How to make money from a blog: the complete guide for bloggers!

New technologies have opened a lot of space so that creators become the next influencers in the digital era. See the example of YouTubers, Instagrammers and bloggers who turn their hobbies into a profession. Making money from a blog, YouTube and other channels has become increasingly common, allowing people to make a living out of their passions.

It’s important to remember that, from the moment you decide to make your hobby into something profitable, you become an entrepreneur. And running a business requires a lot of hard work. And many of the times, more than a traditional job.

Without further ado, in this post we are going to talk about the universe of bloggers and teach you the best strategies for you to make money from a blog, becoming a digital entrepreneur.

6 advantages in working with a blog

Each business comes with its own particularities and benefits. It’s not different with blogs. That’s why we have come up with a list of advantages in creating a blog:

1. You can run your own business;
2. Flexible working hours to work in the best way possible;
3. The opportunity of working with what you like;
4. The possibility of scaling your revenues in time;
5. Become an authority in a specific niche;
6. You can work from home or from wherever you think it’s appropriate.

Can anyone make money from a blog?

This is an interesting question, because the answer is very subjective. Yes, anyone can work with and make money from a blog. But once you decide to become an entrepreneur, you need a lot of dedication, focus, resilience and determination, because the results don’t come suddenly. But we know not everyone can do it. In this case, the answer is no, not everyone can do it.

The good news is that no one is born with the mindset of an entrepreneur. You need to develop it. And if you can improve these abilities, and also study hard, you will be able to reach your objectives. Remember that all the effort is worth it once you start reaping the benefits of your hard work.

What is the main asset in a blog?

Definitively, the main and most important asset in a blog is the traffic that permeates around it. All your strategies must focus on attracting quality traffic so you can then lead your audience to conversion. Besides, the most valuable piece of information you can get from a visitor – remember this – is their email address.

The conversion cycle is based on (1) attracting visitor and increasing traffic volume, (2) putting together a list of contacts, (3) cultivating leads in order to, finally, (4) offer and sell your product or service.

Stay with us, and we will teach you what to do to get your audience’s contact information!

How do I start making money from a blog?

There are many ways of making money from a blog these days, and, in the future there probably will be many other ways we don’t even dream of yet. Check out how it is possible to make a profit as a blogger:

1. Consulting

As you increase your online presence, your niche will look up to you as an authority in the subject, and this is excellent for you to do some consulting work online. This kind of service is a great way of proving your know-how about the subject and make some word of mouth marketing. Whenever possible, ask your clients for testimonials about your service and post them on your website. This is social proof that will certainly build your credibility for other clients.

But it’s important to remember that consulting work, especially when done individually, will, at a certain point, cease to scale because of time limitation. We all have only 24 hours a day and it is impossible to work more than this without an automated process.

2. Google Adsense

A blog with a lot of visits can make space for ads and for every click the ad gets, the blogger gets some cents. When a blog has a lot of daily visits, the probability of getting a lot of clicks increases.

“But is it still worth it to work with Google Adsense?” Yes, it is still possible to use this method and get an extra income!

The profit you make from Adsense is related to your blog’s niche, traffic and layout. That’s why you have to invest heavily in quality content to attract a satisfactory number of visits. Only then will you be able to achieve results with ads.

3. Digital products

Digital products are on the rise. Also known as infoproducts, digital content are accessed easily and can be used in any smartphone or computer.

With so much technology, people are starting to realize the world of opportunities that has arisen with the internet. It has made it possible to learn new skills, improve personal and professional development from online courses. On the other hand, we have the digital producers, people who provide the digital content, creating materials of high quality.

If you have a talent or a skill that can be made into a rich material for a certain audience, it is high time you considered becoming a digital producer. Learn more about what digital products are and how to create one.

4. Affiliate Program

Now, for those who believe they don’t have what it takes to teach, the Affiliate Program is a very lucrative choice, especially for bloggers! It works as a connection between affiliates and digital producers, and the affiliates promote online courses from other people.

Affiliates can be divided into two major groups:

• Authority Affiliates: this is where you will find bloggers, who are responsible for attracting quality traffic, and, through their engagement, recommend products in the niches they act in.

• Scientist Affiliates: these affiliates can clearly identify the ideal audience for a certain product and invests in paid ads for this specific audience.

For every sale made through a referral, the affiliate gets a commission, that could be of up to 80% of the full price of the product. Tempting, isn’t it? Hotmart, for instance, has over 50,000 products, from different niches, to be commercialized. Choose the product that best fits your blog and invest in the promotion!

