of my resources page here.

It doesn’t have to be fancy – just a picture, product name, and a description. To go the extra mile include a brief summary of why you like the product.

Mentioning the product in what you write about

This one is easy. If you are writing an article on baking a cake, for example, you can include a link to the cake pan you like to use in the recipe.

Creating tutorials

You help your readers by saving them time with step-by-step tutorials. You can document anything that involves assembly or a process.

You can even document something that already has documentation if you think you can do it better! Just think about YouTube videos you’ve watched on how to do or fix something because the manufacturer’s documentation doesn’t make sense. I look up tutorials all the time on how to use the features of software I own.

I have several step-by-step tutorials on my website for using different personal finance products. If I like the product, I’ll include an affiliate link.

Tips for good product promotion

Honesty

Be honest in your review. Giving a glowing review of a bad product just to try to earn affiliate income is a bad idea. When you are honest and help your blog readers, they will reward you with loyalty and become a life long fan. That’s worth much more because they will help share your blog to other people.

Promote the benefits

People buy things because it helps solve their problems or makes them feel better:

• Does it save them time? (This ceramic pan cleans up in a flash!)

• Does it save them money? (This book shows you how to save money on groceries)

• Will it help them make more money? (This course gives you a proven plan to getting your dream job)

• Will it help them relax? (This hebal tea will help you sleep better)

I promote Betterment as a fantastic way to get started investing because it’s easy and only takes ten minutes to start saving for an awesome retirement.

The better you become at sharing the benefits of a product, the more likely the person is to purchase the product.

Good product placement

The longer your blog post, the more you can talk about a product or service. But that doesn’t mean you should include a link in every paragraph.

If it’s a short article, 1–2 times may be enough.

For longer blog articles it’s ok to include a link at the beginning, middle, and at the very end.

Action items

1. Sign up for free to Amazon’s affiliate program.

2. Write a blog post about some product you like and include an affiliate link to it in your post.

Part 1: Why Should You Blog?

Part 2: What Should I Blog About? 

Part 3: How To Create Your Blog? 

Part 4: How To Make Money Blogging With Affiliate Income 

Part 5: How To Make Money Blogging With eBooks 

Part 6: How To Make Money by Freelancing, Staff Writing, and Advertising

Part 7: Why You MUST Build An Email List – And How To Get Started 

Part 8: How To Write Great Content That Gets Shared 

Part 9: How To Grow Your Blog And Get More Readers 

Part 10: The Resources I Use For My Business 

Part 11: How To Become Irresistible And Grow Your Following 

Part 12: How to make money with your blog?

Part 13: The Best Way to Make Money Blogging

Part 14: 7 Tips to Make More Money with Your Blog in 2021

Part 15: Only Blogging Advice You'll Ever Need

How To Make Money by Freelancing, Staff Writing, and Advertising

 

Part 6: – How To Make Money by Freelancing, Staff Writing, and Advertising

Freelancing and staff writing are two other great ways to make money blogging.
To break into these lines of work you’re still going to need a blog. Think of it like being an artist – you have to be able to display your work and your portfolio. Your blog lets other people find you and review your work.
I know many personal finance bloggers that make thousands of dollars per month writing for other websites.
To get started, you’ll have to work your way up, just like at any job. Your first jobs you may have to do for $20-$30 per article. Then you charge a little more. Then a little more. Then a little more. Some personal finance staff writers command $500 and up per article.
My friend Stephanie O’Connell (that I interviewed in episode 028 of my show) worked her way up from $20 and $30 articles to earning over six-figures per year writing for major media outlets and Fortune 500 companies.

Sponsored posts

At some point, you’ll get approached (via email) by someone wanting to write a sponsored post and put it on your blog.
They pay you money; they write the post, and you add it to your website.
Why would anybody do this? To get their product or service in front of the eyeballs of your blog visitors.
The post might be a product review, or include some links back to their company’s website. They may even want to get access to any newsletters you send out and include an ad.
There are a lot of types of sponsored content you could have on your website.
Warning: Be very careful any sponsored content you accept. You run the risk of losing part of your audience if you starting putting irrelevant or inferior products and services in front of them.
I’ve built my reputation as a personal finance expert by not ‘selling out‘. I don’t accept advertising revenue or sponsored content from any company offering a financial service or product.
Number one – it avoids any conflict of interest.
Number two – my readers and show listeners trust me.
That trust builds loyalty. When I do mention a product or service, my listeners and readers know I’m not trying to shake them down for a quick buck. The long term business is worth more financially than any short term gains. Plus I look out for my audience – they are more important to me than money.
It seems counterintuitive, but if you or a company puts People over Profit, you end up making more in Profit over the long run. Don’t you wish your cell phone provider or cable TV company thought that way?

Display advertising

I bet you’ve seen websites with advertising on them before – right? Your blog can also include ads. You get paid when a certain number of ads get shown on your blog or when someone clicks an ad.
Adding display ads to your website is another simple and easy way to make money. The more visitors you get to your site, the more you can make.
There are many sources of display advertising:
• Google Adsense
• AdThrive
• Media.net
You can sign up with any of these services. They include tutorials and instructions on how to place ads on your blog.
All of these services are free to sign up.
AdSense (Google AdSense) is one of the largest. It’s an advertising placement service by Google. The program is for website publishers and bloggers who want to display targeted text, video or image advertisements on website pages and earn money when site visitors view or click the ads.

My two cents

I’m going to give you my two cents about display advertising – I don’t like it.
It is my opinion advertisements take away from the true value of your website – whatever your message is. I think ads are distracting. Ads also slow down your website.
Website speed is important. If your blog is busy loading ads, your visitor might leave never to read your blog.
You have to strike a balance between making money with ads, keeping your site looking clean, and website speed.
Yes, you can make money by having display ads on your blog. If you’re just getting started, maybe you should try it just to earn your first few pennies and get that rush of making money.
The other ways of making money other than ads. And your visitors will love you for it.
And certainly don’t be afraid to say no.
I’ve turned down advertising for steaks, diamonds, all kinds of investing products. It’s funny the emails I get sometimes. Why would I want to advertise steaks?
But if Ruths Chris wants to advertise with me, maybe I won’t turn them down (my favorite steak place).

Action items

1. Pick one strategy for making money If you try to pick every strategy, it’s like trying to aim at five different targets at the same time. You’ll miss all of them. Focus on one at a time. Affiliate income is the easiest to get started (and free).
2. Sign up for a free Google Adsense account I don’t want to discourage you from trying advertising on your blog. Try out Adsense. Even if you’re not going to have ads on your site, you might as well check it out and be familiar with it.

Part 1: Why Should You Blog?

Part 2: What Should I Blog About? 

Part 3: How To Create Your Blog? 

Part 4: How To Make Money Blogging With Affiliate Income 

Part 5: How To Make Money Blogging With eBooks 

Part 6: How To Make Money by Freelancing, Staff Writing, and Advertising

Part 7: Why You MUST Build An Email List – And How To Get Started 

Part 8: How To Write Great Content That Gets Shared 

Part 9: How To Grow Your Blog And Get More Readers 

Part 10: The Resources I Use For My Business 

Part 11: How To Become Irresistible And Grow Your Following 

Part 12: How to make money with your blog?

Part 13: The Best Way to Make Money Blogging

Part 14: 7 Tips to Make More Money with Your Blog in 2021

Part 15: Only Blogging Advice You'll Ever Need