So you’ve come here to find out how to make money with a blog, for beginners? Great, because I will do my best to share with you everything you need to know about the subject.
One thing to mention, though. Blogging is not just about writing text and getting paid for it. It’s so much more, and that’s a great thing.
It’s about living the life of your dreams, doing something you love and helping other people along the way. It’s about being your own boss, getting to decide when you want to work and from where. It’s also a way for you to have more free time to spend with the people you care about and love.
By starting a blog, you have the option to change your life forever. All you need to do is to keep believing in the goal, take action on it, and be persistent. DO NOT GIVE UP!
P.S. I have a FREE guide for you. The guide contains 7 smart strategies to grow your blog traffic faster. What’s cool is that I have created this list over the years of blogging through trial and error, and I personally use it every single time I am about to publish a new blog post. I’ve found these strategies to be the most effective, which is why I’ve added them to this guide. Feel free to grab your copy. And now let’s get back to the topic!
Table to contents
Choosing the right niche
Before you go on thinking about how to make money with a blog, it’s extremely important that you first choose the right niche.
The truth is that if you pick the wrong niche, you will have an extremely hard time finding the momentum. Nobody told me this when I started. But fortunately, I picked a niche that not only brings fulfillment but also money.
Niche profitability
If you are starting a blog, chances are that some day you want it to make you a lot of money… so much money that it will replace your day job and even make you financially free. Isn’t that right? And there’s nothing wrong with thinking this way. I mean, what can be better than having a hobby that’s making you money?
Nonetheless, not all blog niches involve a wealthy market. Let’s take the strawberry niche as an example.
You love strawberries so much that you’ve decided to blog about them. You write about all of the different kinds of strawberries, how sweet they can get, where and during what season they grow, etc. But how do you make money blogging about strawberries?
Don’t take me wrong, you can make some money even in this niche. For example, you can promote farming equipment or books about strawberries. Heck, you can even create an online course that teaches people how to grow strawberry plants!
You CAN make money blogging about anything, but not everything has the potential to make you rich.
Nonetheless, the strawberry market is not that big. There are waaay more people interested in Apple products, yoga or fitness, so you won’t be able to attract as many people as some of the other niches do.
The second problem is that even if you do attract the target audience to your blog, how many of them will be interested in buying your online course on how to grow strawberry plants? What will they be willing to pay for such a course, $50 or maybe $1000?
All of this, of course, needs to be researched in advance. You need to understand how profitable the niche is that you want to write about before you actually start writing. The last thing you want is to spend a year blogging about strawberries, just to find out that very few care about strawberries as much as you do.
Research the profitability of your niche very carefully. Use Google to find out how often people search for topics related to strawberries on the internet. Find out what exactly the questions are that they ask when googling for results.
Also, look at all of the different products in your niche that people promote and sell. Ask yourself, are they enough to earn you a decent income eventually? Sometimes the answer will be “no”. But don’t worry if your main passion isn’t profitable. You can always write about the second-best thing on your list. Not always hobbies and passion = money. At least you didn’t find this out the hard way a year after.
Picking the right niche for your blog is the first step to success!
The narrow vs. broad niche dilemma
The second thing you really need to think about before deciding on how to make money blogging, is the narrow vs. broad niche dilemma. Let me explain what I mean using my own blog as an example.
This blog is in the self-development niche. I write about many different topics, including psychology, entrepreneurship, fitness, diets, yoga, motivation, spirituality, etc. In other words, I write pretty much about everything.
On the one hand, having so many topics available has given me the freedom I need. I never run out of ideas and I never get bored.
But on the other hand, because my niche is SO broad, since day one, I have had a very hard time attracting my own audience. Somebody comes here to read about Amazon FBA, another person wants only health advice, the third person wants to beat procrastination, and you, my friend, want more information on how to make money with a blog.
As a result of having so many topics, most people that come here, read one blog post and leave. They simply aren’t interested in all of the other stuff.
Had I picked something more narrow, such as writing about iPhones or racing cars, I would have attracted an audience that clearly knows what it wants. A person interested in the latest iOS would come to my blog and get exactly what they were looking for. Seeing that this blog is only about iPhones, they could even become a regular visitor and a subscriber.