5. Physical products or services

A blog is an essential part of a well-defined strategy of Inbound Marketing. Instead of the brand coming to the consumer with invasive ads, it produces content with high quality, which adds real value and makes the consumer come to the brand. This strategy, commonly known as content marketing, generates more engagement and conversions.

If you have an e-commerce or provide services (physically or digitally), you can start a blog and write about the subjects in your market. Do you own an online bikini shop? How about writing about fashion and trends? Your audience will be interested in what you write about, and when they need a bikini, they will remember your shop sells beautiful ones!

A step-by-step guide to start making money from a blog

After a list of the best options on how to make money from a blog, you are certainly asking yourself: “OK, but how do I start a blog?”. As difficult as it may seem, and even if you don’t know a lot about the internet, starting a blog from scratch is not rocket science. Take the first steps to start a blog:

1. Define a theme

What are you going to talk about? If you’re not a specialist, think about topics that you love talking about, and that come to you naturally in a conversation. Besides, you can also think about themes that don’t have a large presence online, and therefore you won’t have a lot of competition.

2. Identify your audience

It is a very idealistic and superficial thought to consider “any person” your audience. Even if the content is very interesting, something that anyone could show some interest in, you have to define who your target-audience is, and, most importantly, who your persona is. Your persona is a fictitious character, based on consumer research, and it is essential for you to direct your efforts to that specific profile. Firstly, create one persona, and, when your business is up and running, you will eventually identify different profiles among your users. Read our posts in order to understand how to create a persona for your business.

3. Pick a name

You have to be creative when choosing a name, and think of different options that sound good when spoken out loud. A name which is easy to memorize and that makes you feel proud of mentioning and recommending to other people. Do a thorough research, ask for advice from your friends, and play with words! If there is a direct connection to your theme, even better! Make a list and move on to the next step.

4. Register a domain

With the list of names on your hand, you have to check if the name is available to be used. You can go to register.com or godaddy.com. When you find the domain that is available, you can register and pay an annual fee to keep it. Always prefer “.com” domains, because they show up first in search engines.

5. Activate your content management platform

WordPress is a content management platform that is used by 10 out of 10 successful bloggers. There are other platforms in the market, but there are no reasons to choose other than WordPress: plugins, integrations, SEO and an extensive network of knowledge available for free. If you are a beginner in the digital world or an experienced programmer, you will find safe haven at WordPress. Therefore, just access the site, choose the plan that fits your purposes (you can upgrade at a later stage)and set up your blog. Click here to begin.

6. Plan a strategy

What is the objective of your blog? Most of the time, to make money from a blog, you need to provide your audience with informative content that teaches, clears their doubts and builds a relationship of trust that will lead to recurrent visits. The more engaged your audience is, the more they will disseminate your content. Pay attention to the following tips and remember that each and every one of them is very important for your business to work:

7. Create good content

Your main concern, when starting a blog, should be to provide content with high quality, and, more importantly, about topics that interest the general public. After all, people have to want to read about what you write, right? And to know what is happening in your market, follow the trends, participate in social media, research about the topics mentioned by heavy users and have a nose for identifying the novelties introduced by the major players and always try to be ahead of the competition, posting about new things before most blogs and media channels.

8. Keep an editorial calendar

An editorial calendar will help you maintain the frequency of posts that you are committed to. For the volume of visits to increase faster, it is ideal that you post a lot of content, but once you have set that you will write posts three times a week, for example, you must meet the deadlines. Thus you establish a commitment between you and your audience. Try to plan ahead and pre-schedule the content you will post, and in case there are any problems, you can still keep to the schedule.

9. Diversify the content

When you think about a blog, it is common that only written posts come to mind. But the richer your content is, with different formats, such as images, videos and infographics, more complete and interesting will it be.

10. Invite your audience to action

Plan the layout of your website with user conversion in mind. You can strategically distribute Call to Action (CTA) buttons inviting your visitors to download an ebook, subscribe to your newsletter, subscribe to your YouTube channel, and many different actions that are interesting for your business.

11. Build a solid base of contacts

Remember: this is one of the most important topics in all your strategy. When you receive the email address from a user, you can contact him or her directly at the most crucial moment and in an automated way. Here are some strategies:

• Offer free content: offer rich content for free for your audience and ask for their email address in return. Even an ebook, infographic and other kinds of free material need to have a high level of quality and add value to people who download it.
• Forms: make contact forms available on your blog. You can write a newsletter or only inform your subscribers about new content. Make them feel like they are unique when they subscribe to your list. For example: Receive new content first!
• Webinars: After you have a good volume of visits to your blog, you can promote webinars to discuss a topic, promote a product and ask for the email addresses of the users.

