How to make money blogging

A mistake that many bloggers make is trying to earn money with their blog without having a defined topic area. You should decide on a theme that is exciting and in­ter­est­ing. When you start creating your blog, you should already have ideas in mind about the topic of the blog. If you find a niche theme, you will speak to a more defined target group and build a true read­er­ship. And this is the exact type of target group that is lucrative for ad­ver­tis­ers who may want to place an ad­ver­tis­ing banner on a blog, for example. Targeting a specific group is hugely important for a business’s success. Affiliate marketing (see below) only works in the right en­vi­ron­ment.

When it comes to tra­di­tion­al print ad­ver­tis­ing, the cir­cu­la­tion figures determine how suc­cess­ful an advert is. For blogging, the deciding factor is the amount of traffic generated with each article. As such, a blog that only receives a few hundred visitors a day isn’t very appealing for ad­ver­tis­ers. However, this isn’t always the case, as some companies may be in­ter­est­ed in a smaller read­er­ship of experts. In either case, traffic remains a very important factor when it comes to pay-per-click ad­ver­tis­ing and affiliate marketing. However, relevant readers don’t au­to­mat­i­cal­ly flock to a blogger; you need a lot of per­sis­tence and en­gage­ment to ‘earn’ your readers and retain them by keeping your content relevant and up to date. Only when you have many loyal readers can you start to make money by blogging. In this context, you should research about hosting pos­si­bil­i­ties: if you have com­mer­cial ambitions, you should consider hosting your own blog.

What are the pos­si­bil­i­ties for those wanting to make money by blogging? With this question as a starting point, the classical methods of how to monetize your blog will be explained, then how to earn money by blogging without having to place ads on your site.

Direct marketing is when a blogger rents out the free ad­ver­tis­ing space on their site directly to an ad­ver­tis­er. In contrast to AdSense or com­pa­ra­ble online services, in­de­pen­dent­ly managing ad­ver­tis­ing space can be very lucrative, since all the income generated goes straight to the blogger. Managing the space yourself, however, does translate into more work, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to acquiring new ad­ver­tis­ing partners. Blogs generally indicate free ad­ver­tis­ing space on their site and provide all the necessary in­for­ma­tion (media data, ad­ver­tis­ing rates, etc.) on a subpage.

Sponsored posts (also known as ad­ver­to­ri­als) make it possible to earn money with editorial posts rather than ad­ver­tise­ments. With this form of ad­ver­tis­ing, you write articles on a certain product or a topic or you’re given a pre-written text (that has already been adapted to the target group) from the company or agency. The scope of the blog, the amount of effort, and the topic relevance also determine the com­pen­sa­tion for the article. Co­op­er­at­ing with blogs is now common practice for many marketing agencies. Many bloggers find it difficult to strike the right balance between sponsored posts and be­liev­able content.

Affiliate marketing relates to referral marketing. Reg­is­ter­ing for relevant partner programs is usually free for bloggers. Writers receive a com­mis­sion if they recommend a product or a service in their articles and a reader then follows the rec­om­men­da­tion (i.e. the link). The ap­pro­pri­ate com­mis­sion (around 3-10%) is only awarded when a contract has been finalized. Amazon As­so­ciates and zanox, are two very well-known affiliate programs.

Pay per click ad­ver­tis­ing is an un­com­pli­cat­ed way of placing adverts on your website so you can make money by blogging. Google AdSense is by far the most well-known online ad­ver­tis­ing service. The type of pay per click ads that are shown depends on the content of the blog. Profit is made with each click, so the more traffic a blog has, the more prof­itable the pay-per-click adverts are.

Direct and eye-catching ad­ver­tis­ing has proven suc­cess­ful for bloggers in recent years and is un­doubt­ed­ly one of the easiest sources of income to regulate. However, there are other ways to profit from your blog. Here we introduce some al­ter­na­tive solutions.

Your own blog can also be funded by donations. By in­te­grat­ing a donation button on the site, readers are invited to support the blog fi­nan­cial­ly – vol­un­tar­i­ly, of course. In contrast to the paywall model, all content remains free even if the reader decides not to donate anything. Spe­cial­ized providers such as Flattr enable un­com­pli­cat­ed donation pro­cess­ing. However, the service requires the reader to be reg­is­tered with Flattr and have credit in their account. Al­ter­na­tive­ly, you could enable a direct donation option by providing your bank details on your site.

An ad­di­tion­al, seemingly lucrative way to make money by blogging is to sell links that are not marked as paid ad­ver­tis­ing. Text link sales like these can be organized through websites like BackLinks. However, you have a sig­nif­i­cant dis­ad­van­tage compared to links in sponsored posts: purchased links that aren’t marked as such, violate Google’s guide­lines. The blogger could therefore end up being penalized. The con­se­quences may be a decrease in PageRank and a loss in ranking in the search engine results, which will deter many ad­ver­tis­ers.

Com­mer­cial blogging won’t work if you don’t play by the rules. There are reg­u­la­tions con­cern­ing tax de­c­la­ra­tions and trade reg­is­tra­tion. Here is an overview of the most important facts:

1. A com­mer­cial blog must be reg­is­tered as a business: the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) considers your blog more of a business, rather than a hobby, if you make money from it and es­pe­cial­ly if you are running it for the sole purpose of making a profit. If you are filing as self-employed, you are also expected to pay self-em­ploy­ment taxes quarterly rather than annually.
   
