How to earn money from a Blog

Before we start, I would like to tell you that I am not going to sell any fascinating story. I will be true to the profession and will share the facts with you. If you are new to Blogging then let me tell you that it is possible to earn money from a blog.

How?

How to Earn Money from a Blog

Well, there is no bible on blogging which can take you to success. No one can claim to know 5 or 10 or 15 steps to success. But people can guide you to the process. I am into blogging for a while now and I have seen several people earning lakhs every month by just blogging.

In this article, I will discuss different ways to earn money from a blog. The most popular and successful ways of earning money from blogging are:-

1. Affiliate Marketing
2. Sponsored Advertisements
3. Google Adsense

There are bloggers in India and worldwide who are earning lakhs per month using the above ways. I follow a couple of bloggers. While one earns around 20 lakhs/month the other has reached a figure of 5 lakhs/month. But they have worked hard to succeed. Both had their struggles and they fought it to become successful.

So there are many ways to earn money from blogging but you need to be consistent. Let us discuss these three ways in detail:-

1. Affiliate Marketing

This is the most successful way of earning money from blogging.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

You help a company sell its products and get the commission in return for every sale. There are two ways to join affiliate programs.

1. Affiliate Marketplace
2. Direct Affiliate Programs

Websites such as Flipkart, Amazon have their affiliate programs. You can join them, promote their products and claim your commission after each sale. Another way is to join a marketplace where many companies offer affiliate programs. Some of the market places are ShareASale, ClickBank.

Affiliate Marketing is a successful way to earn money. Most of the bloggers earn their maximum chunk through affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is profitable because for some niche companies pay as much as 10% and even more commission. The commission entirely depends on the niche and affiliate program you have joined.

2. Sponsored Advertisements

This is something similar to Affiliate Marketing. But in this case, you just have to divert the traffic to the website of the company/organization. This is also a good way to earn money but in this case, you will be on the mercy of the organization for the payments. In blogging language, we call it generating leads for the client.

In this way, you can display banner ads, the text ads on the articles. When the user clicks on the add he/she is redirected to the website of the company. This kind of earning is done when your customers are Colleges, Banks, etc.

3. Google Adsense

This is one of the most primitive ways to earn money online. You have to register to the Google Adsense account. Once the request is accepted the advertisements will be put on your website.

In this mode of earning the website owner earns for every unique click on the advertisement. Each keyword has CPC(cost per click) associated with it. On every click, the amount as per the CPC is claimed by the owner of the website. To earn a good amount from AdSense you need to have a huge amount of traffic on your website.

How do we start earning?

There is a lot we need to do before we start earning. Below are the three major steps:-
1. Select a niche
2. Create a Blog
3. Generate Traffic

The first step is just a decision you need to make. But an incorrect decision can cost you months of time, energy and a lot of money. Hence this is one of the most vital decisions you need to make in your blogging career.

1. How to choose the correct niche?

1. Choose a less competitive niche

Why?

Because high competition will make it tough for your articles to rank in the top 10. Sometimes it takes months to move the article a couple of places up.

2. Choose a niche which is of your interest

Why?

You will not get bored about researching and publishing the content if the niche is of your interest.

3. The niche should have a good amount of traffic

Why?

Definitely, the niche should have a good amount of traffic. Otherwise, you would not be able to generate substantial traffic for your clients.

2. Create a Blog

There are many ways to create a blog. Two most popular CMS(content management system) are:-
1. WordPress
2. Blogspot

But if you want to get into professional blogging then WordPress is the platform you must choose. WordPress gives you a lot of flexibility. There are multiple plugins, themes available for every functionality you wish to add. You can host your site on wordpress.com or you can have a self-hosted website. Currently, my website is hosted on GoDaddy.com. I am quite happy till now with the performance of my website and services, customer support of GoDaddy.com.

Recently I faced a 500 error due to some changes I had done in my content.php. GoDaddy customer support helped me resolve the issue within half an hour.

There are many themes available to give a great look and feel to your website. Themes play an important role in the SEO of your content. Hence you must choose theme wisely after the extensive research. I will soon publish an article on why I changed my theme from Bug Blog to Genesis.

3. Generate Traffic

Blogging is not just about creating content and sharing knowledge. You need to create an audience for your work. There is no value without any audience. The audience can be build by marketing your products. There are multiple ways you can market your product.

1. Social Media – you can promote your content on FB, Watsapp groups, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and other social media platforms as well
2. QnA Sites – this is also a very good and successful way of promoting your content. You can answer on the QnA sites such as Quora, Yahoo and link back to your content.
3. Guest Post – third way is to write a post on any other website and link back to your own content.

These three are the most prominent ways of promoting your content and creating an audience for your work.

On a very high level, we have discussed almost everything one must understand before starting a blogging business. There is something more I want to discuss with you. I have noticed that you will get most of the information on the internet. But no one talks about strategy. In my experience taking decisions and making the correct strategy is the most important of all the other things. You need to have a good strategy in place to attract traffic to your blog. There are many tools which help in understanding the trend, analyzing the keywords and spying the competitors. Some of the best tools in the market are:-
1. Ahref
2. Semrush
3. Moz
4. Majestic
5. SpyFu

There are many more. You can use the one you wish to. I will soon write an article on How Semrush helped me strategize the perfect plan.