How To Make Money Blogging – 20 Practical Ways You Can Do It

There are many ways to make money from blogging if you can write

Are you tired of the grind of peak hour traffic and working long days for little reward?

Would you prefer to be working from home with more flexible working hours?

For a lot of people, starting a home business is the ideal way to balance the demands of your professional and personal life.

There are hundreds of small business ideas for a home office and work from home jobs. But if you can write, you can start a stay at home business very easily.

Have you thought about becoming a self-employed pro blogger or self-publishing author?

With the technology available now for writers to publish their work online, there are many ways to make money online from a writing career. All you need is an Internet connection.

You might immediately think of self-publishing as publishing ebooks and books on Amazon. But this is only one of the many ways available to you to publish and get paid for your writing.

A lot of writers are now learning to mix and match writing and publishing to maximise the income from their work.

Publishing ebooks on Kindle can be one way to sell your writing. But if you love writing, blogging is now becoming the most attractive way of making money, every day of the year.

There are many choices and possibilities. You can work part-time to make some extra cash, create a passive income stream in your spare time, or work towards making blogging your full-time job.

How to make money blogging from home like a pro blogger

Many writers and authors are turning to monetized blogging as a full-time writing job.

In recent years, the monetary return on the time I invest has led me to focus much more on blogging and content writing than on writing books.

Making money from blogging is about understanding that it is a business. If you do your research and learn how to identify your target market you will stand a good chance of success.

Starting a blog is easy and extremely cheap.

You will definitely need a self-hosted WordPress blog because it offers so many monetizing functions, plugins and tools.

However, the annual hosting cost is usually less than $150.00 so it is not expensive at all. One of the most popular hosts for WordPress sites is Bluehost and its price is only $3.95 per month.

If you already have a WordPress blog, you can adapt it to turn it into your new business.

Blogs that create high earnings are always finely targeted to a niche online audience. In all cases, a thriving blog will answer questions people have when they search on the Internet.

Great blogs are always highly informative, but at the same time, they should be entertaining and easy to read.

There are plenty of good topics for a focused blog.

You could think about ideas related to health and fitness, food and recipes, beauty and fashion, lifestyle, personal development, pets, parenting or publishing and writing, just to name a few.

You could even go a little more upmarket than a blog and start your own online magazine.

The most critical factor is that you narrow down your blog subject to a narrow target audience.

Define, fine-tune and stay laser focused

Successful blogs are always focused on a clearly identifiable topic. Think about landscape photography, vinyl records, or for a recipe blog, low carb recipes or Madras curries.

The reason a narrow focus is essential is that blogs need to exploit Google, Bing and Yahoo search engines for organic traffic.

Keywords are vital in getting blog visitors in large numbers and it is much easier to rank very high for keywords in a specific topic.

Social media can play a role in gaining traffic, particularly in the early months, but it is not as effective in the long term as search engine organic search.

The most essential characteristic of an excellent blog is that all articles are long-form, high quality, accurate and error-free.

Blog articles are published quite quickly, so a premium online grammar and spell checker such as Grammarly is a very wise investment.

Earning money from a blog relies on the volume of search engine traffic you can get. The more visits you can get, the more money you can expect to make.

Building up site visits on a new blog takes time and a lot of work. Never think that blogging will be a financial success from day one. The idea that blogging can make quick cash, quick money or money fast is for dreamers.

The reality is that it takes about a year for a new blog to start ranking well for keywords on search engines such as Google.

I would always suggest looking at a brand new blog as a part-time venture for the first year or more.

If after that time your site is ranking and getting around 10,000 visits a month, you can certainly then look at making it your full-time job.

Your first year will be spent writing a lot of quality long-form content for your site and learning to apply excellent SEO practices to help you build a solid base of daily organic traffic.

You can help speed up the process considerably if you choose to use an SEO pro-tool like Semrush.

It can really help you to quickly build your ranking keywords and to write better, keyword rich content. It is a vast suite of SEO tools that most successful bloggers use.

But once you do all the hard work, and you start getting regular daily traffic to your blog, you can then expect to be making money, every day of the year.

20 Ways you can make money from your blog

1. Display advertising

Using some of your blog space, or site real estate, to display ads is the quickest way to start earning money.

Google Adsense is the easiest way to monetize a blog by allowing Google to show ads on your blog. At first, it will earn pennies, but as your traffic builds, it can turn into a steady and reliable passive income payment every month.

Display ads are the most recognised, but in-article ads are less intrusive and pay well per click.

Other alternatives you could consider are Chitika, PopCash, InfoLinks, RevContent, PopAds and MediaNet.

2. Affiliate marketing

Becoming an affiliate marketer is a great way to make money from your blog.

Affiliate programs, such as Amazon Associates, ShareASale, Rakuten, ClickBank and CJ Affiliate among many others are usually easy to join and to start earning sales commissions.

Again, you either allow space on your site for ads, or you can use affiliate text links. Including links naturally in your text is highly effective and not nearly as intrusive as ads.

Another choice is to become an affiliate for Getty Images and sell images from your blog.

