Day 9: Earn From Your Blog (Start a Blog in 9 Days)
How bloggers actually earn from their content
It’s the final day of the challenge. Did you take the steps from the previous days? How’s it going so far?
In case you missed the steps before:
I will create more challenges on different topics, such as blog monetization, but now, I just wanted to introduce you to the 4 main ways to monetize your blog. And yes, you should be thinking about monetization from day 1.
Here’s how most blogs make money:
How Blogs Make Money
Affiliate marketing
Many bloggers and online influencers skip over affiliate marketing. They either think it’s too hard, that it’s a waste of time, that they will turn followers away, or that their readers just won’t be interested.
However, if you’re not earning money through affiliate marketing, you are leaving money on the table.
Although the basic concept is easy (link to other people’s products and services and earn a commission each time you make a sale), it’s actually all about creating systems, building trust, writing helpful content and doing a lot of work.
You might enjoy this monetization strategy because it could be started from day 1. Maybe you’ll find a product you like and become its affiliate, then add a link on your blog any time you mention it.
That content might one day rank high and get traffic, so people will likely click on the link. Some will purchase through it as they will trust your recommendations and you’ll get a commission.
That can become a nice passive income stream because you don’t need to do anything once the blog posts with links are published.
Sponsored posts
I’m a big fan of sponsored posts as it’s the monetization strategy that worked best for me.
These are articles you publish on behalf of brands, which promote a product or simply include a link back to their website. You get paid for that and the rate can often be hundreds of dollars (or thousands) for a single article you write and publish that promotes another business. In many cases, brands provide the content too and you simply need to publish it and format it in the WordPress dashboard.
The same can happen for a single link placement in an existing article on your blog. That’s another package I offer to brands, for example, and it’s requested as often as a paid post.
Usually, all it takes is to create a reputable blog with a ton of content on it and advertisers will start reaching out to you. Once you get the hang of it, you can start doing cold pitching yourself and find new sponsorships.
In addition, you can add your site to sponsored networks for bloggers (I created a list of 44 of them here), so you can receive more opportunities.
Not every blog is designed for that, though, so you should experiment with different monetization strategies to find out which one works for you.
Want help with sponsored blogging?
I’ve worked with more sponsored clients, big and small brands and agencies than I can count. My blogs are added to 20-30 sponsored networks and I discover new ones all the time. I get discovered by clients a lot and they approach me via email, and this has been happening every single month for so many years now.
If you want to learn everything about sponsored blogging as a business model, you can directly dive into my course The Blog Sponsorship Boss.
Inside the program, you’ll learn:
How blog sponsorships work
Where to find brands to partner with
What rates to choose
How to write sponsored content
What marketplaces to join
How to create a page for sponsors + media kit
How to reach out to brands
How to negotiate prices
How to immediately spot bad clients
How to turn a one-time client into a long-term collaboration
How to get paid hundreds of dollars for a sponsored post while staying true to yourself and your audience
How to double your income by offering packages
How to always get paid.
Digital products
Digital products are one of the best ways to make money from your blog because you create them once and sell forever.
They also give you full control over pricing, branding, and customer experience. No middleman, no revenue split.
Here are a few ideas:
Ebooks & Guides – Package your expertise into a helpful resource. Perfect for beginners in your niche.
Online Courses – Teach a step-by-step process and sell on platforms like Podia or Teachable.
Templates & Printables – Planners, worksheets, spreadsheets—people love ready-to-use tools.
Workshops & Masterclasses – Offer a one-time live event, then sell the replay.
As for why investing the time to create your own product and sell it is worth it, here are a few reasons:
You have full control over it;
It’s passive income – you build it now and can make money for years to come.;
It improves your reputation in the blogging world (not everyone has their own products);
It’s something you can refer visitors to from any piece of content you create;
It’s a way to get people to your sales funnel and have potential customers for your higher paid offer;
It’s how you can create real impact in people’s lives (a course offers a real transformation, an article alone can’t really do that).
Especially with courses, there’s a lot of potential to make money as people are eager to learn how to do what you’re about to teach them.
Becoming a Course Creator
If you want help with every single step of the process of creating and launching your course, I got you.
In my signature program for course creators - Bold Business School - I walk you through the process of outlining your program and validating the idea, picking your course name and creating the offer and sales page. I help you with your pre-launch content so you can warm up your audience and then with planning your launch from start to finish, preparing for it mentally, and actually following through.
Then I help you create your course content, make sure it fits every learning style out there, keep your students engaged while going through the program and get amazing feedback from them that you can turn into testimonials for your next launch.
Bold Business School also teaches you advanced email marketing and sales techniques, and a lot about creating your content marketing strategy, targeting the ideal student, and forming the mindset of a successful course creator, which is quite different from the way bloggers think and operate.
So, there’s all that inside the program, and some awesome bonus material to enhance your learning experience and get you results faster, such as a training on money mindset, a masterclass on defining your niche if you haven’t already, and email swipe copy so you don’t create sales emails from scratch.
You also get sales page templates and a directory of workflows – these are the exact step by step processes you can follow to get things done in your course business. Things such as setting up email automations to welcome course students and ask for feedback, creating a coupon code for your course, creating feedback forms, tagging students inside your email marketing provider so you can email only them later or exclude them from an email, and so on.
It’s pretty tactical stuff that can save you a lot of time.
Head to this link to see all the details and decide if it’s for you.
Ad Revenue
Last but not least, there’s advertising.
I stayed away from displaying ads on Let’s Reach Success for years. However, I believe we should all test different blog monetization methods in order to find what works best for our audience, skills, content, etc.
So I decided to sign up with Mediavine – a reputable publishing network that’s collaborating with some pretty big names in different industries.
Three months later I was making close to $500/month passively, and after that I got to $1000. You’ll never know the full potential of a blog until you test different ways to monetize it.
This is a serious collaboration as it requires me to keep the ads for at least 3 months in order to test them and see the full potential of the site in terms of making revenue through ads.
They also have some detailed guides on what a blogger should do before the guys from Mediavine place ads on the new website.
That might mean removing some plugins, changing the settings of others, displaying your content in a way that’s easier for the reader and for ads to appear, and more.
As my traffic decreased in the last years, though, I was seeing little to no ROI from ads. So last year, I finally removed them.
That’s a pretty big step for a blogger because it means leaving behind a recurring revenue stream, and not being able to join the ad network again because I don’t meet their requirements for traffic anymore.
The blogging landscape has changed drastically and organic traffic isn’t that easy to acquire anymore, so other bloggers are struggling with ad revenue too, and many have now removed ads, just like I did.
But still, so many bloggers out there earn from ads every month.
Ad revenue can be a good addition to your site. It could also be the first monetization method that works well for you as it brings recurring income.
Some of you might decide to build a great blog, write content, and wait till you have enough traffic before you apply for an ad network. Once you do, you will begin earning money regularly and can move onto testing other ways and growing your income from blogging.
Also read:
How to Make Money with Mediavine (+ Tips to Boost Ad Revenue)
How Kylie Got into Mediavine in 1 Year & Makes €5K/Month from Her Blog
And that’s it for today. These are the 4 main ways blogs make money.
Which one sounds like the right one for you?
Tomorrow, I’ll publish a wrap-up post with next steps you can take on your blogging journey.
See you then,
Lidiya