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¿How to win money with a blog?

I think that for all of us who dedicate ourselves to the world of blogging or want to dedicate ourselves it is the great question of the million, right?

I still remember the day when I told my family that I wanted to be a blogger.

They looked at me with a puzzled face saying "What has bitten this man now?"

They did not believe that I could make money with my blog and even less that I could make a living from it.

But the reality is that now I can proudly say that yes you can.

It doesn't matter if you have a cooking, travel, photography, fashion, personal blog, etc.

They are blogs that can be monetized as long as it is done with strategy.

In this way at the same time as telling you different ways to earn money with a blog at the same time I am going to give you a series of tips and mistakes you shouldn't make.

Can you make money from a blog?

Before telling you different ways to earn money with a blog, I would like to answer a question that I am often asked many times.

Is it feasible to earn quick money with a blog?

Lately I read in many places that creating a blog and making money is "sucked" and is the easiest thing in the world.

Well I'm sorry, but based on my own experience I have told you that if you are going to look for the fast track IT'S NOT POSSIBLE.

Creating a blog and positioning your brand so that it generates trust, credibility and security needs a maturation process from 12 to 18 months minimum.

This you must take into account yes or yes.

If you are thinking of opening a nice blog, start offering services and launch a course or an info product it may be that you get a big bump if you haven't worked through the maturation phase before.

Thus, if it is feasible to make money with a blog, but as long as we do things under a strategic plan.

Therefore, during this article, at the same time as I tell you about different ways to monetize a blog, I am going to tell you a series of recommendations.

10 Alternatives to generate money with a blog

I am sure that what interests you the most is knowing different ways to earn money with a blog, in this way I am going to tell you the main ones that I know.

Now tI recommend that you stay with me until the end of the article because later I will give you the roadmap that I myself would follow if I returned starting from 0.

Services1) Services

Offering services can be one of the ways to make money "fast" with a blog.

This simply it will depend on the knowledge we have about the area where we yearn to specialize.

Let me explain, imagine that you want to offer Facebook Ads services.

It is not the same to be offered by a person who already has a journey managing accounts and clients than by another person who is taking their first steps with advertising.

In this article where I explain 47 ways to work from home and earn money I already mentioned some of the professions that will allow us this.

For example:

  • Consultancy
  • Freelance community manager
  • SEO
  • Online psychologist
  • Investor
  • Editor
  • Copywriter
  • Trafficker
  • Programmer
  • Online nutritionist
  • Personal trainer
  • Digital lawyer
  • Wedding planner
  • Etc.

But in this list at the same time I would like to mention you another way to earn money with a pretty interesting blog.

And it is the subject of mentoring or mentoring.

More and more bloggers or entrepreneurs decide to hire the services of a mentor to guide them with the roadmap they have to follow.

You can choose a tool to reserve sessions in the hours that you indicate (after filtering) and that's it.

Of course, the most important thing is to select the price per hour that you will charge per mentoring session.

I know professionals who come to charge 200 to 400 euros per hour for mentoring, in this way you will see that it is a very profitable business.

Online training2) Online and face-to-face training

If you like to teach other people and pass on your knowledge, training is an area that I recommend you experiment with.

I myself have based my business model on training.

Now, there are endless opportunities that we can take into account but the main ways that you can try are:

  • Paid courses
  • Face-to-face workshops
  • Paid webinars

➡ Online Courses

The launch of my Course + Mentoring allowed me to quit my job at the University and be able to live as a freelancer.

It may seem a bit crazy to leave a steady job to become a freelancer, but let me tell you, it is one of the best decisions I have made in my life.

What's more, I'm already preparing the fourth edition of this course which will start in just over a month.

Now, if you are thinking of creating an online course, first of all I recommend that you define:

  • Specify the theme.
  • Check out other similar online courses.
  • Complete the course file.
  • Create a work team.
  • Create a presentation video.
  • Design and create the landing page of the course.

If you need to learn a little more about the subject, do not miss this article that I wrote on the blog of my friend José Facchin and where I explain how to design and sell an online course.

In this circumstance, if you need to sell online courses, what I recommend is that you work very well your email marketing strategy.

Here I would like to quote my Javi Pastor who is an email wizard to earn a lot of money online.

