You may be surprised if you think about how much money bloggers make. During their first year of blogging, many blog owners earn a meager $200 to $2,500 in the starting years. It is good to remember that making money blogging depends on a multitude of factors.
Prominent bloggers who utilize robust monetization strategies can earn between $4,000 to $15,000 per month. Professional bloggers regularly achieve seven-figure incomes in a specific blogging niche.
There is a multitude of streams and roles of income for bloggers, and rightfully so. This article explores how much these people make and what exactly these passive income streams are.
Various Types of Blogger Roles
Many people think only of those who build and create their own blog when thinking about bloggers. However, three kinds of bloggers exist today:
- Independent blog owners who make their own blog
- Freelance bloggers who sell blogging as a service
- Other bloggers who work full time or part-time for companies when they blog post
How Do Bloggers Get Paid?
How smart blogger earns their money can cause a variation in the amount of cash made each month. It is good to note that writers earn an average of $39,000 to $80,000 annually as a full-time business, and this figure is on par with the amount that authors and writers get in the United States of America.
An experienced freelance blogger making between 10c and $1 per word may write for other bloggers’ websites. However, it is crucial to remember that beginner bloggers in the industry are bound to make less. Freelances are paid through the freelancing network or directly from their clients.
Some individuals who start their own blogs are known as independent bloggers, and these people do not earn a conventional blogger salary. However, they make money blogging through multiple monetization techniques, including product sales, online courses, services, memberships, advertising, sponsored posts, affiliate link marketing, etc.
What Blog Owners Make From Different Monetization Options
Blog owners can typically earn between 2c and 10c per page view from advertising if they have page visits between 10,000 and 100,0000 per month. This calculation translates to roughly $200 to $10,000 monthly, a standard across most significant sites.
Depending on the sponsorship arrangement and audience size, sponsored posts average around $25 to $750 per piece.
Bloggers who sell an online course or products can make even more; some earn as high as $10,000 monthly. If you are a blogger, you should consider affiliate income as another great way to earn more passive income from your website.
Adam Enfroy is an example of the above statement. He is a travel blogger who has made more than $44,262 in a single month with the power of affiliate marketing. It is good to note that Adam only has around 3,000 email subscribers and a monthly site visitor count of just over 300,000 users.
The people who make the most money blogging use clever ways to approach their blog monetization. Many bloggers have three or four ways to make money from their site, including selling products, adverting, hosting workshops, sponsored posts, marketing other services, or display and affiliate ads.
What Influences How Much Bloggers Make?
Bloggers earn all different types of income depending on their experience and growth strategy; whether you are a beginner or professional blogger, you have to look for ways to create various income streams through your site.
People who have the most profitable blogging niches and make more money blogging do so because they:
- Actively promote and market their blogs and online courses
- Have a solid understanding of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), search engines, and blogging platforms
- Create unique content that audiences love
- Use effective monetization strategies for their niche and audience
- Choose a profitable blogging niche
- Have a solid business plan in place
- Perform Google Ad testing
Most new bloggers think that posting some articles after they have created the blog is enough, but that is far from the truth. You need to build up your blog over a long time if you want it to make a significant blogging income.
How Long Does It Take to Make Money Blogging?
The answer to that question is not an easy one to determine. Many things can affect how long it takes to make money blogging for your online business. Too many bloggers start their blogs as side hustles or hobbies, therefore don’t devote 30 hours a week to developing their site.
Precisely at the launch phase of your blog, you won’t earn a full-time living if you are putting in a half-arsed effort. Even when blogging full time, very few people earn much income within their first few months. Profitable blogs require lots of keyword research and work to drive more traffic to the blogging platform.
A good rule of thumb is to use business strategies and intelligent content to help boost how much traffic makes its way to your site. Ideally, you want to earn between $30,000 to $60,000 per year in your initial blogging year. However, there are always exceptions, and some may make less while others earn a lot more.
Some world-renown bloggers claim that it takes less effort to generate higher or the same earnings over time. While you can hold back on effort when first building your blog, that elbow grease can yield financial returns for years. It is more than possible to earn an excellent income from blogging while working at the same time on your site.
Tips for Creating the Best Blog
Please don’t be under the impression that all bloggers make money blogging because some don’t make any. A survey found that under 27% of bloggers earn under $10 a month, and nearly 55% make less than $100 passive income monthly.
