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How To Monetize Your Blog and Make An Online Passive Income (5 Best Ideas)

Making money with blogging is quite an old method, but still very underrated.

In this blog post, I’m going to touch on how to monetize your blog and make a passive income.

Blogging started all the way back in the early 90’s. As soon as people were able to communicate with each other, more and more blogs were popping up.

They likely had no idea what was possible if they took blogging seriously. And still, lots of people are looking for 1001 other ideas to make money online.

Perhaps I just described you and you’ve tried multiple ways. In that case, I’m glad that you are reading this blog post. Matter of fact, I was the same.

I have to say.

Blogging is not something that will make you rich overnight, but I’m convinced that If you take this seriously it is definitely one of the best ways to make a sustainable and passive online income.

One of the biggest benefits is that you have to do the work once and if done right, you can reap the rewards years to come.

Take the time to know your audience, take the time to analyze their problem, take the time to find the solution, take the time to write blog posts about this solution, take the time to attract more people with the present problem and repeat.  

What do you notice?

That’s right. Take the time.

If you were thinking “how to make money quick and easy?”, think twice.

I want to emphasize this because you have to work hard in the beginning phase of the process.

After a couple of months, you will thank yourself.

But alright.

Blogging can be lucrative but requires dedication.

That’s why it is important to pick a good niche that you’d like to write about.

But that is another topic.

In this blog post, I assume that you already have a blog.

If not, I have created a really easy step by step guide how you can set up a blog for beginners. So check that out first.

If you’re really interested to learn how to start a successful and profitable blog as a beginner, I’ve created a FREE 4 Day Email course for you to help you out.

How To Start a Successful Blog From Scratch As a Beginner

In this blog post though, I will dig deeper into the following:

1. The Two Main Ingredients You Need To Make Money Off A Blog

Later on ,I will explain the best ways how you can generate a nice income with your blog.

But first ,there are 2 important factors you need to have in mind before thinking about the money making methods.

These elements are rather indispensable.

I’m talking about:

  1. having an audience and
  2. over deliver in combination with email marketing.

Let’s start with the first one.

2. How To Create 1000 Raving Fans

It is a misconception to think that you need hundreds of thousands of customers to earn some good money.

More is not always better.

Let me put it in perspective and ask you this question.

What do you prefer?

  1. Having a following of 20.000 people which consists mainly of folks that know you vaguely and only 3% (600 people) will convert every time you promote a product.
  2. Having a following of 1000 people which have a feeling they know you personally and buy virtually everything you recommend, because they want to do something in return for all the free valuable information they received and all problems that you’ve solved for them.  

In the first scenario ,you have a big following but only 600 people are really interested in you, while you invest a lot of time to find out what all the other ‘fans’ would like to see more of.

If all these 20.000 fans are on your mailing list, it means that you have to pay lots of money for this service (because this monthly expense depends on the number of subscribers you have on your list).

When you compare this to the 1000 raving fans it is obvious to choose for this option.

Fewer people to focus on = more time to enjoy life.

And they will even be going to make you more money.

This is the scenario you want to aim for.

Besides, it is completely in line with the 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto principle.

In case you are unfamiliar with this term, it states that you focus on 20% of the activities that will lead to 80% of the results.

pareto principle 80 20

For example…

You promote 10 products that will make you 1000 dollar per month.

Every single day you do keyword research, writing content, shooting videos and share it on multiple platforms for every product.

When you take a look at your stats, you come to the conclusion that only 2 of these products net you 800 dollars.

Are you still going to put time and effort into promoting the other 8 products or are you going to scale the 2 most profitable ones?

It’s obvious to me.

Work smarter and not harder.

The best part is that you can apply this principle in every aspect of life.

I tried it with working out in the gym.

When you are a beginner you have absolutely no idea what you are doing, so you just start to use every fitness machine there’s available.

After my 3 hour workout, every single muscle felt sore, but I didn’t stimulate it that much to let it grow.  

Once I’ve found out the principle I had a one-hour workout session and only focused on 2 specific body parts.

