I get, at a minimum, a dozen emails a day from people asking about blogging.

So I thought I’d compile a list of the most frequently asked questions so that it can benefit anyone curious about blogging.

I don’t get it! How exactly do I make money from blogging!?!?

This is probably the number one question I get, so I’ll spend the most time laying out how you can actually make money from a blog.

There are common ways that people make money from blogging and not-so-common ways to get money from blogging (thinking outside of the box for money-making opportunities).

I’ll touch on both areas. But one key thing to take away from this is that a blog offers the potential for numerous streams of income; not just one stream.

It will solely depend on you how many streams you want to create. In other words, the blog is strictly the platform (the vehicle), you will use to generate revenue/income.

1) Partner with an Ad Network

This is the most common way people generate revenue from their blogs.

Go on any site or app, and you’ll see that they’re using some sort of ad network to insert ads at the top, in between content, or on the sidebar. Even big companies and news organizations like CNBC, Time, BuzzFeed, Mashable, Huffpost, etc are all partnered with third-party ad networks that put ads on their sites. The most common one used is Google Adsense (very easy to do).

To use me as an example:

I get two regular paychecks from two different ad networks that I’ve partnered with. One is MyFinance (these are the ad units you see on the bottom of every blog post). The second is MediaVine (these are the banner ads you see on the bottom, side bar, and in-between content).

  1. Earnings from ad impressions (bloggers and websites make money from views, even if people don’t click on anything)
  2. Earnings from ad clicks (bloggers and websites make money from people clicking on the ads)
  3. Earnings from ad conversions (bloggers and websites make money from people buying a product, signing up, through the ads)

2) Affiliate Marketing

This is another very common way that people generate money from their blogs.

To use me as an example:

You know the links I have in some of my blogs to sign up with a web host provider? That’s one of my affiliate partners. I’ve partnered with Blue Host (a website provider), where they pay me for people who sign up for web hosting using my link. I’ll put one at the bottom of this blog post as well, if you’re interested and haven’t signed up yet.

3) Sell a Service

This is not as common, but I highly recommend this to anyone who’s looking to blog.

The thing you have to ask yourself is, what are you blogging about? Whatever subjects you cover can be areas that you can provide a service around so you can make additional revenue from it.

To use me as an example:

My blog is mostly about finance, but I also cover career and fitness.

This means I can create additional streams of income by selling services that help people and solve problems for people in these areas (finance, career, and fitness). Can you think of any off the top of your head? There are so many! I can sell a coaching service, a personal fitness training service, a life mentor/coach service, a personal finance, equities, or bitcoin mastermind group, etc.

4) Sell a Product

This is not as common either but it’s similar to the one above. If you happen to be a fitness enthusiast and/or certified as a trainer or nutritionist, and so you want to blog about fitness, you can create all sorts of products around this passion.

You can create membership access videos, packaged programs/bundles, training regimens, nutritional programs, a book, etc.

To use me as an example:

Again, my blog is mostly about finance, but I also cover career and fitness. I can create courses and have them available online through my website or a separate website or become a full-fledged author and write a book on financial independence, passive income blogging, or how to live a healthy lifestyle.

Another real life example: let’s say you’re good at using the Microsoft program Excel because you use it every day at your job, you can blog about Excel and show tips and tricks.

You can also create a course around it (Excel for Beginners, Excel for Intermediates, Excel for Advanced Users, etc) and sell those courses.

I heard on a podcast (I forget where) about a guy who makes six figures doing this! He uses Excel in his 9-5 job and figured he was pretty good at it, so he created an online course that ended up making more money annually than he does at his job, so he quit his job!