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How to Monetize a Blog: The Best Money-Making Methods for 2023

It’s easy to start a blog these days. There are plenty of guides, tutorials, and free courses available online. It’s really the making money online part that’s a challenge for most new bloggers.

You know it’s possible — every blogger under the sun has a “how to start a blog and make money” post — but you’re not exactly sure how to do it yourself.

I get it. I’ve been there.

It’s overwhelming and confusing, there’s simply so much to do. But I’ve got your back.

If you’re not sure where to start on your money-making journey with your blog, these 9 methods are the most popular. I’ve even included information on how big of an audience you’ll need and how easy it usually is to “sell” that specific method.

So, let’s dig in to how to monetize a blog, the most common ways in the online blogging world, so you can write from anywhere!

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Best monetization methods

There are a few methods you can use if you’re wondering how to monetize a blog. But not all of them are going to be the right fit. Some you won’t be ready for (yet) and others will take too much work on your part (hello, services) but chances are there’s a method out there for you. Here are the best monetization methods for bloggers, and when you should start considering them to make a decent income.

1. Services: start earning ASAP

  • Timeline: Can start immediately
  • Audience requirement: Small-to-none
  • Sell: Easy — you’re providing a customized service for the buyer
  • Passiveness: Not at all — you will need to actively provide the service
  • Income: $20-$1,000+ per service (it really depends on the service!)

The easiest and quickest way to make money with your blog is to sell services. You can sell services to a small audience because you’re actively involved. As a freelance writer, I started reaching out to clients with zero audience — honestly, my blog wasn’t even published — and started making money.

Some bloggers argue that this isn’t technically making money via your blog. However, if you have a blog that’s in the same niche as the services you provide, you’re able to your blog readers.

Not only can you provide them with services, but you can eventually repackage those services as a DIY (do it yourself) or template DFY (done for you) product. That means eventually your service-based blog monetization strategy can turn into passive income.

I believe there’s a service opportunity available for every blog — one that isn’t blog coaching services. However, some might be more clear and lucrative than others.

My go-to move is freelance writing, which you can pair with ANY niche. You don’t need a writing about writing blog, to provide contract writing services. You can use your blog as your portfolio in that specific niche. For example, if you want to provide writing services in the lifestyle niche, your fashion blog is a great place to point potential clients to so they can check out your work.

While writing is what I do, it’s not your only option as a blogger. Other popular services to provide include:

  • Social media content creation, support and/or management
  • Virtual assistant services
  • Travel planning
  • Graphic design work (logos, imagery, etc.)
  • Web design services
  • Editing/proofreading services
  • Consulting and/or coaching in your area of expertise
  • Accounting and bookkeeping services
  • Other consulting services

All of these services are good options if you’re looking to take your work life on the road as a digital nomad. Plus, they can compliment your blogging work if you’re targeting your content in their direction.

2. Products: easily create a customer-based revenue stream

  • Timeline: Can start immediately
  • Audience requirement: Small-to-large
  • Sell: Easy to medium — depending on the price
  • Passiveness: Can be passive — you need to market your products and provide customer service, but you can sell in your sleep
  • Income: $1+ it depends on what you list your products at!

Bloggers are in a great position to sell products directly to their audience. These products can be digital or physical, depending on how involved you want to be — in my experience, physical products tend to make you less money (per product) and carry more liability… but that’s a discussion to have with a lawyer.

The best part is, while you do need an audience it doesn’t have to be a massive audience to start making money. The most important factor is that your audience is engaged and that you’ve started building trust. Let’s dig in a bit to selling digital vs. physical products:

Physical products

If you’re selling physical products on your blog, you’ll need an online storefront. You can build one on WordPress with WooCommerce, or you can use Shopify or Squarespace (don’t tell the other bloggers I suggested these — anything non-WordPress is blasphemy in the blogging world!).

First, you’ll need to source your products and set up your store. If you’re planning on blogging as a digital nomad, you’ll want to consider dropshipping so you don’t need a storehouse and staff to manage the shipping process. You also need to develop compelling product descriptions and create attractive images that will help persuade your readers to buy what you’re selling. Finally, you need to actively promote your products and drive traffic back to your online store.