That is not because it’s impossible to make money from blogging; it is challenging and takes commitment on your behalf. The people who fail to make money from blogging don’t understand the path to successful blogs. It is important to remember that building a good blog is not rocket science, but it isn’t precisely intuitive either. You may need countless hours learning about SEO techniques, searching into monetization options, and finding people to advertise or provide sponsored posts for your site.
One word of advice: Do not quit your day job yet. You won’t be making a ton of cash overnight. It would be best to start your blog while keeping your nine to five unless you have some financial resources or your personal finance is in order. Please remember that there is no magic formula for how much you will make and when you start making money.
Choose a Profitable Niche
When you select your blogging niche, it is vital to take great care. Ensure that there is a big enough audience for the subject area you are interested in writing about. Do your research to find the perfect niche market for your own business.
Create a Blog Business Plan
If you want to increase the odds of success tenfold, it’s good to treat your blog like a real business from the very first day. Take the time to develop a business plan for your blog that outlines every step, including the promotion process, monetization, keyword research, and blog creation.
Create a Professional Website
There is no way you will make any money if you have an insignificant website. Creating a professional, fast-loading, and optimized website for your blog is vital.
You will find numerous fantastic options on your website for blog development platforms. However, for scalability and flexibility, it is recommended to go with a reliable hosting provider or a self-hosted WordPress blog. Companies such as GoDaddy or Bluehost offer affordable, secure hosting solutions and can grow with you as you get more traffic. The best thing about these services is that it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to get started.
Post Awesome Content on Your Blog
Top bloggers don’t make generous income if their content is inferior. Instead, these people provide the best answer for their visitors, offer practical solutions, and pay close attention to giving as many details as possible.
If your dream is to make money online through blogging, ensure that you initially check out the competition and then start to create an effective content strategy that boosts you to the top of your niche.
Build a Sound Monetization Strategy
You shouldn’t create a blog unless you have a sound personal finance strategy for how you expect to make money. That doesn’t mean you have to have your monetization efforts in place before launching since you will lack traffic in the first few months of blogging anyway.
Don’t expect to earn much when you begin, but still, make sure you know what you are planning to achieve financially.
There is a multitude of ways many blogging niches make cash. You can sell online courses, products, services, memberships, advertising, and affiliate marketing. Do not limit yourself to just a single monetization technique. If you want to earn the highest income possible, you have to diversify your incomes streams.
Optimize Your Site for Search Engines and Organic Traffic
If you are unfamiliar with SEO (Search Engine Optimization), it is suggested that you increase your knowledge as early as possible. It is one of the best ways for your blog to rank high on Google and is a vital organic traffic source for 90 percent of bloggers.
The best way to go about it is to write relevant and authoritative content in your niche. It would be best if you also considered keyword research by using relatable topic phrases to boost your SEO score.
It is a little tricky to get the hang of SEO, but you will be optimizing your website in no time with a bit of practice. If you struggle to grasp the inner workings of Search Engine Optimization, you should speak to a professional for assistance.
Use Smart Promotions and Marketing Strategies
Do you know what the difference between successful and unsuccessful bloggers is? The most successful bloggers are more consistent with promoting their blog than bloggers who struggle to make money. You should never underestimate the importance of getting word of your blog out into the world.
People can take advantage of ways to promote their blog, including paid ads, proactive blog outreach, starting a Facebook page, Google ads, and email marketing. It is a good idea to experiment with what works best for your blog and what you need to do more or less of.
Grow Your Email List as Large as Possible
One of the most precious assets in your blogging business is your email list. Nothing can take it away from you because you own the email list and built it for the past few years. With search engines like Google, it may de-rank your post out of the blue while going through an algorithm update. You can always reach out to more than half your readers if you have an email list.
The people who sign up for your email list will keep reading your content and returning to your site. You can also use a newsletter to build trust so that clients purchase your products or click on the Amazon affiliate links on your site.
Most successful bloggers can make between $0.6 to $2.5 per subscriber monthly. Say, for example, you have 1,000 email subscribers; you could generate up to $1,000 per month; we would say that is quite an adequate side income.
Most Profitable Blog Categories
While not all blogging categories are profitable, a few stand out from the crowd regarding earning potential. We have listed some of the best blogging niches below for your viewing.
Personal finance or finance – That is where all the cash is; after all.
Boring product reviews – You can create a site with endless reviews on things you don’t even own. Start by hiring many freelance writers to perform your work, and you are done.
