5 ways to make money with your blog
Blogging has gone mainstream years ago, but people still wonder how to make money with blogging in 2022.
One of the most popular ways of making money with your blog is by publishing AdSense advertisements.
There are many alternatives but setting up AdSense is not just easy, it is also trusted more because it is offered by an organization like Google.
Do I make money with my blog in 2022?
If yes, how, and how much?
Right now, at this moment, my primary source of income is writing content for my clients.
I’m not directly making money from my blog in 2022.
I’m planning to change that in near future, but as of now, I use my blog to get more work.
On an average my blog gets me work worth $3000 every month, but as I just said, in the coming months I plan to turn my blog as my main source of income.
I’m outsourcing my work to, on an average, 15 content writers these days but to make this proposition financially viable, I need to generate more work.
No, these 15 content writers are not working at the same time.
I work with whomever is available for the ongoing assignment.
My primary reason for outsourcing to other writers is that I want to have enough time to devote to my blog.
I haven’t been sufficiently able to grow my blog because most of my time is spent working on client assignments.
The problem with working on my own is that there is only up to a certain amount of work I can do and after that, I reach my limit.
For many years I have known how to make money with my blog, it is just that, I have been caught in a vicious loop.
Fortunately, now I have a few writers I can rely on.
Although in terms of quality I still need to be cautious and I need to carefully revise and go through the documents before I forward them to my clients, nonetheless, it saves me lots of time that I can then put into my blog.
Can any blog be used to make lots of money?
How much money you make with your blog depends on your topic.
Technology and digital marketing blogs make more advertising money than gardening and sewing blogs simply because the ads that are published are published on technology and digital marketing blogs are expensive per click.
I have read that blogs on highly focused medical conditions also make lots of money.
But as you will discover, publishing advertisements isn’t the only option to make money from your blog.
You can promote events.
You can sell books.
You can build your personal brand which in turn gets you speaking and networking opportunities.
How do you choose your blogging niche?
My personal advice would be, choose something that you love and you have got lots to talk about.
Don’t choose a niche simply because you think it will be profitable unless you have lots of money and you can hire writers who would be interested in the topic.
Keep in mind that unless you have lots of money, you will be working on your blog mostly by yourself.
Although blogging can be rewarding in the long run, for a few months or even for a year, you may need to work non-stop, really hard, before you can see some money coming in.
If you are not interested in the topic, you will very soon get discouraged.
You may see no traffic building for the first 4-5 months.
People give up.
Unless you are truly interested in sharing your knowledge and thoughts on a topic, it is practically impossible for you to continue publishing a blog on your own for a long time.
Therefore, carefully choose a topic.
Something on which you can write non-stop for months.
5 ways you can make money with your blog in 2022
When blogging started in early 2000’s it was mostly a hobby.
In the beginning people were not using their blogs to make money.
People mostly promoted their business websites through publishing articles on article directories.
Though I was not aware of the concept of blogging, I knew that if I published lots of web pages under my domain it would help me generate traffic, so I did, and actually generated good traffic for my business.
Gradually people realized that Google ranked blog posts faster than it ranked the conventional pages.
The primary reason was that compared to the usual website, a blog is updated with a greater frequency.
Which means, there is more content to crawl, index and rank.
Also a blog is thematic – some blogs may have scores of, and hundreds of blog posts on the same or the similar topics.
This gives a blog topical depth, which is preferred by Google.
When traffic began to build, people began to see a moneymaking opportunity.
Most of the ways people were using to make money with their blogs are still valid in 2022.
This is because the companies (for example AdSense) that were used to make money also grew on the backs of many big blogs.
If you think that the opportunity of making money with your blog has come and gone, and by 2022, there is too much competition and too little interest, you may like to reconsider.
For example, when researching for this particular blog post, most of the blog posts and articles that come up on Google on the first or the second page, have been written in 2022.
I used my blog to generate traffic for my business website in 2008, and I am still using it.
Most of my work comes through my blog.
Hence, if you want to make money with your blog, the opportunity still awaits you.
Below I’m listing 5 ways you can make money with your blog in 2022.
On other blogs you may find 20 ways or even 50 ways, but they have simply inflated single topics into multiple subtopics.
The methods that I have listed below can help any blog make money provided you have chosen the right niche and you stick to your guns for a sufficient amount of time.
Generating traffic for business website
This is how I make money with my blog.
As of now I don’t make advertising or affiliate money.
If you see advertisements on this blog, it is a recent development.
I use my blog to generate traffic for my main website and then my main website generates work for me.
So far my blog has helped me maintain my search engine rankings.
