Best Ways To Make Money Blogging in 2024: Can You Really Earn Money?

Is it possible to earn money with a blog today?

Of course. And a lot.

It is easy?

No, but if you stop being guided by your intuition and use the appropriate strategies, you will greatly increase your possibilities.

So in this post, I am going to tell you how to make money blogging and everything you need to know if you want to get successful.

I created my first blog in mid-2017. At first, it was simply a free blog where I shared my thoughts on personal development and, despite all the effort I put into it, during the first 12 months of the blog’s life I didn’t see a penny.

In fact, I was about to throw in the towel several times.

But one good day, while I was desperately checking my account for the umpteenth.

I saw that I had just entered two dollars thanks to the Adsense I had put on the blog.

Although it seems a ridiculous amount, it tasted like glory to me: I had finally shown that it was possible.

It was then that I decided to take it seriously, learn about blogging and digital marketing, and try to turn it into an online business.

Just three years later, it had already become my primary source of income.

Today I generate around 4,000 dollars a month in a totally passive way, which has allowed me to leave my job, travel for 6 months a year, and start other online businesses.

I have learned a lot since then. I have found ways to generate much more profitable income than advertising.

I have managed to earn more than 7,000 dollars.

And I assure you that you can also earn money with your blog, whether you only want to get a few extra dollars or if you intend to live exclusively on it.

If you are willing to try it, in this guide I am going to reveal the 10 most efficient ways to earn money, the strategy to create a blog with economic potential, and several examples of bloggers who are already achieving it.

It’s a long article, but it’s worth it.

How much money can you earn?

First, the question that many people ask themselves. And the answer is it depends.

I know blogs about personal development that are around 1,000 dollars a month, but there are also bloggers on travel or online business that bill more than 30,000 dollars a month selling video courses or recommending third-party products.

At the end of the day, a blog is just a platform where someone shares content and establishes a relationship with their readers.

From there, there are infinite ways to monetize it.

Some require less work to start, such as advertising, and others more, but generally the economic potential of a blog is usually determined by two aspects:

The Topic/Niche
Your dedication

The Topic/Niche is the key

The myth is not true that the more visits a blog has, the more income.

There are very small blogs that earn astronomical figures because they are in sectors where advertising pays very well (such as trading or making money online).

Or because they have built a reputation among their readers and offer very expensive services.

As a general rule, the less impact on the life of someone the topic of that blog may have, the more visits they will need to earn a decent number.

You’re going to try

The effort you are willing to invest is also a fundamental part of the equation.

Books like Tim Ferris’ 4-Hour Workweek have popularized the idea that making money from a blog is totally passive.

You create it, you write from time to time, and you forget.

But all that glitters is not gold. I know many professional bloggers (myself included) who have to work even on weekends.

Although at least they do it in something they like!

Keep in mind that to earn money you will have to invest many hours, especially at the beginning.

Maintaining a blog is not a passive thing: if you relax, you risk that the competition surpasses you and buries you in the depths of the Internet.

And is that today the Internet is much more competitive than a few years ago.

Although the income potential is greater because people have lost the fear of buying online, it is also more difficult to be visible.

In other words: today it costs more work to earn money, but you can also earn much more .

According to my experience after creating several websites and talking to many bloggers, with a good topic or niche and dedicating the appropriate time, after a year you could be generating between 300 and 2,000 dollars a month.

But I insist: it depends.

Logically, if you only want to earn an extra every month you will not have to dedicate as much effort to it as if your goal was to live on your blog.

But to live on it you must be willing to sacrifice much of your free time.

The 10 best ways to learn how to make money blogging

Below you will find the 10 most efficient ways to earn money with a blog.

Often you can combine several of them, but the key is to choose the ones that best fit your project.

Depending on your niche and the profile of your readers, monetizing your website in one way or another can give you radically opposite results.

I have seen blogs with 2,000 visitors a day generating 3,000 dollars per month with their own products and affiliation, and others with 10,000 visitors that did not even earn 500 dollars.

1. Advertising

Monetizing with third-party advertising remains one of the preferred ways for many bloggers for its simplicity.

