This guide is designed to help you Make money from a blog without ads
As a blogger, you might find yourselves somewhat lost to find an avenue to make money without using any ads.
But this post is exactly that, helping you score big without ads.
That’s not because there aren’t any great networks that pay for ads. You can earn quite a bit passively with ads. There are several blogs that have been using nothing but AdSense for several years together and yet making much money.
As a blogger advertisements seem to be the simple route to making money. As I have discussed on this post around making money with a blogspot blog, ads aren’t the most clever way to make money. There are several other rewarding ways that can help.
But its a big fallacy to imagine that this is the only way you have. You are only running ads because you haven’t thought and worked hard to discover other profitable methods. Don’t be stuck in that rut.
In fact, you absolutely don’t need ads on your blog. There are dozens of highly rewarding ways to monetize a blog without ads. iBlogMagazine’s report says that most bloggers make less than $2500 from their blogs in an entire year. That’s around $200 per month.
62% bloggers haven’t broached $500 per month consistently.
Problogger’s reader survey found that half of bloggers earned less than $100 per month from blogs.
Blogging.pro’s survey found that over 81% of bloggers never made more than $100 from their blogs. Just 8% earn enough to support their family.
Yes making an income from a blog is hard work. However the post helps simplify certain things.
Here are ways with which anyone running a blog can earn without running any ads on their blog
1. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a stupidly easy way to earn real money. Affiliate marketing is the route that hundreds of bloggers are taking and it is very real so much so that you don’t need much traffic. You only need the right kind of traffic.
The premise is simple. Suggest products that others make or sell. You earn a commission from that referral.
The commissions are great and can vary widely.Hosting pays a lot of money and so do recurring tools and software.
You earn much more than usual or what you’d have earned through ads.
For instance Tom at OnlinemediaMasters explains that on his blog he talks about site speed optimization where his number 1 tip to readers is to use a fast host. With that tip he’s able to generate a lot of affiliate commissions from his favorite host CloudWays. Other than WordPress speed optimization guides, he also writes articles around “proof” where he talks about perfect GTmetrix scores and everything else he does to get his site up to speed to score full on page load times.
If tomorrow Cloudways ceases to exist he can suggest WPX or Siteground or anything else for that matter. His commissions and earnings are going to be bulletproof no matter what. See what he does? He creates the need for a reader in his mind by painting a vivid picture of him requiring a good host to improve speed ratings. By telling a story effectively he’s able to sell what he wants. The same thing happens when you visit torrent sites. Almost all of them advertise vpns so that the visitor is able to download torrents anonymously instead of exposing his IP. I don’t know whether that’s true or not. But by seeding fear into their minds, they are able sell countless subscriptions for vpns.
Post sponsored reviews or content
There are several blogs that use sponsored reviews as a means to make money. It’s also something you could think of. It’s something similar to affiliate marketing in the sense you’re recommending products but avoiding the uncertainty associated with affiliate commissions as you get paid for every review.
If you go through the Shoutmeloud blog you will see that the site has posted tons of sponsored reviews over the years. He might charge between $1000 to $2000 for writing a sponsored review. Considering the fact that Harsh talks mostly about WordPress or blogging in general, most of the reviews too are around these products.
In affiliate marketing, you get paid over and over but in sponsored reviews, the payout is once and done. The amounts should be in line with the traffic on your site.
The amount should be discussed and agreed to first. But above that make sure you are reviewing relevant items.
Also accept the money before you start writing the content or accept 50% before publishing the said article.
If you write reviews and have a knack at creating in-depth content, you’re going to earn well for the said amount.
If advertisers aren’t approaching you directly use something like Tapinfluence. The network has a bunch of opportunities which you can get byy creating a page advertising the traffic on the site and the rates you want.
Sponsors will go through this and approach you.
Always mention on the post if a link is sponsored.
Sell ads directly
This might sound similar to advertising on AdSense. But the thing is its different. Networks like AdSense can ban you any time. Two, you set the rates, almost like a paid review and can earn much higher. AdSense makes most of its money for Google. As a publisher you only get a tiny cut of the larger pie.
This way you cut out the middlemen and offer advertisers better rates and in the process end up benefiting you.
To attract such opportunities have an advertise page on the site that details and sketches out traffic stats with proof like Analytics screenshots.
Sell consulting
Blogging about something means you’re learning something new about the products and tools you write everyday. That means you are slowly becoming an expert at this. You can use the blog as a springboard to sell other services like consulting. If you’re good at something say link building you can teach others on how to do the same thing.
With your content you are calling out to the world that you are an expert. Other see you for that.