Look I'll tell you, one day having a beer the two of them in Madrid told me to design a very specific type of email and send it 24 hours before starting the course, the result is that 10 people signed up with the email and I generated € 7000 of income with a single email.

When I told him he told me another day I'll tell you another type of email when we see each other !!! Hahaha

Here I am not going to walk with stories, hire someone like my friend Javi Pastor or my friend Alejandro Novás, and you will see how they help you generate sales through email, yes the two are very busy and I do not know if you will convince him .

➡ Face-to-face workshops

We usually focus so much on the online that we forget about the physical part.

And let me tell you that I consider this to be a serious mistake because with face-to-face workshops we are not only going to be able to earn money directly.

If not, that at the same time we will be able to close other types of agreements and subsequent collaborations.

➡ Paid webinars

This may seem contradictory but it is not.

We always have the perception that a webinar must always be free but it is not.

In this circumstance I'm going to tell you how to make a paid webinar for a very small audience where you give a masterclass and mentoring included for a specific period of time.

For example, imagine that you do a paid webinar for € 29.90 and during that session you give a very practical 1-hour masterclass and answer the questions of the attendees for another hour.

Of course, I recommend that you limit a maximum of 20 people so that attention can be given and thus attend to each and every one of the students.

Online betting3) Sponsorships

One of the great benefits of creating a powerful brand is the

Some of the main ways to monetize a blog through sponsorships are:

  • Podcast
  • Sponsored Articles

Let's see some more concrete examples to give you an idea:

Sponsored podcast

Lately I have seen that more and more people decide to set up their own Podcast in order to reach their community in a "closer" way.

A clear example is my friend Oscar Feito.

Podcast example

If you manage to have a large community behind your podcast, there will be several companies that want to sponsor your podcast.

Of course, the economic amount will depend mainly on what your audience is, thus, before thinking about this type of monetization, I first recommend creating that community.

➡ Sponsored articles

Every week I receive a proposal to publish a promoted article but perhaps those who do not know it is that I do not publish promoted posts on my blog.

That is, only I decide the editorial calendar of my blog and I do not add content to promote a specific service or product.

I'm not saying with this that it seems wrong to me who does it, not at all.

I think it is a very effective way to earn money with a blog but in my case I have preferred not to do it simply as a personal branding strategy, and above all being very selective with the content that is going to be published on my blog.

However, How much should you charge for a promoted item?

The eternal question, if your blog is less than 1 year old, you can charge from 75 to 100 euros for a promoted post.

But if you have at your disposal a blog with hundreds of thousands of visits and with a large social community like me, you can considerably raise the number from 300 to 500 euros per post.

Here if the factor of personal brand and authority is involved enough to establish one price or another.

Advertising4) Advertising

When we consider how to make money with a blog, surely one of the main ways that comes to mind is the issue of advertising.

Now, if you really want to make a living from a blog, you will have to review the niche very well.

Because not all sectors pay the same for advertising.

There are sectors (such as digital marketing) that you will need a fairly high level of visits to get a decent monthly income.

While there are other more specific ones such as lawyers or traffic accidents in which we do not need to have such a high level of visits to monetize.

Here you are going to have to take into account mainly three concepts:

  • Advertising by CPC
  • Advertising by CPA
  • Private advertisers

➡ CPC Advertising - Adsense

In this type of advertising Google Adsense It is usually the best known platform and that is usually used (although it is not the only one).

Adding the famous Google ads to your blog will help you earn money and get a constant payment every month.

In my case I have 2 ads on my blog and the truth is that they work very well for me and generate € 600 to € 800 per month, and even some month it has exceeded € 1,000.

➡ CPA Advertising

In this other type of advertising, we get a commission every time the user carries out a certain action.

We usually associate CPA with getting a sale.

But it does not necessarily have to be this way, there may be other types of conversions such as filling in a contact form.

➡ Private advertisers

In these two types that we have seen before we use an intermediary company to be able to place the advertisements of the companies on our blog.

But at the same time we can do it directly and skip the intermediaries reaching directly to agreements with other brands.

For that I recommend that you add a tab on your blog with all the conditions associated with this type of sponsored publication (in which we will go into more detail later).

Membership5) Affiliate Marketing

A very effective way to earn money with a blog is through affiliation or recommendation of products, courses or services through the blog.