I saw my body rapidly growing.

My last example to apply the Pareto principle on is for studying.

This sounds probably familiar to you if you went to college.

When you start a new school year you receive a list with all the prescribed books you have to purchase and guess what.

They are unbelievably EXPENSIVE.

You think: well, it is a fresh year and I better do what the school advices.

So you buy these expensive books and keep reading this to study.

For a couple of weeks, you’ve been hitting the books hard and had almost no free time to yourself.

Then suddenly…

The exams are around the corner.

And you studied the entire school book, your notes, the lecture sheets, the assignments, and some additional lectures.

Guess what happened…

Chances are considerably high that you didn’t get the grade you hoped for and had not enjoyed your life.

You focused on too many stuff, so your head is full of non-important information as well.

Again, once I applied the 80/20 principle I let other dedicated students read the books and create book summaries.

I built trust and rapport, became friends with them and obtained the summary. In the meantime, I’do study a little bit, but had enough time to live my personal life.

When I studied for the exams I only focused on this summary and the lecture sheets (these are mini summaries as well, because apparently ,the professor thought it was important, otherwise he wouldn’t have mentioned it)

What were the results?

My grades went up because I only focused on what is important and filtered the ‘nice to know things’, I had enough time to enjoy my life and invest in myself to build online businesses.

After all, I graduated cum laude from the University of Amsterdam with a degree in Law, while pursuing a laptop lifestyle and generate a passive income online.  

That is the power of the 80/20 rule.

So back to the 1000 true fans.

Do your best to focus on acquiring, and satisfying them, because they are incredibly valuable.

The best way to get these raving fans is the following:

The concept is very simple.

Just make sure that they like, know, and trust you.

That is it.

Think about it. Do you buy something from someone you don’t trust?

Hell no.

Would you buy something from a friend if he sells you something himself or recommends a product?

If it is a good friend, yeah, you likely would.

The best part of having raving fans is that they will keep buying products from you for months and even years to come, but only if you provide enough value and they still like, know and trust you.

Let it sink in for a moment.

3. Transparency, Over Deliver And Utilize Email Marketing

Like I already mentioned your fans need to like, know and trust you.

But how do you accomplish this?

Well, think about it. There are 2 methods in my opinion.

Create Transparency

When do you trust somebody?

The more you know that person, the more you trust him or her.

With ‘know’ I really mean know personal things about that person.

  • Know his story.
  • Know why he embarked on his journey.
  • Know what keeps that person driven.
  • Know what his future goals are.
  • But I also mean know what basketball club he supports.
  • Know what pets he or she has.

The more personal information you acquire (positive information), the more the person climbs the ladder of trust.

I mean, do you trust the uncle of an acquaintance?

Not in the first place right. You don’t know anything about him.

But what about your friend whom you’ve hung out with the recent years?

That is obvious, right.

So the first methods is to be transparent and open as possible.

Over deliver

Share your story with your followers and help them solving their problems in the meantime.

Yes, I say it again ‘solving problems’.

That is the main part of being an entrepreneur or someone who wants to earn money with whatever he or she is doing.

The more problems you solve, the more money you make.

And.

The bigger and the more persistent the problem is, the more money you will receive if you solve it.

So how do you solve problems and be transparent when you don’t know anything about these people?

Well, of course you do some research by analyzing problems of like-minded folks. But that is a topic for another article.

What I mean is to create high-quality content, whether it is blog posts, videos, podcasts or whatever.

This is exactly the way to discuss problems in depth and to sincerely help them by offering a solution.

When doing this right, they are so grateful to you that you took the time and the effort to make their problem disappear and they begin to become curious about what else you can offer them.

Because of the fact you helped them, they developed a certain trust, so selling products would go much easier.

Some of them become loyal customers for years.

So create content that will purely focus on solving the problems your ideal customer is struggling with. Don’t hold back, over deliver.

Show genuine interest, give them a feeling you understand them and help them take care of their problems.