Sell leads
With a niche blog when you attract traffic you convert that traffic to leads. This helps you sell this information to companies who can pay you for that.
The information around this visitor like email address is important to the company and the person may be interested in the service the company offers. You are acting as a middleman.
Create a job board for recurring revenue
As a freelance writer the first two job boards that come to find are from ProBlogger and Blogging.org. Both have job boards full of opportunities for budding freelance writers. It’s a great way to connect with a target audience.
For each posting companies have to shell out $70 and during weekdays Problogger sports beteen 5 to 10 jobs per day. Meaning at least $300 in recurring daily revenue.
Create and sell courses
Creating and selling courses is easier said than done. But yes its possible.
Creating a course and selling it to a loyal audience means instead of a tiny affiliate commission you are earning a lot more. Also the payments are immediate and transferable to your account.
The income is as much as you can promote the course. If you have been building an email list and have 400 subscribers a $100 course that at least 20 people purchase will make you $2000 that month. If you keep adding subscribers you will make even more.
You can create a guide around something you have done successfully. As discussed elsewhere on the blog, Michelle from Making sense of cents promotes her how to start a blog course and makes six figures from that. It’s a guide on running a successful blog.
Once someone has bought the product you can use their testimonials to sell more. You can also bundle in your own training programs to help launch the course further and gain more fan following.
Matthew WoodWard for instance sells his SEO and traffic getting courses through his blog and email list, once a year. The course is priced around $200 and every time he launches he does $50 to $100k in revenue with the course. This is because of a niche audience he established and by getting people to his email list.
Rosemarie Groner of the Busy Budgeter sells a variety of books and courses through her store. Such as hot mess to home success, or the make money at home master camp. There are also workbooks with step by step plans for readers to achieve things.
The hot mess to success go through the entire process of house organization and cleaning hacks.
Ebooks are the best place to sell more things.
Another example is Ashleigh of Sewrella who runs a sewing blog. Niches like knitting or DIY are huge on Pinterest.
She uses her experience around designing crochet to run her blog and sells crochet design patterns from the blog.
Realizing how big the niche is helped her sell more of the stuff.
People crochet but not many upload new designs and patterns. Only few bloggers do that on Pinterest and that’s one reason she has taken the market by storm.
The blog income report shows her making over $10000 with her blog by selling patterns on Etsy and via affiliate marketing.
Begin a paid membership site
Circling back to Harsh from Shoutmeloud, he created Shoutuniversity which is a paid membership program containing details and courses for beginner bloggers.
A paid forum is something for a select group who are ready to pay month after month for a program where you can earn from them.
The problem with such programs is that you need premium level content every month and that means regular work.
KickBackLife.com
Industry: Fitness Business
Chris McCombs is an entrepreneur and biker whose design is professional and who tells things as they are. The monetization angle is with premium content that is only available through a paid only members area. The site brings him loads of income from loyal readers.
Paid Guest Posts
Circling back to the example of Jeff Bullas, he charges for guest posts as well and promises to publish them in 1 or 2 weeks. On the flipside free guest bloggers need to wait for 3 months or more.
There are several bloggers who only accept paid guest posts. A great way to make some income if you have an authoritative high traffic site. If not, keep this plan under the wraps. For paid guest posting to work you need to have a tribe of eager audiences ready to listen to you.
Once this is done you can set a threshold. Go to Facebook groups that buy and sell guest posts to get an idea around guest post pricing.
To make guest posting easy here’s what you can do. You need to turn your site into an authority figure. This is possible if you
Update the content periodically
Do a regular audit to check if your content is on point. Update articles with current information and fact check pieces. Update old stats to refresh them with new insights and check them for accuracy.
Page speed is crucial because that’s what makes people stick around. Slow loading times means people will take that much longer to get the gist and will run the risk of abandoning the visit altogether.
Increasing site bounce rate isn’t what you want
When you are creating content it is great practice to link out to other authority sites in your niche. This provides credibility to your own content and serves a proof of research that you did.
Also note that Ahrefs survey on paid guest posting sites showed that the average cost was $361 for a link. And the cheapest price was $50/
Once you have an idea you can bring and market the product you want to.
Start podcasting
EOonfire is a great example of site that generates money with products and services. They have over 32000 followers and over 1800 links to their site. The visitors come to listen to podcasts and to read the content.
In april alone the income from products and services stood around $200k/ The freedom journal topped the list of products sold at $35000/ Affiliate income alone would be $24000 in April taking the entire income to $221k
Podcasting gives you opportunities for affiliate income generate, sponsorship and lot of other income options.
What do you think? Tell us in the comments below.