Digital products

Products of a digital nature are a bit different. You can have a storefront if you’re planning on a full-on digital product shop (for example, The Contract Shop). However, if you only want to see a handful of products, and you want to curate their display and sale sequence, working with landing pages and a delivery system like StudioCart is a great option.

StudioCart doesn’t require you to have a full WooCommerce store. Instead, you build products and sales funnels that add products and provide discounts depending on your buyer’s choices. For example, if someone buys a “starter” product, you can offer them an upgrade at a discounted rate. This is how we sell products here at The Freelance Hustle — it allows us to have a streamlined process that doesn’t require a lot of management on our end.

Ultimately digital products don’t require a lot of management and can easily be done while you’re traveling. This is my top option for blogger product sales.

Not sure you’re ready to build products from scratch? That’s where PLR products comes in. You purchase a PLR product, add your own branding and spin to it, then turn around and sell it to your site visitors. PLR products are one of my favorite ways to create products with a head start (so much that I make them!). You have to spend money but it’s worth it in the long run!

3. Selling Online Courses

  • Timeline: Can start immediately
  • Audience requirement: Small to large (the bigger the audience, the better the potential income)
  • Sell: Medium — you’re providing a product but you need to prove you’re an expert, and your audience needs to be willing to invest money and time with you
  • Passiveness: You can sell online courses in your sleep, buy you do need to provide regular customer service
  • Income: $1+ per course, depending on what you sell it for!

Online courses are more involved than digital products on the part of the buyers. They require the buyer to actually go through the course, learn the material, and then apply it to their own situation. This is great for delivering long-term DIY solutions to clients but tends to come at a higher price and doesn’t offer a fast solution.

One big advantage of selling courses is that the sales process can be automated. You create a course once, build a few solid sales funnels, and they can sell themselves while you sleep (or watch Tom Hanks films). You still have to provide customer service, and funnels need to be adjusted when you find out what works and what doesn’t — but ultimately they can be put on autopilot.

There are a ton of great course platforms out there that you can use. I usually recommend Gurucan (which I use to provide travel and digital nomad courses through my Where She Writes) or Teachable (which I use here on The Freelance Hustle).

Other online course platforms include:

  • Thinkific
  • Podia
  • Thrivecart

The biggest variance is budget and what you can do with the platform. But if you’re just starting and you need something completely free, Thinkific is the best starting place. Remember: free isn’t always the best option but it can be a good place to start!

4. Affiliate marketing: leverage your website traffic

  • Timeline: You can start immediately, but you’ll likely wait months to see results
  • Audience requirement: Medium to huge — the larger the audience the more the sales
  • Sell: Medium — you’re looking at a 0.5% to 1% average conversion rate
  • Passiveness: Once your link is in it’s passive until it expires or becomes irrelevant
  • Income: $1-$1,000+ per month (it depends on the affiliate program)

Affiliate marketing is probably the most well-known and commonly recommended way to make money blogging. And for good reason: it’s relatively passive. You can write a quality blog post today that includes affiliate links in it, and it can continue to pay out as long as the program and that content are relevant.

For those that aren’t familiar with affiliate marketing, it’s essentially recommending a product or service with specialized affiliate links (which you get through an affiliate program) and getting a small percentage of the sale when someone clicks through and makes a purchase.

Every industry out there has some kind of affiliate program that would be applicable. Most have TONS, but some (like fashion or beauty) tend to be on the lower payout side than higher ticket items (like insurance or business tools). The best ones are recurring programs that give you a payout on a monthly or annual basis so long as the purchaser is signed up. They’re a little rarer but can make you a solid steady stream of income.

The downside to affiliate marketing — particularly in certain industries — is that the commission payout isn’t always great. Amazon Associates, probably the biggest program out there, pays out so little for the sales. However, sites that see a large volume of traffic can still make bank. In my experience, fashion is particularly low but if you can get into high-quality programs like LTK you can increase your earnings.

What I love most about affiliate marketing is that it happens completely without your input — earnings aren’t reported until after sales are made. You simply add the links to your posts and work to get visitors to that page. Because you’re not selling your own product, there’s no need for customer service and any of the other headaches that come along with that.

