How to make money blogging

A mistake that many bloggers make is trying to earn money with their blog without having a defined topic area. You should decide on a theme that is exciting and in­ter­est­ing. When you start creating your blog, you should already have ideas in mind about the topic of the blog. If you find a niche theme, you will speak to a more defined target group and build a true read­er­ship. And this is the exact type of target group that is lucrative for ad­vert­isers who may want to place an ad­vert­ising banner on a blog, for example. Targeting a specific group is hugely important for a business’s success. Affiliate marketing (see below) only works in the right en­vir­on­ment.

When it comes to tra­di­tion­al print ad­vert­ising, the cir­cu­la­tion figures determine how suc­cess­ful an advert is. For blogging, the deciding factor is the amount of traffic generated with each article. As such, a blog that only receives a few hundred visitors a day isn’t very appealing for ad­vert­isers. However, this isn’t always the case, as some companies may be in­ter­ested in a smaller read­er­ship of experts. In either case, traffic remains a very important factor when it comes to pay-per-click ad­vert­ising and affiliate marketing. However, relevant readers don’t auto­mat­ic­ally flock to a blogger; you need a lot of per­sist­ence and en­gage­ment to ‘earn’ your readers and retain them by keeping your content relevant and up to date. Only when you have many loyal readers can you start to make money by blogging. In this context, you should research about hosting pos­sib­il­it­ies: if you have com­mer­cial ambitions, you should consider hosting your own blog.

What are the pos­sib­il­it­ies for those wanting to make money by blogging? With this question as a starting point, the classical methods of how to monetise your blog will be explained, then how to earn money by blogging without having to place ads on your site.

Direct marketing is when a blogger rents out the free ad­vert­ising space on their site directly to an ad­vert­iser. In contrast to AdSense or com­par­able online services, in­de­pend­ently managing ad­vert­ising space can be very lucrative, since all the income generated goes straight to the blogger. Managing the space yourself, however, does translate into more work, es­pe­cially when it comes to acquiring new ad­vert­ising partners. Blogs generally indicate free ad­vert­ising space on their site and provide all the necessary in­form­a­tion (media data, ad­vert­ising rates, etc.) on a subpage.

Sponsored posts (also known as ad­vertori­als) make it possible to earn money with editorial posts rather than ad­vert­ise­ments. With this form of ad­vert­ising, you write articles on a certain product or a topic or you’re given a pre-written text (that has already been adapted to the target group) from the company or agency. The scope of the blog, the amount of effort, and the topic relevance also determine the com­pens­a­tion for the article. Co­oper­at­ing with blogs is now common practice for many marketing agencies. Many bloggers find it difficult to strike the right balance between sponsored posts and be­liev­able content.

Affiliate marketing relates to referral marketing. Re­gis­ter­ing for relevant partner programs is usually free for bloggers. Writers receive a com­mis­sion if they recommend a product or a service in their articles and a reader then follows the re­com­mend­a­tion (i.e. the link). The ap­pro­pri­ate com­mis­sion (around 3-10%) is only awarded when a contract has been finalised. Amazon As­so­ci­ates and zanox, are two very well-known affiliate programs.

Pay per click ad­vert­ising is an un­com­plic­ated way of placing adverts on your website so you can make money by blogging. Google AdSense is by far the most well-known online ad­vert­ising service. The type of pay per click ads that are shown depends on the content of the blog. Profit is made with each click, so the more traffic a blog has, the more prof­it­able the pay-per-click adverts are.

Direct and eye-catching ad­vert­ising has proven suc­cess­ful for bloggers in recent years and is un­doubtedly one of the easiest sources of income to regulate. However, there are other ways to profit from your blog. Here we introduce some al­tern­at­ive solutions.

Your own blog can also be funded by donations. By in­teg­rat­ing a donation button on the site, readers are invited to support the blog fin­an­cially – vol­un­tar­ily, of course. In contrast to the paywall model, all content remains free even if the reader decides not to donate anything. Spe­cial­ised providers such as Flattr enable un­com­plic­ated donation pro­cessing. However, the service requires the reader to be re­gistered with Flattr and have credit in their account. Al­tern­at­ively, you could enable a direct donation option by providing your bank details on your site.

An ad­di­tion­al, seemingly lucrative way to make money by blogging is to sell links that are not marked as paid ad­vert­ising. Text link sales like these can be organised through websites like BackLinks. However, you have a sig­ni­fic­ant dis­ad­vant­age compared to links in sponsored posts: purchased links that aren’t marked as such, violate Google’s guidelines. The blogger could therefore end up being penalised. The con­sequences may be a decrease in PageRank and a loss in ranking in the search engine results, which will deter many ad­vert­isers.

Com­mer­cial blogging won’t work if you don’t play by the rules. There are reg­u­la­tions con­cern­ing tax de­clar­a­tions and re­gis­ter­ing as self-employed. Here is an overview of the most important facts:

1. You should register yourself as self-employed even if you are literally earning pennies from your blog. The best solution is to register yourself as a limited company, which means that you’re named as the owner and an employee of your blog. You can set up a PAYE system to pay yourself from the profits that your blog makes.
   
