How To Create A Pro Blog And Make Money?

Starting and monetizing a blog has never been easier than today.
Not too long ago, creating a website would have cost you thousands to set up and maintain. Equally difficult was to monetize a website. PayPal was still in its infancy, Stripe did not exist and marketing email was far from as flexible as it is now.

Today, however, you can start, maintain and monetize a blog on WordPress for less than one hundred dollars (this may vary depending 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 it.

According to ConvertKit’s blogging report, professional bloggers reported an average profit of $ 138,064 last year, while amateur bloggers (who represented 86% of those surveyed) achieved only $ 9,497.

It’s terrible, especially considering that most bloggers are launching a blog so they can be their own boss and quit their boring job from 9 to 5.

So how do you go from an amateur blogger to one of the six-digit pros each year?

Well, you need a solid marketing plan, which includes content, a profitable niche, and an excellent monetization strategy.
You also need to do some quick calculations.

When should you start monetizing your blog?

There is no concrete figure on the traffic or the size of an email list to make money from your blog because it all depends on what you sell and how you sell it.

However, having two things to deal with first will help you a lot:

1. Get regular traffic: You don’t need tens of thousands of visitors, but at least a thousand visitors a month means you are doing something good.
2. Increase your mailing list: Again, you don’t need to aim for something crazy here. We will show you examples of people who had a small list but still used it to their advantage.

Now, these two things are important, but first of all, monetizing your blog effectively is a matter of numbers.
For example, if you need to earn $ 6,000 from your blog :

• You can sell a product for $ 200 (let’s say a lesson) to 30 people.
• Or sell a price of $ 600 to 10 people.
• And even by charging $ 6,000 for a consultation with a client.

Monetization is mathematical, not magic.

This does not mean that the key to monetization is simply to raise the prices of what you sell. Rather, it means that you should choose a monetization strategy that aligns with the current situation of your blog or what you want it to be in the future.

In this article, we will show you how you can monetize a blog and make money online if you get thousands of page views per month or if you are at the start.

We are going to show some solid strategies that other bloggers have used to generate income from their own blogs in various niches and teach you how to do the same with your own blog.

Monetization is mathematical. But you must choose a strategy that meets your objectives.

1. Become an independent blogger in your niche

One of the easiest ways to make money from your blog is to become an independent editor for more prominent blogs in your niche.

Think about it, you probably started your blog because you have experience/knowledge in this area, so why not use this to your advantage?
Businesses are looking for people who can create content to feed their marketing, so who better to create that content than someone who has knowledge in this niche.

Independent blogger Bamidele Onibalusi used his blog, Writers in Charge, to show off his content marketing activities while increasing his audience. He is now doing a full-time blog on income for other businesses.

According to Glassdoor data, the average self-employed in the United States earns around $ 40,000 a year. Remember that this figure is influenced by your level of experience and the niche in which you write.

Here is a breakdown of the amount you can earn in different niches according to the Editorial Freelance Association:
You may not be able to charge these rates at the start, but as you gain experience and credibility, your rates increase. Be careful not to charge too low at the start.

Charging $ 10 for an item may seem like an easy way to start having clients, but in truth, it can drive out quality customers as your skills are called into question, not to mention the fact that so little cost can exhaust your motivation to continue.

Since we are talking about pricing, it is best to charge your customers on a project-based basis rather than on time, as it may be difficult to determine how long it will take you to complete a task, especially when you start working as a freelance.

By charging fees based on the project itself, you will be rewarded for finishing faster and your customers will know how much they will pay from the start.

According to WriteWorldwide, here is how much you can charge per project in your first year as an independent editor, regardless of 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 companies really care if you can write great content.

Jorden Roper, for example, earned $ 5,000 in her fourth month as a freelance editor, and Jennifer Gregory derives about six digits a year from her freelance writing business.

As an independent blogger, your job is to create written content that attracts visitors to a company’s website so that some of these visitors can convert to company customers.

According to a report of the content marketing institute, marketing specialists are ready to spend more money on content creation and 50% of marketing specialists expect their content marketing budget to increase in 2022.

If there are companies that make money in your niche and as long as these companies create content, you can bet they need writers.

Note that I mentioned that the company has to make money. One of the worst mistakes you can make as an independent blogger is to choose a niche where companies cannot afford to pay you.

For example, writing about art could be your idea of pleasure and you might have a thorough knowledge of it, but how many blogs can pay you regularly to write about it?

