A few years ago you could start a blog, write some crappy content and fill your site with Adsense and you’d make a decent profit. Things have changed dramatically since then and blogging is no longer the “in” thing.
But is it still possible to make money blogging in 2018? And is it worth starting a blog anymore?
Forget Adsense
While it’s still possible to make money from adsense, you can’t rely on it anymore as a source of income for blogging. I wouldn’t even bother starting a blog with the intention of making money from adsense. For starters, you won’t make very much money from it, and secondly its extremely risky. Bloggers were always at risk of getting banned from Google Adsense for no reason at all.
If you rely on Google Adsense you could one day find yourself without a source of income and your blog worth nothing.
Affiliate Marketing
In my opinion the best way to monetize a blog is with Affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is where you link to other people’s products and they pay you a commission if you make a sale or generate a lead. I’ve used affiliate marketing for the past five years on my blogs and have been able to make a consistent profit all of that time.
The reality is that people are still searching for solutions to their problems – that is never going to change. And if you can offer them a solution in the form of an affiliate product you can make money. It’s really just that simple.
Creating Products
As well as affiliate marketing, creating your own products is a reliable source of income. While this isn’t a great option for new blogs, as you require a large audience to sell a product successfully, its a good way to grow beyond affiliate marketing.
If you follow bloggers who share their income reports, one thing you’ll notice is that most of them have their own products. When you sell your own products you take a much higher profit than you would with affiliate marketing and you can even sell through affiliates as well.
So should you start a blog in 2018?
Absolutely! Sure its so much harder to get traffic and generate revenue than it was 5 years ago. But if you do manage to persevere than it can be extremely profitable. I even feel that these days there are fewer competitors. Many bloggers of old have moved onto other platforms and money making techniques leaving more room for the hardcore bloggers.
And if you do manage to create a money making blog, you have yourself a very valuable asset. These sites can sell for 20x their annual earnings, because they are genuinely hard to build.
Overall blogging is still alive and still a legitimate way to make money online. Don’t listen to the people that say it’s impossible to make money blogging – I make thousands every month from my blogs and so do countless others.
Find out more about monetizing your blog with this post I wrote.