Almost everyone has a blog these days.
Some people run blogs to share their thoughts with their family and keep their friends up-to-date with what is happening in their lives.
Some people run blogs to share opinions about subjects that they are passionate about, and others run blogs to promote their businesses, or even as a primary business.
If you are relatively new to the world of online marketing, you may be wondering, “do blogs make money?” and the answer to that question is yes, some blogs do.
Not all blogs generate an income, and some blogs only make enough to cover their hosting fees, but it is possible to run a blog as a business.
How Do Blogs Make Money?
There are many ways that you can make money from blogging.
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Some of those ways involve directly monetizing the blog, while others involve using the blog as a vehicle to promote a product or service that you offer. Let’s take a look at some of the direct monetization options.
CPM and CPC Advertising
CPM advertising is advertising where the advertiser pays a set amount of money per one thousand qualifying views of their advertisement. CPC advertising is a similar form of advertising, except instead of paying based on ad views, the advertiser pays per unique click on the ad. These forms of advertising have been around since the earliest days of online advertising, and are still popular today.
CPM and CPC networks are fairly easy to get in to, and they can be a fairly good source of revenue for high traffic blogs, however if your blog has a relatively small readership you may not make much money from these systems. Even if your readers are loyal and come back to your site several times a week, you may not generate enough qualifying views to earn more than a few dollars a month.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing involves selling products to your readers. For each product that you sell, you get paid commission, which is sometimes a flat fee, and sometimes a percentage of the value of the product that you sold.
Affiliate marketing can work well if you choose a good merchant and your blog is in a suitable niche. It would be fairly easy to monetize a sports blog or a travel blog using affiliate marketing but you may have a harder job finding suitable products promote for a blog that is simply focused on your family adventures.
Sponsored Posts
Many bloggers make a supplemental income from sponsored posts. These are blog posts that involve mentioning a product or talking about a brand, in return for payment.
Depending on where in the world you live, you may have to tread carefully when accepting sponsored posts. Some countries have rules which mean that bloggers must disclose when they have received financial renumeration for a post that they are making, and they must even disclose if they were given a product to review.
The amount of money that a blogger is paid to make a sponsored post will depend on the popularity of their blog, the nature of the post, and who writes it. Some brands provide content that they want to see posted, while others ask the blogger to write the post themselves.
Monetization and Your Readers
If you decide that you want to try to monetize your blog, be mindful of how your readers will view your efforts. Remember that your readers come to your blog to learn what you think about products and services, not to be bombarded with brand messages and advertising.
If you put too much emphasis on making money and neglect to provide your readers with the kind of entertaining, informative or funny content that attracted them to your blog in the first place then you will lose readers, and without readers you have no income.
As a general rule of thumb, you should make four or five blog posts that are not focused on making money for every monetization post that you make. If you are posting on social media, make 12-15 “engagement” posts for every self-promotional post. This will help to ensure that you keep the balance between quality content and monetization at a suitable level. So, do blogs make money? Yes, if you use the information above.