The path to profitability as an independent blogger is to find the right market to position yourself.

A quick way to check if there is money to be made in your niche is to find at least ten authors who cover the niche in which you want to write. You can do this by simply doing a LinkedIn search with the keywords in your niche.

For example, when I look for individuals with the exact title of “freelance personal financial editor” on LinkedIn, I get about 42 results. You can also do this without quotes for a larger search that will generate even more results.

It’s an easy way to validate your niche.

We have already established that you do not need a lot of traffic to earn money as an independent writer, but that does not mean that people will just find your blog and hire you.

You must go out and promote your service.

When you have created writing samples on your blog and perhaps guest articles on other blogs, you can start reaching out to the companies you want to write for.

You can also use independent markets like Upwork, SEOclerks, and Fiverr. But although there are a few independent authors who make a lot of money, like Danny Marguiles who has made more than $ 100,000 a year on Upwork, the majority of independent authors on these platforms earn very little money.

To avoid the race to the bottom of the ladder that is the freelance market, you will have to deal with most of the awareness yourself.

How to find blogs for which to write

The best way to find companies or blogs in your niche to write for is to just do a Google search for the keywords related to this niche and see what comes up.

Because it is clear that the blogs that appear on the first pages of Google invest a lot in content marketing.

For example, if I was looking for blogs to write in the fitness niche, doing a simple search like “Fitness blog” shows me this:
You can also search for terms specific to your niche, for example, in the case of physical form, something like “Training plans” :

Now all you have to do is contact the blog owners and present your freelance writing service to them.

Enjoy your own site

In addition to finding new prospects, you should also enjoy your own site, you are a writer after all.

Use incoming marketing and SEO to drive people to your site where you can then offer them your writing and blogging services.
An independent writer, Maddy Osman does this on his independent site, The Blogsmith.

2. Sell ebooks to your audience

Selling e-books is one of the most popular ways bloggers choose to monetize their blogs. It is perfect because it is relatively easy to create and its price is generally high enough for most visitors to buy it.

But e-books are not just about allowing bloggers to quickly monetize their blogs. As a blogger selling an ebook may be the quickest way to test if people are interested in what you cover enough to pay for it.

E-books are also a low-risk way for visitors to your website 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 from your books. For example, David Oudiette converted the knowledge he had acquired by building landing pages into an electronic book of 252 pages at $ 39.

He didn’t have a lot of traffic on his blog like everything he did at the time was the consultation, but David was able to generate more than $ 13,000 in ebook revenue.

Here’s what David had to do to sell so many books:

• He asked his blog subscribers on their home page, gave them free advice, and then directed them to his book.
• He answered questions and commented on the landing pages on Quora and Reddit, and then presented his book as an additional source of information.
• David also added the book on Product Hunt.
• Even more impressive, David Cold emailed the companies and gave them free comments on their home page, then responded to the responses and linked to his book.

David didn’t have a lot of traffic, but he did a lot of work.

There is also Taylor Pearson who sold more than 5,000 pounds in four weeks and who, in 2015, earned more than $ 60,000 with this book alone. Taylor had only 700 subscribers at the time.

Taylor attributes the success of his book to a few factors:

• Bring fans of his blog to become beta players during the writing phase.
• Creation of a Facebook group to communicate the progress of their book to key readers (Read: How to create a Facebook page).
• Send the book to all members of the Facebook group so they can leave an honest review of Amazon.
• Keep everyone on their list informed of the progress of the book, which makes them more involved and more likely to buy later.
• Synchronize social media messages during and after launch.
• Sending a personalized email on his book to each of his Gmail contacts.
• Make a gift to promote the book.

The book has become a bestseller in the small business section on Amazon and the rest is history.

The good thing about these two examples is that they show that with good marketing and a good book, you don’t need as many subscribers and you certainly don’t need to be an expert author.

None of these authors published and hoped, on the contrary, they did a lot of work to get their books off the ground.

Where to sell your Ebook

You can then choose to sell your ebook directly on your blog or via platforms like Gumroad or Podia.

Selling your ebook on your own site can be beneficial because you get to keep 100% of the profits. For example, Harsh Agrawal of

ShoutMeLoud has an entire section of its site entirely devoted to its different ebooks.

You can easily create something like this with the Easy Digital Downloads WordPress plugin.

