Are you looking to monetize your blog in 2018? I’ve put together 5 solid options that I’ve used, and know to still work in 2018. While blogging might not be as “hot” as it was a few years ago, it’s still possible to generate a full time income from blogging.
Let me know in the comments what methods you’re using to make money with your blog..
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing generates almost 100% of my income. And I think it’s the best option for monetizing a blog. And you don’t need a huge amount of traffic to start making money. If you target the right keyworks in Google and craft quality content, then with just ~20-100 visitors a day you can generate sales.
Affiliate marketing also works across a huge range of niches. To get started, take a look at similar blogs in your niche to see what affiliate programs they are a part of. But don’t fall into the trap of promoting the same programs as everyone else. I’ve found that the lesser known programs offer the best payouts as there is less competition to compete with.
Adsense
Adsense is still a viable option in 2018 and unfortunately there aren’t many alternatives out there. If you have a blog with a lot of traffic (1000+ visitors per day), then you can generate a reasonable income from adsense.
You have to be careful that your site remains adsense compliant – many bloggers have woken up one morning to find that their site had been banned from Adsense and with it they lost their income. I like to use Adsense as a supplementary income but not the main source.
Products
Building your own products is the holy grail of blog monetization. These products could include ebooks, design files, printables, plugins, courses and more. When you create your own products, you’re in control. You don’t need to worry about being accepted into a program, you don’t need to worry about getting paid. You can set the prices and choose exactly how you want to market them.
Obviously building your own products is difficult and time consuming. This method works really well for blogs that have a large, established readership. It’s not easy to monetize a new blog with products.
Amazon
While Amazon is technically “affiliate marketing”, I think it deserves it’s own mention. Amazon’s Associates program is still one of the most reliable ways to monetize a blog. Amazon works best on Product related sites. For example a “Travel Blog” could review and link to the best travel gear. A blog on internet marketing on the other hand may struggle to link to appropriate products. Such a blog could link to related books, but I have found that this doesn’t generate a great deal of income.
Sponsored Posts
While marketplaces for sponsored posts have dried up and all but disappeared – there is a still a lot of money in sponsored posts. On a not-so-popular blog of mine (which receive 100-300 visitors per day), I get on average 1 request per week for sponsored posts. So people are looking to buy posts and you can take advantage of this.
A few tips I would recommend:
- Charge more than you think people will pay. People will often come back to you with a counter offer so make sure you have room to come down in prcie.
- Keep the quality. I only posts articles that have been written by my team. I don’t want some shitty seo content that is obviously written by a non-native speaker. These posts will do more harm then good and won’t be worth the money you make from them. So offer to write the post yourself.
- Make sure the article fits your site – don’t post random articles on your blog. Make sure it fits your niche and most importantly will be of interest to readers.