When I started this blog, I didn’t think about niche profitability, nor did I know the benefits of choosing a narrow niche over a broader one. I had no online course then to teach me this. My logic told me that the more people I write for, the bigger my audience will be. In reality, though, it’s rather the opposite.
The funny thing is that if you ask me today, what niche would I choose if I could go back in time and start all over, I would reply that I probably wouldn’t change much.
Despite knowing that I could have grown my blog much faster with a different, more narrow niche, I wouldn’t change it. Even though I am currently writing often about blogging, I am passionate about self-development as a whole. I am passionate about becoming better in as many areas of life as possible. I love the freedom of writing about all and everything. If my niche would be more narrow, sooner or later, I know would lose interest in writing about the same stuff over and over.
It’s up to you what niche you choose and how specific you go with it. You now know the pros of a broad niche – freedom of topics – and the cons – slow growth and a very diverse audience. But whichever niche you choose, make sure you that you truly care about it. Picking a niche for the sake of making money will never get you anywhere. You need to love your blog and be passionate the things you write about.
How to make money with a blog for beginners
Google AdSense
Google AdSense usually comes to mind first when we think about how to make money with a blog as a beginner. It’s really the easiest way and the most straightforward.
To get paid with Google AdSense, all you need to do is create a free account there. After that, Google will place their ads on your blog, but you get to choose where exactly you want those ads to be. Each time your blog’s reader clicks on the ad, you get paid a small commission.
While having ads on your blog inserted by Google seems like a fairly easy way to make money, I wouldn’t rush things.
First of all, AdSense doesn’t pay too much. For each click, depending on what the advertiser is paying, you get about $0.25. Unless you have millions of visitors every single month, then it’s ok. But if you are just a beginner wondering about how to make money with a blog, then this is not the best approach.
Just think about it, how often do you click on those random ads you see on other people’s blogs? Most likely never! And neither do I. So if your traffic is 50 visitors a week, don’t get your hopes up too high.
According to Minterest, to earn $100,000 a year from Google AdSense, you would need to have 100,000 visitors come to your blog EVERY SINGLE DAY!
Also, those ads will make your blog ugly!
In my humble opinion, as long as you are a “newbie” blogger, your only goal should be making EPIC content and driving traffic to your blog through SEO optimization. As soon as you put those ads up, you’ll turn off some people.
Notice how I don’t have a single Google ad on my blog (at least in 2023)? That’s because I care about your experience when you visit me here.
My advice to you is not to apply for Google AdSense until it makes sense. Turn it on only when you are sure that it will generate a significant amount of income and your blog is so popular that you are not afraid to scare a portion of people away.
Custom ads and reviews
Custom ads are similar to Google ads, but you have more control over them.
Unlike Google AdSense, you get to choose what ads you show on your blog. The way you get these ads on your blog is either by you reaching out to someone with a promotion proposal, or them reaching out to you.
For example, if you have a product you really like and care about, you can reach out to the company that made it and ask them whether you could advertise the product. Sometimes they will say no, but sometimes they will say yes. If the reply is positive, you place their ad wherever you prefer, such as your sidebar, and get paid for displaying it. This kind of ad will probably generate you more income than a Google ad, and your website will stay looking neat.. unless, of course, you have those ads all over the place.
In the case of product reviews, it gets even better. Most of the time, companies will reach out to you, to ask you to make a review of their service or product. They may send you the product for free (or give you free access to their service), and, depending on how much authority your blog has, they will pay you for the review.
Advertisements in the form of reviews usually pay good money to content creators. In fact, I have seen blogs that focus only on making product reviews, like in the travel niche. This just shows that it is enough money for bloggers to live off of.
Tomoson is a resource if you want to make some money with your blog. Register, find products that you’d like to review, pair up with companies and start advertising.
Affiliate marketing
Want to know more about how to make money with a blog? You are going to love affiliate marketing. It’s definitely my favorite on the list.
Affiliate marketing is great because even a total newbie can do it. All you have to do is find a product or service you like and start promoting it. But you may wonder, how is it different from making a review and getting paid for it, or displaying an ad on your blog?
