How to Make Money from Your Blog

If you’ve started a blog and now have a loyal following, you may be thinking what’s next? All the time spent writing articles and getting your blog recognized could very well have been worth the effort. No matter what genre your blog falls under you can make money from your blog.

Don’t worry. Earning cash from your blog isn’t a deceptive practice. Most blogs nowadays generate some income for the blog owner.

Ways to Monetize Your Blog

Affiliate Networks

You’ve probably seen affiliate links before on other blogs and might not even have realized it. To add these links, you first need to sign up to an affiliate network. There are quite a few affiliate programs so be sure and do your research. You’ll want to see what the commission rate is and what model the affiliate program uses, e.g., cost per sale (CPS) or cost per action (CPA). You can join multiple networks—you don’t have to use just one.

Once you’ve signed up and have grabbed the link from your network, insert it into your blog post in a natural way. You don’t want to give the full URL in the copy; rather, you need to hyperlink it to existing text. For example, if the affiliate link is www.comboink.com, you would use it like so: Your photos will always be vivid when you use these high-quality printer cartridges.

A few tips:

• Don’t use too many affiliate links in one post. Generally, any blog post shouldn’t have a bunch of hyperlinks that make reading difficult.
• Also, make sure you use the exact link from the affiliate network. That URL contains your affiliate ID so the network can track the CPA or CPS. If one of your readers clicks on the link and you’re on a CPA program, you’ve just made some money!
• If you want to retain your loyal readership, try to promote products and services that you believe in or would genuinely use.

Sponsored Articles

As long as you don’t mind having a contributed blog post (i.e., an author other than you), a sponsored article is an easy way to earn money on your blog. Only accept a sponsored article from a reputable company or blogger. You’ll also need to set up guidelines and do a thorough proofread once you accept the article. Of course, you don’t want too many sponsored articles that will turn off your regular readers. Vary the frequency and topic of the sponsored articles and you should be fine.

Reviews

Similar to sponsored articles, you can earn money by reviewing a company’s product or service. The business will often pay you in cash or give you complimentary products. Feel free to reach out to companies that fit your niche and see if they would be willing to offer cash or products in exchange for the review. When you’re creating the proposal, keep in mind that businesses often base decisions on data. Include your monthly readership, number of social media followers, and any other data that will convince them that you are the best person to write the review.

Make Money from Your Blog But…

Include a Disclosure

With all of these forms of advertising and monetization, you should disclose on your blog that you use affiliate links, accept sponsored articles, and so on. This information can appear at the end of the particular blog post as a disclaimer or on a completely separate page listing out all terms, conditions, and notices.

We hope these suggestions can help you start to make money from your blog. If you have any other ideas or have had good/bad experiences with the methods, let us know on Facebook and Twitter. And comment below if you’d like more details on using these monetization techniques.