How To Make Money From Blogging in 2019 [Ultimate Guide]

Blogging is considered as one of the most preferred ways to make money in today’s era. Most of the millennials dream of the blogger’s lifestyle and who doesn’t want to make huge piles of cash while sitting at home. Even I used to dream it until I managed to make it there and become a full-time blogger.

I’ll be honest with you. Blogging isn’t easy and not a get quick rich kind of scheme, but if you are willing to put your heart in it, you can definitely make blogging your career. How you can do that is what we will be discussing here.

Now, since you are considering blogging as your career option, It is wise to see forward how you will be making money from it in the long run. It can be quite a task to forecast your blog and your place as a blogger who is earning from a point where you haven’t started your blog, but it is doable.

Now, since we are talking about “how to make money from blogging”, we are not just looking at the sources of income for a blogger, but moreover, we are looking “the ways” and methods that you can incorporate for yourself and start making those bucks and earning a living from blogging.

So, before we jump into the sources of blogging, let’s look at what all you will require to make those sources work for your blogging business. These things or “prerequisites” are needed for any blogger before one can start monetizing their blogs.

If you are just starting out and want to make a living out of blogging, then this post will be perfect for you. Here you will find the complete steps you need to take to start making money from blogging. Some of you might be aware of the first few steps such as setting up a blog or creating content then I will suggest you jump directly to the ways you can monetize your blog .

If you are a newcomer, then I would recommend you to learn and soak in every step in the process.

How to Make Money From Blogging?

Here I will discuss all the steps for a person who wants to make blogging their career and make money from it. Here are the basics that you need to do. Let’s see the first one.

Step 1: Start a Blog

Probably the most obvious step when you want to make money from blogging but the most important one too.

You need to set up your blog first to make money from it. There are many blogging platforms out there, and I can give you all the pros and cons of every platform out there, but I won’t be doing that here.

In simple words, when you are planning to launch a blog, the best and the most preferred way to do it is by using the CMS WordPress.

WordPress is considered the best blogging platforms out there and is currently powering more than 32% of websites across the web.

That means statistically, every third website you visit is running on WordPress. The customization and ease of access you get with WordPress is something that you cannot compare with any other platform.

It is really easy to set up the website or a WordPress blog too. Here is a quick guide on how to start your WordPress Blog in 10 minutes.

Even if you do not have any technical background, you can start your blogging journey and can start making money from it with the WordPress platform. You can literally revamp your whole website without touching a single line of code.

So, in a nutshell, you need a good blog and a blog already set up to begin to make money from it.

Step 2: Publish Useful & Good Quality Content

Now, once you have your blog all set up and you have the website up and running, the next most important thing you need to do is to create useful content. Your blog will not have any good value if you do not have quality content up for the user.

Why will people visit your blog is the real question here.

You need to write multiple articles around your blog’s niche for your users. You need to maintain diversity and keep your blog’s content quality as good as possible to make people come to your blog and stay.

Bring more focus on how you can make a person’s life better. Most of the time it will be coming up with a solution for their problem or entertaining them, but it is not limited to that.

When a person comes to your website, they should be able to find what they are looking for and you can provide that by uploading quality content on your website.

You can try storytelling on your blog which has the magic to make any topic interesting and worth reading. You can also try applying different techniques to make your content more engaging and interesting.

Step 3: Start Promoting Your Content

Now you have your blog set up, and you have successfully added good content there as well. Now what? Are the readers going to automatically show up? Not necessarily.

Once you are done with your publishing and uploading content, you need to make it reach to your targeted audience. You cannot expect people to choose your blog randomly out of the pool of thousands of blogs out there. You need to sell your content and blog to the users.

I would agree that uploading and writing is not a task that can be concluded once and for all, and rather it is an ongoing process that needs to be taken care of every time in your blogging journey, but ironically this is one of the mistakes people make when they begin their blogging journey.

You need to focus on both publishing and promoting your content to make it work. It can collectively be quite a task, but there is no alternative to that. You do need to take care of promotion as well.

There are many ways by which you can promote your content such as social media marketing, promoting your content, and any other promotion that you can do of your blog.

Again, no matter how good and valuable content you have written on your blog, it will be of no use if your targeted customer is not able to find what you are trying to sell them. So, in a nutshell, you need to promote.