With affiliate marketing, you don’t get paid for writing that review or for displaying the ad. Instead, you get paid a commission every time someone purchases the product or service through your personal affiliate link. So whether you make a review or display an ad for the products is totally up to you. Your only goal is to get people to buy through your link.
When I talk about marketing as an affiliate, I talk about promoting something I have tested and/or genuinely like. I never promote random stuff just to make money. And if you do, your audience will sooner or later understand that you are promoting rubbish, and you will lose their trust. So although the affiliate marketing principle may seem straightforward, there are actually many things to think about when doing it.
I like to break up affiliate marketing into three main categories: amazon associates, general affiliate marketing and product launches.
Amazon Associates
Amazon associates is the easiest way to make some money with affiliate marketing. But just like with Google AdSense, if you don’t have a lot of traffic, you are not going to make much money this way.
With associates, you can advertise pretty much any product that you can find on Amazon. The way I do it is when I write a blog post, every once in a while I will mention a book or a product that you can get on Amazon, to which I will leave my personal affiliate link. When a person clicks on that link and buys the product, I will get a small commission.
Amazon’s commission on average is about 4.5%. So if you are advertising a book that costs $10, your commission for that book is $0.45. I know, not much.
And although Amazon’s commissions are nothing to be proud of, one thing that is cool is that when a person clicks on your link, even if they don’t buy that product right that second, you still have the chance to earn money hours later. The Amazon affiliate tracking cookie has a lifespan of 24 hours. During that time whatever the person puts in their shopping cart will earn you a commission as well.
For example, a person clicked on your Amazon book link and did not buy it. But they continue browsing Amazon. They then find sunglasses, scissors and a kitchen knife that they like. As soon as they buy all of those items, you will get a commission for each one of them, even though they did not buy the book you initially promoted.
So as you can see, it is possible to earn with Amazon associates. You just need a decent amount of traffic pouring into your blog.
General affiliate promotions
What I call “General affiliate promotions”, for me, are more serious and more profitable than Amazon associates, but are still not as awesome as the last category – product launches. Nevertheless, if you’ve come here to learn how to make money with a blog, then this is something you definitely can do even as a newbie.
When I talk about general affiliate promotions, I am talking about the more expensive products and services that are worth reviewing and sharing with your email list. These products have the potential to generate anything from $50 per item to $1000.
Products and services that belong to this category are the bread and butter of any blogger. They can generate enough income so that the blogger would not have to work the standard 9-5. Fortunately, platforms like Commission Junction and Clickbank have plenty of products that you can promote, although not all of them are of quality, so be careful.
Because these products and services are more expensive, you can’t just mention them briefly in your blog posts and expect people to buy from you… well, you can, but that’s not the most effective approach.
The more expensive a product is, the more time you need to spend explaining to your audience what the product is and why they need it. Of course, the product also needs to be relevant to your audience. Don’t just sell them an expensive sports supplement if you are in the technology niche.
The best way to promote affiliate products in the general affiliate marketing category is by, once again, writing reviews. This way, you are giving enough information about the product/service to your audience to get them interested.
Also, if your product review is well-written, you may be lucky enough for it to end up on the first page of Google’s search engine results. This means plenty of people reading your review, more people purchasing through you and thus more commissions.
Below is an example of the commissions that I have been receiving from a product in what I call the general affiliate marketing category.
Product launches
Finally comes the product launch category. This, as you may have guessed, is not the easiest thing on the list if you are trying to figure out how to make money with a blog as a beginner. But, as you may also have guessed, it’s the most profitable out of the three. Even though I have made thousands with product launches, I personally know several people that have made millions from just ONE product launch.
I know this may be a bit more than you’d expect as someone looking for how to make money with a blog, but I wanted to share this with you anyway. It’s a good motivation. Besides, not everyone knows that you can make over a million dollars blogging with affiliate marketing product launches.
So what is a product launch?
As you may know, some people sell high-ticket online programs and courses. This means that the programs can get very expensive, ranging anywhere from $1000 to $25.000+.
It’s also very common for these types of programs to not accept new students throughout the year. Instead, they “open doors” for new students once or twice a year only. And when they do, it’s called a product launch.
Many of these expensive programs are launched with the help of affiliates promoting them. And to encourage these affiliates to work really hard for these launches, they are often paid a 50% commission of the cost of the whole program. No joke.
So because these launches can earn you A LOT of money, content creators, aka influencers, aka affiliates, work their butts off to make as many sales as possible. I am not going to go at the moment into what exactly affiliates do to make these sales, but trust me, it’s a dedication to the process. But the return is also massive. This kind of affiliate marketing is how many bloggers become (multi) millionaires!
P.S. If you want to learn in detail how affiliate marketing really works, make sure to check out this online course. I’ve personally gone through it and I highly recommend it to you as well.
Selling physical products
A blog is your real estate. It is your property on the internet, and you can do with it whatever you want… as long as it is legal, of course. You are probably going to advertise other people’s products and services, so why not sell something of your own?
Have you done Kindle publishing on Amazon? Or maybe you have your own merch, such as t-shirts and mugs? Whatever it is, you can sell more of it using your blog! Either you have links on the blog pointing at your store, or you sell your products directly through your blog using a plugin, such as WooCommerce. WooCommerce allows you to embed that store into your blog.
If you want to make money as a blogger, then I’d say that selling your own products is one of the most straightforward ways to do it.
Many people open up Amazon FBA, Shopify and eBay stores, but soon realize that they aren’t making enough sales through those platforms alone. Starting a blog to drive extra traffic becomes an excellent addition to this!
Coaching
Coaching is another common way for bloggers to make money, especially for those bloggers that are in the self-help niche. In fact, many already-existing coaches specifically start a blog because they understand that the best way to expand their business is by spreading their message across the internet through blogging about it.
Now, you may be thinking to yourself that coaching does not really fall under the category of how to make money with a blog for beginners. It just seems like something that professionals do, people that have mastered their craft. Well, if you are thinking that way, then I must interrupt you. Coaching is not for professionals only.
Let me tell you my story. When I just started blogging, I didn’t think much of coaching. I also thought that coaching is only for people with tens of years of experience and a degree. But I was wrong. I quickly found out that most bloggers also do coaching in one form or another.
Some bloggers do business coaching, some do health and fitness coaching, and some do life coaching, which is what I was interested in having written so much about self-development. Some popular influencers, like Stefan James and Leo Gura, were doing it. They also inspired me.
Besides, the more books I read on self-development and the more I wrote on the subject, the more knowledgeable I became. Although not perfect, I had things to say to people when they felt stuck. I helped myself in the past, so I knew I could help other people as well.
Making money coaching was in no way something I thought I would ever do, but because I wanted to help people so much, why not get paid for it, I thought to myself.
I read plenty of books on the topic and took a couple of life coaching and NLP courses on Udemy. After that, I went to Reddit and Quora to let people know that I am starting my life coaching career, and am looking for clients to grow my experience with, free of charge. Many people volunteered and were really happy about the results that I got them. And that is how I started coaching, something I didn’t think I would ever do.
In addition, what’s funny is that even though my initial focus was on life coaching, people often ask me to help them with starting their own blogs. Because I have my own blog and people see how consistent I have been, they trust me, and I am truly grateful for that.
Selling digital courses
As I already mentioned, the more you research and write for your blog, the more knowledgeable you will become about your niche. Sooner or later, people will begin to see you as an expert in your field.
If your blog is about health and fitness, your audience will reach out to you for dietary and workout advice. They will ask you to be their coach to help them lose weight or become fit. The same goes for other niches as well.
Because I write a lot about blogging, motivation and mindset, people reach out to me for a variety of different reasons. Some want help with overcoming limiting beliefs, some want to find their life purpose, and some simply need accountability.
Coaching can be fun, it helps people and makes you money. But unfortunately, it’s not scalable.
At some point, you will realize that you no longer want to coach one person at a time. This is when you will think of creating your own online course.
Creating online courses is one of the best ways to make money with a blog. You create a course once, but you keep selling it over and over without having to spend more time on it. The margin with this kind of business model is pretty much 100%. Apart from recording equipment, your biggest investment is the time you spend creating the course.
