How to Make Money Blogging: The Ultimate Guide for 2024

If you’re wondering how to make money from blogging, affiliate marketing is one of the most solid strategies that you can adopt. In this model, you would promote a company’s product in the content of your blog, and direct your readers to that company’s website using a trackable link that identifies your blog as the traffic source. You would then make some commission each time a visitor from your blog ends up buying that product.

To get started, you first need to find affiliate marketing partners who want their products featured on your blog. Our guide can help you start thinking about where and how to find effective companies to work with!

While affiliate content is written by you – the blog’s owner – sponsored content is written by the brand or advertiser promoting a certain product, and then posted by you on your blogging platform.

One study found that three quarters of publishers and media outlets have published sponsored content, so it’s a tried-and-true answer to the question of how to make money from blogging. And the benefits for the brand are numerous – by promoting themselves on different corners of the internet, these companies can increase their brand awareness with new audiences.

The question of how to start blogging and make money is also easily answered by advertising. There are a few different types of ads that you can include on your blog:

• Display ads are meant to visually stand out from the rest of your blog, whether that’s by using a distinct color or block shape to separate the ad content from the organic blog content.
• Native ads, on the other hand, are meant to blend in with the look and feel of the rest of the page. They are less noticeable than display ads and are similar to sponsored content in that they look more like a natural part of your blog.
• Video ads are – you guessed it – ads in video format. These are an important weapon in your arsenal, especially since an estimated 3.37 billion internet users consumed video content in 2022!

Another way to monetize a blog is by selling digital downloads – these can be eBooks, online courses, printables or really any digital product you can think of. Selling digital products isn’t too different from selling physical products, and you can do it on many similar platforms, from website builders like Squarespace to online marketplaces like Etsy.

Membership business models aren’t just limited to coffee and workout videos – they’re also another answer to the question of how to make money blogging. You can make this method work by offering a “free” and a “paid” tier to your readers, with the latter set of content only available to those who subscribe.

One of the best ways to attract a paying audience to your monetized content is to know what topics your readers are especially interested in. Implementing good SEO for your blog is one way that you can stay on top of hot topics. For example, conducting keyword research to see which ones are getting the most Google searches will give you a clue as to what content your readers will really want to see.

Once you’ve got your blog up and running, you may want to think about taking it to the next level with some podcasting or video content. This is far less intimidating than it sounds, and the benefits could be huge – 82% of global internet traffic last year came from video!

YouTube is your friend here – many blogging platforms will let you embed YouTube videos on your site, so you can easily integrate your two platforms. And once you’ve set yourself up on YouTube, you can start monetizing your videos in a few different ways. The most common is through advertising revenue, or money from the short ads that often show at the beginning of a YouTube video.

If you decide to go the podcast route, you can use similar methods of monetization that you’d use in your regular blog articles. For example, brand sponsorships don’t have to be limited to the page – you can also mention them in the script of your podcast. Podcast and video content is also helpful if you want to try out a membership model for your blog, because these types of multisensory content are perfect additions to a paid subscription.

More Information

If you’re considering trying out a podcast or video strategy for your blog, make sure you check out some of our helpful articles below:

• Video SEO
• How to Become a Youtuber
• How to Create a Website for a Podcast
• Top 10 Podcast Website Templates

The above methods for how to make money blogging are tried and true, but that doesn’t mean they’re the only ways to accomplish your goals. There are also some emerging monetization trends for blogs, such as:

• NFTs: Non-fungible tokens are unique identifiers recorded on a blockchain, and they can’t be copied. In other words, they’re a way to certify ownership over a piece of digital art. The process of selling NFTs on your blog would be similar to selling other digital downloads.
• Live streaming: This takes the video trend to new heights by allowing you to stream a live video to your audience. You can include brand sponsorships in live-streamed content, and you can also insert ads into a live stream to monetize it.
• Influencer marketing: Once your actual blog presence is thriving, you can expand it onto social media platforms like Instagram and monetize those as an influencer. This type of marketing is super lucrative since 61% of consumers trust influencers’ recommendations.

If you’re wondering how to make a living as a blogger, the first step is to jump in and get started!

Of the methods above, the best one to try is the one that aligns with your goals and is a good fit for the niche you blog in. For example, influencer marketing might be one to try if you cater to a younger audience, while the membership model is a good fit for blogs about specific hobby interests.

Whatever you choose, best of luck – and let us know how you get on in the comments!