I think blogging is one of the best ways to make money online in 2022. I've been building my own money making content sites over the past few years and I'm going to teach your how to make money blogging as well.
Is Blogging a Good Way to Make Money?
Blogging is one of the best ways to make money. Here's why:
- Low Startup Costs – Starting a traditional business like a bar can cost upwards of $100,000. Starting a blog costs less than $100.
- Huge Potential for Scale – Because blogs can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection you have an opportunity to reach a huge number of customers.
- Work from Anywhere – You can work on a blog anywhere you have access to the internet. It's perfect for working from home, or working while traveling.
- Easy to Pivot – If your blog isn't making money, the costs of switching to another niche are basically zero. You can keep changing and adapting to find what works.
- Blogs are Appreciating Assets – As long as you keep updating or adding new content and improving your blog, it will also increase in value.
- Blogs can be a ticket to greater wealth – One of the fastest ways to make a million dollars is to sell a business. Blogs can be sold just like any other business.
Here are the Top Ways to Make Money Blogging in 2022
If you own a blog these are the top ways it can generate income:
- Affiliate Marketing
- Sponsored Content and Partnerships
- Selling Digital and Physical Products
- Advertising
- Selling Services related to your Blog
Most blogs use a combination of methods and I go into a deep dive on how each of these methods work below.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is potentially the most profitable way to make money blogging. Affiliate marketing is where you link to a product or service. When someone clicks that link and makes a purchase, you make a commission.
Affiliate commissions can range anywhere from a dollar right up to hundreds of dollars. Have you ever wondered why there are so many financial comparison sites (credit cards, investing apps etc)? These sites make hundreds of dollars per commission. Niches like Health and Finance pay the highest affiliate commissions but you can make good money from pretty much any site topic.
If you're looking for the easiest way to make money blogging pick a product that has an affiliate program and think about some of the posts you can create that will drive buyers to that product. Reviews and comparison type posts work great at this.
Sponsored Posts
Over the last couple of years sponsored posts have exploded. Traditional online advertising such as banner ads don't really work anymore. So advertisers have been looking at new opportunities. Sponsored posts or Native Content is a popular way to make money from an established blog. You can charge hundreds of dollars per post and the best thing is you don't need to rely on a third party ad network like Adsense.
Advertisers are looking for two things when they buy sponsored posts – traffic (in the form of clickthroughs) or SEO value. Some advertisers just want a link on your blog. Where as others want to drive sales. To appeal to advertisers buying sponsored posts you'll need a blog with traffic or a blog with good SEO value (such as domain authority). These things take time to build so I recommend starting by focusing on affiliate income. When your blog grows you can start selling sponsored posts.
One thing to be aware of with selling sponsored posts – you don't want to fill your blog with low quality posts that aren't related to your niche. So be picky and know your worth. Always negotiate a higher fee than what you're initially offered.
Selling Products
If you have a blog with an audience you can leverage this audience and sell products to them. For example if you have a popular blog about productivity and time management you could sell digital printables such as planners, calendars and note takers. If you owned a health related blog, you could sell access to a diet plan.
Products can be difficult and time consuming to create. But once you've created a product, they can generate passive income for years.
Advertising
Advertising has long been a popular choice for monetising blogs. In 2022 Adsense isn't the only option for selling ads on a blog. Mediavine and Ezoic are two popular alternatives and they are popular with bloggers.
Advertising works best on informational content. For example “How to Fix a Rusty Bike Chain”. This type of article might not be hugely successful with affiliate marketing but could work well with display advertising. Display ads are also a popular choice with Food and Recipe Blogs.
Selling Services
Many bloggers use their blogs to sell related services. For example a photographer could use their blog to attract new clients. In this scenario your blog wouldn't be the main source of income. It would simply be a lead generation tool. Of course if your blog becomes popular enough, it could replace your “service” income. Many professionals started blogging simply to promote an existing product or service and have gone onto become full-time bloggers.
How Much Money can a Blog Make?
If you're serious about running your blog as a business then it's possible to generate an equivalent full-time income from blogging. Some of the top blogs make over $100k per month.
I've put together this table with a sample of some successful blogs who share their income reports.
Monthly Incomes from Bloggers (Feb 2022)
| Blog | Niche | Income (Feb 2022) |
|---|---|---|
| PassiveIncomeUnlocked | Various | $28896 |
| FreedomInABudget | Personal Finance | $3280.18 |
| ThymeAndJoy | Food | $5388.29 |
| LivingTheDream | Travel | $6130 |
| BitesWithBri | Food | $1508 |
If you're looking for inspiration then those blogs are a great place to get motivated to build your own money making blog.
How to build your own money making blog
The best time to start a blog is right now. The good news is that starting a blog is easier than ever.
For beginners I highly recommend SiteGround. They have a really slick onboarding process that will get your WordPress blog setup in a matter of minutes. They also offer really good support.
As your blog grows your blog will be well served by SiteGround. They offer tools to make your blog load super fast (which is important for ranking well on Google) as well as free SSL, wordpress staging sites, enhanced WordPress security and much more.
I use SiteGround to run most of my niche money making blogs and it works perfectly.
Both of these hosts are popular and used by many of the top bloggers.