One of the best and effective ways to do promotion by yourself is by starting the Social Media Marketing. You can post regularly on your social media accounts and can link them to your Blog so you can redirect these users to your blog and can engage them from that point on. Once the user is on your blog, then your content and your quality can take over.

Step 4: Making People Stay on your Blog

Now you have your content up and running, and with continuous efforts and dedication, you can see people coming to your blog as well. Great news!

But, now since all your income will depend on who your user is and how long they spend time on your website, you need to make them stay and come back as well. If you have managed to fetch and redirect targeted traffic on your website, you can now shift focus on how you can make them stay too.

One of the most important thing that will make them stay is your content.

Well, of course, the users are coming to your blog to read what they are interested in and if they find what you are offering of not that much great quality, they might go back and refrain from coming back again. This is the reason why you need to add useful content on your blog.

You can even incorporate lead magnets on your websites such as subscription forms, and content promotions magnets which can help you retain your users and grow your audience.

If you found that your blog’s audience is growing, you can even start a community in your blog. This way you can grow your audience and give them a digital space to interact with other users as well.

Another great way to engage with your users at an early stage is by replying to your Blog’s comments. Replying to comment can do a lot then you can think of. Maybe other users have the same question and you replying to that is only helping them to get what they need.

Also, when you comment, it tells the users that you are more than just a person who likes to talk about his ideas or things. Rather, you respecting other’s questions will only yield in your own favor.

Now since you have established your authority and reputation in your niche, you will see a significant increase in your user base. Since you have people visiting your blog, you will be able to monetize your blog easily. So let’s jump on the part where we learn how you can make money from blogging.

The reason you need to perform all the steps mentioned above is that you cannot start making money from just applying all the monetizing ways I am going to talk about now.

You need users or traffic on your website to start making money. If you do not have a user base, you will have near to no ways to monetize your website.

Most of the time, people skip the part where they need to add valuable content and need to share that so they can start getting traffic and end up monetizing a website which has no or a very few visitors.

Do you know what happens in that case? These blogs fail and have a hard time recovering and making money.

So, to make it work in Blogging, you need to bring traffic to your blog and make it popular before you go ahead and start selling stuff there.

How To Monetizing and Make Money from Your Blog

Now we will look at various ways how you can monetize your blog and start making money from it. If you already have a blog and have a good amount of traffic, you can implement any of the tips mentioned here. All these tips are used widely in the industry and can be used to make money across niches and various topics.

So without any further ado, let’s see the methods to make money from your blog.

1. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is one of the best ways to make money in the blogging industry. Here is how one can earn from affiliate marketing.

It starts with the advertiser who wants to sell a product. The advertiser comes to an agreement that they will give you a commission for every sale happening from your site or the buyer coming from your site.

The advertiser gives you a unique trackable link which will have a record of the visitors from your link. This way the advertiser knows when you sends a buyer to make a purchase.

You now add that trackable link to your website so your visitors can click on it and visit the advertiser’s website. Once the users buy the product from your link, you get a commission from that sale.

This is one of the most popular methods as well. Every blogger who is serious about their blogging has incorporated affiliate marketing in their journey.

The most famous and widely used platforms for affiliate marketing is the Amazon Affiliate program. This program offers various commission percentages based on the products purchased. This same program can be found in other digital platforms as well.

2. Sponsorship

When you build your authority in your industry, you will start receiving requests from companies to feature their product or brand in your blog. For this, the companies will pay you a sum of amount in exchange for featuring their product or service in your blog.

If you have taken care of the above steps on creating a successful blog, you will not have a hard time getting paid sponsorship and deals. The advertisers or the promoters need to see if you have maintained a good quality of your blog or not. If your blog has a good reputation, you will be easily able to get sponsorship deals.

Many people have this mental image that sponsor partnership can make you look like a sellout, but that is not the case if you are smartly doing sponsorship. The trick is to not to get too greedy. I know getting sponsors can be really exciting. After all, someone sees potential in your work, and you and that can be intimidating. But you need to maintain your brand as well.

Go with only the brands which have a reputation in the industry and not the ones which are facing any criticism because you can also attract criticism for promoting those brands.

Don’t be too loud when promoting your sponsors. No matter how well your sponsors are paying you, do not oversell them and make them the priority over your content quality.

