Starting and monetizing a blog has never been easier than it is today.
Not too long ago, creating a website would’ve cost you thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars to set up and maintain. Monetizing a website was just as difficult. PayPal was in its infancy, Stripe didn’t exist and email marketing was nowhere near as flexible as it is now.
Today however you can start, maintain, and monetize a blog on WordPress with just a few hundred dollars (this can vary based on what you need to do). But just because it’s easier to make money with your blog today, doesn’t mean that most bloggers do.
According to ConvertKit’s 2017 state of blogging report, pro bloggers reported an average profit of $138,064 the past year, while amateur bloggers (who made up 86% of those surveyed) made only $9,497.
This is terrible, especially when you consider that most bloggers start a blog so they can be their own boss and quit their dull 8-to-5 job.
So how do you go from being an amateur blogger to one of the pros hitting six figures every year?
Well, you need a solid marketing plan, this includes content, a profitable niche, and a great monetization strategy.
You also need to need to do some quick math.
When Should You Start to Monetize Your Blog?
There’s no concrete number out there for how much traffic or how large an email list should be to make money from your blog because that all depends on what you sell and how you sell it.
However, having two things straightened out first will help you a lot:
- Get steady traffic: You don’t need tens of thousands of visitors but at least a thousand visitors a month means you’re doing something right.
- Grow your email list: Again you don’t have to aim for anything crazy here. We’ll show you examples of people who had a small list but still used it to their advantage.
Now these two things matter, but primarily, monetizing your blog efficiently is all about the numbers.
For example, if you need to make $6,000 from your blog:
- You can sell a $200 product (say a course) to 30 people.
- Or sell a $600 course to 10 people.
- And even by charging $6,000 for consulting with a client.
Monetization is math, not magic.
This doesn’t mean that the key to monetization is simply increasing the prices of what you sell. Rather it means that you should choose a monetization strategy that aligns with where your blog is right now or where you want it to be in the future.
In this article, we’ll show you how you can monetize a blog and make money online whether you get thousands of page views a month or you’re just starting out.
We’re going to show some solid strategies other bloggers have used to generate revenue from their own blogs in diverse niches and teach you how to do the same with your own blog.
1. Become a Freelance Blogger in Your Niche
One of the easiest ways to make money from your blog is to become a freelance writer for more prominent blogs in your niche.
Think about it, you probably started your blog because you have experience/knowledge in that area, so why not use that to your advantage?
Businesses are looking for people that can create content to fuel their marketing so who better to create that content than someone that has knowledge in that niche.
Freelance blogger Bamidele Onibalusi used his blog, Writers in Charge, to show his content marketing chops while also growing his audience. He now makes a full-time income blogging for other businesses.
According to data from Glassdoor, the average freelancer in the United States makes about $40k a year. Keep in mind that this figure is influenced by your experience level and the niche you write in.
Here’s a breakdown of how much you can earn in different niches according to the Editorial Freelance Association:
You might not be able to charge these rates when you begin, but as you gain more experience and credibility your rates go up. Be careful not to charge too low in the beginning though.
Charging $10 for an article might seem like an easy way to start getting clients, but in truth it can chase quality clients aways as your skills are called into question, not to mention charging so little can drain your motivation to continue.
Since we’re on the subject of pricing, it’s better to charge your clients on a per project basis rather than on an hourly rate since it can be hard to determine how long it’ll take you to complete a task, especially when you’re just starting out as a freelancer.
Charging a fee based on the project itself means you get rewarded for finishing quicker and your clients know how much they’ll pay from the onset.
According to WriteWorldwide, here’s how much you can charge per project in your first year as a freelance writer, without accounting for your niche or previous writing experience.
The best part about freelance writing is that you don’t need a lot of traffic on your blog to start making money, all businesses really care about it that you can write great content.
Jorden Roper, for example, made $5,000 in her fourth month of being a freelance writer and Jennifer Gregory pulls in about six figures a year from her freelance writing business.
As a freelance blogger, your job is to create written content that attracts visitors to a business’s website so some of these visitors can convert into customers for the business.
According to Content marketing institute’s 2019 report, marketers are set to spend more money on content creation and 50% of the marketers surveyed expect their content marketing budget to increase in 2019.
If there are businesses making money in your niche and so as long as these businesses are creating content then you can bet they need writers.
Notice that I mentioned that the business has to be making money. One of the worst mistakes you can make as a freelance blogger is picking a niche where businesses can’t afford to pay you.
For example, writing about art might be your idea of fun and you might have extensive knowledge of it, but how many blogs can pay you regularly to write about that?
The path to profitability as a freelance blogger is finding the right market to position yourself in.
A quick way to test whether there’s money to be made in your niche is to find at least ten writers that cover the niche you want to write in. You can do this by simply making a search on LinkedIn with the keywords for your niche.
For example, when I search for individuals with the exact title of “freelance personal finance writer” on LinkedIn I get about 42 results. You could also do it without quotes for a more broad search which will generate even more results
This is an easy way to validate your niche.
We’ve already established that you don’t need a lot of traffic to make money as a freelance writer but that doesn’t mean people will just find your blog and hire you.
You have to go out and promote your service.
When you’ve created writing samples on your blog and maybe guest posts on other blogs, you can start reaching out to businesses you want to write for.
You can also use freelance marketplaces like Upwork, SEOclerks and Fiverr. But while there are a few freelance writers that make a lot of money, like Danny Marguiles who made over $100k a year on Upwork, the majority of freelancer writers on these platforms make very little money.
To avoid the race for the bottom that is freelance marketplaces, you’ll have to do most of the outreach yourself.
Sell Ebooks to Your Audience
Selling ebooks is one of the most popular ways bloggers choose to monetize their blogs. It’s perfect because it’s relatively easy to create and is usually priced adequately enough that most visitors can buy.
But ebooks do more than let bloggers monetize their blogs quickly. As a blogger selling an ebook can be the fastest way to test if people are interested in what you’re covering enough to pay for it.
Ebooks are also a low-risk way for your website visitors to judge the value you can bring before buying more expensive products.
Contrary to popular belief you don’t need a lot of traffic on your blog to make money with your books. For example, David Oudiette converted the knowledge he’d gained building landing pages into a 252 page $39 ebook.
He didn’t have a lot of traffic on his blog as all he did at the time was consulting, but David was able to generate over $13,000 in revenue from his ebook.
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