It will build rapport and leads to easy sales.

The second method is to create high-quality content aimed at solving problems and thus over deliver.

Alright…

What do you do next?

Utilize Email Marketing To Make Sales

To make sure you can always get in touch with your followers, you need to collect their email address.

Why?

Because even though you provided lots of valuable information, not everyone is going to buy your stuff right away.

Actually, marketing expert Dr. Jeffrey Lant states that it takes 7 times for anyone to buy something from you.

He called this the ‘Rule of Seven’.

That’s why you need to get eyeballs on you as much as you can.

Be active on multiple social media platforms, write content, shoot videos, attend network events etc.

You need to be seen everywhere.

But let’s say someone read your blog in order to let him buy your products or your recommendations you need to follow up with that person to build the relationship.

The best way to follow up is to collect their email address and send them valuable content mixed with product promotions.

You are probably wondering: “how do I collect their email addresses and send these emails?”.

Use an email marketing service.

email marketing how to use

Every big blogger uses a good email marketing service for their blog or online businesses and you should do too.

A powerful email marketing service is GetResponse, because it is affordable and will simply do the job. It is an ‘All-in-one Email Marketing Platform to Grow Every Business’. At the time of writing, they offer plans with max 30% discount. I use GetResponse myself.

The best part is that once you’ve built your email list you’re able to keep approaching them with pre-written emails.

That is possible because of the autoresponder that is built in the email marketing software. By means of this autoresponder, it sends out a series of emails completely on autopilot as soon as someone subscribes to your list.

Like I already mentioned, your job from then on is to send them valuable content-rich emails mixed with promotional offers. But always make sure to provide more value than actually sell.

When the ‘Rule of Seven’ is applied you should aim for 5 value emails and 2 selling emails.

the rule of 7

value – value – value – soft sell – value – value – hard sell

Sometimes your visitors already know who you are.

It is up to you if you want to reduce the number of emails to 5.

In that case, your sequence looks like this.

value – value – soft sell – value – hard sell

So this is sort of the foundation of a blog that has a lot of potentials to make money.

Once you know how this process works, you can think about the monetization methods to earn passive income with your blog.

I’m going to point out 5 different ideas to make money blogging.

4. 5 Best Ways To Make Money Blogging

Chances are you were thinking this before you land on this blog:

‘how can I become a blogger and make money?’

You are lucky because I can help you with both.

I’ve written a simple step by step guide on how to set up a blog from scratch for beginners.

By following this guide you become a blogger within 20 minutes. So check it out!

how to start a successful wordpress blog from scratch on siteground (step by step beginners guide)

The second part, earn money through blogging is something every blogger really wants.

Doing what you love ( writing or recording content) and even getting paid for it.

But unfortunately not every blogger knows how to monetize their blog.

Most of the time they just write what’s popping up in their mind or what they experienced that day, which is fine.

But they seriously leave money on the table.

So let’s go over some monetizing strategies in more detail.

4.1 How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

This is definitely the best way to make money online in my opinion.

I agree with the following description of affiliate marketing by marketeer Pat Flynn.

Affiliate marketing is a way of earning commissions by promoting other people’s products.”

Imagine that you could get paid for all those times that you recommend a product to others you use yourself.

Just take a moment and think about it.

How many times did you recommend stuff to people so they can enjoy the same benefits as you?

Well, if I speak for myself I was constantly doing this.

A lot of companies (very big ones too) are eager to work with you and offer nice commission rates. Take Amazon for example.

The biggest online eCommerce store in the world has an affiliate program.

When you refer people to a product from Amazon and they buy it, or another product within 24 hours, you get rewarded.

amazon affiliate partner program monetize

Amazon utilizes a commission percentage of up to 10% (dependent on the type of product), which means that when you send a visitor of your blog to Amazon through your affiliate link and they buy, for example, a brand new tv for $1600, you’ll receive $160.

$160 for just referring someone, insane!

Imagine if you refer 1 person every single day, that means you’ll earn $4800 a month.

