How To Make Money Blogging In 2021
Is it still possible to make money blogging in 2021? Do you already have a blog or are you planning to create one?
Do you feel a bit confused while virtually all the world tells you “you must start your blog right now”?
I’ve been here and, quite frankly, working things out might not be an easy task. If that’s the case, I hope that this post will clarify things for you, helps you to understand more about blogging and if it’s something that fits you.
If you keep reading, you will find valuable insights on how to make money blogging and tips on how to start that journey if you will.
Let’s begin!
Is Blogging Dead?
Many say that blogging is saturated and today you have no chance to get traffic and succeed with all the competition that exists in the blogging space.
Of course, if you started a blog 15 years ago it would have been easier. Back then you just had to write a couple of posts to get organic traffic from search engines. You just needed content, not even good content.
Today, things have changed in the sense that you won’t be successful being average. But that’s actually good news because you can definitely provide an experience to your readers that is better than average (more on this later).
Blogging not only is still alive, it’s growing!
Every single day more and more people are coming online to learn something. Just like you are here because you’re interested in learning about blogging and understanding if it’s a good way to make money.
Forget the nayseyers, they won’t help you!
Can You Really Make Money Blogging?
The short and simple answer to the question “can I make money blogging” is: yes, you definitely can!
Are you planning to become rich overnight? That probably won’t happen.
While creating a blog is one of the best ways to generate income online over the long term, it takes work and some time to create content, to build trust, and to rank on search engines.
Blogging is a journey.
A journey that I think it’s worth taking. Even if you don’t make any money (which is unlikely if you do what it takes) you learn a ton of useful skills that you can take to any other job or project you are going to launch in you life.
Make Money Blogging: Hype or Reality?
It’s easy to stumble upon sites that tell you that you can make some strange amount of money in a given period of time… headlines like “Learn how to make $1847/month with your blog” or “Amazing! I just made $53K this month with this simple strategy”.
Most of the time, these are just clickbait headlines, and soon after you enter the site you realize that there is some promotion that they want you to click on.
Realize that there is a lot of shit out there. Many websites on how to create a blog immediately say you need to register a hosting plan with and quickly install WordPress and you are ready to go.
This is how “they” make money, but at the end of the day there is little advice on how you can make money blogging.
Don’t get me wrong, sooner or later you are going to need a hosting plan, but as you can see in this guide on how to start a blog and make money, the technical stuff is one of the last things you have to care about.
In order to create a successful blog and make money, you need to understand your audience first.
How To Create A Successful Blog: Know Your Audience.
This is where people that tell you to install WordPress as the first thing to do fall short. Blogging is much more than setting up a website and creating content.
In order to be a successful blogger, you have to create content with a purpose.
The most important question you can ask yourself not to waste time and to put things into perspective is:
Why people visit a particular blog?
The answer is that they visit a blog because they have a problem they want to be solved!
If they can’t see that you can help them solve their problems in 3 seconds they go away and never come back.
You clearly need to know who you are talking to.
Of course you can start getting some ideas on profitable niches, but to create a blog that works, you need to be specific.
To create a successful blog you must understand their problem so well that they can see you as the way to solve their problems.
Someone that actually has good information that can be useful to achieve the desired result. That’s when people start to pay attention.
Think of your audience as one person. Understand his pain points and create content that speaks directly to him or her.
Once you created content around one single specific topic that provides a valuable answer to that person’s problems, move on to something else related to those needs, and apply the same process.
In order to make money blogging, you need an audience that’s willing to spend money to solve their problem. This is the first step needed to get them interested.
The Secret To Make Money Blogging: Offer A Valid Solution
We already mentioned the importance of providing a great experience for your reader in order to stand out.
This is not for it’s own sake.
In order to provide a great experience, you must know exactly who you are talking to and this helps you to make money blogging because you actually don’t have to sell.
Why people buy?
People buy something because they believe that the purchase will solve their problem and will make them feel better than they currently do.
If you studied you audience and you can relate with them, you can figure out what they need to feel better.
If you established yourself as someone they can trust, you can create specific offers and recommend products that they are willing and happy to purchase from you because they trust you.
Once you are at this level, it will be a lot easier to monetize your blog and there is a ton of ways that you can do that. Please note that no monetization strategy is useful if you don’t solve a specific problem for a specific audience.
Once you target an audience and start to solve their problem, whether it will be affiliate marketing, products, or services, your monetization strategy is based on converting that trust into money and you don’t need to push people to buy.
How Bloggers Make Money Online
There are multiple ways bloggers can make money online with their websites.
Making money blogging not only is 100% possible, but it’s also a great way to generate passive income while helping other people.
Although I encourage you to structure your project with monetization in mind from day 1, what you should really focus on is producing content that solves the audience problem and promotion of your blog.
That’s for a simple reason.
To earn money with your blog you need traffic.
Without people coming to your blog you’ll never make a dime. First you need to connect with people and provide valuable information, once you have an audience you start to monetize.
Once you have a decent amount of pageviews and people that subscribed to your mail list, you can use those monetization methods to generate income through your website:
- Selling your services — freelancing is the fastest way to make money with your blog although it’s not passive. Whatever skill you have (writing, photography, design, social media manager … virtually any skill can be monetized), you can sell it as a service and use your blog as a platform to find customers. Let people know what you’re good at and advertise it on your blog so they can hire you with a click of a button.
- Affiliate programs — affiliate marketing is one of the top strategies that bloggers use to make money online. When you provide a link to a product (that you are an affiliate for), if someone clicks on that link and makes a purchase, the company or the person that offers that service recognizes you a commission at no extra cost to the person who clicked on the link. A lot of the biggest brands have affiliate programs that you can join and start to make money with your blog in a way that is 100% passive.
- Sponsored posts — when a brand or company pays you to write a blog post featuring their product that’s a sponsored post. You can look for brands in your niche that you like and that provide solutions for your audience and write a review post.
- Online courses — together with affiliate marketing, selling your own online courses is one of the major sources of revenue that you can have as a blogger. Once you have a set of skills and experiences that other people want to learn, you can package them into an online course that provides actionable steps and advice making them achieve their results faster compared to learning through trial and error.
- Ad Networks — you can display advertisements on your website and earn money as people click on the advertisements. There are many different ad networks that you can join, like Google Display or Mediavine. In order for ads to work, you need a lot of website visitors because you get paid for the clicks. Be careful with ads because they might ruin the overall user experience and web design, making everything look too cluttered
Conclusion
We made it to the end! I hope this post helped you to understand more about blogging and provided you insights on how to make money blogging.
If you’re willing to put in the time and learn how to create a successful blog, it’s a great way to generate a decent side income that has the potential to replace your primary source of income in the long term.
Most bloggers make nothing, absolutely zero money from their blogs. However, that isn’t surprising because few of them are willing to do the work, to put in the effort, learn new things, test, and stay consistent.
Ranking takes time. At the very beginning, you have to keep going even if your traffic is zero and focus on providing value for a specific audience.
If you want to know more on how to start a blog, this guide will surely help you.
Creating a blog is a great way to establish trust with people and make money while helping them.
Once your audience trusts you, it’s easy to recommend products or services or sell your own product and services because they are useful ways to solve their problems.
The number of internet users is growing, people are more and more accustomed to check things online and get more information before doing a purchase and overall they are spending more money online than ever before because we are more and more familiar with online shopping than we were in the past.
Creating a blog might not be easy, but it’s definitely worth it. Are you ready to give blogging a go?