3. Accept sponsored or advertorial content

An easy way of earning money is to accept sponsored posts, advertorial articles or paid links on your blog. Content marketers are always on the lookout for blogs that accept paid articles.

Once your site is ranking well, you can expect to get a lot of emails and contact messages from content marketers looking to pay for publishing articles on your blog.

But be selective and only accept quality content. Publishing poor content could adversely affect your SEO.

4. Sell ebooks

If you are a writer and author, the very first products you should start selling on your blog are your books and ebooks.

But for a blogger, you can turn some of your blog posts into an ebook.

You can self-publish on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) to make some extra money. Or you could use your ebook as a giveaway in exchange for an email address to help build your mailing list.

You could start a competition and give away an Amazon gift card to encourage more email subscribers. Email marketing is a powerful tool. So never overlook an opportunity to increase your subscriber list.

5. Offer your services as an editor

Writers and authors are always looking for editing assistance.

If you have the skills, it can pay very well, especially for fiction and nonfiction books.

6. Become a proofreader

With more and more people publishing ebooks and books there is a good market for proofreading.

Make sure you have a clear pricing table on your site and outline how you will provide your corrected copy to your clients.

7. Became a freelance writer

If you write well on your blog, you can use it as a reference point for new clients.

Blogs need a lot of posts, and many of the larger sites will pay for writers who can provide quality content. If you know how to write around SEO keywords, you will increase your chances of getting regular paying writing assignments.

But be careful of content mills that underpay writers. Do your research for websites that pay fairly for freelance writing.

8. Sell online courses

Online courses are becoming extremely popular. Perhaps you could offer online writing classes.

There are many types of courses you can develop and offer.

Think about the expertise you have. It could be related to computers and technology, self-help topics, writing children’s books or how to use WordPress.

9. Become a social media manager

Social media can be time-consuming for a lot of small businesses.

If you have good social media skills, you might find that there are clients willing to outsource their social postings and interaction with potential clients.

10. Become a virtual assistant

If you have good administration skills and can deliver good customer service, you can offer your services as an online personal assistant.

It is a wide spectrum of possibilities. If you are ready to take on tasks such as data entry, bookkeeping or email management, this could be an opportunity for you.

11. Sell memberships

Your product here is premium content that you restrict to paying subscribers.

It is not an easy model, but it is one that is being tried more and more, especially by magazines and newspapers.

12. Sell Skype language lessons

If you have some teaching experience, private language lessons by video can be very profitable.

Language lessons by Skype or any other online video conferencing application are also attractive to busy business people.

The best part is that you can gain regular clients as well as a predictable weekly cash flow.

13. Sell your products

Combining Woocommerce with WordPress provides you with all the tools you need to sell products online.

Whatever product you decide to sell, Woocommerce has everything from credit card payments to shipping.

It is like owning your own shop, but you do not have to open the doors at 7 am every morning and sit behind a counter all day.

14. Offer WordPress troubleshooting or development

WordPress is a fantastic blogging platform. But bloggers can run into trouble.

If you have the expertise and experience, helping new bloggers overcome issues or assisting in developing their sites can provide a good income.

If you keep your hourly rate reasonable and competitive, it can turn into very good business.

15. Offer graphic design services

Are you a Photoshop expert?

If you are, there is plenty of work out there to keep you busy. You can work with authors for book covers or with bloggers for website designs and logos.

Infographics are another area you might look at for opportunities.

16. Become a coach

Whatever expertise or skill you have, there are people who would like to learn.

This is a very one on one service and requires good interpersonal skills.

You could become a life coach, a writing coach or even a blog coach.

17. Get paid to write reviews

Paid reviews are tricky. But if you contact companies directly and ask to try their products or services in return for a review on your blog, it is like payment in kind. You can also make a little money with online surveys from paying survey sites.

If you can combine your reviews with affiliate marketing for a product or service, it can then generate ongoing income.

18. Blog, but don’t have a blog

Writing for other blogs has two advantages. One is that you can just concentrate on writing. The other is that if you can get your articles published on high ranking sites, you can get a lot of traffic and readers.

Depending on each site’s rules, you might even be able to incorporate one or two of your affiliate links into your posts.

Look for sites that have a “Write For Us” link, or something similar, in the footer of their site.

19. Flip your blog

If you have a blog that is getting reasonable traffic, you can flip it. In other words, sell it.

You can check sites such as Flippa or Empire Flippers for how it works.

20. Ask for donations

Sometimes it works, but there are no guarantees.

Forget all about selling, promoting and advertising.

Simply put a Paypal donate button on every page of your blog and see what happens.

You never know.

Conclusion and summary

If you want to make money from home by blogging and writing, it is much easier today than it was years ago.

All the tools and resources you could need are at your fingertips to successfully publish books and ebooks or to start a career in pro blogging, or content writing for paying sites.

But you need to decide if you want a long-term business or a part-term hobby. It can be hard work and time intensive, but there are definitely financial rewards if you take it step by step.

If you would prefer to be working from home rather than spending time on the freeway or train commuting to work, then blogging is something you might consider. You will certainly save money on all your commuting costs.

However, if you start a blog, be patient. It takes time to drive traffic to a new blog. But in the end, a successful blog can become a very regular money maker for you.