What would you do with an extra $3840 every month?

Visualize it for a second.

But now we are talking about Amazon and their physical products. You also have the opportunity to promote digital products, like software or ebooks.

It totally depends on your niche but I highly suggest to take a look at this kind of offers, because the commission percentage is quite higher than physical products.

A 50-80% commission percentage is common for digital products.

How do you find companies with an affiliate program?

It is very simple. When you visit an eCommerce store, like Amazon, Walmart or eBay, you scroll to the bottom of the page and look for ‘affiliates’, ‘affiliate program’, or ‘partners’ near or in the footer.

amazon affiliate marketing program

An alternative way of finding affiliate programs is to enter ‘the company name + affiliate’ in the Google Search bar.

Anyone can sign up. It is FREE, so you’re able to earn a small commission if someone purchases through your link, without any extra costs.

It is a good way to make money passively.

Sounds interesting?

Apart from these separate affiliate programs, there are several popular affiliate networks where you can apply to promote their products as well.

Examples are:

  • Clickbank
  • CJ
  • JVzoo
  • Markethealth

These networks give product creators the opportunity to place their digital products on the affiliate marketplace so that it can be promoted by affiliates like you.

That means that there are thousands of products available and ready to get sold.

One important tip is to only promote offers you have really used yourself, because then you have a better understanding of the quality.

When you start to refer people and convince them to buy crappy products, you lost all your credibility you’ve worked so hard to gain in the first place.

If you are really serious about affiliate marketing, I have a 4-Day Free Training you should see.

Online Passive income course

Affiliate marketing is my favorite on the list. It enables you to generate a passive income quite easily. 

4.2 How To Make Money With Your Own Info Products

This is a method I recommend to start with once you’ve learned the basics of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing gives you the opportunity to develop countless sales skills which come in handy when you are ready to sell your own products.

The main benefit of selling your own products is that you have everything in your own hand, which means you can determine your own price and therefore your own profit margins.

what is an digital info product

And if the vendor stops selling products that you promote does that mean you also stop earning commissions.

Having own products gives you lots of freedom.

Again, the type of products to focus on if you are looking for the big money is digital products and in particular digital info products.

What are digital info products?

You can think about an online course on how to bake a pie or an online video training which teaches you how to burn more calories.

The product needs to have an informative element.

I hope you recognize the pattern.

Info products solve people’s problems. Exactly what you need to do to make money.

The fact that the products are digital, makes it very interesting because you have low overhead costs.

You do not need a team that handles shipping, you do not need packaging and you do not have to worry that the product would be damaged or missing.  

When you create an info product, it is your own little baby and something you’ve worked hard for to achieve.

Imagine the satisfaction you would get if you help to change people’s lives with your OWN product!

The downside is that you have to do customer service. Buyers have questions or changed their mind and might want a refund.

Fortunately, this work is easy to outsource, but it is still something you have to keep in mind and of course have enough money to invest in outsourcing.

Selling digital info products is a very lucrative way of making money online!

4.3 How To Make Money With Sponsored Posts

Chances are you’ve come across some sponsored blog posts often when surfing the web.

It is a viable business model that results in instant gratification because you get paid instantly when you wrote the article.

This method is kind of straightforward.

Your blog will get noticed by companies in your niche, let’s say photography for example.

They like the way you write and you probably have matching audiences, so they try to get in contact with you.

Once they slid into your email inbox, they will offer you a deal to write an article about a product they really like to have in front of your audience.

Most of the time it is a review type of post.

After you’ve arranged the conditions and the rewards, they will send the product to you to test it out.

Next, you write an honest and sincere review, because you do not want to fool your readers, and simply get paid.

The rule of thumb is that the bigger your audience, the more money you could potentially earn.

I know some bloggers who receive $2000 offer deals weekly.

Making money with sponsored posts is not really for beginners, but it’s still a method which could let to a nice extra income when you grow your blog and gained more authority.

4.4 How To Make Money With Advertising

Have you seen ads on top of or in the sidebar of a website?

This person or company utilizes advertising to make money with their website.

There are several types of ad payouts. Most popular ones:

  • Based on CPM: cost per mille. You get paid a couple of cents or dollars per 1000 views.
  • Based on CPC: cost per click. You get paid some bucks when a person clicks on the ad and gets redirected.

Perhaps you realized it yourself, you need a lot of traffic to make a 5-figure monthly income.

Well, you basically need traffic and the right niche. Some niches are not profitable at all.

To figure out which ones produce the most money, you simply look for ‘CPC’ in Ubersuggest, Google keyword planner or with the Keywords Everywhere extension.

keyword research ubersuggest

Some profitable niches are:

  • Law
  • Real estate
  • Mortgage
  • Trading
  • Finance

How to get these ads on my website?

To advertise on your website you need to sign up for ad networks.

The most popular one is Google Adsense. It is completely free to apply.

Google_AdSense monetize

As a small blogger, this is a method you could use but it would not bring in a lot of money.

Apart from that, it often looks spammy, especially when you put these ads all over your blog, which has a negative effect on your visitors and your sincerity.

Monetize your blog with advertising and make passive income online is easy to do, but not something I would recommend.

Finally.

We have reached the last method.

4.5 How To Make Money With Guest Blogging

Blogging starts to get more popular and the trend is that bloggers are reaching out to each other to share tips, tricks and experiences.

In other words, blogging leads to new contacts and maybe to potential business opportunities.

One type of collaboration is guest blogging.

Blogger A writes a detailed article on Blogger B’s blog (did you notice that beautiful alliteration? Haha) and links back to his own blog so readers who like the way of writing would take a look at the blog of Blogger A.

This means that Blogger A receives much more traffic to his blog because he’s likely in the same niche as Blogger B and has a similar audience.

Once they visited his blog and read other articles, Blogger A tries to capture their email address and turn them into a raving fan.

In addition, Blogger A got a backlink to his own blog from Blogger B’s blog, which is a very positive signal in the eyes of Google.

His blog will rank higher in search engines.  

You are probably thinking: alright, it is all fun and games, but how do I monetize my blog with this method.

Well…

Once your blog reached a certain point that it attracts lots of visitors and it has gained quite some authority, other blogs would rank much faster and higher if you link out to their websites in your articles.

Linking out has some real value.

So the answer is trading.

You trade heir written article on your blog for a link back to their blog.

And people really do pay for a link to their website.

Wealth is not always about money. Like Benjamin Franklin said:

‘Time is money’.

And all millionaires try to buy time.

So one way to help your blog grow is to reach out to other bloggers in the same niche and ask them to write a high-quality blog post for them, so they could link out to you (free or paid).

Your blog would rank higher on Google and becomes more known. Other bloggers will contact you to do the same for your blog: they want to write articles in exchange for a link back to their website. If you have a small blog you won’t charge them because you could need the content. Once you have become an authority in your niche it’s time to make a nice extra income from it.  

That’s the process.

How To Start a Successful Blog From Scratch As a Beginner

7. In Summary

In this article, we’ve discussed how to monetize your blog and make passive income online as a beginner, although I shared some advanced tactics as well.

One thing to keep in mind when you have a blog is to focus on your truest fans. When you’ve build a connection, trust and rapport with 1000 of them you never need to worry about money again.

Make sure that you are transparent and over deliver with high-quality posts. Transparency will lead to trust and high-quality posts will lead to solving problems.

Combine these two and you have a goldmine.

An email autoresponder will automate the entire process and convert readers into buying customers, without you doing any work.

In my opinion, these 5 ways to make money online with blogging are worth to try.

  • Affiliate marketing
  • Info product creation
  • Sponsoring
  • Advertising
  • Guest blogging

Now I want to turn it over to you:

Which way of monetizing a blog is your favorite?

Do you join me with affiliate marketing?

Or maybe you like to create info products?

Just let me know by leaving a comment below right now.

And if you like this post I would really appreciate if you share this article with friends or family!

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