5. Display advertising: earn from your WordPress site on auto-pilot

  • Timeline: You’ll need a big audience
  • Audience requirement: Large — the larger the audience the more the sales, I wouldn’t start until you have steady traffic of 10,000 to 25,000 visitors per month (at 50,000 sessions you can apply for Mediavine)
  • Sell: Easy — you really don’t have to do anything with ads… honestly, there’s not much you can do
  • Passiveness: Once your ads are up you just need to keep bringing in traffic
  • Income: $1-$1,000+ per month (it depends on your CPM and the network you’re on)

Display advertising is probably the most (or second most) popular way bloggers make money. Or, more accurately, ways that we think bloggers make money. The truth is, not all blogs make money via display advertisements… even if they have them on their blog!

Ads pay a pittance compared to the rest of the options out there — unless you’re with one of the bigger ad networks like Mediavine or Adthrive. They’re paid out based on cost per mille (CMP) which is the cost per thousand views. If your CMP is $5, then you’d make $10 for 2,000 visitors.

You need to have A LOT of traffic to make a full-time income from display advertising, which is the main reason it’s not one of my personal favorites. If you’re just starting, I recommend avoiding ads on your blog altogether. Not only will you basically make nothing, but you’ll slow down your site (which is bad for SEO) and probably piss off the few readers you manage to get.

However, if you have a ton of traffic, go full-blown ads if you’re looking for an income. They’re awesome because they provide a set-it and forget-it-money-making experience. So long as you’re getting traffic to your blog and your ads are optimized, the money should come in!

Many bloggers aim to get into MediaVine which requires 50,000 sessions in a 30-day period to apply. If you want to start right away, you can use Esoic, which has no minimum traffic requirement but has been known to slow down sites. I’ve previously monetized blogs via She Media and Google Adsense – I do not recommend using the latter… you’ll really only make pennies!

6. Sponsored content: leverage your favorites on your blogging platform

  • Timeline: You’ll need to be established because you need an engaged audience
  • Audience requirement: Medium-sized — sponsorships aren’t going to come about with no audience, but you don’t necessarily need to have a large audience. The biggest factor is how engaged they are
  • Sell: Hard — you need to contact the brand and convince them that it’s worth it to spend the money with you. Sure, you can wait around for them to come to you, but you’ll probably be waiting for a while
  • Passiveness: Not passive at all. Sponsored content requires you to make connections, pitch brands and create content
  • Income: $100+ per partnership — it depends on what price you set, but don’t do anything for less than $100

Sponsored content is also advertising, but it’s more personalized and directly related to your audience. Rather than placing random ads on your blog and hoping someone clicks on them, you work directly with a brand to create content that specifically highlights them.

This sponsored post content could be a product review, a how-to guide, or simply a topic that’s relevant to your audience that features whatever they provide. Unlike display ads, you’re usually paid a set rate and these rates can be hella high if the brand is the right fit. Some brands are willing to pay $1,000 or more to be put in front of specific audiences. As a bonus, a lot of these sponsorship deals come with free products or services so you can test them out. Hello, free stuff!

The downside to sponsored posts are that they’re, well, content. Creating quality content takes time and effort, so you’re essentially trading your time for making money online.

Not to mention, working with a brand that doesn’t fit well with your audience or blog (even if they pay REALLY well), can reflect negatively on you and your brand. You need to be selective about how much sponsored content you agree to publish on your blog. Too much, and it’ll look like you’re just using your audience for the cash. Don’t be that creator!

7. Paid events: build your business model with some face time

  • Timeline: You’ll probably need to be established so you can prove your expertise
  • Audience requirement: Small to large — you can hold paid events whenever you want, buy you’ll probably want to hold off until you have a big enough audience to fill the figurative room
  • Sell: Medium — you need to show that you have the expertise, and prove that your audience should invest time and money with you
  • Passiveness: Not passive at all. Paid events require you to be present, however, you can turn them into passive income by turning them into a digital product once they’re done
  • Income: $10+ — depending on what price you charge

This is along the same track as digital products and courses, some bloggers make money by hosting paid events and workshops. These can be as small as a how-to workshop that takes place online with a small group of students and go as big as full-on conferences that people fly into.

The reason this monetization method works well is that it’s often a combination of several of the other methods we’ve discussed. You’re not just selling your time, but you might be selling digital products, sponsorships, and more. And if you have a big enough audience, you might even be able to get brands to foot the bill for the event! Pretty sweet, huh?