Online courses vary a lot in price. You can start with a smaller course that costs only about a $100. A smaller price tag makes it more affordable, which means more people will buy your course. When it comes to learning how to make money with a blog for beginners, starting with a cheaper course is a good option, since you don’t yet have a large email list and a following.
On the other hand, once your email list is big enough, you are experienced and your audience trusts you, you can create your own high-ticket course. You can even hire your own affiliates to help you launch that course.
Honestly, online courses are an amazing way to make money online. If you search around, you will see that almost all big blogs sell one or more courses to their audience. Just think about it, if you’ve been writing for the last 5 or more years about some specific topic, you probably know A LOT about it by now. So why not share your wisdom with others and get paid to do it?
Amy Porterfield is a great example of someone that has had tremendous success with creating online courses and helping others learn to do the same. She has changed the lives of thousands of people, and so can you!
Memberships
Finally on the list of how to make money with a blog for beginners comes memberships!
Membership programs are similar to creating an online course, but not quite the same. Instead of being paid once by one client or student, you are paid over and over again, sometimes monthly, sometimes annually. In other words, it is a recurring stream of income.
As a blog owner, you can sell memberships for a number of different things. Maybe you have a tool that you would like to be paid for on a monthly basis.. or premium content, or maybe you have a VIP Facebook community only for the “chosen ones”, or maybe you do group coaching on a monthly basis… it’s really up to you.
The bottom line is that you have all of these options. Eventually, as a blogger, you will diversify your income streams. And I can guarantee you that sooner or later, you will create memberships and you will successfully make money this way. Again, many big blogs do this!
Building your personal brand
I have shown the many ways how to make money with a blog for beginners, but now I want to touch on the other side of the coin.
Every aspiring and starting blogger wants to become successful and make millions. Fortunately for us, it is absolutely possible. Sure, it may be more difficult today than it used to be in the past because of the increasing competition, but competition should never be the wall that stops a person from pursuing their dreams.
Most of those blogs that you see in Google’s search engine results on the first page are proof that you CAN become successful with blogging and you CAN make money. In fact, many of those blogs have grown so much that there are entire teams working for them, creating content daily, editing and marketing, and coming up with new ideas to make more money.
Let’s face it, a successful blog is more than just its creator and text. It’s an image, it’s a brand.
I hope that you understand that from day one you need to be treating your blog as a brand. You should be very careful with what decisions you make and what you do with your blog. The content you publish, the people and products that you promote – all of this can either have a positive or a negative effect on your blog.
It takes years and decades to grow your reputation, but you can lose it all in the blink of an eye.
I often see blogs that don’t add absolutely any value to anyone. All they do is copy the content of other blogs and use that content to promote and sell trash to their visitors. I call them leeches (no disrespect to real leeches).
I also see blogs that do have their own content, but they are of poor quality. The posts are usually no longer than 500 words, but include plenty of promotions, as well as ads all over. It becomes quite clear that the blog creators are not interested in helping anyone or in adding value. It’s done only for profit. Fortunately, these types of blogs don’t last.
Why am I saying all of this?
Let me speak from the point of view of self-development… To be successful, you need to know exactly why you are doing the things that you are doing. You need to be honest with yourself and figure out whether you are doing it for the money only or not.
As I already said, it’s possible to make plenty of money with blogging and there is nothing wrong with it – we all want to get paid for something we love to do. So no need to worry here. But if you care only about the money, I am sorry to say, it probably won’t work for you.
Blogging is not an overnight success game. It takes a lot of time, hard work and dedication, which is why it is so important to have the right motivation right from the start.
I want to emphasize one more time how important it is not to run after the money by promoting things you haven’t tried or don’t care about. The only way to grow your blog, your traffic, is to be a person of value. If you are after the quick buck, people will see and feel it, and they won’t trust you.
However, if it comes from the heart and you focus on helping people first, you will have success sooner or later. If you are genuine, people will appreciate you, and as a result, the money will follow. Money always finds those people that are genuine and passionate about what they do.
Hopefully, you’ve enjoyed this post on how to make money blogging for beginners. Once again, if you want to grow your traffic as fast as possible, make sure to download my FREE “7 Smart Strategies to Grow Your Blog Traffic Faster” guide.
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