how to monetize a blog in 2022? part I
Starting and monetizing a blog has never been as easy as it is today.
Recently, creating a website cost thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars to set up and maintain. Monetizing a website was just as difficult. PayPal was in its infancy, Stripe didn’t exist, and email marketing wasn’t as flexible as it is now.
But, today, you can start, maintain and monetize a WordPress blog with as little as a few hundred dollars (this can vary depending on your needs). But just because it’s easier to make money blogging now doesn’t mean most do.
According to ConvertKit’s 2017 State of Blogging report, professional bloggers reported a median income of $138,064 last year, while hobby bloggers (who made up 86% of those surveyed) made just $9,497.
This is terrible, especially when you consider that most bloggers start a blog to be their own boss and quit their job from 8 to 5.
So how do you go from being a hobby blogger to being one of the pros earning six figures a year?
Well, you need a solid marketing plan, this includes content, a profitable niche, and a good monetization strategy.
You also need to do quick addition.
When Should You Start Monetizing Your Blog?
There is no set number on how much traffic or how big your email list needs to be to start making money from your blog because it all depends on what you sell and how you sell it. (Although in Latin America it is not as strong as in Europe and the United States).
However, having two things ready at the beginning will help him a lot:
Get stable traffic. You don’t need tens of thousands of visitors, but at least a few thousand visitors a month means you’re doing something right.
Grow your email list. Again, you don’t have to focus on something too far-fetched. I’ll show you some examples of people who had a small email list but still use it to their advantage.
Now these two things are important, but mainly, the efficient monetization of your blog is in the numbers.
For example, if you make $6,000 from your blog:
- You can sell a product for $200 (let’s say a course) to 30 people.
- Or sell a $600 Course to 10 people.
- And even charging $6,000 for consulting services.
- Monetization is pure math, not magic.
This is not to say that the key to monetization is simply increasing the prices of what you sell. If not, you should choose a monetization strategy that suits where your blog is right now or where you want to be in the future.
In this article, we’ll show you how to monetize a blog and make money online whether you’re getting thousands of hits a month or just starting out.
We’ll use solid strategies that other bloggers have used to make money from their own blogs in various niches and teach you how to do the same with your own blog.
- Be a Freelance Blogger in Your Niche
One of the easiest ways to make money from your blog is to become a feelance writer for more prominent blogs in your niche.
Think about it, you’ve probably started a blog because you have experience/knowledge in that area, so why not take advantage of it?
Businesses are looking for people who can create content to support their marketing so who better for this content creation task than someone who has the knowledge of that niche.
Freelance blogger, Bamidele Onibalusi used her blog, Writers in Charge, to showcase her content marketing examples as she grew her audience. Now he has a full time blogging business for other businesses.
According to data from Glassdoor, the average freelancer in the United States earns around $40k a year. Keep in mind that this figure is influenced by your experience level and the niche you write in.
Here’s a breakdown of how much you can earn in different niches according to the Editorial Freelance Association:
You may not be able to charge this amount at first, but as you gain experience and credibility, your rate will increase. But be careful not to charge too little at first.
Charging $10 for an item might seem like a good way to start getting clients, but it could actually drive away quality clients as your skills will be questioned, not to mention charging so little could drain your motivation to stick with it.
While we’re talking about pricing, it’s best to charge your clients per project, rather than an hourly rate, as it will be difficult to determine how long a task will take to complete, especially when you’re just starting out as a freelancer.
Charging a fee based on a project means you’ll be rewarded for finishing faster and your clients will know how much to pay you from the start.
According to WriteWorldwide, this is what you can charge per project in your first year as a freelance writer, regardless of your niche or previous writing experience.
The best part about freelance writing is that you won’t need a lot of traffic to your blog to start making money, all businesses only care about the quality of the content you write.
Jorden Roper, for example, made $5,000 in her first four months of starting out as a freelance writer, and Jennifer Gregory earns up to six figures a year from her freelance writing business.
As a freelance blogger, your job is to create written content that attracts visitors to your business website, so that some of these visitors become customers for your business.
If there are businesses making money in your niche and as long as these businesses are creating content, then they will almost certainly need writers.
Notice I mentioned that the business has to be making money. One of the worst mistakes one can make as a freelance blogger is choosing a niche where businesses can’t pay you.
For example, writing about art might be a good and fun idea and you might have extensive knowledge about it, but how many blogs can pay you on a regular basis to write about it?
The path to profitability as a freelance blogger is to find the right market to position yourself in.
A quick way to test if there is money to be made in your niche is to find at least ten writers who cover the niche you want to write about. You can do this by simply searching LinkedIn with your niche keywords.
For example, when I searched for individuals with the exact title of “freelance personal finance writer” on LinkedIn, I got around 42 results. You could also do it without the quotes to have a broader search that will give you more results.
This is a simple way to validate your niche.
We’ve already established that you don’t need a lot of traffic to make money as a freelance writer, but that doesn’t mean that people will find your blog to hire you.
You will have to promote your service.
When you’ve created writing samples on your blog and perhaps some guest-authored articles on other blogs, you can start contacting businesses you want to write for.
You can also use freelance marketplaces like Upwork, SEOclerks, and Fiverr. But while there are already a couple of freelance writers making a lot of money, like Danny Marguiles who made over $100k a year on Upwork, most freelance writers on these platforms make very little money.
To avoid getting into the race to the bottom that normally happens in these markets, you’ll need to get in touch on your own.
How to Find Blogs Where to Write?
The best way to find businesses or blogs in your niche that might need your services is to search for keywords related to that niche on Google and see what comes up.
Because clearly, the blogs that appear on the first pages of Google are investing heavily in marketing content.
For example, if I was looking for blogs to write about in the fitness niche, doing a simple search using the term “Fitness blog” showed me the following:
You can also search for terms related to your niche specifically, for example, in the case of fitness, put something like “Workout plans”:
Take Advantage of Your Own Site
In addition to looking for new writing jobs, you should take advantage of your own site, after all, you are a writer.
Use inbound marketing and SEO to drive people to your site, where you can offer them your writing and blogging services.
Freelance writer, Maddy Osman does this on her freelancing site, The Blogsmith.
By the way, we have all our services on fiverr including writing. You can see it in the tourist marketing tab. We also help you with email marketing for your hotel.
