There are many ways to make money blogging, it could be more than hundred ways which you can simply pick from the internet, some might work and some might not work. There is no guarantee way that you can make money from the internet, it’s all about trial and error, some methods might work for you but not for others, and vice versa.
I’ve been blogging part time for almost 5 years since year 2007, I made some money by blogging and creating micro niche sites all the while, make money blogging is fun because it’s flexible and you can do whenever you want, you are the boss. I have no stress of doing these because of the flexibility, but I will be stress if I’m doing these in full time basis. As you know there is no guarantee for online earning, the earning is fluctuated every month, you’ll be in deep shit if you have not enough money to pay your monthly debt, it’s the case unless you have no debt such as housing loan, car loan, phone bill and etc.
10 Ways How I Really Make Money Blogging
I’ve tried many ways to make money blogging throughout my blogging journey, some are working for me and some are not. These are the ways that I used to make money blogging all the while, all of them are proven ways to make money which I’ve been doing all the while. All of these are not solely theories which teach you how to make money blogging, these are my personal experiences and I made real cash out of them. You’ll be amazed of how I make money online in Malaysia these years.
1. Writing Sponsored Review
Advertiser pays you to write about their product or website on your blog, their purpose is to promote their product to the crowd. Why they pay you to write about their product on your blog, it might be your huge traffic, relevant audience, high pagerank, and etc. Advertiser won’t pay for nothing, they want something back if they decide to pay you.
There are many sponsored review sites and marketplace on the internet where you can register and place your sites over there, and wait advertisers to get you through the site. Usually these marketplaces would charge a commission as a middleman between you and the advertisers.
These are sponsored review marketplaces which you can try, i.e. Sponsored Reviews, ReviewMe, BlogVertise, PayPerPost and Smorty.
I personally do not get advertisers through these marketplaces, usually advertisers contact me directly and we make a deal without any middleman. Frankly speaking, you may get lesser deal through this way but you will get a better offer compared to marketplaces. You have to give and take, either you get lesser advertisers with better price, or get more advertisers with lower price.
2. Selling Domain Names
This is not a popular way to make money but this is what I’ve done recently, you can check out my recent post to see how I make money online selling domain name. It’s easy to purchase a domain in cheap price, but it’s difficult to sell it in a higher price unless your domain name has value. It depends on luck and trend. A year ago, I got to know about a popular game which will be launching a new version in short time, I foreseen the domain name will be a hit after the launch of the game with new version. After waiting for a year and the new version of game was launched, I placed the domain name for sales at Flippa and I managed to sell it at low price which was $200 for 2 domain names.
Selling domain name might not be profitable but it counts, unless you have a really brandable name or short letter name, otherwise you’ll be hardly to get a sale. Anyway, it works even though it’s difficult. I would recommend Flippa if you plan to sell your domain name.
3. Article Writing Services
Article writing service is simple, as long as you know how to write article and your English is acceptable. In the internet marketing world, there are many webmasters and bloggers prefer to outsource their writing tasks to freelance article writer rather than doing it themselves, so you can actually get many writing projects if you deliver quality article.
There is a Job Board at WarriorForum under “Warriors For Hire” section, you can list your writing service over there and you can simply get tons of projects. There are many competitors, so be ready to give discounted price and provide quality articles in order to get regular clients and good feedback at your thread.
I’ve done this before but not in a regular manner because you may need to get a team of writers to do it together, otherwise you can’t cope if you get a huge project, say 50 articles in a week time. The standard rate for writing service would be $0.01/word or you can charge higher if the client is happy with your work.
4. Blog Creation Service
You’re required to know a little bit about WordPress if you plan to provide blog creation service, it’s not complicated though. If you are in this field, I believe that you know about Hostgator, if you sign up your hosting plan with them and they have a fast-setup feature called “Fantastico” which helps you to set up your website with few clicks in seconds. WordPress is very friendly user, you just have to know how to do the setting, what useful plugins to install, and how to do some on-page SEO, then you’ll more than enough to provide blog creation service.
“Lee, since you said these are simple, so how are you going to get client?”
You are right, our clients usually are people who totally have no idea how to create a blog or they are new to internet marketing. I used to provide blog creation service to offline company who doesn’t has a website or blog. The world is big, so there are still people who don’t know how to set up a website or blog. They can actually learn from the internet, but offline company rather paying you to do it for them.
If you plan to do it by yourself or you want to learn how to setup a blog, you can read my previous article on step by step how to create your blog from scratch.
5. Selling Text Link
In order to sell text link ads, you’re required to own a website or blog. Usually advertisers pay you to place a text link on your website or blog to gain traffic and backlink juice to increase their website pagerank. Usually advertisers want you to place the text link at sidebar or footer in every page of your website or blog.
Nowadays, I rarely get advertiser to place text link at sidebar, now advertiser prefer to place text link at inner page which has pagerank, this type of text link is natural and may give their site a better link juice. I used to do this on some of my other niche sites but not for this blog because we know that Google may not like this kind of text link on our sites, Google may not know that it’s a text link ads. Nevertheless, still there is a chance that Google penalizes your site, so it’s up to you to take risk or not to make money blogging with this method.
If you plan to do this, you can either deal with direct advertiser or you may get advertiser through marketplace. There are several text link marketplaces on the internet, as usual they will take commission if you made a sale. You can try these text link marketplaces, i.e. Text-Link-Ads, TNX, Text-Link-Brokers, and LinkWorth.