If you choose to publish your ebook as a Kindle Amazon then you can only keep 70% of the profits, but it comes with the added benefit that the more books you sell, the more you can get more exposure which leads to more sales.

The sale of electronic books is also not limited to a particular niche. There are email books on blogging, photography, fitness, and everything you can think of.

For example, if you had a blog that taught gardening, you can sell an ebook that taught your audience in more detail how to grow their own gardens or a particular plant.

You can even reuse some of the content you have already written on your blog, then add more details and context.
If you don’t have the time or the skills to write a book yourself, you can hire Ghostwriters to do it for yourself.

You can find Ghostwriters on LinkedIn, Scripted, Upwork and even Fiverr. Keep in mind that, like everything, you get what you pay for. More experienced Ghostwriters will charge you more than beginners.

You can also create your book cover yourself with tools like Canva, Photoshop and Snappa or you can pay for a service like 99designs and let a professional do it for you.

3. Create and sell online courses

Another way to monetize your blog is to sell online lessons. What keeps most bloggers from starting their own course is that they think you need to be some kind of expert to teach a course.

But it’s not true, all you need to teach a course is to know more than the people you teach and to be able to present this information in a way that will be useful to people.

Ramit Sethi of IWT earns millions thanks to the courses he creates, not because he is a licensed financial planner, but because he helps people to eliminate the problems in their lives.

You don’t have to be a certified chef to create a course that teaches people how to cook. If you can cook better than most people and start your course in a way that can really teach people how to cook then there is nothing that keeps you from starting your course.

More and more people are taking online courses, the e-learning industry is expected to reach around $ 325 billion by 2025.
You also don’t have to be an influencer like Ramit Sethi to get a decent income from your lessons.

There are people like Joseph Michael who won $ 40,000 as a beginner by teaching writers how to use the popular Scrivener writing software.

Joseph did not have thousands of visitors or a gigantic email list. He sold his course by speaking to influential people and promoting his course in the webinars he talked about.

How to find course ideas

If you already have an audience, just identify a problem that many of them share and that you can solve.

Let’s identify the pain points that your audience’s needs have resolved:

• Sending a survey: The quickest way to find out what your audience’s problems are is to ask them questions. You can do this by sending a simple email survey.

Here is an example of Ramit Sethi just doing this in one of his emails just before New Year’s:

• Read the blog comments: Your comments section can be a treasure trove of ideas if you pay attention. And if you don’t have as many comments on your blog, you can read comments from other blogs in your niche.

However, if you don’t have an audience, you can come up with course ideas by brainstorming a list of things you do better than most people.
Here are some questions to help you understand:

• What do your friends compliment you on?
• Why do people come to ask you for advice?
• What does everyone around you complain about, but you don’t seem to have a problem with it?
• What did you learn from your old job?
• What can you do better than most people you know?

For Joseph, he knew how to use Scrivener, which most people found too complex. In your case, it may be an instrument or a bandage. As long as you can do it better than most people, you can teach them.
Without a doubt, one of the most effective ways to launch your course is by using the 7-step launch strategy found at the link below;

Peek Behind the Curtain at the 7-Step Launch Strategy That Sold 394 Online Courses… In Just 2 Weeks! >>

 

4. Start of a coaching/consultation company

Sometimes people want more detailed and personalized instructions than a book or course can provide, so they turn to individual coaching (or advice depending on the type of services you offer).

Coaching or counseling is a monetization strategy to which most blog owners who have successfully sold books and lessons turn when they want to create an additional source of income.

It’s not just for established bloggers, however, a consultation can also be your monetization strategy from the start.

Coaching, like most monetization strategies, we have already talked about your ability to use your skills and experience to help people solve problems in their lives.

Brennan Dunn, for example, helps companies sell more through marketing automation and charges around $ 9,000 for a consultation and Nagina Abdullah earns more than $ 100,000 a year in coaching with clients who want to lose weight.

Here is an overview of Nagina’s income throughout the year:

If you already derive income from books and lessons, consider offering individual consultations to members of your audience.
And if you’re just getting started, the low-volume nature of the consultation means you can start generating income without too much traffic.

With consultation, it’s not just a question of how much traffic you generate, it’s more about getting the right type of traffic, that is, people who need your services and can afford to pay you.

This means writing targeted blog articles on topics of interest to your type of client, speaking on a podcast, listening, and going to events where they come together to get to know you.

