Do you want to know how to make money blogging? Are you tired of the grind of peak-hour traffic and working long days for little reward?
Would you prefer to be working from home with more flexible working hours?
Starting a home business is the ideal way to balance the demands of your professional and personal life.
There are hundreds of small business ideas for a home office and work-from-home jobs. But if you can write, you can start a stay-at-home business very easily.
There are many ways to make money from writing
Have you thought about becoming a self-employed pro blogger or self-publishing author?
All the technology is available now for writers to publish their work online.
There are many ways to make money online from a writing career. All you need is an Internet connection.
You might immediately think of self-publishing as publishing ebooks and books on Amazon.
But this is only one of the many ways to publish and get paid for your writing.
Many writers are now learning to mix and match writing and publishing to maximize the income from their work.
Publishing ebooks on Kindle can be one way to sell your writing.
But if you love writing, blogging is becoming the most attractive way of making money every day of the year.
There are many choices and possibilities. You can work part-time to make some extra cash.
You can create a passive income stream in your spare time. Or you can work towards making blogging your full-time job.
How to make money blogging from home like a pro blogger
Many writers and authors are turning to monetized blogging as a full-time writing job.
I focus more now on blogging and content writing than on writing books. The return on my time invested is much higher.
Making money from blogging is about understanding that it is a business. If you do your research and learn how to identify your target market, you will stand a good chance of success.
Starting a blog is easy and extremely cheap.
You will need a self-hosted WordPress blog because it offers many monetizing functions, plugins, and tools.
However, the annual hosting cost is usually less than $150.00, which is not expensive.
If you already have a WordPress blog, you can adapt it to turn it into your new business.
Bloggers making money are always finely targeted to a niche online audience. In all cases, a successful blog will answer people’s questions when they search the Internet.
Great blogs are always highly informative, but at the same time, they should be entertaining and easy to read.
There are plenty of great topics for a focused blog.
You could think about ideas related to health and fitness or food and recipes. Beauty and fashion, lifestyle, and personal development are always popular.
You could look at pets, parenting, or publishing and writing, to name a few more.
You could even go a little more upmarket than a blog and start your own online magazine.
The most critical factor is narrowing down your blog subject to a specific target audience.
Define, fine-tune, and stay laser-focused
Successful blogs are always focused on an identifiable topic. Think about landscape photography, vinyl records, or for a recipe blog, low-carb recipes, or Madras curries.
A narrow focus is essential because blogs need to exploit Google, Bing, and Yahoo search engines for organic traffic.
Keywords are vital in getting blog visitors in large numbers. It is much easier to rank very high for keywords in a specific topic because they are less competitive.
Social media can play a role in gaining traffic, particularly in the early months.
But it is not as effective in the long term as search engine organic traffic and building an email list.
The essential characteristic of an excellent blog is that all articles are long-form, high-quality, accurate, and error-free.
Blog articles are published relatively quickly. So a premium online grammar and spell checker is a very wise investment.
Earning money from blogging relies on the volume of search engine traffic you can get.
The more visits you can get, the more money you can expect to make.
Building a blog
Building up site visits on a new blog takes time and a lot of work.
Never think that blogging will be a financial success from day one.
The idea that blogging can make quick cash, quick money, or money fast is for dreamers.
A new blog can take about a year to rank well, and earning keywords on search engines like Google takes time.
I would always suggest looking at a brand new blog for the first year or more as a part-time venture.
Wait until your site ranks well and gets around 20,000 visits a month.
Then you can certainly look at turning it into your full-time job.
Your first year will be spent writing a lot of quality long-form content for your site.
You will also be learning to apply excellent SEO practices to help you build a solid base of daily organic traffic.
You can help speed up the process considerably if you choose to use a premium SEO tool.
They can help you to build your ranking keywords faster and help you to write better, keyword-rich content.
Once you do all the hard work, you will start getting regular daily traffic to your blog.
Then you can then expect to be making money from blogging every day of the year.
20 Ways you can make money from your blog
1. Display advertising
Using some of your blog space or site real estate to display ads is the quickest way to start earning money.
Google Adsense is the easiest way to monetize a blog by allowing Google to show ads on your blog.
At first, it will earn pennies. But as your traffic builds, it can turn into a steady and reliable passive income payment every month.
Display ads are the most recognized, but in-article ads are less intrusive and pay well per click.
Other alternatives you could consider are Chitika, PopCash, InfoLinks, RevContent, PopAds, and MediaNet.
2. Affiliate marketing
Becoming an affiliate marketer is a great way to make money from blogging, but you need to put in some work.
Amazon Associates, ShareASale, Rakuten, ClickBank, and CJ Affiliate are the most popular affiliate programs.
But there are many others that are usually easy to join and to start earning sales commissions.
You can either allow space on your site for ads. Or you can use affiliate text links.
Including affiliate links naturally in your text is highly effective and less intrusive than ads.
3. Accept sponsored or advertorial content
An easy way of earning money is to accept sponsored posts, advertorial articles, or paid links on your blog.
Content marketers are always on the lookout for blogs that accept paid articles.
When your site is ranking well, you can expect to get a lot of emails and contact messages from content marketers.