Since my blog is under my main website domain, when it improves its search engine rankings, it also has a trickle-down effect on my main website.
Through improved search engine rankings of my blog, the SEO of my business web pages also improves.
Most of my clients for whom I write blog posts use their blogs to build targeted traffic or to simply have a blogging section because most contemporary websites have them these days.
Is this a good way of making money from your blog in 2022?
Surely, if you prefer that.
As I have mentioned above, most of my clients use their blogs to improve their search engine rankings.
In this sense, I have been using my blog to make money for the past 14 years.
Building a personal brand to make money with your blog in 2022
You can make money with your blog in 2022 by building your personal brand through it.
One of the best examples that comes to my mind is that of Seth Godin.
He is a bestselling author and a speaker.
He goes to conferences.
He gets many paid gigs for speaking in front of audiences.
He has published multiple books.
He has built his personal brand by sharing intelligent insights about doing business from his blog.
He posts a blog post every day, or at least, he was posting a blog post every day when I was regularly following him.
He was so particular that he never missed publishing a blog post even on Christmas eve.
To make money with your blog by building a personal brand requires immense thought leadership.
Therefore, if you are a consultant, speaker, or a coach, you can use your blog to build your personal brand which will generate unlimited moneymaking opportunities for you.
Publishing advertisements to make money from your blog
This is the commonest way of making money with your blog and people are still making lots of money through publishing advertisements.
The caveat is that you need lots of traffic.
You make decent money from programs like AdSense only if your blog gets more than 20,000 visitors every day.
The real money is made by blogs who get millions of visitors every month.
Again, it also depends on your topic.
Some years back I was publishing a technology blog and even with a traffic of 300-400 visitors per day, my blog was making $2-$3 dollars every day.
Sometimes, a single click on an AdSense advertisement can get you $1 and sometimes, it gets you just $0.01.
Hence, how much money you make through advertisement depends on your niche as well as the amount of traffic you can generate.
The easiest way of publishing advertisements is joining the AdSense program.
It also has a WordPress plugin that allows you to publish ads on your blog within a few hours.
Why I say within a few hours is that when you sign up and activate the ads, the AdSense algorithm analyzes existing content.
This blog post lists some AdSense alternatives that you can use on your blog to make more money.
Advertisements don’t have to be from third-party companies like AdSense.
Recently I was approached by a company to place their advertisement directly on my blog.
I’m not posting direct ads right now because I don’t have enough traffic to charge them decently.
Promoting affiliate products to make money from your blog
Affiliate links are unique links given to you by various merchant websites like Amazon.com.
You use the link on your website and when someone clicks the link, he or she goes to the merchant website, and buys the product represented by that link, you get a commission.
The commission is normally 10%-30%, depending on the affiliate scheme.
You can sell various items through your affiliate links such as subscription-based services, digital products, books, movie tickets, and conventional products from websites like Amazon.com and Shopify.
For example, if you have a blog on arthritis, you can have affiliate links for various arthritis-related products from Amazon.
Among bloggers, this is the second most favorite way of making money after publishing AdSense ads.
Some bloggers claim that promoting affiliate links makes them more money than publishing AdSense ads because affiliate links are better targeted.
Sponsored blog content to make money
This is another option I will be considering in near future.
When your blog builds up a decent traffic there are many businesses who would like to publish a sponsored blog post on your blog.
As the name goes, since it is a sponsored blog post, they are ready to pay you for publishing it.
Why do businesses want to publish sponsored posts?
They want exposure.
They want to associate their brand with a blog that is growing in popularity, or is already popular.
They want to improve their search engine rankings.
Why I’m more excited about this way of making money from my blog is that whereas advertising still doesn’t make me money, I already get proposals for sponsored blog posts.
But I’m going to wait.
You need to provide the screenshots of statistics of your traffic before you can tell people how much you are going to charge for publishing sponsored content.
My traffic isn’t much right now and I don’t want to charge too low for publishing sponsored content.
Nonetheless, I’m looking forward to such an opportunity.
If you write your own blog posts it means you are a prolific writer and you can charge additionally by writing the sponsored posts on your own instead of getting them written from other businesses.
These are the most prevalent ways of making money from your blog, in 2022, and beyond.
I must admit that publishing a successful blog isn’t as easy as it was when the blogging was just starting.
The competition is tough.
Almost every niche is already covered.
Top rankings have already been taken by big websites and blogs.
But then, almost every month I see a new blog emerging and becoming successful, despite tough competition.
Therefore, don’t let other successful blogs dissuade you from starting your own blog or using your existing blog to make money.