Although there is a belief that with advertising it is not possible to achieve high income, generalizing this way is not correct: it depends on the theme of your blog and its volume of visits.

For example, a blog on tricks to save will surely get less income than another on financial investments, because your audience will not be too predisposed to spend money on anything.

There are many forms of advertising, but the most popular are Adsense , CPA, and private advertisers .

This is Google’s PPC advertising network, the largest in the world.

Adsense owes its popularity to its simplicity, ease of implementation, and a number of advertisers. You simply sign up here, and once Google has approved your request you can start placing ads on your blog by inserting a small code.

PPC is the acronym for Pay Per Click, which means that every time a reader clicks one of these ads on your blog, you receive money.

In addition, with Adsense you do not choose what type of ads will appear on your website: Google is in charge of doing it automatically according to the subject and the profile of the reader.

Generally, this is an advantage. Google has a lot of information about your readers, and shows them the most relevant ads for each of them. That allows you to:

Maximize the money you can earn from advertising, because the more relevant and specific an ad is, the more chance the reader will click on it.
Not having to contact any advertiser directly, as anyone associated with Adsense can potentially appear.
That the ads do not seem forced. Being personalized for your reader and theme, they integrate quite naturally into your articles.

To find out what potential your theme has with Adsense, you can use the Keyword Planner. Enter your general theme or a specific article there and look at the number of searches and advertiser bids.

Bids are how much advertising companies are willing to pay for each click . One part is for you (over 40%), and the other Google, so the higher the bid, the more money you can earn with this type of advertising.

For example, if you created a blog with content on emotional intelligence in children, each click of your readers would generate between 0.11 (40% of 0.28) and 0.65 dollars (40% of 1.63). This is an average of $0.38 per click.

The percentage of readers who click on an ad is usually between 1 and 2%. Therefore, if you had two thousand page views a day, the monthly income calculation with Adsense would be the following:

60,000 page views / month x 1.5% clicks x 0.38 dollars -> 342 dollars / month

Calculate your potential income with Adsense

Use this calculator to assess the income potential of your blog based on monthly visits, cost per click, and the percentage of users who would click on the ads.Visits / month01,000,000Cost per click (CPC) CTR ads0%10%

Estimated monthly income

$127.5

The key to earning a good sum with Adsense is having a blog on a topic that pays very well, such as executive training, finance, or health, or one that is less profitable but capable of attracting a huge volume of visits.

For this reason it is usually more useful for informative websites that offer general content on a specific topic, such as health, animals or psychology, because this allows them to attract hundreds of thousands of visits per month.

For a blog, Adsense is a very simple way to earn extra money every month, but surely it is not what will allow you to live on it .

At social skills.com I decided to use Adsense only on those pages that received unskilled traffic.

That is, where the majority of readers are curious that they probably won’t end up buying any of my products.

As these are too general articles, the CPC (what I earn per click) is very low, at $0.03.

I could earn more optimizing the position of the ads or inserting them in articles where the bid was higher, but still, it gives me between 80 and 100 euros per month that allow me some whim 🙂Example

Although more than a blog is a content website, Dream Home Base work generates thousands of dollars a month with AdSense. They are constantly posting articles and since they receive a lot of traffic (millions of visitors per month), they have decided to monetize it with Adsense in the articles themselves and the sidebar.

Easy to implement
Ads are very relevant

Most blogs are not in niches that Adsense pays well
You will need a very high volume of visits

In CPA advertising, the advertiser does not pay you when the reader clicks on the ad, but when they take additional action, such as filling out a subscription form to receive more information or entering a raffle.

Logically, the effectiveness of this advertising is less, because in addition to clicking on your blog ad, the reader must do something else on the page where it lands. But for that reason the commissions are much higher.

The companies that offer CPA advertising are usually insurance companies or online dating companies.

When you put your data they send you a personalized quote or several potential suitors to incentivize you to end up hiring their services.

There are many companies that offer CPAs, although many of them are closing as they sometimes encourage unethical practices (such as when a website forces you to put your phone number to access certain content and then resell that information).

Some of the most recommended options currently are Peerfly or Toroadvertising.

