Unless you already have a decent sized audience on your blog (or social accounts), it’ll take some time to grow your readership to a point where sponsored blog content is a viable monetization option.
What is sponsored blog content?
How much traffic do you need in order to get blog sponsors?
The best way to do sponsored content without alienating your readers, is to weave it into your typical publishing style (like I’ve done with this sponsored post and this one too).
4. Online Courses
Once you have a skill (or experience) that others also want to learn, it’s relatively easy to package your best advice (like my blogging tips), strategies, tactics and tutorials into an online course where people can pay for access to accelerate their learning much quicker than they otherwise would going through the stumbling process of learning through trial and error.
Last year alone, I generated over $60,000 from the launch of my premium blogging course, Built to Blog, which takes students far beyond just starting a blog and into advanced strategies for getting readers & generating revenue from their blogs.
Online Course Sales (Screenshot of Stripe Payments) to M thailand business mailing list ake Money from Your Blog
What’s great about an online course as a monetization path for your blog (or like I’ve done with selling blogging books too), is that you don’t need a huge audience in order to earn from online courses. The same goes if you choose to write an ebook and sell that digital product to your audience.
How to launch a profitable online course (quick tips)
5. Traditional Blog Advertisements (Ad Networks)
I used to have several small blog advertisements displayed across my content (from one of these top blog advertising networks) and in my blog sidebar that would earn me around $1,500 to $2,000 per month in incremental revenue, before I turned advertisements off in favor of optimizing for page speed & other sources of income.
Sidebar Advertisement Example (Screenshot) to Monetize a Blog
I was a member of a small ad network called Carbon Ads for the first few years of my blogging journey, where they partner with bloggers and pair us up with ads from high-quality startups like Slack, Asana, Freshbooks, Monday, Upwork and other targeted brands that my audience is already familiar with.
How much can you earn from blog advertisements?
What are the best blog ad networks for bloggers to join?
All in all, traditional CPC or CPM advertising doesn’t become very profitable (at least as a viable source of substantial blog income) until you’re driving more like 1 million+ monthly readers, so it’s not a great monetization channel to focus on in the short-term if you’re just hosting a few ads in your blog sidebar. But, when you’re starting a blog, it can be one of the easiest ways to make money from your traffic without much extra effort—just be sure to set the right expectations for now.