That is, basically affiliate marketing is a type of advertising in which a profit is generated each time the product and / or service is purchased.

In fact, it is one of the marketing techniques that you are going to hear the most during this year because it is having a quite important boom.

There are affiliate platforms that allow us to affiliate any type of product. They normally work as follows:

  • You register as an affiliate.
  • You analyze the products that you would be interested in affiliating.
  • You generate a link from that service.
  • We add these links on our website or blog and try to promote them.
  • When we get them to buy those products from us, we get a commission.

Some affiliate platforms that we may use are:

  • Hotmart
  • Amazon
  • ClicBank
  • Awin

In my case I recommend a series of tools or services such as Raiola Networks, SEMrush or SEObox that inform me of € 500 to € 1000 per month of income.

Another example would be some of the affiliates of my courses, who come to earn thousands of euros in commissions through the promotion of my courses in their respective Blogs.

In a first launch, you are still interested in getting the largest number of viable affiliates but then in future launches I recommend that you select only those people who simply convert and make sales.

It is not a question of traffic or communityYou can have an affiliate with little traffic that converts a lot because they have a super loyal community that follows their recommendations.

The key is to find which are simply the bloggers that convert the most in your sector, rest assured that it is not easy but you should try to get 5 to 10 affiliates who generate sales from your courses or info products.

Infoproducts6) Infoproducts

Have you noticed that there are more and more people who decide to start selling info products to make money with a blog, right?

Just this year I am seeing that there is a great boom in this type of product.

A format widely used today by many bloggers and that it consists mainly of offering a fully recorded course.

Which makes it easier to automate and sell it but where classes will not be held live and direct as a normal course.

That is, at the same time they tend to have a lower price than online courses.

There are mainly two types of info products.

  • The tutored, where we answer the students' questions through a group.
  • The not tutored where we simply don't have any contact with the students.

I prefer the tutored more than the non-tutored because it will allow you to create a greater closeness with your students but logically it takes extra time to answer questions.

Other examples of infoproducts can be:

  • Ebooks.
  • Checklist and roadmaps.
  • Recorded masterclass.

Undoubtedly, a great alternative to start monetizing a blog.

Ebooks7) Digital products

Many people often confuse digital products with info products, but there are simply certain differences.

Digital products are mainly:

  • Templates.
  • Plugins.
  • Tools.
  • Applications.
  • software
  • Etc.

We are going to see some examples of the templates to make it clearer for you.

Templates

Vilma Nunez

There are many bloggers who have found in the creation of templates a way to make money with a blog.

Think for a moment the number of templates we need and use every day to manage a project.

Maybe it can be a good way to receive an inflow of money, right?

Vilma Nuñez is a great example of how to make money from a blog by selling templates.

It has a very complete set that you can use for social networks, email marketing and content marketing, etc.

Content transcripts8) Physical products

We can create an online store with the products we sell or we can sell directly through our blog.

Typically, there are two main types of products that can be sold:

  • Books
  • Handmade products

And we can use the blog and our brand as a way of dissemination to publicize our products.

For example, imagine you write a book geared toward entrepreneurs.

You could make an article with the best books for entrepreneurs and add your book to that list.

And at the same time you could promote that book through the blog either through banners, sending it to your subscribers, etc.

Trading9) Membership

When we manage to generate a powerful brand, another way to earn money with a blog would be to set up a membership.

At the end of the day, we could say that a membership is a private community that is accessed upon payment of a fee that is usually monthly.

At the same time there may be free memberships with additional payment options, but these are usually paid.

Does Netflix sound familiar to you?

After all, their business model is a membership that by paying a monthly fee you can access all their videos and depending on what type of fee you choose, you will get different services.

Job opportunities10) Job opportunities

Until now all the ways to make money with a blog that we have seen were related to the sale of products and / or services.

But we can get other series of benefits that do not necessarily imply ending up having to start our own business.

There are many people who decide create a blog to:

  • Position yourself as a specialist within your sector.
  • Create a powerful personal brand.

And this can lead directly or indirectly to a series of additional possibilities like:

  • Attend conferences and events as speakers.
  • Participate in training workshops.
  • Give classes in business schools, marketing schools, etc.
  • Get a pay rise.
  • Get a better job.