6. Selling Affiliate Product
Affiliate product is a product which is owned by others, usually they allow or encourage other people to help them selling their product as an affiliate, affiliate will be getting % of commission if they get sales. It’s good in the way that we don’t need to create or develop our own product with a huge modal and time, of course it’s even better if you have your own product.
In order to successfully selling affiliate product, there are two ways which I’ve tried, first way is that you have to really know and understand the product, so you should have used the product, then you can promote the product on your blog, write an article to explain how’s the performance of the product and insert your affiliate link. Second way is to create a landing page which purposely highlights the product, you have to create a convincing landing page to convince people to trust you even though you have never used the product before, and of course that will be great if you’ve tried the product.
I am using several internet marketing software and tools for my blogging such as micro niche finder, article marketing robot, and etc, I’ve also created a landing page to promote one of the IM software that I think is very useful and potential. The landing page is totally a new site with new domain, I wrote some articles about the product and offered discount to people who purchase the software under my affiliate link. Now, the landing page is ranking at first page for the keyword and I make average 3 sales per month. The figure is not huge but it counts.
There are various affiliate programs which you can pick the product you like and promote it on your blog or create a landing page for the product, I would recommend you to try these affiliate programs, i.e. Clickbank, Commission Junction, Link Share, Azoogle Ads, and Amazon.
7. Banner Advertisement
It doesn’t require much work for banner advertisement, you just need to have a website or blog with traffic, then you’re ready to make money from banner advertisement. Usually advertisers pay you to place their banner ads on your blog with a link to their website, their purpose is to drive more traffic to their site through the banner.
Banner ads are usually sold in monthly basis, or you can offer a 7 days trial, or a package for 6 months or 1 year at discounted price, you can sell in any ways you like, as long as both parties agree with the terms and conditions.
You can either get direct advertisers or through banner advertisement marketplace, as usual the marketplace will charge a fee as their commission once you get sales through the marketplace. It’s same as text link ads marketplace, it’s all about give and take, you either get lesser advertisers with higher price, or you get more advertisers with lower price. If you plan to sell banner ads on your blog through marketplace, I would recommend you to try these marketplace which I’ve tried before, i.e. BuySellAds and AdvertiseSpace.
8. Google Adsense
Nothing much I need to talk about how Google Adsense works because I believe that most of you might know about Google Adsense, it’s a popular CPC program which you place Google Adsense ads on your blog, people click the ads and you get paid, that’s it. However, how to get people to click your Google Adsense ads is the key point. In order to make money from Google Adsense, you need a blog or website with huge organic traffic from search engine. It is because people from search engine tend to search for some information, if they can’t get information they want on your blog, then Google Adsense ads may be their exit, once they click and you get paid.
This is how I made my first $100 online when I first got into blogging business. Now, I do make money from Google Adsense every month from my micro niche sites, so you know Google updated the algorithm called Google Panda and Google Penguin, both updates had killed a lot of micro niche sites which do not provide useful content to the users. I would suggest you to build a micro niche blog and manage it, once the blog drives constant organic traffic from search engine, and you can start blending adsense ads into your blog in natural way, you should be able to make money from Google Adsense.
9. Selling Website
Selling website can be very profitable if you have a blog or website with traffic and revenue. You have two options, one is to create a new blog, set up everything, write a few articles, and sell it. You may not be able to sell it at high price because the blog is new without traffic and revenue, but you can still make some profit from there because it’s a turnkey blog which is ready to run after selling to the buyer. In order to sell a new blog, you have to concentrate on the keyword research and exact match domain which will be the selling point. The whole process from keyword research to sale, it would probably take you less than a week time.
Second option is similar to the first option, but this you have to put effort and time to develop the blog until the blog gets pagerank, better alexa rank, good traffic, and generate revenue. If your blog generates revenue every month, you can probably multiply your monthly revenue with 12 times and take it as your selling price. Besides, other factors like design and growth potential of the blog do take into account as well.
I personally did sell several micro niche sites, some with revenue and some without revenue. I also sold one of my established blog 2 years ago, it was a blog that I’d managed for years, I sold it for some reason. Anyway, I did get a good offer for the blog, I sold it to a full time Internet Marketer in my country, and everything just went smooth.
So it’s your time to choose either first option or second option if you plan to sell website and make money out of it. When your blog is ready for sale, I would recommend you to list your blog for sales at marketplace, i.e. Flippa or “Complete Web Sites For Sale” section under WarriorForum.
10. Selling Own Product
The concept of selling own product is similar to selling affiliate product, the similarity is that you sell a product. When it comes to own product, you have to create or develop it by yourself. Product can be in term of physical product or online tools or software, i.e. books, electrical appliances, ebooks, online tools, software, etc, it can be anything else.
I don’t have any product which is created and developed by myself, but I did purchase a full resell rights product which can be resell, so I compile a huge amount of full resell rights product, I create a landing page and sell the product. I sell the product at a very low price, so I’m able to make some sales from there. In order to receive more sales, SEO is needed to improve the search engine ranking for the keyword.
Wrap Up
Other than these, there are still many other ways to make money from the internet. Everyone has their own methods and strategies to make money blogging, these 10 ways how to make money blogging are what I’ve tried throughout my blogging journey, they are working for me and might not be working for you, and vice versa. Anyhow, you have to go through the trial and error process to see which method is working for your blog.
Again, these are not solely theories but they are my personal story and experience on how I really make money blogging from my blog these years. If you plan to start or you’re on the same journey, keep going and never give up. Remember that time and effort will pay off, let’s work together toward success! He play a game.
Have you tried these for your blog? What is the best way that is working for your blog?