Higher commissions than PPC advertising

Low conversion (generally)
There are few really reliable CPA companies

Private advertisers

If you are proactive, something that I recommend if you want to be successful with your blog, you can contact companies to offer advertising spaces on your blog where to place their banner with the ad.

These ads are typically placed in the header, sidebar, or within the content itself.

Advertisers often pay per print, that is, the number of times readers have viewed that page with advertising.

It would be the equivalent of an advertisement placed in the newspaper or on a billboard.

The more visible, the more expensive the ad will be, so the more traffic your blog has and the better places you offer for the ad, the more money you can ask for it.

To get advertisers you can do two things:

Get in contact with companies related to your topic to offer them to advertise their services and products. They will be more likely to access if they are companies that are already advertising on Adsense or other websites, so do some preliminary research to increase your chances of success.
Encourage companies to contact you by creating a section on your “Advertise here” blog, where they can find a document with your rates, the number of visitors to your blog, and a contact form.

Example

There are a lot of websites and blogs that sell advertisement spaces. In their advertising policy, they indicate the monthly prices for each creativity.

You charge according to the visualizations, regardless of what the user does

Sometimes they are too intrusive and break the design of your blog
To earn money you need many, many visits

2. Affiliate Marketing

In reality, affiliate marketing is still a form of CPA where buying is the action.

Thus, you will earn money every time a reader buys one of the products you recommend.

Along with Adsense, it is one of the forms of monetization preferred by many bloggers for its simplicity. You do not need to create your own products and you benefit by recommending third party products.

There are companies that offer their own affiliate programs, like Amazon, and others like FNAC or PcComponentes are integrated into affiliate networks with many more advertisers, such as Shareasale and Awin. Its operation is similar:

You sign up for that company’s affiliate program and wait for your website approval.
You are looking for the product you want to promote and you get a special link with your affiliate ID.
You include those links in your blog when you talk about that product in question.
When a reader clicks on that link, they are redirected to the product’s sale page. If he ends up buying it, you get a commission.
Once you have reached a minimum of commissions, the company will deposit in your account the money that you have generated each month.

The amount of the commission depends on the company and the type of product. Generally, the cheaper it is, the less commission.

Amazon moves between 3 and 10% for its products, while Clickbank offers between 30 and 70% for its digital products.

Amazon affiliates

Amazon is probably the most popular affiliate platform in the world. And my favorite. Since it has everything from pots to ebooks , you can recommend almost any product you can think of.

Affiliation with Amazon consists of recommending products from a specific niche so that your readers or other Internet users click on your recommendations, send them to Amazon and buy it.

For example, if you had a blog about graphic drawing you could make an article recommending graphic tablets. Or if you had another one about cooking, recommend express pots and earn commissions when people buy one.

The negative part is that Amazon only attributes the sales to you during the 24 hours after the click and does not offer too high commissions, as you can see in the following table:

However, its conversion rate (the percentage of people who end up buying) is one of the highest in the world.

In addition, it gives you a commission on EVERYTHING the customer buys, not just the product you have recommended. Calculate your potential income with Amazon Affiliates

Use this calculator to assess earning potential based on monthly searches, product price, and Amazon commission.

Very effective and easy to implement
Links integrate seamlessly into articles

Lots of competition
Amazon commissions are low

Clickbank

Membership is not just about selling physical products. You can also sell digital products like online courses or software.

Clickbank is a popular affiliate network that acts as a marketplace where advertisers present their products and bloggers like you select the ones they are interested in promoting.

For example, if you had a blog about diet and healthy living you could search Clickbank for online weight loss courses that seemed trustworthy (the ideal is to do them first to validate their quality).

Then you could recommend this course on your blog with an affiliate link, earning commissions for readers who sign up for it.

High commissions, between 40 and 60% for products that are around 70 dollars
Ideal if you do not have your own online course and find one related

Conversion rate is low
Your readers trust you more than third-party products, and you should do a good job recommending them.

Affiliation with other bloggers

Another quite effective option is to contact other bloggers who have digital products, such as video contests, and offer to sell them on your own blog.

It costs them nothing more than to register as an affiliate in any of the platforms they are using, such as Hotmart or Sendowl. Commissions are around 50% and are usually expensive products.