5. Offer a paid membership plan

Companies with subscription models are becoming more and more popular, so much so that some people have started to call it the subscription economy.

All of Netflix, web hosting providers and membership sites are part of the subscription economy.
A membership site is a protected section of your online business where members subscribe monthly or annually to receive exclusive benefits.

People in your community share a common interest and the benefits they pay may include exclusive items, advice, reports, webinars, meetings in person and simply being in the company of people with similar views.

Membership sites not only allow you to reach more people but also give everyone a sense of community and belonging.

One thing I like about membership sites is that everyone is part of a group, whether they realize it or not.

This means that if you are interested in something, the world is so big and the Internet so connected that you can find other people like you.

For example, Ryan Levesque loved orchids and knew how to grow them. He, therefore, created OrchidsMadeEasy, where he offers its members exclusive content and provides them with a platform where they can meet and learn from other orchid lovers.

Ryan’s members pay $ 9.95 a month and, since it has 1,800 members, its monthly income is $ 18,000.

Even better, depending on the price of your subscription, you don’t need as much traffic.
Will Hamilton of Fuzzy yellow balls teaches tennis players how to improve their game and he has already had 600 members who paid $ 25 a month. It’s over $ 15,000 a month for only 600 people, and it was in 2010.

You can create a membership site for almost anything as long as the people you target have money and are dedicated.
For example, tennis players train for hours to be good, so they get involved and they also spend money on tennis equipment, so they have money to spend.

Another good example is golfers. Golfers are ready to make efforts to improve their skills and they are also spending money on equipment.

This is probably the reason why Sean Ogle of Breaking Eighty managed to get 150 members to join his golf club within 8 months of the start of his blog. Breaking Eighty members pay between $ 250 and $ 500 a year.

If you have an audience that is dedicated and already spends money to improve, creating a membership site could be the most profitable thing you can do. You can easily start making thousands of dollars with only a few hundred members.

When it comes to creating and managing your membership site, you can use WordPress plugins or third-party platforms.

6. Earn money with display advertising (Banners)

There is a lot of hatred for advertisements displayed in the blogosphere. Most people say it is a bad monetization strategy because there is nothing you can do well with it. In most cases, they would be right, but there is a reason why the advertisements displayed are always popular despite all the bad press they receive.

The reason is that they work and are the quickest way, even if not the most cost-effective, to start monetizing a website.

In fact, some bloggers start by posting advertisements until they can find more cost-effective monetization strategies. For some people, these first dollars give them enough motivation to continue with the blog.

For example, Alborz Fallah of Car Expert began to monetize his website when a friend taught him how to post Google Adsense ads on his blog. Advertisements allowed Alborz to go from 0 on his blog to earn $ 200 a day while he kept his job full time.

Alborz later began working directly with automakers who paid up to $ 30,000 for sponsoring. All this would not have been possible if this friend had not convinced him to monetize his blog with Adsense first.

Alborz is not the only one successful with display ads either, as is Fat Stacks’ entrepreneur Jon Dykstra.
Not bad for a bad monetization strategy, no?

Jon says the secret to his success with Adsense is the optimal placement of ads, generating a lot of traffic on the many sites he owns and choosing niches where the billboards work.

An excellent free WordPress plugin that you can use to optimize your advertising placements is Ad Inserter. With it, you can easily do A / B testing with your ads to see which ones are best performing and it even allows you to customize how and where your ads appear on your website.

For example, if you want an ad to appear in your article, but only after the first two paragraphs of the content, you can easily do so.
With advertisements, you don’t need a product of your own to sell, but you need traffic and the more you can generate, the more you perform.

It may take a while before advertisements start working for you as you start developing your blog and improving your content marketing, but ultimately you will get there.

Advertisements don’t even have to be permanent, they can just be a temporary way to make money with your blog until you can find a better way to monetize it.

But we live in the era of advertising blockers and they affect your income in a negative way.

7. Become an Affiliate Marketer

You cannot have an article on the monetization of a blog without mentioning affiliation marketing. This is one of the most common ways for bloggers to make money online.

In fact, affiliate marketing feeds much of the web, about 15% of the digital media industry’s revenues come from affiliate marketing, and in the United States, affiliate marketing generates as many orders for eCommerce electronics as emails.

With affiliate marketing, you promote products from other companies and get a commission for each sale you bring.

