How To Earn Money By Blogging

At that place are lots of guides roughly how to make money blogging, simply here's what makes this one different:

I've affected three incompatible blogs to over $1 million per year. In fact, the blog you'atomic number 75 reading right now has made a total of $6.7 million.

And in this post, I'm going to give you a in small stages grammatical case study showing you exactly how I did it, starting from nothing, along with my bit-by-bit pass around for beginners trying to get started.

Let's jump in.

7 Ways to Make Money Blogging (with Examples!)

Online Courses and Workshops
Books and Ebooks
Affiliate Marketing
Advertising
Speaking Gigs
Consulting/Coaching
Selling Independent Services

In a moment, I'm going to present you a general model you can follow to start a profitable web log from scratch.

But first, rent out's jump into the specifics of how to make concrete money blogging, including real-international examples you can study and study from.

Here are the top 7 awesome ways to make a good blogging income:

1. Online Courses and Workshops

Hera at Smart Blogger, we make near of our income from online courses and workshops — over $1 zillion per twelvemonth — only we are far from the only palmy blog doing this. Most of the populate making a lot of money from their blogs are doing IT through online courses.

Ramit Sethi reportedly crossed $10 million dollars in annual revenue with his suite of premium courses:

And it's not only business or wealth-adjusted topics that are doing well. You can notic successful blogs along just astir any topic or niche monetizing with online courses. For instance, the popular interior designer Maria Killam has quite a few courses and workshops in her catalog:

Online courses and workshops can buoy bring in ane-time payments or, depending on your model, recurring income via subscriptions.

2. Books and Ebooks

Quite a a few writers have parlayed their blogging success into a major publication heap. Mark Manson, for instance, publicised a blog post called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck in 2015. Millions of readers later, he got a book take with Harpist Collins and went connected to sell over 3,000,000 copies in the US unparalleled.

Somebody-published books have also been successful. The most notable success story among bloggers is probably James Altucher's Choose Yourself, which is directly sold over 500,000 copies:

3. Consort Selling

If you'd wish to create some unresisting income streams from your blog, one of the unexceeded choices is affiliate marketing — recommending the services, digital products, and bodily products of other companies in exchange for a commission.

Hither at Smart Blogger, we make more than $100,000 p.a. promoting affiliate products, most of that coming from casually recommending products we love like SiteGround (affiliate link) and Elementor (assort link).

But there are lots of other examples too. For instance, John Lee Dumas of EOFire ready-made $710,835 in affiliate income last year. Digital Picture taking School has reportedly ready-made over $500,000 in Amazon Associates commissions from promoting photography equipment:

With thus many companies offering referral programs to help counterpane the give-and-take just about their production or service, the number of different consort selling opportunities is enormous.

Joining an affiliate network is one means to get down tapping into this revenue stream and to start earning extra income from your baffling-attained organic traffic.

4. Advertising

Normally, we're not big fans of selling ads along your web site as a monetisation strategy. You need approximately a million visitors per year for the large ad networks to take you seriously, and affiliate marketing is virtually always more profitable and just as passive.

That being said, some niches like recipes, fashion, and news show are hard to monetize through and through many of the other methods mentioned here, and they get LOTS of page views. Therein case, putting a few banner ads on your site dismiss make sense as a supplementary income source.

For example, hither's a screenshot of a 2016 income report from Portion the Yummy:

Unremarkably, you build money by joining an ad network. Nearly anyone can join Google AdSense, for example, and you can later grow into more selective networks like Mediavine and AdThrive.

5. Speaking Gigs

If your web log takes forth, and you start being recognized as an authority in your space, you might be surprised by how many invitations you fetch to speak at conferences. And information technology's amazingly profitable. I typically make a minimum of $10,000 per speech and it can go as high Eastern Samoa $100,000 when you count product sales resulting from the actor's line.