These are things that can be achieved thanks to a blog (as long as things are done well).

Dropshipping11) Sell the blog

Have you ever considered selling your website?

I personally have not contemplated it nor do I contemplate it, but I know people who are dedicated to creating projects, "fatten" them and later sell them for quite interesting amounts.

In fact, There are companies that are mainly dedicated to the purchase and sale of websites.

Depending on the niche you are targeting, there will be a series of metrics that are taken into account in order to assign a value to it, such as:

  • Project authority.
  • Traffic
  • Link level
  • How much does the project invoice?

If you need to create different niches and later sell them, it could be an interesting idea for you.

How to make money with an internet blog

Now that we have seen different ways to monetize your project, I am going to tell you the roadmap I would follow if I was wondering how to make money from a blog.

These are steps that are often overlooked and that can mark the success or failure of a project.

Here at the same time I leave you a presentation about a presentation I made about different ways to earn money with a blog.

And now yes, we are going to see those essential steps that I consider establishing before creating any project.

1. The theme is essential

The first step will be to choose the theme of our blog.

This step is essential because depending on your choice the monetization options may vary from one project to another.

Some of the questions that I recommend you ponder are:

  • What are your passions or hobbies.
  • What are you good at? What are your skills?
  • What kind of blogs or books do you like to read?

These are some questions that you can ask yourself, but later at the same time I recommend you validate the theme and review the profitability of the same.

2. Establish the business model

Then you will have to establish what the project's income channels will be.

I recommend that you make a canvas model and determine how are you going to monetize the blog.

Before we have seen different ways to earn money with a blog, which are going to be the ones that best suit your business idea?

Being clear about this is essential because later it will affect the entire strategy that we define later.

3. Analysis

Having the two previous points clear, the next phase in any project is usually the audit.

In this circumstance you will have to do a external analysis of other blogs on the subject that you have chosen and go over how they are monetizing their project.

Some of the elements that you could take into account are:

  • Blogs with more web traffic and authority.
  • Blogs with more audience or social engagement.
  • Content strategy.
  • Frequency and style of publication.
  • Recruitment strategy.
  • Sales strategy.
  • Objective and purpose of the blog.

In this way what we are going to do is a complete analysis to understand which are the blogs with the most traffic and authority where to publish an article.

Then we have to see what are the objectives of the different blogs analyzed, as well as the content strategy and what type of editorial calendar they are using.

As well as reviewing if they use a newsletter to publicize their content to subscribers and what email marketing strategy they are using.

Finally review online and face-to-face events where we can connect and networking with certain bloggers in our sector.

4. Definition of objectives and user profile

A key aspect that is not given the necessary importance, and that will set the course of our actions in the blog world, in this way be very clear about the objective (s) for which you decide to access in the blogging world.

Examples:

  • Improve Personal Brand.
  • Capture more customers.
  • Sell more products.
  • Create your own self employment.
  • Earn money.

Once we are clear about the objectives we want to achieve, we have to set the user profile for each service, production or action that we yearn to work on and improve over time.

5. Editorial Calendar

In this phase we are already clear on the way to proceed, so we are already in a position to establish an editorial calendar with a view to at least 3 months.

In principle, it is only enough to establish the titles of the articles that we will be publishing on the blog at that time, and each election has to be an action aimed at the objectives that we have previously defined.

Choose the tool that you like the most, I use Google Calendar, other people use an Excel template, so choose the tool with which you feel most comfortable and start designing your editorial calendar right now.

6. Launch

Launching a blog always has to be done with at least 3 or 4 articles, but strategically decide each of these contents.

The first post It can be a personal article, where you talk about why you have decided to enter the world of blogging and what you hope to achieve.

It is very important that from the first post you leave an imprint of your own style of communication and storytelling.

The second article write a very powerful guide on a topic that interests you a lot, for example a social media guide or an SEO guide, etc.

The third article choose a good long tail where you can capture a large volume of traffic.

The fourth article It can be a strategic one where you try to achieve a great viralization and especially that you make yourself known to many professionals in the sector.

7. Promotion

This is the phase in which it is most failed or not well understood.

If you think that promotion is reduced to sharing on social networks, you are very wrong.

Promotion are a set of SEO, Social, Branding and Networking actions that are essential and base them to get your blog mature enough to take the step to monetization.