Affiliate marketing specialists work the same way as most sellers. They help promote and sell a business’s product and get a commission when someone buys.

Here is a visual description of how it works:

It’s really that simple, let’s say your commission is $ 5 for each sale, and you get 200 people to buy this product, you would have earned $ 1,000.

What attracts people to affiliate marketing is that you can just focus on a big product and sell it to your audience.

With affiliate marketing, you only need three things

1. A niche (It sounds obvious, doesn’t it ? ).
2. An affiliation product.
3. And an audience to promote the product.

You build your audience by writing on topics related to your niche and once you have an audience, you can find products from affiliated networks like:

Many affiliate programs pay recurrent commissions for life and many bloggers are earning a lot of passive income from this.
You can also check which affiliate products from other blogs in your niche are promoting, and reach out to these companies yourself.

One thing to keep in mind when monetizing your blog with affiliate marketing is that you should focus on providing value to your readers, not just throwing products so you can make a sale.

For example, the best affiliate marketing specialists do not even appear to be affiliate marketing specialists.

Take, for example, Ryan Robinson, who earns tens of thousands of dollars in membership revenue each month through his blog.
Ryan creates a lot of valuable content for his readers and presenting products he likes and uses makes him feel like he is a natural part of it.

As more and more companies now have membership programs, you can start promoting products no matter which niche you are in.

8. Generate income with sponsored articles/evaluations

Earning money with sponsored and critical items is one of the least common ways to monetize a blog, probably because you will need to have a lot of traffic and credibility for it.

With sponsored articles and notices, a blogger will charge a company fees for writing about its product on the blog and giving their opinion on it. The product is displayed at the blogger’s hearing and the brand has greater visibility and new customers.

When you think of influencer marketing, your mind quickly extracts images from the influencers you know about on Instagram and Youtube.
But writing sponsored messages on your blog is influence marketing and it’s exploding right now. Over 63% of companies that already use an influencer marketing plan to increase spending this year.

Marketing of influencers has already grown phenomenally and is expected to reach a market size of approximately $ 8 billion in 2022.
When you present a product on your blog, be sure to give your honest opinion about it, as it is not worth losing your readers’ confidence for a few dollars.

For example, Matthew Woodward, who is asking for nearly $ 1,000 for a sponsored opinion, clearly indicates on his advertising page that a paid review does not mean a good review.

Transparency with his audience allows him to maintain the trust he has established with them, which is much more precious than $ 1,000.

Michelle Gardner of Making sense of cents charges about $ 5,000 per sponsored item and earns $ 10,000 to $ 20,000 a month from sponsored items written primarily on the products and services she uses herself. That way she can make sure the people in her audience like it too.

Here is a comment from a product she put on her blog that shows what I mean by that:

As I mentioned before, the only downside to sponsored items is that you need to have a strong online presence before you can get businesses to pay you for something substantial.

Businesses need to know that paying for a sponsored item will lead to sales to make the investment worth it. Thus, sponsored articles may not be the best monetization system for beginners, but they are excellent for more established bloggers.

If your blog already generates traffic, you can start contacting the companies in your niche whose products or services you are already using and offer to write a sponsored article or review.

For example, if you write about technology, you can do controlled assessments for companies that make smart bells, laptops, cameras, etc.

Alexis Schroeder of Fit Financials writes about fitness and personal finances, and when it started generating enough traffic, she contacted companies in the area of personal finance and fitness spaces.

Alexis charges around $ 750 to $ 1,500 per item and earns an average of $ 3,000 a month with them alone.

9. Sell physical products to your audience

Another way to monetize your blog is to sell products directly to your audience. Some bloggers even go from selling a few items to launching full-fledged eCommerce sites.

The popular eCommerce Beardbrand store, for example, started as a blog where founder Eric Bandholz wrote on beard grooming before starting to sell the products on the beard grooming via the Beardbrand brand which is known for today. ‘hui.

Eric transformed his beard blog into a company that was published in the New York Times, Inc, Shark Tank, and is now earning more than $ 100,000 a month.

Eric is not the only one who finds that selling products to your audience is a great way to monetize your blog.

Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal earns approximately $ 375,000 a year by selling comic book merchandise he draws on his blog.

Both Eric and Matthew can monetize their blogs this way because they built a dedicated community that really wanted what they offered.
If you have ever built an audience, one of the most cost-effective ways to monetize it is to sell products directly to these people.

