How to Make Money from Blogging As a Beginner

We believe you are here because you want to learn how to make money from blogging as a beginner. Earning an income from blogging is really possible. Many are doing it and we are sure you can do it too.

It isn’t easy to make money from a blog, but it is definitely doable. Before having a look at the different ways of making money from blogging, let’s see what makes a profitable and successful blog.

3 Things Required To Make Money from Blogging

These are the three things necessary for anyone who wants to make money blogging.

A Blog

Pretty obvious, isn’t it? Without a blog, you can’t really make money blogging:-) But did you know, many of the readers who visit our website searching for ways to make money blogging don’t actually have their own blog/website?

We don’t want you to do the same. So please start a blog before searching for ways to make money from it. We have written a detailed step by step guide that shows you how to start a WordPress blog from scratch. If you don’t have a blog yet, please visit that page and start your own blog today.

Traffic

Starting a blog is like solving only a small bit of the whole puzzle. And getting traffic to your blog is another one. According to an estimate given on Internet Live Stats at the time of writing this article the number of websites in the world is 1,708,758,473. Also, a total 2,894,367 of blog posts were created just today.

But how many of them actually succeed? The percentage is very less. Most of the blogs fail because of the lack of traffic. Traffic is the bloodline for blogs. No audience means no money. So to avoid this pitfall you need to perform proper niche selection and keyword research before starting a blog.

Engaged Audience

Now having a ton of visitors to your blog is great. But what use is such blog traffic that doesn’t convert into buyers? To solve that problem you need to build a large base of an engaged audience.

This can be achieved by creating great content on your blog regularly. Also, provide immense value to your readers. Genuinely help them solve their problems. Building an email list is also a great way of building an engaged and targeted audience.

What Stops You From Making Money From Blogging?

How much money you earn from blogging may depend on various factors. You may earn millions, you may earn lunch money or you may not earn anything at all.

Here are the factors that may affect your blog’s money-making potential.

Blogging Niche

The blogging niche you chose can literally make or break your blog. A niche refers to the topic of your blog or website. If you choose a blog niche that is highly competitive your blog may struggle to get organic traffic. No traffic means no money. So we suggest you stay away from highly competitive niches as a beginner blogger.

Also, if you choose a blogging niche that has very low competition but also has very low demand, getting visitors to your blog may be very difficult.

Then there is another scenario where you have chosen a niche that has low competition and high traffic potential but the visitors have no buying capacity or intent. That too is going to be a disaster.

So choosing a niche wisely is crucial for the success of your blog.

Lack of Affiliate Programs and Advertisers

Lack of affiliate programs in the niche you choose can be a limiting factor for your blog’s earning capacity. And also some niches have more advertisers who are ready to spend millions of dollars on advertising than in other niches. You have to keep this in mind while choosing your blogging niche.

Three of the biggest blogging markets with zillions of affiliate products to promote and advertisers to sponsor are the health, wealth and relationship niches. At the same time, they are highly competitive.  So be creative and choose a niche from one of these three big industries that have moderate competition and good return on investment.

Evergreen Content

There was a trend recently called ‘event blogging’. Event blogging is a type of blogging where the niche is targeted towards a particular event like a holiday, Independence Day, National Day, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s day, etc.

The idea is to create blog posts targeting the keywords in that niche and make it rank higher in search engines. When the event begins to approach people from all around the world start searching for related keywords. When they come to your blog, you make money by displaying ads.

But this method is actually flawed. Once the event is over, there will be hardly any traffic to the blog. Also, the only way to make money with event blogging maybe with advertisements, especially Google Adsense. If your Adsense account isn’t approved for the event blog or if it gets banned for some unknown reasons, all of your efforts are going to be wasted.

So always choose an evergreen niche about which you are going to blog for many more years to come. With evergreen niches, you can create the content ones and enjoy the fruits of your labor for many more years to come.

Now let’s have a look at the different ways to make money from blogging as a beginner.

Different Ways of Making Money from Blogging as a Beginner

Advertisements

CPC and CPM ads

The easiest way to start making money from blogging as a beginner is by placing advertisements on your blog. Also called as display advertising, in this method you make money by placing text, image, video, audio ads or banner ads on various locations on the blog.

