At the end of the 20^th century, blogging was gaining a lot of traction all over the world. However, back then it wasn’t a big source of income, rather it was a creative outlet for individuals to simply share their thoughts with a global audience. As the internet grew as a digital economy and people became more willing to spend real money online, bloggers had a chance to capitalize on their audience.

Today, blogging continues to be a profitable business but it is more challenging than it used to be back in the day. Search engines have become more complex, there is more competition, and the different strategies used to monetize a blog have also evolved. Here is a quick rundown of a few things you can do today to make a decent amount of money from your blog.

Display Ads

You have most likely seen banner ads on websites you visit. You may have also noticed that these evolve over time and they often reflect your recent search history or things that you are particularly interested in. What you need to know as a blogger is that advertisers are willing to pay websites with a decent amount of traffic to advertise their products and services. To get started with making money from banner ads you need to be part of an ad network where you can register your blog.

The most common ad network is Google Ads. This is a great choice for new bloggers but as you rack up more traffic, you can move to other networks that pay a better rate but these require higher monthly traffic.

Affiliate Content

If you search for any product or service you will most likely see a lot of other ‘review’ sites above the official website in search engine results. The other websites that show up in the results often have a link to a buying page. This could be linked to Amazon or it might be linked to the official website where you can buy the product. This is because the official seller, or the Amazon seller, pays other people commissions on sales they generate. As a blogger, you can also use these affiliate links to make money.

Whenever someone follows an affiliate link on your website and makes a purchase, you get a commission. There are countless services, as seen on TinyBlogger, that you can sell as an affiliate. Whatever your blog niche may be, you can easily find someone who wants to increase sales through an affiliate program.  Commission rates vary depending on the seller and the price of the product. However, this is an excellent way to make a lot of money especially if you’re an authority in a niche and have a very particular kind of audience.

Sponsored Content

Sometimes the seller, or even a fellow affiliate marketer, will want to use your audience to generate sales. They may reach out to you requesting to post on your blog or even on a specific page on your website.

Some might want to share a link there or just want visibility among your readers. You can charge for this service either as a percentage of the commission they earn through those sales or you could charge them a flat fee to post on your website. Some people may want to share a single post on your website but the majority of clients will want a slightly longer-term relationship. Generally, brands will reach out to authority websites within their space and ask them to promote a certain product or line of products for 4 or 8 weeks at a time. With sponsored posts, you have most of the power and can negotiate a deal according to your liking.

Digital Products

Digital products can include anything from an eBook to a year-long online course. People are selling downloadables, videos, pictures, premade scripts, letters, stock media, music, and all kinds of other products that are essentially just digital files that others can use or download. In some cases, the owner will also sell the rights to the asset but that isn’t necessary. This is a great way to make money without actually investing in a physical product. Plus, it’s very easy to scale.

How you make money through blogging largely depends on the niche you are in and the kind of audience you have. The different techniques we have covered above are those that can be applied to nearly any kind of blog. In very specific niches there are other ways of making money but those cannot be applied to general blogs. The main thing you need to make good money blogging is plenty of traffic. Even if the conversion rate is low, you can make a decent amount if you have the traffic to support it.