If you have a loyal audience and recommend a product from another well-known blogger, you will surely get multiple sales with little effort.

Logically, the idea is that the product is relevant to your readers. And it is that I never get tired of seeing personal development bloggers selling the video marketing campaigns of their mentors.

High Commissions
Ideal if you don’t have your own online course yet
It allows you to diversify by recommending courses on other topics

If you are going to launch your own product later, you can lose customers who buy now

3. Sale of physical products

Selling physical products through your blog is another excellent way to generate income, since the margin will be greater than with affiliation or advertising and you will not be so limited to the volume of visits you have.

Of course, not in all blogs it makes sense to sell products.

If you have a very strong personal brand, surely someone will want to buy you merchandise or books. Otherwise you will have little success.

But the biggest drawback is that, as a general rule, you are going to have to deal with storing the products and making the shipments, which involves an associated cost and prevents this form of monetization from becoming an automatic income (which is the truly interesting from online business).

Printed books

Many bloggers sell their own self-published books through their websites. This gives them a very good margin, but as I mentioned, they should also take care of shipments.

Good profit margin
Helps you establish yourself as an authority on the subject

If you do not work with a third party like Amazon, you must take care of making the shipments

Handmade products

If you have a blog of crafts, pastry, or anything else made by hand, you can also sell it through your website.

Creating an online store section on your blog is very simple nowadays. There are plugins like Woocommerce that integrate automatically and allow you to manage prices and stocks, or platforms like Shopify that create an eCommerce in a matter of minutes, with your shopping cart and payment methods, for a monthly fee.

Good profit margin

It cannot be automated and become a passive income

Third party products

You can also use your blog as a platform to sell products produced by others. You buy the product from a manufacturer, you have a stock, and you sell it at a higher price.

Lately the dropshipping system has become popular , where you collect the order through your website, but you are not in charge of managing the stock or making shipments.

You simply come to an agreement with a manufacturer to have him do it for a commission. This way you save yourself work and headaches.

There are companies (especially Chinese) that allow you to customize the brand and logo of the product if you order a good number of units.

So you can sell products made by another under your own brand. Keep in mind if someone makes in your name, don’t hide it.

This is what happened to a Spanish company that became popular for launching the first Spanish mobile, but in reality, it was a Chinese mobile. When the users discovered it, there was a stir.

Good profit margin
It is relatively easy to create a section on your blog with the online store
You can automate it with dropshipping

You depend on the stock and the manufacture of a third party, and that is not under your control

4. Sale of digital products

If you have an audience and have managed to generate enough trust with the contents of your blog, you have an excellent opportunity to sell your own digital products.

This is probably the most profitable way to make money from a blog. And my favorite.

You minimize commissions, avoid intermediaries, and eliminate physical distribution costs. Plus, you can turn it into automatic passive income and earn money even while you sleep.

However, creating your own product requires time and dedication, in addition to a good sales strategy.

Digital books

Selling your own ebook is a great way to start automating a sales process. Once the system is written and prepared, you can forget about the rest.

If you are not very clear on how to configure the payments and downloads of the ebook on your blog, you can use platforms such as E-Junkie to sell PDF books, or put it on sale on Amazon.

Automated sales process

Income is not usually spectacular

Your own digital products

If you are a photographer, designer or programmer, you can sell your creations through your blog.

For example, you could sell the rights to some of your photos, or sell WordPress plugins and templates.

Since no logistics is required for transportation, you can turn it into a passive income.

Excellent profit margin
Allows to automate the process

Few bloggers and themes can create digital products

Online courses

Surely the most lucrative form of monetization that exists today, because once you create an online course it costs you the same to sell one as two hundred. It has hardly any creation and no distribution costs.

An online course can be in the form of videos or downloadable documents, and if you join it to an automated sales system, such as a sequence of emails through Mailchimp or Active Campaign, you can create a very, very interesting passive income.

For example, every time someone subscribes to my personal development blog, a sequence of emails is activated. T

he first few days emails come to you with information of free value to build trust, and after a week you receive an email presenting the premium video course in case you want to register.

There are online courses on almost any topic you can think of. The only requirement is that you be able to solve a problem of your audience, offering them what they would really be willing to pay for.

