Earning money from your blog isn’t a difficult issue. As I have been asked many times about this, I’m summarizing some points in this regard.
Ads
If you’re a premium user of WordPress.com, you can run their ads. Unless you have good traffic, this might not generate a lot of revenue. Please refer to my previous post “Do you display ads on your blog?”. Users of Blogger, WordPress.org and other platforms have more options of ads to run – such as Google ads or Amazon’s. Just be careful that a lot of ads might have negative impact.
You can also sell advertising spaces on your blog. For example, you can add an image in one of the widget areas letting people know that this space is available for ad slot. This image can be linked to your contact page – and those interested in purchasing this ad slot can settle things with you. They’ll need to provide you with the required banner image for ads, which you can place in the widget areas. I’m doing the same – check here for details.
Referrals
There are a lot of affiliate programs that pay good commission (cash or non-cash). For example, Amazon, WordPress, Dropbox, … You can easily display the referring links on your website or use them within your posts.
Re-blogging
You can also sell a reblog or a post about a product/service. However, this depends on the numbers of readers your blog has and their interests. Again, be careful, too much of reblogging might have negative affect on the reputation of your blog.
Other
Your blog is the best place to sell your own products or services. For example, writing, programming, translation, …
Don’t forget that with time and more traffic, your domain name could worth a fortune. I sold one of my websites once for a good amount of money due to the reputation of its name!
Quite informative. Thankyou for posting this.
You’re most welcome, Pooja. Glad it was of a help
This is a nice post. I sell ad space on my blog which has improved my blog earnings.
Thanks for sharing!
You’re most welcome, Chiomaokoye. Glad to know that it’s working fine for you. Good luck. Hope it’ll for me too!
Initially when I began with my cooking blog https://lovetocook101.wordpress.com my goal was to make money. Since then it has become more of a blogging passion, trying my best to get my readers, traditional, and new recipes each week. It is a time consuming full time job! And yes why shouldn’t our hard work be profitable. The hardest steps when becoming a blogger is generating traffic, so I joined discussion groups on Facebook. Such as promote your blog, another time consuming effort to generate traffic, this did increase my stats, but again did not effect or help in any way to make $$. So I ventured out into the wild web… and searched on how to make some extra $$ I found sights that help you integrate ads. These are called affiliates. I said why not! Even though I am aware I do not generate much traffic I crossed my fingers that these companies would approve me. And so I began to apply to companies which I felt would go good with a cooking blog. In response to my requests to become an affiliate I was happy to be approved by 5 on 10. You can find my affiliates on the bottom of each of my blog posts. Yes I had to put them in myself this was a great challenge through widgets seeing that I’m no computer genius. So in response to your post Mohammad, there is much homework to be done a lot of time to invest, and Hellas maybe one day I will have 5000 followers, and eventually become profitable. For the moment I do my best to get out there continuing with my cooking passion! All efforts, all input, is much appreciated!
Hi I am also struggling to promote my blog as I want more and more readers to come and read what I write my main concern is to help people deal with real life situations and what will eventually make them happy so your reply was very informative and will try out what you have advised Thanks a lot
I’m really enjoying reading your experience here. It’s very helpful. Thank you, Anastasia. Yes, it’s not an easy thing to build a blog reputation at the beginning. But I believe things will be easier after some time. For the advice, most of WordPress users check posts through WP reader not through the website itself. So, unless you have good traffic from outside WordPress, I think you should put the affiliate links within your posts themselves every now and then. P.S., you have very wonderful site…
Thank you Mohammad
Definitely something to think about. Thanks for the post.
Thank you William. I believe earning money here isn’t difficult and good idea as much as it’s not bothering readers
Excellent information and thank you for sharing, Mohamad. Are there any guidelines for displaying these ads, meaning those where you’re selling spaces?
Thank you, Franci. Do you mean my own spaces? Nothing special. I only mentioned the size of banners on the Offers page. But in general, it depends on your preferences. That’s, you might prefer a specific type of sites to be displayed on yours – not gambling’s for example. Also, the dimension and size of the banner you want to display. The less in size the better for loading…
Thank you!
Very informative Thank you for posting this
Thank you, Sonia. Very glad that you found it useful. You may also like to check my other post: How to drive traffic to your website
Ya I will check on that I seriously need to start working on that Thanks for letting me know about that Take care Have a wonderful day
You’re most welcome. If I can be of any assistance, please don’t hesitate…
Thank you so much Its always so nice to meet such wonderful people like you Any day if I can be of any help to you please shout
Mohamad, how timely this post is! A friend of mine who is just starting on WordPress asked if it’s possible to make money by selling things on her blog. I will pass this on to her! All the best to you, my friend!
Thank you very much Linda for your support. I’m very glad it was helpful. I confirmed it with WordPress so that every thing mentioned above is in line with their policies and terms
Perfect! When we have a bit of time, I’d like to ask you about WordPress themes that actually show the featured image correctly. Apparently, my theme has been cutting them off since I started and I never realized it!
They are many. I’ll be glad to help. I’ll check and send you some by email. Any time, at your service.
You are too good to me, my friend. No hurry at all. I wonder why WP would have themes that would cut off featured pics in the first place. Silly WP!!! ❤️
Cropping featured image is preferred by some. Personally, I prefer they make it optional and on specific pages only 🙂
For now, I’m just trying to get back into the writing groove I used to have. This was a great post, but personally, I don’t think it’s worth trying to monetize a blog until you have a decent amount of daily visitors. I think this is one of the first things advertisers look at – your stats. I’ve tried affiliate marketing in the past, but again, a person won’t make any money unless they have enough traffic to see the ads. And are using the correct ads for their target audience. Just my two-cents! 🙂
I totally agree, Melissa. I believe the key is to have good traffic from outside WordPress too. Blogs on WordPress have two types of visitors: WordPress users and Outsiders. WordPress users mostly read your posts only – affiliate links within the posts could do it here. Outsiders are visiting your main website – banner ads could be better here.
Very helpful – nice and simply put for us to research the parts that we might just consider. Would you recommend wordpress premium or would you go for an alternative?
Thank you, Maddie. With paid subscription, you get a domain name and extra storage. With premium’s, you get some more features… So, it depends on your needs. However, I usually recommend the upgrade after some time of testing. The best alternative to WordPress as I know is Blogger. Some argue that Tumblr is the one. You may check my other post: https://mohamadkarbi.com/blogger-vs-wordpress/
Great – thank you! Really appreciate it.
This is good advice, thank you!
You’re most welcome, Dawn. Glad it was useful.