How to Monetize a Blog in 2021

Monetizing your blog is one of the best ways to generate a viable income online, especially if your blog receives a steady number of visitors that read your posts and engage with them.

According to one study, 73% of bloggers state that money is a major factor in making them feel successful. This is a tangible metric to track the effort that you are putting into your blog, and could be an important motivating factor.

Source: ConvertKit

There’s quite a lot of money to be made with blogging, provided you know what you are doing and have found a profitable niche. It’s all about the content when you are blogging, so if you are really serious about monetizing a blog, you need to pay attention to the content.

But, without using a blog monetization strategy, you can’t really make money. If you don’t know how to monetize a blog, you can’t maximize your income. The aim is to create an effective content plan, and then monetize your blog through a comprehensive strategy.

The Top 10 Ways to Monetize a Blog

Here are our top 10 ways to monetize your blog for a steady revenue stream.

1. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is when you promote someone else’s product on your platform. For every sale that’s made, you generate a commission. If you already have an audience that listens to you and engages with your blog frequently, you can easily join one of the many affiliate programs for bloggers. The Cloudways Affiliate Program is a fantastic choice for tech bloggers and people in the hosting space. It gives you excellent payouts, especially if you already have a blog focused in the cloud hosting niche. If you want to monetize your blog, start with a decent affiliate program. Of course, there are hundreds of other options out there. Just do your research about different affiliate programs before you decide to implement them. If you are starting a blog with the sole purpose of using it for affiliate marketing, it’s imperative that you do some affiliate marketing keyword research first so that you know the most profitable niches or ones that generate the most amount of interest.

2. Sell Off Ad Space

There’s considerable real estate available on your website for blog monetization, and you can easily sell it off if you have a decent audience. Of course, this is a more direct alternative to setting up Google AdSense, but it offers greater revenue. When you sell off ad space directly, you can set the price on your own terms. You can charge a flat rate if you have a viable audience. Finding businesses that are looking to advertise on your website isn’t difficult either. Much like billboards out in the real world, you can just post an “Advertise Here” sign on the ad spaces on your blog or you can use a third-party platform too. There’s a learning curve when learning how to monetize a blog, especially because you have to negotiate prices too, but once you get the hang of it, it’s quite simplistic. But, if you are wondering how to monetize a blog, this is a great way to begin.

3. Create an Ebook and Sell It

When you start building your blog, you will eventually start growing your audience. People will visit your website in order to read your thoughts and opinions on different topics. One of the best ways to monetize a blog is to create an ebook and sell it. You don’t have to sell just one; you can also create a series of ebooks and sell those as well. One of the best examples of this is James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits. He created a simple blog back in 2013 and continued to grow it. Eventually, it became so successful that he was able to build a massive newsletter and prime his audience. By the time he released his book, people were just craving to get more of his writing. Needless to say, Atomic Habits was a bestseller and continues to sell even today. You can do that too! It’s an effective way to monetize your blog.

When linking to ads or even when using affiliate links to promote others’ products, you may want to consider using link cloaking practices. It’s a good way to avoid adding those lengthy links in your content.

4. Create a Membership Plan

People want to read consistently valuable content. Give them such content to turn them into loyal followers. Your loyal fans will be willing to pay money to consume more of your content, especially if you are promising something more valuable. If you are not sure how to monetize a blog, start with this. It’s fairly simple. You can either charge a monthly fee or set a recurring subscription model, making it a viable blog monetization strategy. The best part is that there are plenty of membership plugins that you can use, so you don’t really need any kind of coding experience.

Another fantastic way to monetize a blog is to put sponsored posts on it, such as product reviews. Again, these opportunities usually open up as your blog continues to gain traction and your audience starts to grow. People in a similar niche or industry might be willing to pay money to put up a post on your blog. For instance, if you are in the tech industry, you could simply put up sponsored posts or reviews about different products. Companies will pay you to put sponsored posts on your blog to gain more exposure. There are two ways you can do this: either charge a one-time fee or get a payment for the number of traffic that you send to their page through your post. You can also provide a coupon to your audience, thus making it easy for the company to track the traffic that you route their way.

6. Use Google AdSense

Used by millions of bloggers and websites around the globe, Google AdSense allows you to put up ads on your blog with ease. AdSense is the world’s biggest ad network, managed and operated by Google. The ads shown are automatically tailored depending upon the niche in which your blog operates and the kind of content people search for. For every click that you generate, you get a commission. You can also check your CTR and optimize it accordingly through third-party plugins.

7. Sell Digital Products

The best-sellers are those who are able to create a need for their audience and pitch a product to them that makes their life easier. Remember, a vast majority of your audience doesn’t know what they want; it’s your job to convince them that they can buy something from you to make their life easier. The good thing is that there are plenty of digital products that you can sell to your audience. You don’t have to limit yourself to just ebooks; you can create an entire course and sell it to your audience, or you can also create Notion templates and sell them. For those who don’t know, Notion is an incredibly popular app that’s used by businesses and individuals alike for better management. By creating custom templates and selling them, you can easily generate a decent income.

How to Host Your Course

You can easily host your course on a content management system like WordPress. There are plenty of LMS themes that you can choose from that give you an array of fantastic tools for managing the course, add new lessons or control communications.

8. Ask for Donations

Platforms like Patreon make it easy for audiences to support their favorite content creators by giving donations. You can also ask for donations on your blog to support it – but be sure to provide a viable reason for it. As long as you are offering something of value to your users, a small section of your audience won’t mind donating to your cause. Of course, it’s important for you to make sure that you outline the reasons for the donation as clearly and specifically as possible. Don’t just go asking around for money because you can – it’s going to turn your audience away and you will see a significant drop in traffic.

9. Launch Your Own Podcast

A little-known way to grow your brand, and generate a decent income on the side, is to launch your own podcast. There are hundreds of thousands of podcasts out there, and while some might consider it a saturated space, you can easily carve a niche out for yourself if you know what you are doing. If you already have a blog, creating a podcast becomes easier. There are platforms on which you can launch your podcast, including major streaming giants like Spotify. It’s a great way to complement your blog content, and you could easily ask your audience for a small surcharge in order to access the podcasts. Offer them a preview of at least 15-20 minutes so that they are able to make up their minds about whether it’s worth the money or not. It’s a fantastic way to monetize a blog and grow your audience.

10. Brand Your Blog and Sell Merchandise

This does take a bit longer, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it. If you know the basics of branding, start by turning your blog into one. Eventually, you can launch merchandise such as t-shirts, mugs, and a whole lot more. There are plenty of content creators around the globe who have gone this route, and there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t do that either.

Wrapping Up

As you can imagine, there’s no shortage of different ways to monetize your blog. However if you don’t know how to monetize a blog, start slow. Begin by creating a detailed strategy, and stick to it. Affiliate marketing is by far the best option because it’s reliable and because it can result in a consistent income stream for your blog!

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Usman Dar

Usman is a Digital Marketer at Cloudways- A Managed Cloud Hosting Platform, where he looks after affiliate partnerships and helps digital nomads in generating passive income.
He is a foodie by heart, who loves to explore new eateries around his vicinity.