Another great advantage of the courses is that they allow you to set fairly high prices: people are not used to paying more than 25 dollars for a book, but they do agree to spend between 50 and 200 dollars for a training course.

I have even seen some 2,000 dollars. Calculate your potential income with an online course

Use this calculator to assess the income potential based on your subscriber list, the price of your course, and the conversion rate to sales.

But watch out! Creating and selling an online course is not easy. There are several factors involved:

You need an audience with whom you have established a relationship of trust (hence the importance of the mailing list!)
You must offer exactly what your target audience needs
You will need marketing knowledge to create the need to purchase your product
You will need digital tools to automate it

Despite all this effort, if you do it right it will give you a lot of satisfaction and offer an excellent service to your readers.

Allows you to set high prices
The process can be 100% automated
Anyone can create a course based on their knowledge

Creating a course and your sales system requires a lot of effort

Exclusive areas on your blog

You can also protect certain areas of your blog and offer exclusive content there under a monthly subscription.

This is a typical strategy of some digital newspapers that only allow you to access all content if you are a paid subscriber, but there are already several blogs that are using it.

For example, Marie Haynes’ blog has a private area where every two weeks she publishes a newsletter with exclusive information on SEO for 18 dollars a month.

This strategy is ideal when you have a blog on a subject where there are constant changes, such as social media or digital marketing, because an online course could quickly become outdated.

Allows you to assign recurring payments
It is a very simple way to sell a digital product

You should create content regularly

5. Offer your services

Once you’ve established some authority with your blog, offering your services is one of the fastest ways to start earning money.

You just have to think about the services you could offer and their format. If you had a photography blog, you could sell your fees as an on-site photographer.

In the case of a blog about personal development, you could offer coaching sessions via Skype or e-mail.

The key is to position yourself as an expert with the content you publish. Over time you will increase your knowledge yourself, and in the end you will find many people willing to pay for your services or advice.

The counterpart is that it is not a passive system at all. Each new client you get will mean an income, but it will also force you to dedicate yourself a lot, limiting the number of clients you may have.

These are several ways to offer your services with a blog:

Conferences and workshops
Advice via Skype or email
Face-to-face counseling
Custom design or programming projects
Group webinars
Content writing
Content translation
Online classes
Editing video or photos
Web Analytics
Search engine optimization projects (SEO)
The fastest way to start earning money with your blog!
Allows you to set high prices

You will be limited in terms of the clients you can serve

6. Donations

Lately, it has become fashionable to accept donations or sponsorships from individuals with platforms such as Patreon.

It is common to see it on YouTube or video game channels like Twitch, but more and more bloggers are implementing donation collection systems on their blogs.

Even Paypal has created a specific plugin for WordPress that allows donations to be accepted quickly and easily.

Although you may be ashamed to ask for it, you will be surprised by the number of readers who will have no qualms about giving you a small tip for free sharing your content with them.

Yes, it is always more effective to sell something, but do not underestimate donations as a source of additional income, at least until you have your own digital products.

You will not need to create any product
It is a passive income

You totally depend on the generosity of your readers
Income is usually quite low

7. Professional Directories

If you have a blog on a subject where there are many professionals, you can create a payment list organizing them by specialty or geographic location.

The idea is that, if a professional wants to appear in your directory, they can do so after paying an amount.

The more popular your blog, the more people will be willing to pay to appear on the list of professionals you recommend.

If your blog is about psychology, you can create a directory of psychologists. A law blog could do the same with lawyers, and a graphic design blog could also list a number of designers.

Creating a list of this type is very simple. There are WordPress plugins that automatically configure them to collect payments.

It is even possible to add rating systems so that readers rate each of the professionals that appear.

You offer a service to your readers
Fully automated

You will need to have many visitors to make it attractive

8. Private forums

Some blogs choose to include a forum section where readers themselves can create their topics and comment.

It is an option to assess if your blog has a loyal audience and you think that they could benefit from the content created by them, both to exchange knowledge and experiences and to give themselves support.

To monetize a forum you have two options:

That access to the forum requires a monthly fee or a single payment
That only to access certain sections or Premium services of the forum it is necessary to make a payment

The second option is usually the most frequent, unless you manage to create a very strong personal brand and want to position it as something very exclusive.