Peachy for a 60-90 minute speak. 🙂

6. Consulting/Coaching

Spell this sure enough isn't everyone's cupful of tea, doing a trifle of coaching job or consulting is an online job that can earn you a surprisingly nice living, even when your audience is small. I rarely do consulting anymore, just the last time I did on a regular basis, I charged $1,000 an hour with a six-calendar month waiting list.

But I'm non the only one. Going noncurrent to Maria, once more, she's been quite modern in coming functioning with ways to practise design consultations by photo and email, currently charging $1,275 per room:

You backside make this work in almost whatever niche. You just need to know what you're doing and be confident in the value you are providing to clients.

7. Selling Freelance Services

The future step up from consulting is to actually do it for them.

Typically, you'll make many money freelancing than with anything else, but it's also the most draining and meter-intensive. That existence said, I've seen bloggers make six-figure incomes with no than a few thou readers on their web log, essentially using their blog as a lead mechanism to get clients.

It's soh profitable, even if successful bloggers continue to do it. E.g., Elna Cain continues to deal her freelance committal to writing services:

If you're a freelance writer, couturier, photographer, computer programmer, Oregon opposite service provider where your skills can be sold digitally instead of you having to be there in person, you might require to consider this income watercourse from day one. Every you really need to get rolling is a contact soma for clients to poke out to you.

Okay, now for the play division. LET Maine show you the framework I wont to become an downright-to-goodness millionaire…

If you're a New blogger opening from scratch with atomic number 102 traffic or influential friends, information technology's slowly to curiosity…

Is it reasonable for you to consider you can make money blogging?

For that matter, how do blogs even make money? Ads? Sponsored content? Sell products? Good luck? Or something else?

Well, let's take a consider exactly how I did it at Smart Blogger. Here's my complete step-past-step process for how to defecate money blogging:

1. Choose the Right Blogging Niche (a Profitable One)

Lashkar-e-Toiba's start with a little brutal truth, shall we?

Passion does non tight profit.
Neither does expertise.
Hard cultivate doesn't guarantee anything either.

For instance:

You can glucinium the world's foremost expert happening quadrate-shaped tomatoes, wake up every morning with a burning passion to develop the public on their immense superiority to pattern-wrought tomatoes, and shape until your fingers bleed and your eyes pass off of your head, following all the right tactic for turning your brand-new blog into a touristy one, and…

You'll never take over a prospect in infernal region at making whatever amount of money.

Here's why:

Cypher but you gives a damn virtually square tomatoes
Even if they did care, they wouldn't spend any money

In different words, you penury a large audience who buys things. Without that, nothing else matters. It's a prerequisite for everything other.

In the case of Smart Blogger, I noticed early that bloggers buy dozens of different things:

In fact, there are companies with $10 million+ per year of revenue in most of those categories. Information technology's also a growing space with millions of people:

The only problem?

Heaps of contention. Whether it be my previous employers Brian Clark Beaver State Neil Patel, my good friends over at Problogger, or the gazillion other "blogging about blogging" peeps infesting the social media space, everyone was intent on snagging a piece of the pie. They also had a several-yr head start on Pine Tree State.

So, how did I compete? The honest resolution:

2. Improve Your Content Skills

Embed This Infographic Happening Your Site

You've probably heard that "Content is king," and it's true… to an extent. A more veracious statement would be…

The Best Content Is King

If that's hard to understand, think nigh it this way:

Slews of bloggers sit down down and think, "What will I write today?" They jot some thoughts, doing their best to be helpful, original, and entertaining. If they're disciplined, they might even follow it for a few months.

But it almost never works. Here are a few reasons why:

What you want to say isn't what other people desire to read
You weren't using a verified content fabric
Information technology's not the best spot ever published happening the topic

Granted, it's not your demerit. Until today, chances are no uncomparable e'er told you about any of those requirements. You thought, to become a successful blogger, you just had to spell interesting stuff and publish it.

No, hopper. None.

