Here’s the truth. Nobody wants to start blogging if they aren’t going to get paid for it.
Sure, it’s nice fantasy to believe that you’ll blog for a hobby but if the goal of a blog is to get people to read it, then you might as well figure out how to get paid for it.
And that’s what we are going to talk about here. How to get paid for blogging.
If you’re not interested in getting paid for blogging then there is no need to read this post. It won’t help you. In fact, it will only hurt you because that fantasy of blogging as a hobby will disappear.
You’ll see the potential of blogging and truly believe that you can turn it into a strong online business. And you can, but it has to be something that you want to do.
So this is your last chance to turn away now because if you want to learn how to get paid for blogging then you’ve reached the right place.
Why Blogging Works So Well for Online Business
Before we get into the actual money part it’s important that we understand why blogging can work so well for online businesses. And the answer is pretty easy.
Attention.
We live in the Attention Economy and those people/brands/businesses that can grab the most attention usually grab the most money. How does a blog help with that?
Take my blog as an example.
I write content to help you build an online business. If you’re interested in that then you’ll come here to read the blog. If I do a good job with the content then I’ll keep your attention. Now that I have your attention I can show you some other resources that will help you make even more money online.
And guess what?
I’ll get money from those resources.
It’s easy to think that world only cares about social media and short-form content and while that takes up a majority share of attention, long-form content still works really well.
Because there are some topics that don’t work well in short-form. They miss the nuance and a ton of information.
That’s why you see a lot of YouTube videos over 10 minutes that have millions of views.
If you can get and keep someone’s attention for a long period of time then you’re going to find success so that’s important to keep in mind.
The goal is to grab attention. Without that then you have no way to make money blogging in any form.
How to Get Paid for Blogging
There are two different ways we can look at this:
- Get paid to do someone else’s blogging
- Get paid to do your own blogging
To get paid for someone else’s writing makes your a freelance writer and there is nothing wrong with that. It’s a great way to get started.
The problem is that it becomes hard to scale the money since you’re only one person and you can only write so much.
But if this is the route you wanted to go then how would you get started?
Freelance Blogging
You can start on freelance writing sites such as Upwork or Fiverr to get requests from others for your services. But if you’re starting from scratch then you’re going to have a hard time getting work unless you are really cheap.
And you still want to make some decent money so one of the best things that you can do is start your own blog. By doing that then you’ll have a portfolio of content for others to go through.
Once they see your work then they’ll get a better idea if you’re a good fit. This also helps you charge more as you can justify the quality of your writing.
The side benefit of starting your own blog is that you can start to make money with it which gives you another source of revenue.
And that’s why we’re going to spend most of our time talking about how you can make money blogging with your own blog.
Make Money With Your Own Blog
The true magic of blogging is that there isn’t just a single way to make money with it. There are multiple ways because the whole premise of a blog is to gain attention.
If you gain attention then you have many paths you can take.
My three favorite ones are:
- Digital Products
- Affiliate Marketing
- Ads/Sponsorships
Let’s over them in reverse order.
How to Get Paid for Blogging: Ads
Making money with ads is simple to understand. You place ads on your site and people pay to have their ads there.
The difficulty is that you don’t make a lot of money unless you get a ton of traffic and the best money comes from the two big ad networks, Raptive and Mediavine. If you try to get into one of the smaller ad networks then I usually find that’s a waste of time because they don’t pay out much and clutters up your blog.
If you’re going to have a ton of ads on your blog to ruin the reading experience a bit then you might as well get good money for it.
This means you need to figure out ways to build traffic to your blog and SEO is one of the best ways to do that over the long term. In the short term, your best bet is to make the most out of Pinterest, social media, and your mailing list.
It’s important to understand that out of the 3 ways to make money blogging, this is the most passive because you don’t have to sell to anyone. But it’s also the one that takes the longest to build up because it does take some time to build up your site’s traffic.
How to Get Paid for Blogging: Affiliate Marketing
This is a method in which you can make money from day one. How?