With some WordPress plugins like BBpress, it is very easy to create a forum section on your blog. Of course: be aware that moderating it, at least until you have the help of other participants, requires a lot of work.

It can be an additional recurring income
The participants themselves generate the content

Moderating it takes a lot of work

9. Sell your blog

Most bloggers have a hard time letting go of their projects, but there may be times when selling your blog, even when you’re making money, is the best option.

It could happen that you decided to create a blog on a totally different subject, that you could no longer dedicate yourself to it or that your professional life took a radical turn.

In that case, you could use platforms like Flippa or Empire Flippers to put your blog up for sale.

All kinds of websites are sold on these pages. From those that bill 50 dollars a month to others generating hundreds of thousands of euros.

Generally, the sale price of a website is calculated by multiplying x20 or x30 its monthly turnover, although it depends on its theme and future expectations.

That means that if your website was generating 500 dollars a month, you could sell it for 10,000-15,000 dollars.

Even if it is not yet monetized, it is possible to sell your blog if it has good content and traffic. Logically, its market value will be lower, but it is an alternative.

Note: There are people who are exclusively dedicated to creating blogs, monetizing them and selling them when they are in their billing boom. And then they repeat the process with another blog. It is a way of life!

It is a way to take advantage of money if you plan to leave your blog

You must calculate if it turns out profitable in the medium term

10. Job opportunities

Having a blog does not mean that you can only earn money through it: it can also be a great boost for your professional career.

Nowadays, any job offer receives hundreds of applications, and the typical curriculum with your training, professional experience, and knowledge to stand out are not enough for us. Do you need anything else?

In a US study, it was found that, for positions of certain responsibility, more than 90% of companies research a candidate’s social networks before hiring them.

They are looking for professionals with a good reputation and who are able to demonstrate their knowledge, and the best way to achieve this is through a blog.

A blog related to your professional activity will help you:

Position yourself as an expert in your sector. Imagine that there are two candidates with the same professional experience. One of them only tells you that he has five years of experience with SAP, while the other regularly posts diagrams of SAP integration projects on his blog and also answers technical questions from his readers. Which one would you choose?
Obtain greater credibility. There is a belief that only the benchmarks of the sector open blogs, so when people know that you have one you will see how they start to respect you and ask for advice, even if you opened it yesterday and you do not have a visit.
Build your personal brand. A blog allows you to control the image you give of yourself (or the image people build about you), so it’s a great way to show your values and concerns.

In the end, with a blog you open up to the world, and that always brings pleasant surprises.

It is a totally indirect benefit, it does not involve any effort

It forces you to link the theme of the blog with your profession

The strategy to earn money with your blog

I’m going to confess something to you:

Most bloggers selling methods to make money from a blog never applied it to themselves.

Because many of the same things happened to me: they created a blog as a hobby and suddenly discovered that there was an opportunity. They did not look for it: they found it.

They were successful because they were among the first. The first of the laws of marketing is that it is better to be the first than to be the best. When you are the first in the market, you have half the work done.

Today it is not easy to be the first. There are blogs for everything, so you will have to follow a strategy that allows you to differentiate yourself and make yourself known. And it can be summarized in 5 steps:

Find your niche
Create your blog
Generate content
Build your audience
Monetize the blog

1. Find a profitable niche

This is the most crucial phase in determining the earning potential of your blog .

Most people think of a blog as a newspaper, a place to share their thoughts and what happens to them on a daily basis.

But, unless you are already famous and there are people interested in you or you have a life absolutely out of the ordinary, this does not usually work.

You must bring something more to people. Everyone wants something in exchange for their time, and if you do not offer any value, they will not find your page or feel the need to visit it again.

So the first thing to think about is what can you bring to the world?

The most common is to contribute knowledge or fun.

Yes, there are blogs created with the mere intention of entertaining, and if you don’t check YouTube, where there are countless videos that are simply funny.

But the most common are blogs that offer knowledge on a specific topic. And the most successful are those that manage to satisfy a demand from their public.

To find a topic with potential for your blog, answer the following questions:

WHAT DO YOU LIKE?