The truth is, having good ideas and powerful words isn't enough. You have to create the best content ever published along web log topics lots of mass are interested in learning more about. And that brings us to the three levels of content creation:

You know what blog content is popular in your niche, and you compose exclusively about those topics
You've mastered frameworks proven to make your content more than popular (list post, how to spot, etc.)
Your content delivers Sir Thomas More economic value to the reader than any otherwise post published on that topic

You're probably thinking, "Geez. That sounds hard." And you're right, IT is.

I personally spent about three years honing my skills by writing for other sites before I started my own web log. It doesn't take in to take that lank — I'm but a perfectionist, so I wanted to learn from the best people in my space.

It worked, though. Nowadays, my posts get millions and millions of visitors, not because I know some special "undercover," but because I'm really good at what I do.

Blogging is genuinely nobelium different than anything else. The more of a badass you are, the easier it is for you to puddle money online.

So you want to bon how to make money blogging?

Turn an awesome writer.

Then the following step is to…

3. Choose a Traffic Source (Google Search or Facebook)

When you'ray a newbie, acquiring traffic is confusing.

Should you pore on optimizing your keywords? Maturation your Facebook varlet? Leaving comments connected blogs? Respondent questions on Quora? Being active in Facebook groups? Creating videos for your YouTube channel? Starting a favorite podcast?

And so happening.

There are a gazillion dealings maneuver out there. Everybody says theirs is the best.

But here's the data:

referral traffic sources by topic — Seed: Lin Insider

Pretty much all the dealings for typewritten content comes from either Google or Facebook. The rest of traffic sources combined don't even approximate to competitory with those two Goliaths.

And then, how coiffure you get them to send you a bunch of traffic?

One alternative is you can pay for it. They like that.

But chances are, you're reading most how to make money blogging because you get into't want to pay for traffic. You want it for free, right?

Well, imagine this:

There's an stadium where all the bloggers in your space attend contend for dealings. The number of other challengers you defeat determines the amount of traffic you receive.

In other dustup, acquiring traffic is a sport.

Thither are winners, and there are losers
To be good, you have to train
You need to study your opponents

Thither are actually two sports, and I'd bet you've heard of both of them: look for engine optimization (SEO) and going away micro-organism on Facebook. Some take years (yes, I said years) of study to master, just you can start getting pretty decent traffic after just a few months of study and practice.

Which one should you focus happening?

Well, here are deuce questions to draw you:

Is your subject something your friends and family regularly talk most on Facebook? Examples: pets, parenting, self-reformation, and health. If so, focus on playing the viral traffic sport.
Is your topic something populate actively look for for information about happening Google? Examples: product reviews, specific questions they would ask an expert, how-to information. If and so, center on SEO.

For most topics, you give the axe do both, but one or the other will be dominant. In that case, direction on whichever extraordinary is governing.

In the blogging place, for example, overgorge about writing and grammar occasionally goes infective agent on Facebook, because we love criticizing our relatives about their terrible English. Connected the other hand, you rarely talk with your family about blogging platforms, WordPress plugins, consort marketing, digital marketing, keyword explore, or any other blogging topics.

You will, however, search for them on Google. Sporty as you would guess so, the blogging recess is heavily dominated by search. Here's a partitioning of Smart Blogger's dealings away source:

The accuracy is, we pretty much ignore Facebook. The volume of traffic for sale there comes nowhere close to the volume of traffic free from search engines. So, we focus on Google.

I besides expend Way of life Thomas More time keeping up to date on SEO stuff than I do on interpersonal stuff. I'm a geek about it. Throw me in a room full of Google engineers, and I'd believably know more than half of them.

Not to imply I'm the best, though. I'm too competing against people like Darren Rowse, Amy Lynn Andrews, and Neil Patel. They're pretty freaking practiced too.

In time, I think I can be better, but who knows? That's why sports are fun. You never know WHO is going to make headway.

If you're good though, you'll always be in the "playoffs," for your space, and you'll get lots of traffic. Maybe not the most, but still plenty.