If you need to know a little more about what actions are, leave me a comment in this post and I will be happy to expand this information.

You should think about applying the Pareto principle, where you dedicate a 20% to the creation of content and an 80% to the promotion of it.

8. Readers and Subscribers

One of the main goals of a blog should be attract or attract a reading community around your brand, but to achieve this the best way to do it is by providing true value in each content you do.

At the same time you have to try to increase your subscriber list from the first moment, since in the future it can be a very effective channel to earn money with a blog.

1 year ago I told my friend Rubén Alonso's blog about my experience and my best strategies for increase subscriber list.

A year later I have almost doubled the number of the post and for the first of the year I will prepare a post for my blog where I will explain how i got over 100,000 blog subscribers.

9. Social Community

The social community is a very effective channel to generate trust and credibility of our brand and logically this will improve the monetization of our blog in the future.

One of the keys to the success of an internet project is based on creating an online communitye around a brand.

So I recommend that you spend as much time as necessary to see how you can create your own community.

10. Quality networking

If you need tomorrow get an affiliate network that helps you sell or publicize your courses or infoproducts.

This step is simply essential if you really want to scale your business, but for this you will have to create relationships with all the professionals that you would be interested in having as affiliates.

Because the normal thing is that nobody wants to help you promote something if they do not know you at all or did not have any relationship in the pass with you.

In this way dedicate 6 to 12 months to create relationships with other professionals and thereby create a friendship with them, and really do not be in a hurry to ask them to help you with the promotion of your info-product.

11. Measurement and Results

Everything that is not measured cannot be improved, so I recommend that you set a series of objectives and KPIs to see if we are on the right track or not.

If, for example, we have set the objective of starting to earn a specific amount 6 months after the start of the project and we are not achieving it, we will have to review why.

And we will have to carry out a contingency plan and a series of additional measures to try to reverse the situation.

10. Monetization

The monetization of a blog should not begin before the 12 or 18 months of life of your blog and as long as your project is mature enough to do it.

(And by monetization I mean earning real money, not a few euros. That amount can naturally be achieved much earlier).

With this he does not want to discourage you but rather the opposite, I want to encourage you to get it and really get to earn money with a real blog.

So that you can live off your own project and do not limit yourself only to getting a series of extra income.

5 common mistakes when you want to make money online with a blog

1. Create a free blog and earn money

If you analyze it for a moment and put a little common sense into it, you will realize that it is not viable.

Imagine that, for example, you have just opened a physical business and surely you know that when you open the sales will not rain because you have to dedicate time to actions to publicize your business because the same happens with a blog.

2. Monetize a blog without investment

Continuing with the previous example, if you had to open a physical store, Wouldn't you invest a significant amount for the design of the entire premises?

Well, the same thing happens with a blog.

Do not expect to achieve great results if you are not willing to invest money in hiring essential services or tools.

3. Thinking that you can make a living from the ads on Facebook Ads

You have just completed a Facebook Ads course and you think you are going to become someone else by selling through this channel.

Stop stop, wake up from the dream!

If you need to sell, you have to position your brand first so that it inspires the essential values that lead to buying.

To be recognized before we have to be known!

4.- Sell a course or info-product that does not have enough quality

If you think that by doing a course or info-product sales will rain, believe me that it is not like that.

Do not think that the user does not know what they buy and remember that this user makes up to 5 comparisons before making a purchase decision.

In this way, think about why they will choose your product over that of another competitor.

5. Failure to conduct a full market analysis

If you are going to sell a product online you have to deeply review the market, before even starting to design the course.

You have to check what offer exists in the market and what your course or info-product contributes that others do not do or have.

This last point is fundamental, if we are going to offer the same thing that people who are already positioned in the sector already do, why would they buy from us instead of from them?

Conclusions on how to make money with a blog

You see that it is feasible to make money with a blog with any of these 10 ways that I tell you in the article.

If you have just created a blog and you think it is feasible to monetize it and start making money online, you are very wrong, in this way I recommend that you mature your project well as I explain in the article.

Finally I recommend this great article from my friend Miguel Angel Trabado where it teaches why you should invest and bet on new digital advertising formats.

Well I really hope that all the tips and recommendations help you to generate income and sales with a blog.

R Marketing Digital