If you are going to have to write for several years about a topic, it better be about something you are good at, but also like.

For example, perhaps you are good at preparing attractive PowerPoint presentations, but you are tired of doing them at work.

Look for hobbies or interests that you would never tire of talking about, because all of them are excellent candidates to become the central theme of your blog.

Keep in mind it is not essential that you are an expert on the subject, far from it. There will always be people who have no knowledge and want to learn with a simpler and less academic vision.

That this does not stop you, because by the time your blog has visitors, you will have had to inform yourself so much to create your content that you will know more than 99% of the population about that topic.

IS THERE DEMAND?

The contents of your blog must solve a need, otherwise nobody will be interested in it and much less will be willing to pay.

To find out if that need exists, ask people who respond to your target audience’s profile, research forums, and use Google’s Keyword Planner.

This application will let you know how many people do a certain search each month on Google, and it will also show you how much advertisers are bidding to show advertising in those searches.

The more searches your subject has, the more demand there is.
The more an advertiser is willing to pay, the greater the business potential that niche has. That gives you an idea of the money you could earn with your blog.

If your topic hardly has searches and the bids are zero, ask yourself if there really is a demand.

CAN YOU SPECIALIZE OR DO BETTER?

Once you have validated your subject, it is time to investigate your competition.

Search for your chosen niche in Google and see if there are websites or blogs ranking there. Since there are probably several (it is very difficult to find a virgin market today), think about how you could specialize .

Specializing is a way to differentiate yourself from your competitors, and will allow you to be visible in a specific market niche.

Think about what types of people could benefit from your knowledge and choose one.

For example, you could teach how to make PowerPoint presentations to students, entrepreneurs, university professors, or doctors.

Also look at how your subject matter deals with your competition and assess whether you can do it better or, at least, differently.

You could take another approach, more personal, motivational, humorous, or scientific, for example.

In any case, let none of these three keys stop you. You do NOT need to have a great idea.

The important thing is to start because then you can always change your position, as many of today’s great bloggers did.

2. Create your blog

The next step is, logically, create your blog.

You will first have to choose a name for it. You can give it your own name or invent one, but don’t waste too much time on this either: what’s relevant is its contents, not its name.

There are many domain registrars, but for its reliability and simplicity, I recommend Namecheap and Godaddy. Just sign up for an account and type in a domain name that is available.

Then you will need a hosting to host your blog. Although they exist free like wordpress.com or blogger.com, in reality, no blogger with minimal aspirations uses them because:

They greatly limit the functionality of your blog and you will not be able to customize it
The domain will be of the type yourblog.wordpress.com, which will take away a lot of credibilities

My recommendation is that you purchase hosting from platforms like Bluehost. For just less than $5 a month you will have one of the fastest and best technical support accommodations.

3. Generate useful content

This point, along with the theme of your blog, is what will largely determine your earning potential.

Every day more than 3 million articles are published on blogs. This means that if you really want to be visible with your blog, you are going to have to create content that stands out and attracts readers.

Your content must be epic. Create articles that meet the needs and solve the problems of your readers, and that also connect with them.

This is what will truly allow you to get the most out of your blog.

These are the 3 requirements that any article on your blog should meet:

Well formatted, with a nice and simple design
In-depth explanations, but practical and easy to read
With stories and personal examples that help your readers get to know you better

4. Build your audience

The mistake that many novice bloggers make is to create their blog, publish content, and wait for visits to arrive.

This strategy where they are the center of the world is doomed to failure.

With the number of competitors there are today, if you want to make money from your blog you will have to be proactive and give it visibility so that your target audience knows that it exists.

Another common mistake is to focus solely on the number of visitors. The amount of blog traffic does not have to be related to your earning potential, especially if those visits are not interested in what is offered.

It is essential that you are clear for whom you are going to create your content.

That is, who is your true target audience and what problem will you help them solve. In this way, you can also know where to find him on the Internet.

These are the best ways to give visibility to your blog:

APPEARS ON OTHER BLOGS

Does your target audience read other blogs?

Then you have a great opportunity to attract attention to your project by appearing as a guest author on that blog.

