There are actually a large number of ways to make money off of a blog and legitimately make money online. Once you have your blog created and consistently post original, engaging content, your audience/following will grow, and you can actually start to make monetize your little corner of the internet.

If you haven’t created your blog yet, here is a quick and easy way to start a profitable blog from scratch. Ready to take your blog to the next level? Here are some key options to create multiple lines of revenue and turn your hobby into a profitable business.

How To Make Money Blogging

Advertisements

If you get a large amount of traffic to your blog, advertisements are a great type of ‘passive’ income. You igon’t want to over do the amount of ads – having too much banners will make your blog look spammy and will take away from your content. A few strategically placed ads are all you need for potentially high impressions & clicks.

If you’re just starting out you could always go with Google Adsense, but you will most likely get paid more if you posts ads from an ad network. (Although these usually have a blog traffic minimum.) An example of this is Mediavine, where you need at least 25,000 sessions a month to even apply, but they have a great reputation and work with many top bloggers.

Affiliate Links

Affiliate links are definitely large chunks of many profitable blogger’s income. When you join an affiliate program and link to a company’s website, if someone clicks on that link and becomes a customer of that company, you in turn will get a commission. If you often blog about a certain product/service, find out if they have an affiliate program – you could be earning money each time you rave about something you already like!

We recently wrote a post – The Ultimate Photography + Film Guide for Bloggers, in which we shared all of our camera/photography gear. We linked back to each product shared on Amazon, and each of these were it’s own affiliate links. We only include affiliate links when it’s relevant to the topic, but we do have have affiliate ads on our sidebar for travel and blogging related services.

Sponsored Posts

If you have eye-catching photos and and a captivating blog voice that really fares well with your readers, brands may want to work with you to create a sponsored post. You will get a set rate from them to post about their product, and in return they will hopefully get a bunch of customers from your following. This is also how a lot of influencers on Instagram get paid.

Sponsored posts usually pay very well, but the rate naturally goes up as your following increases, and you need an engaged and active audience to begin with. Sometimes brands contact you on their own, but many times you can connect with a brand through influencer networks – where brands actively look through the networks list of influencers for their marketing campaigns.  We recently did a sponsored post for Dove, and that was through an influencer marketing agency.

Selling A Product/Service

If you feel you have a product or service that you can offer someone – turn it into a digital product and sell it! This option is a major income stream for many bloggers – I know of a bunch of bloggers who actually make $20,000+ a MONTH just from a product or service they created. From e-courses to e-books to web design services and online coaching, this is an extremely profitable option and the possibilities are endless! This also doesn’t require you to have a ton of followers, as long as you have an awesome product and market it to the right people.

These are some of the major ways to make money blogging online – while you can definitely make a lot off of just one of these, many bloggers like to diversify their income and have a combination revenue sources, and a lot of it goes hand in hand. It’s a lot of work to get started and takes time, countless hours and continued effort, but eventually you will be on your way to a profitable blog!