   
2. Bloggers need to pay tax on their earnings: they have to declare anything that has value such as review items, sponsored posts, etc. You must file an income tax return if net earnings from self-em­ploy­ment are $400 or more. Even if you make less than this, you still have to file an income tax return if you meet any other filing re­quire­ments listed in the Form 1040 in­struc­tions.
   
   
3. Image rights: When you use images on your blog, you have to make sure they aren’t copy­right­ed otherwise you could find yourself with a big fine. You’ll find more in­for­ma­tion in our article on image copyright online.

In previous sections in the guide, it explained how you earn money with a blog in the first place. So far, the question of how much a blogger earns on average each month has remained unan­swered. This is because there is no set answer, since blogs not only have different possible sources of income, but are also paid com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent­ly when it comes to sponsored posts, ad­ver­tise­ments, etc. In addition to the pop­u­lar­i­ty and number of visitors, the topic of the blog plays a decisive role. For example, it is possible to make more money with a pro­fes­sion­al fashion or travel blog than with a blog about exotic animal species such as the Mexican Axolotl (simply because the target group is so small).

In the US, it’s possible to sup­ple­ment your income if not get all your income, from a well-run blog. It can be a tedious process, taking months or even years to make even a little profit. Only once your blog is becoming more popular, does it start to look at­trac­tive for ad­ver­tis­ing companies, which is why donations and selling your own products are often the only sources of income at the start. Once various part­ner­ships have been concluded and the financial basis has been created, there is no limit to how much you can earn. Some of the most suc­cess­ful US bloggers earn as much as six figures per month!

Blogs cover the widest variety of topics: fashion, sports, lifestyle, music, etc. Every industry has its top blogs, which all have their own success stories. There’s often more to these suc­cess­ful blogs than just blog posts. Popular bloggers are known as in­flu­encers in social networks or as experts at con­fer­ences and events, and they sometimes even operate their own product chains. The project 'The Blonde Salad' was launched as a fashion blog by Chiara Ferragni in 2009 and is a prime example of this. Today, the Italian boss has a multi-headed crew and doesn’t just deal with making sure the fashion blog runs smoothly, but also the social media channels, photo shoots, and sales from the shoe col­lec­tion ('Chiara Ferragni Col­lec­tion'). It’s estimated that Ferragni earns more than $12 million per year.  The following bloggers are some of the most suc­cess­ful and best paid in the world:

Source: https://blog­gerspas­sion.com/bloggers-income-report-how-much-money-do-top-bloggers-make-and-how/

If you plan to make money with your blog, it is time to start taking steps to com­mer­cial­ize it. However, with all your efforts you’ve made to spe­cial­ize in your topic, finding the ap­pro­pri­ate hosting solution, getting more traffic, and building on your re­la­tion­ship with other bloggers, you’ll notice it’s a lengthy process that often requires a lot of patience. There are some tricks, however, that can help increase your success rate.

1. Optimize loading time: Blogs are ac­ces­si­ble to anyone via the World Wide Web. Potential readers expect the same level of user ex­pe­ri­ence as other web projects. In addition to the intuitive usability and good struc­tur­ing, a quick loading time is also required. The latter is mainly in­flu­enced by the choice of blog or content man­age­ment system as well as the hosting en­vi­ron­ment. If you use a CMS, you can often improve the loading time with plugins, for example, with LazyLoad for WordPress sites. The plugin ensures that images are only loaded when they come into the user’s field of vision.
   
   
2. Provide more content: Many bloggers only show a couple of posts on their homepage and sometimes there is no editorial content at all. If there’s more choice of reading material, it increases the chance of at­tract­ing visitors and gaining loyal readers. The in­creas­ing length of stay also has a positive effect on search engine marketing. It is important, however, that you also keep the afore­men­tioned loading time in the back of your mind.
   
   
3. Use teasers: With an in­ter­est­ing preview picture and an exciting teaser, you increase the prob­a­bil­i­ty of your articles being read. It’s best for you to write the blurb yourself, ex­plain­ing what the reader can expect from the article. However, many content man­age­ment systems also offer features that au­to­mat­i­cal­ly generate the preview text from the first few lines of the main text. This is handy if you don’t have enough time to think of something yourself or you’re not feeling par­tic­u­lar­ly creative.
   
   
4. Emphasize the call to action: You should make it clear to your readers if you offer newslet­ters, products, or services on top of your editorial content in order to make money with your blog. Buttons and forms should be made obvious and prominent so that readers see them. If you want to integrate several different action prompts into your blog, don’t give them the same im­por­tance as each other. Highlight the most important thing so that visitors don’t become over­whelmed with too much choice.
   
   
5. Analyze user behavior: When you customize your blog to reach new visitors, increase retention time, or improve con­ver­sion rate, you should always analyze the impact of these ad­just­ments. Using web analytics software like Google Analytics, you can see what has caused the increase in traffic or what had en­cour­aged more readers to convert. You shouldn’t perform all the op­ti­miza­tion steps at once, otherwise you won’t be able to tell which of the ad­just­ments has had the positive effect on your blog’s success.

Our guide has explained that there are a lot of things to consider and that a lot of time needs to be invested before you can make money with a blog. Only when a project has enough traffic does it become in­ter­est­ing enough for ad­ver­tis­ing companies. You’re also more likely to profit from any pi­o­neer­ing part­ner­ships that present them­selves.

To conclude, we have sum­ma­rized the different sources of income: