One of the most popular questions we get is how does having a blog help entrepreneurs make money online? And is it still a good idea to build a blog? This article answers those questions by walking you through ten ways successful bloggers are making money with a blog.

Blogging is a popular way for individuals to share their knowledge, ideas and experiences with a wide audience. It's also one of the most popular ways to make money online.

Making money with a blog is how regular people are losing the commute, ditching childcare issues, saving money on gas and wear and tear on their cars, as well as saving money on their clothing budget.  

They are also saving time (that thing you can never get back) that used to be spend just getting to a job each day. 

Blogging is not only a great way to make money, it's also a great way to save money. 

Individuals are using a blog to take themselves out of consumer only mode, where they are buyers of products and services and placing themselves into supplier mode where they contribute with products and services of their own.

They are using their hobbies, skills and interests to work from home, using a blog as their income generating, content management and distribution system that brings in active and passive income.

By creating valuable content (also called content marketing) and building a sizable audience with lead generation and email marketing, bloggers can turn their passions into a profitable business.

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When setting out to earn from a blog, it's important that you're intentional about your goals, and what you want to accomplish with your blog.

It's also important to choose a niche and products that people in your chosen niche are looking for. Finally, be sure to establish income goals, and identify the daily income generating activities that will lead to success.

The Steps to Earning with a Blog

Take a look at these blog monetization methods and click the additional resources that are highlighted to learn how to get started. 

Share Your Knowledge

1. Course creation. Many people have hobbies, skills and interests that they can share with their target audience and earn passive income. Putting together a course is a great way to show others how to reach their goals using the knowledge you've gained. There are many platforms that will enable you to create courses with ease. The WordPress tools we use to create and sell courses are Thrive Architect and WooCommerce.

Digital Products: Items You Make

2. Sell digital products. Digital products are products that you create. They can include printables, guides, PDFs, templates, eBooks, tutorials and yes, blogs. A blog post is a digital product that can be monetized in the ways we discuss in this post.

If you've got Canva, Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or Adobe skills, you can use these platforms to create digital products that you can sell online in your own eCommerce shop, in various marketplaces and more. 

Affiliate Products: Items Made by Others

3. Become an affiliate. With affiliate marketing, you partner with other brands to sell their products to your target audience. You create content that promotes your advertiser's products to your audience. For each referral, you can be paid a one time fee, a percentage of the sale price or a recurring fee. 

Offer a Service

4. Sell services. There are lots of services you can offer to help consumers and other businesses reach their goals. The services you offer will depend on the niche you are serving and the needs of the consumers in that niche.

Here is a list of side hustle services and ideas you can offer customers to earn money either full or part time.

If you're serving the B2B market, services you can provide might include freelance writing, social media management, calendar management, coaching, consulting, accounting, website design, bookkeeping services and more. 

Offer Tiered Memberships

5. Offer a paid membership. You can use your blog to offer tiered services, enabling your audience to join your membership to get premium content and services.  You can offer lower level, intermediate and advanced content offerings. You can set up a membership site on WordPress using a tool like Thrive Suite. 

Reach Your Audience Through Audio

6. Create a podcast. Podcasting gives your business a way to meet your audience where they are. No matter what they are doing, they can receive your tips, and resources. They can put on their headset and listen while they are working out, waiting at their doctor's office, they can listen in their cars over Bluetooth, and stream it through their soundbar or portable speakers. 

Listen to Our Latest Podcast Episode

The Fortune is In the Follow Up - Bloggers Build Lists and Market Their Content

7. Email marketing. When starting your blog, one of the first goals you should work toward is building your list. This is also known as following up.

This will involve signing up with an email marketing provider like Mailchimp, aWeber, Convertkit and there are many more providers available.

Once you select a provider, you will need to connect your email marketing provider to your blog using an API connection. We use Thrive Architect and MailChimp for our follow up system.

The goal with email marketing is to distribute your content (through a newsletter, online communities, social media and other channels), to an audience of people that know, like and trust you.

A email list is a group of people you who have given you their contact information so that they can learn more about your business.

Learn more about email marketing and how building a list can help you sell more products and services. 

Download our ebook The Beginner’s Guide to Building an Engaged Email List that walks you through a step by step process you can use to grow your business. 

The primary focus when following up should be placed on the solutions (value) you can add to help your audience reach their goals.

Your follow up system will enable you to build an audience you can share your best content with. You can inform and educate your audience about your business over time and build a relationship that hopefully results in more leads and sales.

Short on Time? Watch This Video

The Traditional Model

8. Sell physical products. With the addition of an eCommerce store, you can sell physical products that you make or purchase from other sources.

If your blog is self hosted, WordPress.org (versus WordPress.com), you can integrate WooCommerce, a free open source eCommerce platform into your blog. 

Other popular platforms you can use to sell physical products include Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix, Squarespace and others. You can also sell physical and digital products you make in various marketplaces like Etsy and Facebook.

Provide An On Demand Solution

9. Sell print on demand products. Print on demand is a great way to start an online business without having to store products in your home, or worry about shipping your products to places across the world.

You can create products like t-shirts, mugs, home decor, digital products and books related to your niche, and sell them online, either in your own eCommerce store or in online marketplaces like Etsy.

If you're on WordPress.org, and you're using WooCommerce as your eCommerce platform, your blog can be connected to a number of print on demand partners, including Printful and Printify. If you're an author, you can sell your books on Amazon, Barnes and Nobile Press and integrate with a print on demand partner called LuLu.

Buy Low... Sell at a Profit

There's Nothing Like a Bonus

By offering reviews to your peers, you are helping others to understand the inside tips, resources and equipment needed to run their business.

Reviews tell both sides of the story, the things that work well and the things that don't work as well.

When providing reviews it's important to provide a fair and balanced evaluation. If you're only telling people about the pie in the sky reviews and not sharing the things that are not working that well you do yourself and your audience a disservice.  

If you've ever wondered how blogging could work for your business, this article should answer most of your questions. This is how bloggers are making money in every industry imaginable. And it's how you can get started with an online business that thrives.