12. Start partnerships with other blogs

You can strengthen your brand by starting partnerships with other blogs that are not your direct competitors, but which are also in the same market. You can leave some space for guest posts, inviting another person to talk about something on your blog and also offer to post on their blogs. Do interviews, create content together, and offer co-marketing material, sharing the leads you generate with the initiatives.

13. Build engagement on social media

A true blogger is present on different social networking sites, creating exclusive content and strengthening the relationship with the audience. But, beware: you should know which social networking sites your persona really uses. There are many options, and new ones pop up all the time, and if you try to use them all at the same time, you will end up losing focus and won’t have the necessary present in your channels.

14. Use metrics

To better understand the performance of your metrics, you have to analyze, assess and verify what the numbers are telling you. Install Google Analytics and keep track of your results. Google Search Console is also an excellent tool which will provide you with interesting insights about your CTR, the keywords you should use in your posts and the position they have ranked on Google pages.

15. Optimize

Perform A/B tests with your blog, change conversion buttons (CTA), alter texts and campaign images, change the frequency of emails and identify which of these actions lead to more or less result.

16. Follow the best

Monitor other bloggers, check out what they are doing that is different, observe what your competition is posting and always try to do better! Also, keep up with bloggers from other countries, and publications in different niches that can also be applied to your business. Try to stand out because of your creativity, agility, and credibility.

17. Learn about digital marketing

With all the blogs and websites nowadays, luring the audience to your site can be tricky, unless you learn about the tools available in the market and understand how to attract, fidelize and multiply the users who are looking for good content. To know how to use these tools well, start studying or enhance your knowledge in Digital Marketing and you will see how this area of knowledge will become a valuable ally in your sales process.

18. Learn SEO techniques

SEO = Search Engine Optimization. Despite its complicated name, SEO techniques have as an objective improve the position of your website on search engines, such as Google and Bing, improving your organic traffic (the one which is not paid). The results of this strategy take some time to bear fruit, with continuous work. To learn more about SEO, click here. Once you start popping up when the terms about your niche are looked up, you will naturally get more recognition and will be able to enjoy the moment to make money with a blog.

19. Invest in paid ads

Many entrepreneurs, especially the ones that are starting out, get chills just from hearing the words “paid ads”. Advertising means spending money, right? Wrong! Making money from a blog organically may require a lot of patience and the ads will speed things up. Good campaigns, actually, are an investment and will help in the promotion of your blog. Just like we mentioned before, you can use the ads to promote a product as an affiliate.

20. Nurture your leads by using email marketing

Your leads will be a valuable asset for you to start making money from a blog. Imagine you have a contact base of 100,000 and start sending your emails manually? It’s not viable, is it? Use tools to build email funnels and automate the entire process.

To do so, use marketing automation tools that have as main goal to nurture leads through email marketing. You establish rules and it sends emails automatically according to the stage where your lead is in the sales funnel.

There are open source programs like Mautic, and also some that are paid, such as Hubspot.

What if you already have a blog?

There are many bloggers that start writing unpretentiously, and, in a natural way, get a good volume of traffic and a faithful audience. If you already are a blogger, but you have no idea how to make money from it, try to find the best strategies for you. Your numbers are your big allies in making this decision!

If your blog has a good number of visits, you have already taken many steps towards making money from your blog.

For a website without ads, starting with Google Adsense may drive away the visitors who are used to a clean page. If you decide to do it, start making small spaces available for ads, and, increase this space in time, but always be aware of the experience your user will have when visiting your blog.

To create a digital product, pay attention to how your audience interacts with you. You will probably have the answer in front of you. If your blog is about pets, a product about animal training could fit like a glove. And it is possible that your readers may have asked you for a tip about this already. Read the comments and try to get what the needs of your audience are. And there’s also the possibility of turning the whole content of your blog into an ebook or video lessons!

And as we have already mentioned before, the Affiliate Program is an open door for bloggers with a good audience! Analyze the products that have more in common with your market and promote them in your posts. With an engaged audience, the chances of making sales are much bigger!

Get to work!

So, did you enjoy our tips? Did you already know everything you need to do from now on? So it’s time to get to work! Remember that, to make money from a blog, you must work constantly and always have focus! That’s why you should maintain a routine of productivity that will motivate you to keep working. Here, you can find 11 essential facts you should know before becoming a digital entrepreneur.

Moreover, set targets that will be the indicators that your business is going as planned. If there are no signs of evolution, try to find out what you could be doing better and do it!

If our post was useful, leave your comment below. And also tell us about your strategies to start making money from a blog.