Complete Guide: How to Make Money Blogging in 2023

Blogging has a low barrier to entry, owing to its low-cost business strategy. It can make you a lot of money if done correctly. Let’s address an important question most new bloggers have in mind before getting started.

How Much Can You Make Money with Blogging?

The short and sweet answer is: There’s no limit to how much money you can make with blogging, or how long can you keep making it on autopilot. Successful blogging requires the execution of the right strategies and a lot of patience.

Choose a Profitable Niche

A niche is a topic within a broader industry. For instance, vegan recipes would be a niche in the broader diet market. But, why should you pick a niche and not a market for your blog?

Here are the two reasons:

• When you talk about a particular niche, it’s easier and faster to build credibility in that space
• Ranking your blog posts is relatively easier in a niche as compared to a market

The recipe of a profitable blog niche has three main ingredients:

• You’re good at it
• It’s low-competition
• You can achieve your monetization goals with it

Join Affiliate Programs

There’s a reason why most bloggers are also affiliated, marketers. A blog is a perfect place to promote affiliate products. The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to own a product or handle customer service after a sale.

Just pick your favorite products that have an affiliate program and earn money by promoting them. For instance, if you have a blog in the search engine optimization niche, you can promote SEO tools. Also, make sure whatever you promote on your blog is valuable and helpful.

Some of the most popular affiliate programs are:

• Amazon Associates
• CJ Affiliate
• AWIN
• Impact

Sell Services

Blogging is a great way to establish authority as a service provider. So, you can eventually sell more services by talking about related topics on your blog. For instance, if you’re a writer, you can offer your services at the end of your blog posts.

Other examples of services you can sell are:

• Graphic design
• Web development
• Online classes

Sell Digital Products

Unlike a service-based business, you don’t need to invest your time to get paid for a digital product. A digital product once created can bring in regular income on autopilot. This makes selling digital products one of the most rewarding monetization strategies for bloggers.

Here are a few digital product examples:

• Ebooks
• Online courses
• Workbooks

Read More: 10 Best Affiliate Marketing Programs for Beginners

Sell Physical Products

You don’t have to own a physical product to sell it on your blog. The print-on-demand business model helps bloggers sell physical products with their designs imprinted on them. All you need to do is sign up on platforms like T-spring and Printful and create custom merchandise, such as:

• T-shirts
• Mugs
• Posters
• Phone cases

Build an Email List

You can rank your blog posts on search engines and generate passive income for a while. If you want to make your blog income sustainable, you need to build an email list. A list of loyal readers who’d value and act on your suggestions. When someone gives their email address to you, they’re essentially permitting you to reach out to them later.

Once you have a decent-sized email list, you won’t have to worry about other traffic channels. But, of course, more traffic means more money, so you want to maximize your traffic sources. You can use opt-in forms on your blog posts to grab the email addresses of your readers. You can even bribe them into giving their email addresses by offering lead magnets, such as:

• Free checklists
• Helpful ebooks
• Blog posts packaged into a PDF
• A free trial of a software

Sell Ad Placements

This is probably the most popular method of monetizing a blog. You can rent out particular places on your blog for a fee. Companies are willing to pay bloggers generous amounts if there is enough relevant traffic to their blog posts. But, of course, you can only work with advertisers in your particular niche.

There are essentially two ways to generate blog income with this strategy:

1. Work with individual companies: Find companies in your industry and ask them if they’d be interested in showcasing their business on your blog.
   Although it can be a time-consuming process, done well, you can make a lot of recurring income with it.
2. Sign Up for an Ad Network: The second one is relatively easier where you work with an advertising network that handles advertisers for you.
   Examples include Google AdSense and AdThrive. All you have to do is paste their code on the backend of your site.

In most cases, your blog has to fulfill a certain minimum page-view requirement. The good thing with this monetization strategy is that you only need to bring traffic to your blog posts and don’t need to sell anything.

Publish Sponsored Posts

You can also let brands publish their posts on your blog and charge a certain amount of money. If your blog gets a good amount of traffic, many companies would be willing to pay a handsome amount for a sponsored post.

All you’d need to do is talk about their product. You don’t have to wait for companies to approach you either. Reach out to relevant businesses and let them know you’re open to sponsorships.

Final Thoughts

You can generate multiple sources of income with a single blog. You need to pick the right niche, create great content consistently, and identify the right monetization methods.

The kind of money you can generate with your blog depends on:

• The niche
• Content formats
• Your audience