Lifestyle/ Travel: Who doesn’t want to live off the coast of Santorini and live a glamourous lifestyle? Most people would say yes to that. The key to a travel or lifestyle website is to sell the dream!
Fashion – The higher price brands make the highest profit margin. Luxury brands make the best quality and most significant designs that attract people’s attention. Men have an opportunity to get into this niche because females dominate it.
Supplements/health products – People are fascinated with fitness, life, and health. A massive range of health pills, exercise drinks, and sports drinks can be marketing through your website.
Least Profitable Blogging Niches
Music – Due to 99 cent downloads and piracy, not even musicians are making money.
Political/general news – There is so much drama in the world. You can write about the chaos but be warned that it will probably make you depressed and angry.
Gardening and cooking – Everyone has a great garden hack to grow vegetables or a cooking recipe to sell.
Games and toys – Even though bloggers don’t make much from the toy and games niche, one kid called Ryan makes over $5 million a year from his YouTube channel reviewing games.
Religion: You might make a lot of money if you can get fiery fanatics to follow your site. However, it’s good to note it’s hard to earn ad revenue and sell products on this type of blog.
How to Make Money Blogging for a Living
It’s time to start building a site for yourself, no matter how much bloggers can make in a month. Once you create a stable and incredible platform with a strong brand that resonates with the world, you can leverage your blog for extraordinary opportunities.
The internet is fantastic for scaling, and if you have a brand that you can grow, you may find yourself a real winner. After multiple years of non-stop writing, you can build a blog that brings in many organic views each month.
Monetization Options
Below, we show you some of your website’s most prominent monetization options and explain how they work.
CPC Ads (Banner Ads and Text Link Ads)
One of the most common CPC networks you can join is Google AdSense. You will get paid pennies every time someone clicks on an ad, and in some cases, you can even earn a dollar or two, depending on how lucrative that particular keyword is.
Say, for example, “life insurance” is a much more prominent keyword than “hotdogs” because if a life insurance provider can get you as a customer, they can make thousands of dollars off of you over the years. On the other hand, with hotdogs, you only need to spend $10 to $50, and that is it.
It is important to remember that you can get banned from Google AdSense by messing with the system. People have been prohibited from clicking on their website ads or providing irrelevant content on their homepage. Don’t be a fool; the Google algorithm can pick up fake clicks, so save yourself the hassle; don’t click your advertisements.
Once you have conquered Google AdSense, it’s time to look out for another platform with higher CPC rates so you can make money blogging, there is a platform called Adthrive, but you need to have at least 100,000 page views per month to use this provider. Make sure you take baby steps in the monetization process; you won’t be sorry you decided to use a CPC platform to make some money from your blog.
Affiliate Links (CPA = Cost Per Action)
It is time to focus on earning through affiliate links once your blog gets around 30,000 page views a month.
You need to find affiliates with products that fit your content well. Every time you refer a new user to the affiliate platform, they will pay you an affiliate fee (referral fee). Finding the best products that fit your content is one of the greatest secrets to affiliate marketing. If you are interested in bonds, stocks, real estate, and retirement, it may be best to look for affiliates in wealth management, investing, and real estate.
Once your blog traffic and brand are strong enough, you will get inundated with many affiliate opportunities.
It is crucial to select the best ones; otherwise, you will seem like a used car salesman.
Sponsored Post
When you get a big enough blog, many brands will try and tap into your community by offering to write a sponsored post. Writing a sponsored post for a reputable blog is also an excellent way to gain valuable links back to your website. Please member that links are the currency of the web.
Just make sure that you are careful and do not post too much-sponsored content, as the Google algorithm doesn’t like that.
Search engines want your original content and not have your website be a factory for advertisements. When you host a sponsored post, ensure that you disclose that in the piece itself.
You can earn as little as $50 up to $5,000 on average for a sponsored post. Sometimes brands will ask you to update the piece you already wrote with new information updates. You have more bargaining power if you can rank well for specific keywords or the brand.
Direct Advertisement (CPM = Cost Per Thousand Impression) (RPOM = Revenue per Thousand Impressions)
Some companies or brands will reach out to your to put a banner display ad on your website to promote their products. Let’s say your site has over 100,000 page views per month. The brands may offer your something like $20 RPM, which means you stand to earn $20,000 from a single banner ad.
You can fill up to three direct banner ads above the top of your site. Unfortunately, real estate above the header is limited to the size of the screen. With more individuals surfing the net via mobile, this real estate is more diminutive.
