How to make money with a blog

After reading my guide on how to start a blog, you too have decided to dive into an “Internet” adventure and open your own website to show everyone what your true passions are. Your dream is to create a famous blog, turning your talent into a real business capable of generating income.

If that’s the case, let me tell you, you’ve certainly had a good idea, but know that making money with a blog will not be easy at all. Creating a successful blog that is independent of an economic point of view takes a lot of time and work. In any case, making money with a blog is possible: you will only have to commit yourself properly and learn how to properly exploit all the tools made available by the Web. With a little patience and a lot of effort, you can succeed in the business and earn some money.

Having said that, all you have to do is sit comfortably and take a few minutes of time to devote completely to reading this guide of mine. I can help you and give you some advice on how to make money with a blog: I’m sure that if you put all your commitment and all your passion you will see that sooner or later the fruits will come. As usual, before we begin, I wish you a good read.

How to make money with a blog – Create a successful blog:

As anticipated in the introduction, making money with a blog is by no means a simple thing and there is not even a magic formula to succeed. What I can offer you in this guide are in fact some tips on how to start a successful blog, first of all, and consequently, given the high quality of your content, how can you make money. However, do not expect to be able to make easy money thanks to the Internet: you can earn money with a blog only and only if you offer your readers a website with very high-quality standards.

That said, if you want to aspire to make money with a blog you must first of all be prepared to invest in the creation of a professional blog. In fact, you cannot think of being able to become famous and make money with a blog, using free hosting. To start a successful blog, you have to plan to spend money on the purchase of digital products and services for your blog. Which? I’ll tell you about it in detail below.

• Buy a domain name: You can’t think of making money blogging if your blog is amateur and doesn’t have a custom domain name. Choose the name for your website and buy a domain. If you need more information on how to buy a web domain, read my guide dedicated to the topic.
• Buy quality hosting: to create a professional website and think about making money, you need to buy a hosting service tailored to your needs and that guarantees high performance.
• Use a CMS: as I explained to you in my guide on how to create a blog, the CMS is a bit like the skeleton of your website as it is a software for creating a blog and for its configuration.
• Choose a theme and plugins: the website theme constitutes its graphical interface while the plugins are additional tools that will allow you to customize your blog.
• Identify your audience: if you want to make money with a blog you have to produce quality content. For the production of the articles, however, you must follow an editorial plan, that is a list of contents to be created that you will create once you have identified your audience. Identifying your audience is the first step in creating a successful blog. Choose the topic you want to deal with and be specific: a single-issue blog that has identified its niche is better than a generalist blog that talks about many topics and does not have a specific target.

Once you have started your blog following the guidelines I have indicated, you will certainly have taken the first step in creating a professional blog. You will see that, if you publish quality articles frequently, analyze the interests of your audience and answer their questions, you will be successful over time.

How to make money with a blog (Direct Earnings):

When your blog has started and you have gained the interest of your audience, you can start thinking about how to make money. Making money with a blog won’t be easy, but you have more than one tool that will allow you to earn income. On the Web, in fact, and especially with blogs, earnings are obtained through tools that allow direct and indirect earnings. Indirect earnings are active ones, for example, advertising banners and affiliations. I’ll explain everything in detail in the following lines.

Google Adsense:

As can be easily understood, one of the most effective ways to make money with a blog is the inclusion of advertising in it. This does not mean that you have to contact companies asking them to invest in your site, but that you have to register with one of the many advertising systems available on the Internet. These systems provide you with an HTML code to insert into your blog, which analyzes the content of the site and intelligently displays themed advertisements.

One of the most famous advertising services available on the Internet is the one offered by Google Adsense which without any activation cost or particular constraint can allow you to earn money for each view or click on the ads and banners you insert on the blog. To use the service, all you have to do is connect to the Google Adsense website; log in with your Google account (or create one, if you don’t have it yet) and fill out the form that is proposed to you with your site data.

There are many other alternative advertising circuits to Google Adsense that allow you to earn by placing advertisements on your site/blog (Tradedoubler and Bidvertiser, for example). Unfortunately, unlike Google Adsense, many other advertising circuits require minimum requirements in terms of views in order to be activated on a website. In any case, you can find all the terms of use and information on these two services on their respective home pages.

Once the advertisements have been placed on the blog, to make money, someone needs to see and click on the banners posted on its pages. Precisely for this reason, as I explained to you, there is no magic formula that allows you to be successful and make money with a blog: you simply have to propose interesting content and try to make your website known around the Net.

Sale of advertising space:

Has your blog been open for some time now and have you reached a fair amount of traffic? Consider selling some of your website’s advertising space for a monthly cost. If your blog has become famous, then leave some advertising spaces empty and warn your audience that you intend to sell that space: those who have a blog like yours and are interested in making themselves known, taking advantage of the visits to your website could contact you to ask for information.

Once successful, companies may also contact you directly: selling your advertising space will be an additional source of income.

Earn through Affiliations:

Another tool that will allow you to make money with a blog is the proposal of products and/or services through affiliate programs. These programs will in fact allow you to obtain a percentage on the purchase of products and services that you will offer on your blog.

To earn through affiliations, my advice is therefore to register with the main affiliate programs (Amazon, for example) and then propose products in line with your content. Earning through affiliation will not be easy, but the trick is to learn to analyze the needs of your audience and propose exactly what they need.

Sponsored posts:

Once you have a solid visitor base, making money with a blog will become almost natural. There will also be companies that will contact you to publish sponsored posts or reviews on their products for reward (in money or in products), but in that case, it will be at your discretion whether or not to take advantage of this possibility, also based on your own relationship with readers.

Create training courses:

Opening a blog has allowed you to have a space in which to talk about your passions. However, if you have a particular talent and, over time, you have acquired extensive knowledge on a certain subject, you might consider doing training courses.

Through your blog, you can convey some of your knowledge and offer others for a fee, in the form of training courses. If thanks to your blog you have become a popular person, you will see that people will pay to know the “secrets of the trade”: training other people, talking about what your passions are and selling your same skills to others, will be a well-paid job.

In this regard, don’t just think of the training to be offered as a costly classroom course. Nowadays, training can also be done online, through one of the many video calling applications, for example. In this way, you will be able to train while sitting comfortably in front of the PC and you will eliminate any costs for travel and the rental of a room, required for traditional classroom training.

Making money with a blog (Indirect earnings):

Do not think of your blog as a direct source of income only and also think about the possibilities of creating a blog with a longer-term purpose: that of obtaining indirect income.

Once you have created a successful blog, in fact, your website will become your business card and this could indirectly lead to earning, helping you to find a job. If you offer quality content and have managed to get noticed, it cannot be ruled out that a company may contact you and, having appreciated your website, could offer you a job in line with your skills.