You might have heard that blogs make money, but just how do bloggers make money online exactly?
What specific things do they do to earn money from their blogs?
And how do bloggers actually receive the money that they earn?
If those are some of the things that you’ve been wondering about, then you can rest assured that you’ve landed in the right place to find out the answers.
In this blog post, we’re going to uncover how bloggers make money online, how they receive the money they earn & what kinds of blogs make money.
So let’s dive in & get straight to it.
How Do Bloggers Make Money?
There are actually quite a lot of different ways that bloggers make money. These include affiliate marketing, display advertising, guest posting, product sales, subscriptions & memberships, services & finally, tip jars.
The 2 primary ways that most bloggers earn money are affiliate marketing & display advertising as those are generally the easiest to get started with.
And overall, the concept of making money from a blog is pretty simple. We’ll run through it below:
- Bloggers write blog posts related to the things that people search for in search engines.
- Search engines automatically discover the blog posts & list them within the results.
- People click on the results in the search engines & arrive at the blog.
- Once a blog starts getting visitors, the blogger can earn revenue from those visits.
How the blogger earns depends on what monetization method(s) they’re leveraging.
For example, if they’re leveraging display advertising, they could potentially earn from the views alone.
Or if they’re leveraging affiliate marketing (our top recommended monetization method) then they could earn commissions by promoting other people’s products or services.
So let’s run through & take a closer look at the 7 proven blogging monetization methods below.
Affiliate Marketing
As mentioned above, affiliate marketing is our top monetization method for bloggers & well, for anybody at all that wants to earn money online.
It’s also the method of making money that we teach in our free course here at Commission Academy.
So, what is it?
Well, in short, affiliate marketing involves promoting other people’s products or services in return for commissions that are paid out for successful sales.
All you need to do is simply link people to a product or service via an affiliate link & if they happen to make a purchase, you can get paid a commission.
Sometimes those commissions can be up to 90%! That’s why we believe it to be the best business model.
Display Advertising
Display advertising involves getting paid to place advertisements (such as banner ads or text ads) on your blog & this presents a pretty easy way for bloggers to make money.
Some bloggers handle the management of ads themselves & get paid for the duration the ads run, whilst others (the majority) leverage ad networks to handle it for them.
With most ad networks, all a blogger needs to do is simply connect a plugin to their website or add a bit of code & ads that are relevant to their content will automatically start displaying.
The blogger can then get paid for each time the ads are viewed or clicked, meaning that all they need to do to grow their income is simply get more traffic (visitors) coming to their blog.
And the best part is that display advertisements can also be run in conjunction with affiliate marketing & this is typically the strategy most bloggers use for maximum earnings.
Guest Posts
As a blogger begins to get more views on their website, other bloggers will reach out & ask them if they’d consider publishing a paid guest post.
And what this essentially means is that the other blogger wants to use the high-visited blog to promote their own blog or product, or service.
So, they’ll write up a blog post (or create a video) promoting whatever it is they want to promote, submit it to the blogger for review & offer them some money to publish it.
In fact, the time you are reading blogs online, you should take a closer look at the author section & look out for text such as “guest post” or “sponsored post”.
If you see that, that means the blogger whose blog you’re reading has been paid to publish that specific piece of content by the author.
Product Sales
Some bloggers have their own products that they wish to sell & they simply use their blogs as means of promoting them.
So, for example, you may see a blog in the arts & crafts niche which also has its own shop selling arts & crafts supplies to the visitors.
These blogs simply use the blog posts as a free way to attract traffic (aka potential customers) from search engines like Google, Yahoo & Bing.
We, however, personally prefer promoting other people’s products for commissions.
Subscriptions & Memberships
In niches such as the fitness or personal development niche, where there is the opportunity to provide coaching or training, subscriptions & memberships can be a great way for bloggers to earn.
So, for example, you may see a fitness blogger generating revenue from their blog by promoting their members-only training course.
And sometimes, there may be no course at all. There are many blogs that simply sell subscriptions for “ad-free” viewing or unlimited access to content, etc.
Services
Just like with selling their own products, there are also many bloggers who offer services & leverage their blogs to promote those.
We’ve seen it all, from plasterers & electricians to graphic designers & web developers. A blog can be an easy way to generate traffic & build a client base.
What we will say, however, is that if your services are local, you could be missing out on a lot of income opportunities from visitors to your blog who are outside of your service radius.