Social Media Influencer
Some big companies out there will host Twitch chats with a specific hashtag. In exchange for answering questions or participating in the Tweet chat with the hashtag, you could be paid $100 to $3,000 an hour. The pay depends on how considerable your Twitter following is. Some brands also pay if you host a Facebook chat session or Facebook lives. Instagram is also a popular place for brands to contact influencers to promote their products.
Advertising Your Content
Running Google and Facebook Ads are two of the most common ways to monetize your content. If you spend $1,000 a Facebook Ad but convert $1,100 in affiliate revenue and another $300 in CPC revenue, you should do this all day long.
In contrast, this requires some Google and Facebook Ad testing. Over time, you will find the winning combinations for your blog, and the key is to test constantly.
Beginning with a small ad budget and promoting your most popular page or post on what you see in Google Analytics is the best way to advertise your content.
Your Product Revenue or Online Course
It can be a lot of upfront work to create a course revenue system. However, the best thing is once your course is complete, each one you sell is practically 100% profits margins minus the transaction fee. The transaction fees on PayPal are usually around 2.8%
You can create a course or eBook and solve someone’s problem with it. Once the book is on the market, it can make you money for years to come; keep in mind that the content needs to be highly informative yet easy to understand.
After your course or book has gained popularity, you can update it after a few years and increase the price. These types of blogs typically generate between $1,000 to $5,000 per month. Best of all, it will provide more value than the cost and will change people’s lives forever.
Private and Corporate Consulting
Consulting or training is a great way to make money from your blog. Some people can make up to $30,000 per month consulting for financial technology startups, and rightfully so. You need to be an expert in your field so that people trust the advice you are giving them. This can help you leverage your platform and build an additional income stream from your blog.
If you have a book or a course, it can help bring attention to your skill and serve as a lead generator. One of the big bonuses you won’t anticipate is consulting after starting an informative blog. Your website serves as proof that you know to build a brand, how to generate revenue online, and how to gather an audience.
Podcast Advertising
People may not have thought about it, but Podcast advertising is an excellent way to get the word out about their blog. You may as well have a Podcast if you have a blog. Furthermore, you can go the simple route, record your reading, and add the Podcast from your mobile device. Then you can set upload the audio file at the end of most posts, and away you go. Now you have a Podcast.
An intelligent blogger repurposes their content as much as possible for different types of media and platforms.
Speaking Gigs
Once you have a large site or have written a book, you will be invited to various conferences for speaking gigs. The fees range from $500 to $10,000, depending on if you are a keynote or side speaker. It is good to note that you will also get a conference pass for free and be able to build a larger community of people who will follow your work. If you prefer your privacy, you don’t need to do speaking gigs; however, please remember that you can earn up to $10,000 or more at a conference if you are in a dominant niche.
Freelance Writing
Freelance writing is low-hanging fruit. If you have a blog with some rather exciting content, it makes you far more marketable than someone who is a freelancer but has minimal work online that shows their talent.
It is clever to freelance to earn income when beginning your blogging journey, and what is more important is that it helps get your name out there. In most cases, the company you freelance for will allow you to link back to its website.
You can do plenty of freelance writing for affiliate partners and other blogs while starting your first few years of blogging.
People can use these articles to produce some of their best work and get their names out there. Freelance writing is like guest posting but getting paid for it.
Forum Advertising
In order to build an even tighter community, you may want to establish a forum as well. Once you have created a platform with many subscribers who post and answer questions regularly, you can start to place banners ads that make money.
Choose Your Blog Niche Based on Market Factors, Not Your Passions
There is a reason that 95% of bloggers fail, and you may not be able to guess why. The current myth is that bloggers fail because they aren’t passionate enough. Some people say you should push through to succeed, but that is very far from the truth.
If you google “why bloggers fail?” you will get the same answer all over the place; the number one result is bloggers fail because they aren’t passionate enough.
However, we officially reject this notion. One of the fundamental reasons bloggers fail is the same reason many businesses fail; it is not profitable.
Let’s consider people’s passions, such as astronomy, distance running, personal development, airplanes, and drumming. These subjects are fantastic, but if you write an endless amount of blog posts about them without making any cash, you will burn out 100% of the time.
Additionally, some bloggers claim it is just a hobby, and they are not in it for the money. Hobbyist bloggers are just new bloggers who are unsure how to make money from blogging. In any digital creative field, there are experts and beginners. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, whether it be video editing, copywriting, photography, web development, or design; you have to start somewhere to optimize your site.
