Passive income, i.e., money earned without active participation, is a great way to unlock financial freedom. You can earn passive income through blogging by, among other ways, selling digital products and renting ad spaces.
Keep reading to learn how to start and grow a successful blog, as well as strategies for making money as a blogger. Let's get started.
How To Start a Blog
If you want to start blogging to earn revenue, these steps will set you up for success.
- Choose your niche. What are your interests and hobbies? What is your target audience interested in reading about? Is there enough demand for the subject area? Delve into these questions to find yourself a profitable niche.
- Conduct competitor research. Find out who the key players in your intended niche are. What topics do they often cover? What is the tone and style of their content?
- Choose a name for your blog. Pick a name that gives readers an idea of what to expect from your blog. It should also be timeless and easy to say, spell, and remember.
- Get your blog online. Claim a domain name, choose a blogging platform to build and design your blog, and choose a web hosting service.
- Write and publish your first blog post. Perform keyword research, come up with a title, build an outline, write engaging content, proofread for grammatical or spelling errors, and upload your blog post.
Tips for Promoting Your Blog
Now that your blog is up and running, you want to focus on growing your blog's audience. Here are five strategies that can help promote your blog to increase traffic:
- Create an editorial calendar. A survey of over 1200 marketers by Hubspot found that small blogs should post three to four times a week to maximize organic traffic.
- Build an email list. Of the various channels businesses use to reach customers, email tops when it comes to return on investment. You can expect an average return of $40 for every dollar you spend, according to Omnisend.
- Write guest posts on other blogs. Establish yourself as an expert in your niche through guest blogging on authoritative sites.
- Invest in paid advertising. Boost your blog posts with paid ads to drive visitors to your site using search ads (most popular Google Ads) and social ads (e.g., Facebook and Instagram ads).
- Add videos to your articles. Humans naturally prefer visuals to text. So it's no surprise the demand for video content is increasing, with 91% of people saying they want to see more online videos from brands in 2023.
How To Monetize Your Blog
Here are five of the most common ways bloggers can make passive income.
Affiliate marketing
You can join an affiliate program and earn through promoting a third party's products or services. You'll get a unique affiliate link or promo code that will give you a commission if people complete a specific action through it. It can be purchasing a product, downloading an app, or filling out a contact form.
According to ZipRecruiter, the national average salary of an Amazon affiliate in the United States is $85,416 a year as of June 6, 2023. That said, you have to start somewhere. For instance, you can win up to 4 million credits ($4,000) with Honeygain's referral program if at least one active referral shares 200 MB of traffic or more weekly.
Advertising Within Your Blog
Another way to make passive income through your blog is by renting your blog space to third parties to display their ads. Google Adsense is the most popular advertising network, but there are many others to choose from. Compensation methods ad networks use include:
- cost-per-click
- cost-per-mile
- cost-per-view
- cost-per-action
- fixed cost
Offering Premium Content
Have you tried reading an article online but couldn't access it without a subscription? You can create an additional revenue stream by doing the same thing with your blog by placing certain content behind a paywall. It could be existing content or new content.
Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee are two examples of platforms bloggers can accept membership from their readers by providing exclusive access to content.
Selling Digital Products
Bloggers can also generate revenue by selling digital products their readers need. These include e-books, online courses, printables, photographs, video tutorials, and other online resources. These products can typically be accessed or downloaded immediately after purchase.
Consulting or Coaching
You can offer your knowledge and expertise as a service to your readers who want more tailored insights or solutions. For instance, if you're a practicing accountant who runs a finance blog, you can offer one-on-one accounting consulting sessions to individuals or business owners.
Bottom Line
There are a multitude of strategies requiring minimal effort that bloggers can use to make money. The key is consistently posting quality content in your niche and marketing your blog. Doing so will attract and continually increase traffic to your blog, putting you in a better position to monetize your blog.
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