And so you can focus on how to…

4. Grow Your E-mail List with Pop Ups

Chances are, you see papa ups as an bother.

They get in the way when you'ray trying to read. They ask you to mitt over sensitive information like your advert, email address, and phone numerate. Sometimes you experience to deal with multiple nonclassical ups on the same site, and it makes you feel hassled and uncared for.

And all that sucks. In my opinion, you have all right to be irritated.

But here's the affair…

That's where the money comes from. The scoop soothsayer of the revenue for a money fashioning web log is the size of their email list. Here's a dislocation of our tax revenue at Smart Blogger comparison revenue dollars from email to other sources.

The rule of flick is you can expect to make $1 per subscriber per month. Then, if you have 10,000 electronic mail subscribers, you should glucinium able to get to some $10,000 per month.

So obviously, growing your email list is a top precedence. You power, however, feel conflicted about using pop ups. What are you supposed to do?

Here's a different style of look it:

If a visitant comes to your site and doesn't give you their email address, the chances of them backward are virtually zero. You'll never bear another opportunity to helper them.

If you believe your content is the C. H. Best, and you believe you rump assistant them finished prison term, I think you owe it to them to be as pushy as possible nigh staying in link. In other words, not exploitation a pop up is unethical. A little annoyance is a miniscule cost to pay for change.

And remember, that doesn't mean you have to cost super pushy Oregon spammy. You can absolutely use pop ups in authentic ways.

Only you absolutely must use them. Assuming you need to make money, anyhow.

5. Begin Monetizing with Affiliate Programs

So, you'ray operating in a profitable niche, and you have dealings and an email list. What next?

Lots of new bloggers jump into creating a course or book or community of some sort, but that's a mistake, in my opinion. Before you start selling things, you need concrete evidence those things are what multitude deprivation to grease one's palms. Otherwise, you're risking wasting months or even years of your life trying to push a product zero one wants.

The simplest way to obtain that evidence:

Affiliate programs.

Away seeing what your audience buys from other people, you can get a more than better sense of what they might want to buy from you. If you push an assort mathematical product and it converts well, you should think of creating a standardised product. If it doesn't convert well, you should probably move connected.

In otherwise words, affiliate programme offers are a form of market research. Atomic number 3 a bonus, you with great care happen to get mercenary commissions on the products your customers buy in the mental process. So non only are you learning what your target audience wants to buy, but you're making money from your blog at the same time. Jolly sweet deal.

At Chic Blogger, I've tried tons of different offers. WordPress blog hosting, landing paginate tools, email marketing software, Amazon assort content links, WordPress themes, and sestet incompatible types of high-superior courses. Since we sell courses, I pay the most attention to the results from those programs, and here are a few lessons:

Remainder to end solutions deal best. Courses likely to claim someone from knowing nada to making money out-of-the-way outperformed the others. For example, here's a screenshot showing us as the #1 affiliate for Danny Iny's Class Builder's Laboratory:

Tools with a realise connection to money making also sell better than the others. For instance, landing page builders. As proof, present's a screenshot of our profit from promoting LeadPages:

Away themselves, neither of those promotions very sick the needle on our revenue, merely they did teach us useful lessons that went into creating Freedom Machine, which brings us to…

6. Build up a Unique Mechanism

Earlier you think about launching your own products or services, there's one essential point about human nature you need to empathise:

Whenever anyone purchases anything, they carry to transition from where they are right away (Point A) to where they want to be (Point B). For example…

When you buy pizza, you want to transition from being hungry and craving pizza pie (Point A) to taste delicious pizza and feeling full (Point B).
When you lease a plumber, you lack to transition from having a clogged, full toilet (Point A) to having a normally functioning bathroom (Sharpen B).
When you buy a course connected SEO, you deprivation to transition from feeling bewildered and acquiring ignored by Google (Manoeuvre A) to senior for competitive terms and getting great blog dealings.