The fact of the matter is that most bloggers start as novices by writing about a passion and trying to figure out everything else later on; this is a recipe for disaster.
Audience Potential Budget
In order to offer a valuable product on your blog, you need to solve a pain point for your audience. Individuals who are bloggers should deeply understand their audience’s challenges to offer the most in-demand solutions.
Begin by looking at niches where you are a target audience member yourself. This way, your domain expertise shines through sooner.
Once you have gotten that far, perform keyword research and narrow down your niche. Travel? K-pop? Watercolor? Good luck with that process.
What Is an Essential Factor When Choosing a Blog Niche?
One of the most critical factors for selecting your blog niche is how much your audience is willing to spend. We will break it down for you to quickly understand:
You plan to start a blog in the home design niche. The blog may pull in various readers. Visitors could include professional interior designers, stay-at-home moms, and even college design students who want the latest home decor inspirations.
In order to monetize this niche, you would create a new blog that moves your readers to your sales funnel.
Below is how you can establish your sale funnel strategy:
- First, you need to create the content to attract an audience
- Then it would be best if you built out a home design freebie to get an email opt-in
- Next, you could use affiliate marketing to promote home decor brands
- Finally, you would offer your email subscribers a $500 online course (with a money-back guarantee) about professional tips for the perfect home design
There is nothing wrong with this approach, and it tends to be what most bloggers do. What’s great about using a sales funnel is that it gives you an additional income stream after a couple of years of building your audience.
Use Your Professional Leverage to Choose Your Blog Niche
After uncovering a lucrative audience to provide value, the next step involves discovering the strategic advantages you may have over other bloggers. There are some things you should ask yourself before selecting your blog niche:
- What is your current level of professional experience?
- Can you leverage this experience into a profitable blog?
- What connections do you have in the industry?
- If you could pitch any website in the world to contribute a guest post, who would take you seriously from the start?
In order to build a truly successful blog, you first need to develop a following and authority. You will have to leverage your connections and step out of your comfort zone. Strategically use everything at your disposal like never before and let your professional experience shine through.
You can also perform a lot of outreach to make new connections.
Outreaching includes building connections so you can guest post no authoritative sites in your niche. These posts will give relevant content as high Domain Authority (DA) backlinks for your search engine optimization. SEO is still one of the best ways to rise in the Google search rankings.
According to internet statistics in 2019, Google processes over 40,000 searches per second and over 3.5 billion searches per day. That figure has undoubtedly increased over the last three years as more people have started to use the internet.
It is important to note when you are starting out your blog, you may not have many connections or published content leading to asking yourself, “Why would someone feature me?”
Leveraging your professional background helps tremendously.
Say, for example, you are a photographer, you may know a photographer influencer, have contact with a local meet-up group, or a client-based that you have built up from the past. With these contacts, you can accelerate your blog’s growth by getting them to help you advertise.
Your Blog Niche Requires a Demand
You need to find monetizable topics before you start establishing your blog. There are two types of monetizable keywords ideal for making money, including “how-to guides” and “best” list posts.
Here are some examples of “Best” list posts:
- “Best PS5 exclusives” in the tech category
- In finance, it could be “Best Roth IRA” or “Best savings account.”
- “Best travel backpack” or “best travel insurance” could be great for the travel niche
In the case of “How to guides,” you could use the following:
- “How to make a website” in the marketing category
- In lifestyle, you could explain “How to decorate your kitchen.”
- “How to get rid of acne” is an excellent topic for the health niche
The great thing about the how-to guides is that you can pack this long-form content with high-quality information. These posts are also excellent for adding affiliate links.
According to a study, 77% of bloggers interviewed consider how-to articles one of the most popular blogging formats. Once you understand your passion and leverage, take your chosen niche and come up with the top 10 keywords to target.
You can use a range of keyword research tools to help you do this, including Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and GrowthBar.
Final Thoughts
Now that all your burning questions concerning how much you can make blogging have been answered, you can start creating a profitable blog. You can also use some of the advice provided to improve profits on the blog you have already started.
Every successful blogger will tell you that making money blogging will take time, and treating your blog like a real business will give you the best foundations to create and make your blogging income dreams a reality.
Bloggers making money from Facebook traffic and Google Ads at the same time are at the forefront of online income. They know how to make their new blog a personal finance monetization machine. With the information provided to you in this article, you can go out and be one of those bloggers making money.