You can take this one step further by holding a whole virtual summit. You can reach out to the blogging community, bring in speakers and provide a full interactive learning event. These virtual summits can be a big money maker in a short period of time, a great little boost in your overall monetization strategy.

Another fun little hack to earn money with paid events is that you can turn them into evergreen online courses after they’re over. That’s a 2-for-1 deal, you get paid for the live event and then charge for replays if someone wants to access the advice but didn’t know about the event or couldn’t attend. Bam!

8. Sell memberships: start earning with revenue streams you can reply on

  • Timeline: You’ll probably need to be established so you can prove your expertise
  • Audience requirement: Small to large — you can start with a small audience, but like everything else, the bigger the audience the more the potential
  • Sell: Medium to Hard — Memberships require time and money investment, so you’ll need to take the time to establish a relationship and truly prove the worth
  • Passiveness: Not passive. While they don’t require as much as one-on-one clients, they do require you to be active on a regular basis
  • Income: $5+ — depending on what price you charge, but income is recurring on a monthly basis

Membership is a monetization method that’s pretty similar to digital products, courses, and paid events — in fact, it can combine a bit of everything for a full experience. But as someone who participates in several memberships, it’s the community that provides the real value.

I’ve noticed as of late that memberships are becoming more and more popular, and it makes a lot of sense from a business perspective. Memberships provide you with a recurring revenue stream that helps make your income more predictive. If you have 100 people in a membership that costs them $27/month each, you’ve just secured $2,700 in recurring revenue every month. Of course, people come and go, but that bit of stability goes a long way towards helping you build a solid business.

And as I mentioned, memberships can be a great combination of everything we’ve discussed so far. You can sell digital products, host paid events and workshops, create exclusive content, and more — all while building a close-knit community of like-minded individuals.

Plus, people are willing to pay good money for quality memberships. I know I’ve spent hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars on memberships over the years, and I know I’m not alone. If you can provide a quality membership experience, people will be more than happy to hand over their hard-earned cash.

9. Donation/creator’s fund: generate income directly from your blog readers

  • Timeline: You can put up a donation button as soon as you hit publish on your blog
  • Audience requirement: Small to large — You could theoretically get money at any income level
  • Sell: Hard — Donations, at least for me, are a hard sell. You’ll need a solid relationship with your audience for them to believe that it’s in their best interest to donate to you
  • Passiveness: Relatively passive, you’ll want to include the link in your blog posts but like ads or affiliate marketing, once it’s there it’s up to your reader
  • Income: $1+ — it depends on what people decide to donate

Donations are my least favorite way to make money blogging — or, as a creator in general.

There’s nothing wrong with collecting donations, plenty of creators use this method, I find them to be a hard sell. You’re asking people to give you dollars for nothing. You want them to invest in you, but aren’t willing to give them anything specific back… except what you already provide everyone else.

Simply put, donations require a lot of trust between you and your audience. Your audience needs to not only enjoy the work you’re doing, but also feel like it (and you) are worth investing in. It can also sometimes instill an “investment” type feel in where they believe they do or should have more input in your creations, which isn’t great as a creator overall.

Not to mention, they’re simply no guarantee that anyone is going to donate, regardless of how much they love your content.

Instead of straight-up donations, I recommend going the membership route. Whether you’re a blogger or podcast creator, even a low-cost membership where you deliver content early or even a little extra, is a great way for those who love what you do to donate without feeling like they’re not getting anything in return.

Popular donation/creator fund platforms used by creators include:

All of these platforms can double as membership platforms where you can provide content behind a paywall for your audience besties.

How to monetize a blog FAQs

How long does it take for a blog to make money?

Every blog is different, which means every blog makes money in its own time. I know this isn’t the answer you want to hear, but it’s next to impossible to answer. Here’s why we have such problems predicting the time it’ll take:

  • If you’re starting from zero with no audience to speak of, it’ll take longer to grow an audience and connect with them enough to hand you money directly (via products or services)
  • For those that want a more hands-off, passive approach relying on ads and affiliate marketing, you’ll need to grow page views and build a database of content
  • You can blog for years and not make money because you’re simply focused on the wrong things

There’s just no solid answer. I can tell you, I’ve made a few dollars in the first few months of starting a blog — but on other properties, it takes considerably longer than that.