The success of a product ultimately depends on serving customers pretend those transitions. If the customer doesn't get to Point B, they typically though the experience as a failure.

So, here's the magic question:

What makes you better equipped to have that changeover than your competitors?

The answer to that question is what smug marketing good Todd Brownish calls your "unique mechanism." It's a pocketable different from a "unique selling proposition," because it's non righteous something about you that's different. It's something about you or your method that makes you advisable able to help customers than anyone else.

For Freedom Machine, we have multiple unique mechanisms:

Get published on Medium — a platform with more than 60 million active readers looking great content
Smug frameworks developed behind the scenes at Forward Blogger to produce hot, valuable content
A monetization methodological analysis proven by our success with Smart Blogger

Combined, those unique mechanisms are EXTREMELY convincing at setting us upwards atomic number 3 the boss result. Therefore, the cartesian product sells like hotcakes.

To be clear-cut… it's not inevitable to have 3 different unique mechanisms. Sometimes honorable one is all you need (i.e. fresh, hot pizza in 30 minutes or less). The core idea though is to make sure as shootin you are obviously farthermost more capable than your competitors at delivering results.

Then all you have to practise is…

7. Set in motion the Minimum Viable Funnel

Look around at successful entrepreneurs of any type, and you'll find a stunning trend:

They tend to sell their products in front the product is created.

To about people, this sounds like insanity at the best or a disturbing lack of ethical motive at worst. How could you possibly ask masses to bribe something that doesn't exist?

The answer:

It's the same rule as Kickstarter.

You create a fancy minimum sales funnel of some sort (in this case, vindicatory a apiculate sales Thomas Nelson Page), tell people the ware is coming shortly, and then wait to see if enough citizenry sign up to justify qualification the production. If they Don River't, you refund everyone's money and start over.

In some other words, IT's the final tone in validating you have a viable product. The steps go like this:

Identify postulate by promoting affiliate products
Breakthrough a uncomparable mechanics that makes you clearly blue-ribbon
Test the take for that unique mechanics with a quick and dirty launching before you make over the product

In my case, the lower limit workable funnel shape was a 90-minute webinar. The first time I did it, there was No product, no follow-up succession, nothing. It was just a bare-maraca prove.

And information technology resulted in $126,000 in gross revenue live along the webinar.

Seeing that $30,000 sales was my minimum for success, we went ahead and created the first version of the product swallow students. About a year afterward, it's now future $1 million in sales.

That's also just one product. We have others, and we have lul more in the research word of mouth.

And surmise what I would brawl if I had to start again?

The exact same affair. It's not easy, IT's not fast, it's not even that red-hot, but it works.

Army of the Pure's walk-to with about questions and answers, shall we?

FAQ more or less How to Make Money Blogging

So, we've covered the basic process. Now let's step out indorse for a moment and answer some of the questions I take heed the most often:

Do bloggers make money?

I for sure do, merely I Don River't think that's what you're asking. I think you're interrogatory…

"Is it reasonable for Maine to learn how to make money blogging?"

The no BS answer:

IT depends on how patient and continual you are.

Starting a web log from loot is just as difficult as starting a small business. For example, it requires the unchanged clock time and effort as starting your own restaurant, software fellowship, or method of accounting service. Yes, those businesses are wildly contrary, but the first few age are usually the same story: scummy income, lots of stress, big eruditeness curve.

If you deprivation a more concrete answer than that, we've found it takes even our smartest, most holy students 3-6 years to make enough money from blogging to chuck up the spong their jobs. And that sounds corresponding a long meter, only so what? 3-6 years to personify fit to work from anywhere in the world, return a vacation whenever you want, and probably have passive income until the day you die?

Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

How much money buns you make from blogging?

The fact is, most bloggers make as practically money as any other type of enterpriser:

Nothing.

And it's non because there's no money in it. This web log makes more than $1 billion per year, for God sakes, and it's nowhere close to the most profitable blog out there. Blogs like The Penny Hoarder, Moz, and Lifehacker power businesses worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

So wherefore aren't more bloggers rich?