They already trust you and, since you take care of them, you probably know more about them than most manufacturers and retailers.
Shari Lott started Spearmint Baby as a blog for mothers and as she grew up online, she started learning more about what her mother’s audience wanted.

Shari launched Spearmint LOVE, an eCommerce store that sold baby clothes and, in less than five years, became a business that generated $ 1.5 million in 2016.

If you already have an audience, then start paying attention to the problems they have and see if you can sell something that will help them solve them.

10. Sell digital products to your audience

Sometimes the best way to solve your audience’s problems is not with a physical product, but with software and digital downloads.

Clay Collins got the idea for Leadpages through his blog where he wrote about optimizing the landing pages. When Clay started distributing home page models for free, he discovered that people wanted more.

They wanted to personalize it, integrate it into their tools, and even perform fractional tests, so he created Leadpages. A company that now has $ 38 million in funding and generates $ 25 million a year.

If you have other skills, beyond simple blogging and creating e-books, don’t waste them. If you know how to code, you can create WordPress software or plugins and then sell them to your existing audience.

Even if you can’t code, you can still hire a developer. Omar Zenhom of Webinar Ninja built the first version of his product with developers he hired from Freelancer.

You can even sell digital products like templates, themes, and even audio recordings to your audience if it helps them solve a problem they have.

For example, Relaxing White Noise sells audio tracks that help listeners relax and fall asleep, and The Luxe Lens sells Photoshop and Lightroom models to photographers. The Camera gear Shotkit website sells Lightroom to win a commission.
You can even sell printables like Jennifer from syandbrilliant lifeisms that sell calendars and digital stickers on her blog.

11. Launch a virtual summit in your niche

If you follow the trends of the Internet, you have probably heard of or even attended a virtual summit.

Remember that virtual summits or web conferences are different from webinars.

The main difference is that virtual summits are much more interactive and engaging. These are essentially conferences that you can attend online with a host, question and answer sessions, and multiple speakers covering a specific subject.

Now, while the virtual summits themselves are generally free, you can only access them for a limited period of time. The organizer derives most of his income from the sale of an “all-access pass” which allows participants to consult conference equipment whenever they wish.

Tom Morkers, who heads the $ 100 summit in Launch School, has won more than $ 20,000 by selling all-access passes after a summit.
Hosts of virtual summits also make money by selling related products such as membership plans and courses on the subject after the summit is over.

The part about virtual summits that makes it an excellent monetization strategy, even for beginners, is that you don’t have to be a known blogger to organize one. Especially because you gain credibility by interviewing other influential people in your space.

Jon Schumacher, for example, had only about 2,000 email subscribers when he launched his Webinar Mastery Summit.
The summit not only resulted in sales of nearly $ 26,000 after only 10 days but also added 2,854 subscribers to its electronic mailing list.

Virtual summits exist for almost all the niches you can think of. For example, in the publishing field, there is the Best Sales Summit which teaches how to write and publish a successful book.

And Membership Site Summit teaches entrepreneurs how to launch and develop a successful membership site.

If you have ever built an audience, even if it is not important, you can create a virtual summit by establishing a partnership with influential people in your space.

The best way I know to find the influencers you can connect with in any niche is to use a tool like Buzzsumo.
All you would have to do would be go to the Buzzsumo home page and type your niche keyword.

For example, if I wanted to hold a virtual summit on book publishing, I would type books in the field of research.

Then make sure to click on the influence tab:

You can then filter through the number of followers, response rate, and any other criteria important to you.
When you have found the influencers in your niche, it may be tempting to contact them immediately and ask them to speak at your summit, but this rarely works.

Instead, you need to build a relationship with them slowly before making any kind of request. Start by following them on Twitter, then read, comment and publish messages on their blog. In other words, you have to offer value before making a request.

12. Accept donations on your blog

You can also monetize your blog by allowing your audience to donate. It works particularly well if you are a nonprofit organization.

You can accept donations with WordPress plugins such as Give, Charitable, and PayPal Donations.
Here’s what the Charitable plugin looks like on the Uganda Water Project campaign page:

Now, although accepting donations is the norm for not-for-profit organizations, they can also be used to monetize blogs that are not non-profit organizations.

You might be a little skeptical about how donations can work for a blog, I was too until I started reading bloggers like Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex who won $ 2,493 a month with only 410 fans on Patreon. Keep in mind that Scott only blogs part-time and that he still has a day job.