The good news, though, is that even if you do wish to promote your local services, you can still leverage the other monetization methods for visitors outside of your area.
Tip Jars
There are many bloggers who simply leverage tip jars on their website, such as the good old Buy Me a Coffee tip jar.
The idea behind tip jars is simple. If a visitor enjoys the content that you’ve created, they can donate to support your work.
And whilst you may think this wouldn’t amount to a lot of revenue, think again. Popular blogs can earn 4-figures per month from tips alone.
The best bit is that there’s really no disadvantage to having the ability for people to send tips so it’s an easy “set and forget” income opportunity & every now & then, you may find yourself pleasantly surprised.
What Kind of Blogs Make Money?
Any kind of blog can make money, but typically, the most profitable kinds of blogs are niche blogs, whilst the least profitable tend to be personal blogs.
And niche blogging is the exact blogger money-making strategy we teach in our free training course.
But you might be wondering, what exactly is a niche blog?
Well, in short, a niche blog is a blog that’s focused on catering to a really narrowed-down audience.
So, for example, let’s take the fitness industry. As a whole, that industry is huge & there are many different smaller niches within it.
Kettlebell fitness, home workouts or CrossFit training are 3 examples of niches within the fitness industry.
And these types of blogs can be so profitable because when you have a laser-targeted audience, it becomes very easy to convert visitors into revenue because you know exactly what type of things they’re interested in.
So you can create relevant content to attract visitors from search engines, and then you can promote really relevant products or services to them as an affiliate.
Whereas blogs like personal blogs tend to be less profitable because they are more generalized, making it harder for bloggers to build an engaged audience.
You see, somebody may land on the blog because they were interested in 1 specific thing, but they may not be interested in anything else the blogger writes about if they’re talking about different topics.
The good news, though, is that we have several guides on creating niche blogs, such as:
- How To Start a Gaming Blog
- How To Start a Dog Blog
- How To Start a Photography Blog
- How To Start a Fitness Blog
And as mentioned, in our free training course, you can learn how to build a profitable blog in any niche.
Do Bloggers Make a Lot of Money?
This ultimately depends on how frequently the blogger blogs & how much effort they put into their blog posts, but yes, bloggers do generally make a lot of money.
In fact, a blog could even make you a millionaire.
But the best part about blog revenue is that it has the potential to become almost completely passive, meaning you only need to do very little to maintain it.
So, for example, if you managed to build up an income of $10,000 per month with blogging (which is entirely possible), you could typically stop working & find that you’d still continue to earn for quite a long period of time.
And if you’re wondering how long it takes for bloggers to start making money, we uncovered in another post how long it takes to make $500 per month with a blog.
Do Bloggers Get Paid For Views?
Depending on their chosen monetization method, bloggers could potentially get paid for their views.
For example, if a blogger has chosen to leverage display advertising through an ad network, then typically, that network will pay them each time their ads are viewed.
However, what you should be aware of is that, as you can imagine, the amount a blogger earns per view of their ads is generally very low.
For example, on average, Google Ads pays roughly $0.02 to $2.50 per 1,000 views.
It’s not a lot, but I think you’ll agree that it’s certainly better than nothing at all & as your blog grows & gets more visitors, it could become a handsome revenue source.
This brings me to the next point, then.
How Do Bloggers Receive Their Money?
Ultimately, bloggers can choose how they wish to receive their money since they’re entirely flexible to choose who they work with.
So, if a blogger wishes to be paid via PayPal or some other specific payment method such as cheque or bank wire, they would simply just need to look for a monetization method that supports that payment option.
And the same applies to the payout frequency as well.
If a blogger wants to be paid monthly or weekly, then they can simply just choose a monetization method that caters to their requirements.
There are even affiliate programs that pay daily.
The Bottom Line
As you can likely see after reading this blog post, there are many different ways that bloggers can make money online from writing blogs.
The 2 most lucrative & easiest to get started with, however, are most certainly affiliate marketing & display advertising.
And the good news is that we actually have a free step-by-step training course that teaches you how to build a thriving affiliate marketing business.
So if you haven’t already done so & you’re interested in making money online, we recommend you sign up for our free training before you leave.
But overall, we hope that this post has been very insightful & helped you better understand the monetization methods available to bloggers.
If you have any additional questions or comments, feel free to leave them below.