If your goal is to make money quickly, I highly recommend you consider adding services to your business. It’s a lot easier to get a service-based business off the ground — but you’ll probably want to design a service exit plan if your ultimate goal is fairly passive income.

Can you make money from a free blog?

Technically, you can but it’s complex and not a sustainable route. For example, you can build a WordPress.com site (WordPress.org is the self-hosted version that money-earning bloggers make) but you’re subject to their rules and you usually have to sign up for a paid plan to bring in cash!

Others make money working with Google’s blogger, but it’s a fraction of what you’ll earn on your own. There’s a saying out there that if you get it for free, you’re the product — and that’s true with free blogs. In most cases, the companies like WordPress or Blogger will put ads on your blog and earn from your content, without paying you a dime.

So, yes, you could probably make money from a free blog. But it’ll end up costing you a lot — start your own blog instead.

What is the best blog niche to make money?

I’m a firm believer that you can make money in ANY niche, so long as you put the work in. However, some niches are easier to monetize than others — however, those are also the more competitive niches.

Defining “best” can be a bit complex when we look in terms of money. It could be the easiest or the most profitable or could mean something entirely different. Plus, it kind of depends who you ask. However, here’s some of the research that I’ve come across:

  • Food blogs provide the highest median monthly income
  • Lifestyle, travel, food, and arts and crafts are the highest traffic niches (which doesn’t say much because “lifestyle” is vague)
  • 72% of bloggers who make more than $2,000 in a month use Mediavine or Adthrive as their advertising partner
  • Personal finance and education have some of the highest-paid affiliate programs. However, finance is a YMYL/EAT niche so you’ll need actual expertise to make a splash
  • Travel does well on social media and visual promotional platforms and focusing on it can help you “pay to travel” but as COVID taught us, it’s not the most stable industry
  • Business and/or marketing can make a killing in digital products, but SEO is highly competitive — it’s also great for services!

How many blog views do you need to make money?

There is no magic number of blog views that guarantees that you make money. Honestly, there’s nothing overall that guarantees that you can monetize your blog. But in my experience, if you put the work in and practice (some serious) patience, you can absolutely monetize your blog.

I also find that once you’ve successfully started to make money with a blog, it’s considerably easier to grow that income. This isn’t because of some technical aspects, it’s a mindset thing. If you’re motivated by money (guilty as charged) seeing a little trickle of cash flow here and there is really inspiring. You’re a little more fired up to get in there and grow it, and that makes it seemlike it’s easier.

Not the answer you wanted? Yeah, I figured. Here are a few numbers that might be able to provide a little context — though remember, they’re generalizations:

  • 50,000 sessions in a 30-day period is the minimum threshold for applying MediaVine*
  • 20,000 pageviews in a 30-day period is preferred for a SheMedia application*
  • 2 to 5% is considered a good email conversion rate – so an email list of 100 (quality) subscribers could produce 2 to 5 sales
  • Conversion rates of 0.05 to 1% are considered average in affiliate marketing – so if you get 100 click thrus, you might get a sale

*Both SheMedia and Mediavine have additional requirements as part of their application process, these are simply the metric-based requirements

Why do bloggers fail at making money?

Blogging is a long-term game, and I’d say the primary reason why bloggers “fail” is because they give up. They don’t see movement as fast as they want or expect to, and they fade before they have a chance to get traction.

The second reason I’d say bloggers fail to make money is that they don’t consistently produce quality content. Sub-par content simply doesn’t make money… OK, sometimes it does, but it’s usually because the blog’s been around for a while.

If you want to monetize a blog, you’ll want to focus, above all, on quality content that provides value.

What percent of blogs are successful?

Success is both subjective and relative, but only 30% of bloggers report being “successful” according to First Site Guide.

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Wrap up: When can I start making money from my blog?

If you’re pulling your hair out wondering how to monetize a blog, the most important thing to remember is that it’s not hard so much as it requires some serious commitment.

These 9 techniques are the most popular (and in a lot of cases easiest) ways for creators to make money. But as you forge your own path you might find your own. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try new things — after all, that’s how you’ll figure out what works best for your blog.

And above all else, keep creating great content! That’s always the key to success in any industry.

Not sure where to go next? I recommend checking these articles out:

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