You need to first create your own image, and once you have done that, you will see good brands coming your way.

3. Ad Revenue

Ad revenue is one of the most common sources of income for bloggers. Although it is not the most ideal source if you are just starting out.

The reason why I don’t recommend AdSense is that it does not make you much money while interrupting the user experience by showing flashy advertisements. The last thing you want on your blog which has just started out is degrading the brand value by showing annoying advertisements.

Still, it is one of the most common sources of income for blogger, and this applies to the bloggers who have a good amount of visitors on their website.

Google’s AdSense is one of the most popular advertisers in the industry. You can go with it if you wish to start earning from showing advertisements.

I would recommend you to not to start showing advertisements until and unless your website reaches a mark of 25000 page views.

In some sense we can say the more the pageviews you have, the more you will be able to make from AdSense ads. Although as compared to other sources, it is very less it can be a reliable source if you have good traffic on your website.

4. Selling Products or Services

Now, this is yet another great way to make money which people seem to have trouble with. Selling your own product or service on your blog is something that can make you a good amount of money if done right.

The most common form of this income source is selling merchandise of the blog’s brand. This is widely practiced as the blog owner starts or set up their own online shop or e-store and start selling their own merchandise there.

Sometimes bloggers team up with companies such as “Represent” and start selling theirs as that way they do not have to do most of the dirty work.

But there is one thing that needs to be taken care of before launching your merchandise. The one thing that will determine how well your merchandise do. The thing I am talking about is Fan Base.

The most important recipe for selling your merchandise is by creating a fan following beforehand. If no one or a very few people know you, then you will have a hard time selling your merch.

Apart from selling merch, you can start selling your own products. This can be easily done with WordPress websites with the use of Plugins like WooCommerce. It takes care of all the things you need to set up your eCommerce shop. You can sell digital products which the users can use.

If you do not want to go for Physical Products, you can sell subscriptions for your premium content. You can also start selling printables which the users can use and have a value for them.

5. Ecourses

This is mostly done by the professionals who have good domain knowledge in the industry they are working in. But it does not mean that you cannot do it. Even if you have just started your blogging journey, you too can sell online courses for beginners and for anyone who wants to learn.

But since you will be teaching others, you need to have a good amount of knowledge so that the people learning from you should never doubt your authenticity and your knowledge. And to make sure that does not happen, you need to work on your knowledge.

If you are working with a WordPress website and wants to set up an online course, there are many ways by which you can do that.

You can use plugins such as LifterLMS or LearnDash. They both are learning management systems which can help you in creating your own course without touching a single line of code.

When you are building your course add a good amount of value to it so that the user must not refrain from paying for a course. Do make sure that your possible candidate is able to understand how they are going to benefit from your course.

6. Donations

This is another great way to make money or raise money. If you are running a blog and do not wish to monetize your content in any other way and wants your content to be available for free, then you can start accepting donations.

This is mostly done by blogs offering literature and educational material for their users. One of the most prominent examples of this is Wikipedia. They have kept the website advertisement free, and their only source of income so far is Donations.

You can also go with donations, but this recipe does not mix well with other monetization methods. If you are going to accept donations, you will have to think again about the other monetization techniques regards whether to implement them or not.

7. Freelancing

If you wish not to work a 9 to 5 job, you can always go with the option to start offering to freelance and doing independent projects based on your skill set.

This is mostly done by professionals who are running their personal blog and writing on their blog about the work they are doing. Once they get a good amount of traffic, they start offering their freelancing services to the users.

The good part about this is that you will get to work with people who are actually interested in the way you work and the work you do.

Your blog and your work will also help you in building your brand, and if you want to take this to the next level in terms of freelancing, you can set up a portfolio page on your blog which can help you in showing your work. The best part is this can be easily done with the Portfolio designer plugin and that too without getting wrapped up in coding

All these ways to monetize your website are pretty simple, and you can easily integrate these methods to start making money from your blog but do not forget the first section of the blog.

You need to follow the four steps mentioned above before you start with the monetizing process. Once you have the traffic coming in, you will find it rather easy to monetize your blog, and you will find more opportunities to make money with your blog.

Which method you will employ first? Which one do you think will make you money? Comment it down!

Originally published at wpblogdesigner.net on March 7, 2019.