Ways to Make Money Blogging

One of the biggest misconceptions that I see bloggers having about monetising blogs is that they have to do it in one of a handful of ways. The reality is that there are many ways to make money from blogs.
 1. Advertising Income
This is where many bloggers start. In many ways this model of making money from blogs is not dissimilar to how a magazine or newspaper sells ads. As your traffic and brand grows you’ll find advertisers will be willing to pay to get exposure to your audience.

While you need decent traffic to do a direct deal with an advertisers there are ad networks (like Google AdSense) that act as a middleman and enable smaller publishers to run ads on their blogs. This is where many bloggers start (I did too).

2. Affiliate Income

Affiliate income is when you link to a product that is for sale on another site (take Amazon for example) and if someone follows your link and ends up buying that product you earn a commission on that sale.There’s more to it than that but this is another great place to start with monetising your blog as affiliate programs are easy to sign up for and if you have an engaged audience.

3. Products

While I started out making money from my blogs through advertising and affiliate promotions today my #1 source of income is through selling eBooks and courses on my blogs. These ‘virtual products’ take work to create but have been lucrative for me and many other bloggers.
Products can of course take many forms and income virtual information products like eBooks or courses but also other virtual products like software, reports etc.
The other type of product some bloggers sell is physical products. This is most common when the blogger has a business but sometimes bloggers also create merchandise (T-shirts etc) or other physical products to sell.

4. Continuity Programs

A continuity program is when you set up some kind of subscription for readers to buy that gets them access to something exclusive. A reader pays you a monthly or annual fee for access to some combination of:

• exclusive content
• community area/forum
• coaching/mentoring/mastermind group
• other benefits like access to products, services, software

5. Services

The last main way that I see bloggers making money from their blogs today is through selling their own services in some way.
I know of many bloggers who offer coaching, consulting and mentoring services but others who offer a wide variety of freelance services from web design, to social media management, to book keeping, to speaking, to event management etc.
The key is to use your blog to highlight your expertise to the point that people want to hire you as a result of what they see that you know and can do.

Multiple Income Streams

Most full time bloggers make money more than one way and end up with multiple income streams.
Diversifying your income in this way not only is smart and helps you spread the risk from having all your eggs in one basket but it also speeds up the journey to going full time.