Google Adsense is the most popular platform right now which allows publishers to make money from their blogs and websites by placing relevant ads.

These ads are mainly of two types. CPC ads and CPM ads.

CPC, otherwise called Cost Per Click ads are the ones where you get paid a specific amount every time a reader clicks on the ad. CPM ads mean “cost per 1000 impressions”. Here you get paid a fixed amount of money based on the number of people that view your ads.

Sponsored Ads

As your blog grows, you may also give sponsored ads a try. An increase in your blog traffic may simultaneously bring a lot of sponsored advertisement opportunities to your doorstep.

Here you can determine your own ad rates. You can bargain with the sponsor and settle on a price that you both agree upon. The sponsors may pay a specific amount per month or may pay you depending on the number of impressions/clicks. These rates are usually better than the ones you get from placing Google Adsense ads on your blog.

Affiliate Marketing

This is the next recommended step of the blog monetization strategy for beginners. Affiliate marketing is an online business model where you make money by promoting and selling other people’s products on your blog or other online content sharing platforms.

Affiliate marketing is a lucrative business model that can give you an ROI which is many times higher than that from display advertisements.

How To Get Started With Affiliate Marketing On Your Blog?

Getting started with affiliate marketing on your blog is pretty straight forward. You start by signing up for one or more of the zillion affiliate marketing programs on the net. The process of signing up is easy and is absolutely free, in most cases.

Once you are approved for the affiliate program you then access the affiliate marketplace and choose a product to promote.

When you decide to promote a particular product, you will be given an affiliate link that is unique to you. Now all you have to do is promote that affiliate link on your blog, website, social media accounts, emails, eBooks, etc.

Whenever a person clicks that link and makes a purchase you get a commission. Now, the amount of commission you earn varies from one affiliate program to another. Also, the money you make from affiliate marketing may also depend on the type of product you promote on your blog.

For more information, you can read this how-to guide about getting started with the ClickBank affiliate program as a beginner.

Our favorite affiliate programs are ClickBank and Amazon Associates program. Both of these affiliate programs are beginner-friendly and are free to join.

Sponsored Posts

This isn’t a suggested method of online income generation for the beginners. But once you establish yourself as an expert blogger in your niche, this business model can fetch you a lot of money.

Many bloggers generate their highest income from sponsored posts and videos (if you are into YouTube). Below is a screenshot of one such email from a company asking us to feature their product on our blog.

You can get anywhere between a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars per post depending on the authority and popularity of your blog.

But please remember to not get carried away once you start receiving sponsorship offers. Only promote products that are genuinely good and can offer real value to your readers.

Sell Your Own Products

Selling your own products in the form of eBooks, video courses, audiobooks, podcasts, etc. can potentially be the highest income generator for your blog. You can also start selling your services if you are blogging in such a niche.

Many popular bloggers make six and seven-figure incomes online selling their own products and services. You can also create membership websites associated with your blog and earn recurring income.

In fact, Jeff Walker a popular internet marketer makes a ton of money teaching people how to launch their own products. The system itself is called the ‘product launch formula’.

The point is, if you are an expert in your niche, there is no harm in creating a simple eBook and keeping it for sale on your blog, even as a beginner.

Promote Your Offline Business

Many offline businesses these days start corresponding blogs and drive customers from their blog to their businesses.

A blog serves as a platform to showcase their skills, crafts, and expertise in front of their readers who may eventually turn into potential buyers. This can be broadly termed as ‘lead generation’.

So if you have an offline business that shares the same interests as your blog, don’t hesitate to redirect your readers towards your business and build your client list.

Is It Really Possible to Make Money from Blogging?

Making money from a blog used to be much easier five to 10 years back, than it is now. Blogs were not many and most niches were also not saturated those days.

It is a totally different story now. Nowadays it looks like every person and his grandmother wants to start a blog and make money from it.

We are not trying to intimidate you here. We just want you to be realistic. Earning money from blogging is really possible. We have done it and we are sure you can do it too.

But there are no guarantees.

What we suggest you do is don’t expect to earn millions from your blog, at least in the early days. It may take you anywhere between six months to a year, to start getting results. Again, that depends on the niche you choose, how good your content is, and how frequently you publish content.