You write blog posts and put affiliate links within them. Affiliate links usually link to a product or service that another brand runs. You get paid each time someone clicks on your affiliate link and purchases the product or service.
This is why you can start to make money one day one with it. As long as you get people to your blog (probably through social media if it’s day 1) then you can get people in front of the affiliate links.
But even if someone purchased from one of your affiliate links you still have to wait for the payout to occur which is usually 30 days or more. And that’s okay because eventually you get to a point where you’re getting paid every month and that’s never a bad thing.
To learn how to get more out of affiliate marketing be sure to check out my best affiliate marketing tips.
Which leads me to my favorite way of getting paid with blogging.
How to Get Paid for Blogging: Digital Products
There are simply way too many benefits with making digital products.
- Create it once
- Sell forever
- Keep most of the money
- No inventory
- Continue to sell more products to the same buyers
It might seem like on the list of ways to get paid for blogging that digital products would be the hardest but when you think about it, it’s the same thing that you need to do with affiliate marketing.
You have to get people to your site and then show them that there is a solution that will make their lives easier. If you can do that then they will buy the product.
And once they buy the product then you get the money right away. There is no delay if you’re using the right platform for selling. By selling digital products you’ll create a method that allows you to make money with on ceiling.
The Best Way to Make Money With Digital Products and Blogging
Not all digital products are created equal. There is a good way to sell low-cost offers (under $99) and a way to sell high-cost offers.
Low-cost offers can often be seen as impulse purchases so if I linked to one of my digital products in this blog post and say it was $29, then you might buy it right away.
However, if I linked to an offer that was $999 then the chances of you buying it right away from one blog post are going to be slim. You need to do more research or become more familiar with me.
Blogging can help with that as you read the different blog posts and gain better perspective on what I do. The blog posts also lead to a mailing list where I send you emails packed with value.
At some point, you might come back to that $999 offer and purchase it.
And it all started with the blog.
But what about the low-cost offers? These are fun because you can put links to them within your blog posts and that makes every blog post act like a salesperson. Imagine having 50 different blog posts with links to your low-cost digital products.
Everyday people are coming to these posts and reading them which means that every day they are becoming aware of your digital products.
It doesn’t require hard-selling where you get in the person’s face and scream at them. It only requires that you show that you have something that can help them and make sure they know where it is.
How to Build Attention
Remember, without attention there is no money. So how do you build attention for your blog? The two best ways I’ve found are social media and SEO.
Social media doesn’t seem like the obvious choice for a number of reasons mainly the fact that the social media platforms hate for people to leave them. They want to keep people in their apps and on their sites so they actively discourage the posting of external links.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t find ways to get people to your blog. The bio link is a great introduction to your blog and mailing list.
Once people sign up for your mailing list then you can continue to send them back to your blog. These emails are effective because they do a great job of reinforcing the fact that you can be the guide for this person.
SEO is a bit trickier but if you can get blog posts ranking on Google then you’ll start to earn passive traffic that makes it feel like blogging isn’t that bad. The problem is that everyone else wants to rank well on Google also so there is a lot of competition.
But if you can learn to create great content that people love then over time you’ll continue to climb up the rankings and pull in the traffic that you need to monetize your blogging efforts.
You Deserve to Get Paid for Blogging Long Term
The most important aspect of getting paid for blogging is that there are ways to get paid once and there are ways to get paid forever.
Going back to the example of digital products, if I leave the blog posts up that have links to my digital products then nothing is stopping me from making money from them forever.
Think about it.
You spend a year writing blog posts. Let’s say you get 52 done (one per week). Each of those blog posts do something to help you get paid. Be it with ads, affiliate marketing, or digital products.
That means every single day those posts are doing work for you. They are helping to bring in money while you continue with other things. Maybe you continue to write more blog posts which in turn become workers for you.
Blogging is one of those things that allows you to set up ways to make money from it forever. This is why it makes sense for everyone to have a blog. Those who are smart enough to get started with a blog today are the ones who will also see the rewards down the road.
And maybe one day there will be another 100 ways to make money blogging and in that case you have a chance to be ready to do that today.
So why not get started?