The truth is, almost people quit. They start a web log, indite a military post or two, realize IT's hard work, and walk off.

But if you're patient and persistent?

You can cook millions. I have. So have lots of other smart, dedicated entrepreneurs.

You retributory rich person to do the work. Consistently. For years.

Can you do that?

So yeah, I think you rump make six figures at least. Maybe more.

How do you make money blogging? (Beaver State, How do bloggers make money?)

As I mentioned earlier, on that point 7 nonclassical ways to create money blogging:

Offering online courses and workshops
Writing books and eBooks
Associate marketing (recommending products and services in exchange for a commission)
Blog ads
Speechmaking at conferences
Oblation your expertise every bit a consultant or coach
Selling freelance services such as writing, designing, and programming

Which is best for you will depend on your blog, your expertise, and your situation.

How do you outset your own blog for free?

Oodles of populate say you can't. They distinguish you to buy a domain name, a web hosting account (Bluehost is one you understand pushed a lot by influencers), and a premium WordPress theme.

But I think that's nonsense.

You can get started for free within Phoebe transactions on Culture medium. They also have over 60 million monthly readers, so you stool obtain a good deal of exposure there if you get featured.

This great article walks you through that strategy, step-past-step.

Alternatively, you can indite along WordPress.com, Linkedin, or any of the other platforms out there. It doesn't really matter. The point is, start penning and encyclopaedism as soon as possible.

Once people start share-out your great, informative posts, and you begin to empathise how everything works, past you can go through the trouble of setting up your own site, installing WordPress, and all that jazz. Until then though, it's just a headache you don't need.

What are the most popular blogging platforms?

WordPress is by far the most popular. No one else is even close.

Just that doesn't mean value it's the best for everyone. There are several blogging platforms you can try — and most of them are free.

Equally I mentioned earlier, I consider Medium is a good place to start. You can also produce your own web log with tools like Blogger, Squarespace, Wix, Joomla, and multitudinous others.

What are the top blogs about how to make money blogging?

I'd like to think Smart Blogger is the unsurpassed (and almost comprehensive) site on the topic, but it's away no agency the alone one. Not all of these talk about how to make money blogging, but together, they give you a solid foundation:

Backlinko — Brian Dean doesn't talk much all but how to make money blogging, but helium's one of the top experts and educators in the world on SEO. What I love about his highly valuable content is how well-situated to empathise information technology is, scorn covering some incredibly complex topics. If you're a beginner blogger looking at for DIY insights, brace oneself for a treat.
Digital Trafficker: — In my opinion, my friends over at Digital Marketer are the best in the world at monetizing traffic. If you'd like to learn about selling, list construction, customer research, automation, or funnels, there's no more better source.
Smart Passive Income — If you're interested in using your web log to shape passive income, Pat Flynn is a master at showing you how to build a midget little business that can support you and the lifestyle you want. Some his web log and podcast are excellent.

The Bottom Line close to How to Make Money Blogging

Is information technology possible?

Utterly, but only if you treat it like a blogging job.

Yes, you can startle your blog every bit a side project. Yes, you can slowly grow it in the background. Yes, you can turn your blog into a source of passive, regular income that eventually lets you quit your job, go under, spend a lot of time with your kinfolk, whatever you want to Doctor of Osteopathy.

Merely suchlike anything worthwhile, information technology's hard work getting there.

You have to study. Practice. Master your craft. Put in a whole sle of work. Hustle.

If you love committal to writing, I lav't envisage a better business, though. Not only is blogging a enthusiastic way to get your writing noticed, but information technology's a great way to colligate with citizenry around the world-wide World Health Organization need you, teach them what you know, and get paid beautiful damn well in exchange.

In that location's never a day I regret dedicating myself to blogging. Never.

It's non just because of the money, either. It's because I likewise chafe do what I love and serve people at the same time.

What could be better than that?