There are also bloggers like Tim Urban of Wait But Why who earn more than $ 12,000 a month with Patreon only.
This does not mean that any blog can make money with donations, however.

It took a long time for most bloggers I mentioned to start earning substantial revenue from donations.
This is because you need to have a truly dedicated audience to donate to your blog and it requires giving a lot of valuable content for free first.

For example, Tim Urban spends between 40 and 80 hours writing and researching to create one of his blog articles, some of which are longer than the email books sold.

It’s a lot of work to create something he gives for free.

His audience realizes this and loves Tim’s work so much that they support him with donations. Tim would not have been able to obtain donations if he had produced only 100-word lists each week.

So far, I have given examples of people accepting donations with the Patreon platform or using the WordPress donation plugins.

But which one should you use? It depends on what matters most to you.

Accepting donations on Patreon may be more costly because there are 5% fees on your incoming income and you also have to pay an additional 5% in transaction fees.

In return, you have a platform that manages all debit releases and refused payments. In addition, it is easy to accept donations and manage your donors with minimal effort. Patreon even has a WordPress plugin to help you make money with the contents of your blog.

If you choose to use the WordPress plugins, however, you will pay less, but you will have to do most of the installation by yourself. You will also need to manage transaction errors and create a way to manage donors on your own.

So basically, if you want to start as quickly as possible and want to pay extra for an already built platform, Patreon is a great option. If you don’t mind making your own donations and managing the donors yourself, then the WordPress plugins are perfect for you.

13. Start a podcast

The podcasting is exploding. According to Paid Insights, in April 2019, there were more than 700,000 active podcasts and more than 29 million episodes.

More and more people are starting to listen to podcasts around the world. Here is the percentage of the population currently listening to podcasts worldwide:

If you already have a blog, including a podcast can be a very smart way to get more traffic by taking advantage of the podcast growth.
Podcasts are great, especially when you are a newcomer because most blogs in your niche have more written content than you.

But how many of them have a podcast?

Podcasts are what allowed John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur on Fire to go from $ 69,879 in revenue in 2012 to $ 1,545,090 in 2018.
Podcasts are doing so well that even popular bloggers like Noah Kagan and Darren Rowse now have podcasts in addition to their regular blog content.

Podcasts don’t just help you make your name known and generate more traffic for your blog. They can also be another source of income for your blog.

With a fairly large audience, you can start selling sponsorship placements on your podcast to companies that want to reach people in your audience.

Andrew Warner of Mixergy generates additional revenues by offering businesses the opportunity to reach their entrepreneurial audience through their podcast.

Here are two of his sponsors for an interview he did with the founder of Codementor:

Where to host your podcast?

To start with podcasting, you will need a place to host your audio files, much like hosting your website.
A media host is a company that allows you to store your audio files so that they can be broadcast continuously and downloaded by listeners.

Some media hosts for podcasts include:

• Libsyn
• Blubrry
• Buzzsprout
• and Transistor

There are also WordPress plugins that can help you manage and even host your podcasts like Seriously Simple Podcasting, Smart Podcast Player and Simple Podcast Press.

What you need to start a podcast

Most people overestimate what they need to start a podcast and therefore never start, but if you already have a computer, you will only need a few more items to start with, such as:

• A microphone: You can get one for as little as $ 10 on Amazon.
• A listening helmet: You probably already have it.
• Audio editing software: There are free options like GarageBand (Mac) or Audacity (Windows).
• Podcast accommodation: You can get plans as low as $ 12 a month.
• A Skype or Zoom account: If you plan to do interviews on your show.

That’s it, you can now start creating podcasts that the whole world can listen to.

Summary

Although it is easier than ever to create a blog, most bloggers, as the ConvertKit study shows, find it difficult to monetize it. Blogging alone does not generate revenue unless you can find a monetization strategy that works for your blog.

And as most examples have shown, you don’t need as much traffic or prospects to start generating revenue from your blog. And even if your niche is important, it is not the most important factor that will determine your success.

We have seen people make money with tennis, beards, golf, baby clothes, cars, and even orchids.

What you need is an understanding of the numbers necessary to successfully complete your monetization strategy and the determination to work hard to promote what you have to offer.

Reading this is the first step, we hope you now have the strategies and tools to start making money with your blog.
Do you have any other good advice on how to make money from a blog? If yes, share them below.