Just contact its author, show them you know their blog, and offer to write an article that adds value to their readers.

Keep in mind the same target audience may have several needs, so make sure that the blog where you publish your guest article does not directly compete with yours in its value proposition.

For example, if you helped university students to make impressive presentations on your blog, you could look for a blog about career opportunities, as their audience will surely be very similar.

ADD VALUE IN SPECIALIZED FORUMS

Does your target audience participate in certain forums?

Sure it does, so identify them and add value to establish yourself as an expert on the subject.

Most forums are highly chastened by spam, but if you engage in the conversations by contributing interesting information and then present your blog as a place where people can expand information, chances are good that you will get quite a few interested readers.

Another common mistake in many bloggers is trying to be present on ALL social networks.

That is time-consuming and does not allow them to focus on what is really important: creating content and promoting it.

You must choose and focus. Depending on your theme and content, there are more appropriate social networks than others, such as:

Visual content (photography or travel blogs): Instagram and Facebook
Professional content : Linkedin and Twitter
Personal development content : Facebook and Twitter
Health content : Facebook and Instagram

The groups of Facebook or Linkedin are like forums: opportunities to put your content in front the eyes of an interested audience.

Just make sure you add value and don’t fall for spam , or you’ll be short-lived.

OPTIMIZE YOUR SEO (SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION)

SEO is about making your articles as visible as possible within content search engines like Google or Ping.

If you get your articles to appear in the top positions of these search engines when people make a query, you will ensure a constant flow of visitors (and free).

In most of my projects this is the main traffic channel. I could write for hours about SEO, but I summarize it for you in the three main keys to achieving visibility:

Create content that meets the user’s search intent
Take care of your on-page SEO making good use of keywords, titles and images
Get other websites to link your blog or articles , and link your own content in your articles to derive traffic

PAID ADS

Paying to get traffic on search engines or social networks is also an option to get interested visitors, because they allow you to segment exactly what type of people you want to be shown.

In addition, paid ads have two advantages:

They allow you to obtain results much faster than with organic ranking (SEO), since this requires time to be effective.
The organic reach of social media or Google posts is becoming less and less , so it is not surprising that paid ads are becoming increasingly important.

For your ads to have a good return on investment, make sure that you are attracting a qualified target audience, that is, with the potential to invest to solve their problem.

5. Create a mailing list

Once you manage to attract readers to your blog, you must retain them so that they continue reading and interacting with your content.

Otherwise, the vast majority will arrive, read an article, and will never return. Not because they are not interested, but because they are saturated with information.

You should make it easy for them and send them your content instead of waiting for them to find you again.

The best way is to create an email subscriber list. To motivate your readers to subscribe to your mailing list, you should probably offer them something in return, such as:

An email course
A series of exclusive videos
An ebook
A special discount

A list of subscribers will allow you to maintain more frequency of contact with them, which will generate more confidence and help you position yourself as an expert on the subject.

In addition, in your list of subscribers lies the true economic potential of the blog, because it will allow you to present paid services by email.

Remember that they are readers who have already shown interest in your content!

6. Monetize your blog

Once you have your content and have built an audience, monetizing your blog is the next natural step.

Whatever they say, there is no better way than another to earn money with a blog.

It depends on the theme, the demand, the profile of your readers, and the effort you are willing to dedicate to it.

In any case, you are going to need a lot of consistency.

Today it is almost impossible to make money blogging until several months have passed, so you must be willing to continue working on it even when you have not seen a euro for more than a year.

Most bloggers have started the same, dedicating themselves to their blog out of pure hobby.

And it is precisely the fact of not setting economic goals that have allowed us to keep going even when we did not obtain results.

If you are not willing to go the same way, you will be buying many numbers to end up abandoning it.

But if you persevere, I assure you that a blog can change your life 🙂

Wrapping Up

I hope this article has helped you understand the difference in how to make money blogging.

Each of them has its advantages and disadvantages, but generally, the more effort they require, the more money you can get.

In any case, monetizing a blog so that it becomes a stable source of income is a long run.

You will not succeed in a month or two, so arm yourself with desire and patience, think carefully about your strategy, and do not delay it any longer!

And you, what method are you going to use to earn money with your blog?