How Do Bloggers Make Money?

11 min read

Wishing you could make money from blogging? Or better yet, make blogging your full-time job? We have good news for you: you can! Or, at least, many people have. So, how do bloggers make money? By producing quality content and diversifying streams of income, bloggers can earn substantial amounts of money.

Continue reading for a detailed step-by-step for setting up your own blog and earning money along the way!

Key Components of Blogging

The blogging space is vast and always expanding. While some bloggers are industry experts in their particular field, others are simply regular people with a passion for writing and sharing their knowledge on specific topics, ideas, or common interests.

If you’re eager to start your own blog and earn money from it, there are several key components to consider as you get in gear. These include content development, website creation, online following, and monetization.

Content development

Whether your blog is based on specific knowledge, products, skills, services or opinions, you need to create engaging, consistent content that pulls readers in.

When developing content for your blog, it’s often helpful to create a content calendar. By doing so, you’ll be able to plan out what you’ll be posting and when you’ll be posting in advance. This is extremely useful because you want to have a substantial amount of content prepared so that you’re not scrambling for things to post to your blog later on. This means going through developing, photographing and/or recording, and writing about each recipe you plan to post to your blog.

Some tools you can use for planning a content calendar include: Airtable, Asana, Loomly, StoryChief, and Trello, among others. Feel free to check out each platform to get a grip on which might work best for your specific blogging needs.

While compelling writing is an obvious key component to a successful blog, it is also important to incorporate visual content. People are attracted to visually appealing blogs, so be sure to include high-quality photos or videos for people to watch and better understand what your blog is about. These can be photos or videos that you take yourself, or free to use stock content. You can find free and for purchase stock photos on websites like Shutterstock, Pexels, or Pixabay among others.

Website creation

Once you’ve prepared a decent amount of content, you can dive into creating a website to host your blog. Of course, to launch your website, you’ll need to find a platform to host it on, whether that be a more blogging-focused space, like WordPress, or something broader, like Squarespace.

After deciding on and purchasing a server, you’re able to register and buy a domain name. The domain name will be the same as your blog, so make sure it’s unique, memorable, concise, and easy to spell so readers can easily discover or revisit you.

When you’ve secured your domain and have a platform to host your content, you can begin designing your blog. Many servers include ready-to-use themes that make developing your blog that much easier. Next, start uploading the content you prepared to create a robust blog. As you upload content, prioritizing SEO by using specific keywords sprinkled throughout as a way to direct audiences to your blog.

Online following

Creating and posting engaging, consistent content is a great way to draw audiences to your blog. However, to continue building your online presence and following, opt to use social media. For instance, you can set up Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest accounts for your blog as a way to gain followers and generate traffic to your site.

To get the most out of these social media platforms, take time to learn about how each works (i.e., algorithms, audiences, posting frequency, types of content) to optimize your content better and drive traffic to your blog. Learning about what makes each of these platforms tick will help you gain a greater online presence and overall following.

Monetization

Having established your blog and acquired an online following, you’re now ready to monetize your blog. Bloggers earn money through ads, affiliate marketing, giveaways, membership/subscription fees, selling products/services, and sponsored posts. By using a combination of these monetization strategies, bloggers earn more money in more ways.

Ads are a popular way of making money from blogging. Types to use are CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions), which you can source from advertising networks like Adcash, AdThrive, Bidvertiser, Google AdSense, Media.net, PropellerAds, and RevenueHits.

Alternatively, you can include private ads that require direct partnerships with individuals or businesses. After securing your ads, you can display them as banners, on side-bars, or as buttons and links on your blog.

Be thoughtful about the types of ads you put on your blog so that they mesh well with your content and target your specific audience. For instance, if you have a food blog, food-related ads might range from restaurants and food festivals to kitchenware and cooking classes. To find relevant ads, Google Ads is a helpful tool that utilizes targeted advertising to find ads related to your blog content.

Affiliate marketing

To earn a passive income from your blog, consider using affiliate marketing. To pursue this source of income, establish a relationship with a business that wants to sell its product or service and reach a wider audience. Ideally, their product is related to the content you like to write about, and something you genuinely think will add value to your reader’s lives.

In this relationship, the business agrees to provide a certain commission from their product/service sales if the sale originated from a promotion on your blog.

To help you kickstart your affiliate marketing efforts, you can find a business’s existing affiliate program on their website or join an affiliate marketing network (i.e., Amazon Associates, Awin, ClickBank, Rakuten, ShareASale).

Giveaways

For building relationships, growing your online following, and ultimately earning more money, giveaways are an optimal strategy. A giveaway is where a business provides you with a product or service to award to your blog viewer(s) for free. To make money from this, you can charge the business a certain fee for hosting the giveaway event on your blog or social media.

Giveaways include products or services that can include physical items, classes, event tickets, or gift cards among others.

Membership or subscription services

Gaining a substantial following opens the door for you to charge consistent viewers of your blog membership or subscription fees. By offering membership or subscription services, you then provide exclusive content in exchange for the additional fees.

Sell Your Own Products And/Or Services

In addition to marketing other businesses’ products and services, you can also market your own.

These products and services can be digital or physical (i.e. mobile apps, books, ebooks, online courses or workshops, plugins, premium content). By selling your own products or services, you can turn your viewers into customers.

Start Today

After you’ve gone through developing and monetizing your blog, you might be seeking assistance in selling your products or services. That’s where Ecwid comes in.

Ecwid is a world-class ecommerce platform that streamlines the ecommerce experience by helping you sell your products and/or services across all platforms. They do this while giving you complete control over your new blogging business (i.e., website, social media accounts, marketing, selling).

Unlike other ecommerce platforms, with Ecwid, there are no setup charges, transaction fees, or installation requirements on Ecwid. So what are you waiting for? Set up your Ecwid account today and watch your products and services fly off the (digital) shelf!

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May 29, 2021

About the author

Max has been working in the ecommerce industry for the last six years helping brands to establish and level-up content marketing and SEO. Despite that, he has experience with entrepreneurship. He is a fiction writer in his free time.