Most will be offering to pay for publishing articles on your blog.
But be selective and only accept quality content. Publishing poor content could adversely affect your SEO.
4. Sell ebooks
Are you an author? The first products you should start selling on your blog are your books and ebooks.
But for a blogger, you can turn some of your blog posts into an ebook.
You can self-publish on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) to make some extra money.
Or you could use your ebook as a giveaway in exchange for an email address to help build your mailing list.
You could start a competition and give away an Amazon gift card to encourage more email subscribers.
Email marketing is a powerful tool. So never overlook an opportunity to increase your subscriber list.
5. Offer your services as an editor
Writers and authors are always looking for editing assistance.
If you have the skills, it can pay very well, especially for fiction and nonfiction books.
6. Become a proofreader
With more and more people publishing ebooks and books, there is a good market for proofreading.
Make sure you have a clear pricing table on your site.
Also, explain how you will provide your corrected copy to your clients.
7. Become a freelance writer
If you write well on your blog, you can use it as a reference point for new clients.
Blogs need a lot of posts, and many larger sites will pay for writers who can provide quality content.
Knowing how to write around SEO keywords will increase your chances of getting regular paying writing assignments.
You could try Upwork to find paying writing jobs.
But be careful of content mills that underpay writers. Do your research for websites that pay fairly for freelance writing.
8. Sell online courses
Online courses are becoming extremely popular. Perhaps you could offer online writing classes.
There are many types of courses you can develop and offer.
Think about the expertise you have.
It could be related to computers and technology, self-help topics, writing children’s books, or how to use WordPress.
9. Become a social media manager
Social media can be time-consuming for a lot of small businesses.
Do you have good social media skills?
You might find that clients are willing to outsource their social postings and interactions.
10. Become a virtual assistant
Do you have good administration skills?
If you can deliver good customer service, you can offer your services as an online personal assistant.
There are a lot of possibilities.
You could take on tasks like data entry, bookkeeping, or email management. This could be an opportunity for you.
11. Sell memberships
Your product here is premium content that you restrict to paying subscribers.
A membership site is not an easy model.
But it is one that is being tried more and more, especially by magazines and newspapers.
12. Sell Skype language lessons
If you have teaching experience, private language lessons by video can be very profitable.
Language lessons by Skype or any other online video-conferencing application are also attractive to busy business people.
The best part is that you can gain regular clients as well as a predictable weekly cash flow.
13. Sell your products
Combining Woocommerce with WordPress gives you the tools you need to sell products online.
Whatever product you decide to sell, Woocommerce has everything from credit card payments to shipping.
It is like owning your own shop.
But you don’t have to open the doors at 7 am every morning and sit behind a counter all day.
14. Offer WordPress troubleshooting or development
WordPress is a fantastic blogging platform. But bloggers can run into trouble.
If you have the expertise and experience, there is excellent potential to help new bloggers overcome issues or assist in developing their sites.
It can provide a very good income.
Keep your hourly rate reasonable and competitive, and it can turn into very good business.
15. Offer graphic design services
Are you a Photoshop expert?
If you are, then there is plenty of work out there to keep you busy.
You can work with authors for book covers or with bloggers for website designs and logos.
Infographics are another area you might look at for opportunities.
16. Become a coach
Whatever expertise or skill you have, there are people who would like to learn.
But this is a very one-on-one service and requires good interpersonal skills.
You could become a life coach, a writing coach, or even a blog coach.
17. Get paid to write reviews
Paid reviews are tricky. You can contact companies directly and ask to try their products or services.
Then in return, you write a review on your blog.
It is like payment in kind.
But you can also make a little money with online surveys from paying survey sites.
If you can combine your reviews with affiliate marketing for a product or service, it can then generate ongoing income.
18. Blog, but don’t have a blog
Writing for other blogs has two advantages. One is that you can just concentrate on writing.
The other is if you can get your articles published on high-ranking sites, you can expect a lot of traffic and readers.
Check each site’s submission guidelines and FAQs.
You might even be able to incorporate one or two of your affiliate links into your posts.
Look for sites with a Write For Us link or something similar in the footer of their site.
19. Flip your blog
If you have a blog that is getting reasonable traffic, you can flip it.
In other words, sell it.
You can check sites such as Flippa or Empire Flippers for how it works.
20. Ask for donations
Sometimes it works, but there are no guarantees.
Forget all about selling, promoting, and advertising.
Simply put a Paypal donate button on every page of your blog and see what happens.
You never know.
Conclusion
If you want to make money from home by blogging and writing, you can.
It is much easier today than it was years ago.
All the tools and resources you need are at your fingertips.
You can successfully publish books and ebooks or start a career in pro blogging or content writing for paying sites.
But you need to decide if you want a long-term business or a part-time hobby. It can be hard work and time-intensive.
But there are definitely financial rewards if you take it step by step.
Would you prefer working from home rather than spending time on the freeway or train commuting to work?
Then blogging is something you might consider. You will certainly save money on all your commuting costs.
However, if you start a blog, be patient. It takes time to drive traffic to a new blog.
But in the end, a successful blog can earn you a very regular amount of money each month.
Related reading: How To Write A Blog Post To Attract Attention And More Readers