   
2. It counts as a business if you’re accepting products in exchange for writing reviews about them. Just because no money is exchanged, doesn’t mean you’re exempt from paying tax. Even if you sell samples that you’ve been given, you also have to declare how much they were sold for.
   
   
3. Being self-employed, you need to fill out a self-as­sess­ment tax form, which documents your earning and spendings regarding the blog. The standard personal tax allowance is £10,600, which means you don‘t have to pay tax if you earn less than this amount. Any more than this amount and you have to pay 20% back on whatever you’re earning on top of the standard amount.

In previous sections in the guide, it explained how you earn money with a blog in the first place. So far, the question of how much a blogger earns on average each month has remained un­answered. This is because there is no set answer, since blogs not only have different possible sources of income, but are also paid com­pletely dif­fer­ently when it comes to sponsored posts, ad­vert­ise­ments, etc. In addition to the pop­ular­ity and number of visitors, the topic of the blog plays a decisive role. For example, it is possible to make more money with a pro­fes­sion­al fashion or travel blog than with a blog about exotic animal species such as the Mexican Axolotl (simply because the target group is so small).

In the UK, it’s possible to sup­ple­ment your income if not get all your income, from a well-run blog. It can be a tedious process, taking months or even years to make even a little profit. Only once your blog is becoming more popular, does it start to look at­tract­ive for ad­vert­ising companies, which is why donations and selling your own products are often the only sources of income at the start. Once various part­ner­ships have been concluded and the financial basis has been created, there is no limit to how much you can earn.

Blogs cover the widest variety of topics: fashion, sports, lifestyle, music, etc. Every industry has its top blogs, which all have their own success stories. There’s often more to these suc­cess­ful blogs than just blog posts. Popular bloggers are known as in­flu­en­cers in social networks or as experts at con­fer­ences and events, and they sometimes even operate their own product chains. The project 'The Blonde Salad' was launched as a fashion blog by Chiara Ferragni in 2009 and is a prime example of this. Today, the Italian boss has a multi-headed crew and doesn’t just deal with making sure the fashion blog runs smoothly, but also the social media channels, photo shoots, and sales from the shoe col­lec­tion ('Chiara Ferragni Col­lec­tion'). It’s estimated that Ferragni earns more than £9 million per year.  The following bloggers are some of the most suc­cess­ful and best paid in the world:

Source: https://blog­ger­spas­sion.com/bloggers-income-report-how-much-money-do-top-bloggers-make-and-how/

If you plan to make money with your blog, it is time to start taking steps to com­mer­cial­ise it. However, with all your efforts you’ve made to spe­cial­ize in your topic, finding the ap­pro­pri­ate hosting solution, getting more traffic, and building on your re­la­tion­ship with other bloggers, you’ll notice it’s a lengthy process that often requires a lot of patience. There are some tricks, however, that can help increase your success rate.

1. Optimise loading time: Blogs are ac­cess­ible to anyone via the World Wide Web. Potential readers expect the same level of user ex­per­i­ence as other web projects. In addition to the intuitive usability and good struc­tur­ing, a quick loading time is also required. The latter is mainly in­flu­enced by the choice of blog or content man­age­ment system as well as the hosting en­vir­on­ment. If you use a CMS, you can often improve the loading time with plugins, for example, with LazyLoad for WordPress sites. The plugin ensures that images are only loaded when they come into the user’s field of vision.
   
   
2. Provide more content: Many bloggers only show a couple of posts on their homepage and sometimes there is no editorial content at all. If there’s more choice of reading material, it increases the chance of at­tract­ing visitors and gaining loyal readers. The in­creas­ing length of stay also has a positive effect on search engine marketing. It is important, however, that you also keep the afore­men­tioned loading time in the back of your mind.
   
   
3. Use teasers: With an in­ter­est­ing preview picture and an exciting teaser, you increase the prob­ab­il­ity of your articles being read. It’s best for you to write the blurb yourself, ex­plain­ing what the reader can expect from the article. However, many content man­age­ment systems also offer features that auto­mat­ic­ally generate the preview text from the first few lines of the main text. This is handy if you don’t have enough time to think of something yourself or you’re not feeling par­tic­u­larly creative.
   
   
4. Emphasise the call to action: You should make it clear to your readers if you offer news­let­ters, products, or services on top of your editorial content in order to make money with your blog. Buttons and forms should be made obvious and prominent so that readers see them. If you want to integrate several different action prompts into your blog, don’t give them the same im­port­ance as each other. Highlight the most important thing so that visitors don’t become over­whelmed with too much choice.
   
   
5. Analyse user behaviour: When you customize your blog to reach new visitors, increase retention time, or improve con­ver­sion rate, you should always analyse the impact of these ad­just­ments. Using web analytics software like Google Analytics, you can see what has caused the increase in traffic or what had en­cour­aged more readers to convert. You shouldn’t perform all the op­tim­isa­tion steps at once, otherwise you won’t be able to tell which of the ad­just­ments has had the positive effect on your blog’s success.

Our guide has explained that there are a lot of things to consider and that a lot of time needs to be invested before you can make money with a blog. Only when a project has enough traffic does it become in­ter­est­ing enough for ad­vert­ising companies. You’re also more likely to profit from any pi­on­eer­ing part­ner­ships that present them­selves.

To conclude, we have sum­mar­ised the different sources of income: