We’ve seen lots of tutorials on how to earn money blogging from a blog without ads. But realistically, is it possible?
The two most popular ways to monetize a blog are:
- Google Ads: Pretty much everyone is accepted. No wait times, and easy setup.
- Selling services: There’s always a need for writers or virtual assistants that can make businesses’ lives easier.
Both of those methods have huge disadvantaged:
- Google Ads are extremely cheap. You won’t likely earn a lot, even if you have lots of traffic.
- Selling services means you work 24/7, hardly taking any vacation. It is hard to plan your life around a constant need to do something to get paid. It can make money but it is exhausting.
Are there any alternative blog monetization methods you’d like to explore?
Here are a few ways you can earn income from blogging without using too many ads on your pages:
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How To Earn Money Blogging with Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is making a commission from every sale you bring to a third-party business.
Be careful with this one, however, because it’s easy to get carried away. You don’t want your site turning into a sleazy operation to turn a few bucks. That will degrade your content and ultimately bring fewer people to your site.
However, writing an occasional review of a product from your niche, and then putting your link at the end will net you more profit than AdSense, at least until you get a large enough user base that Adsense starts making you more money, in a more socially-acceptable way.
Just make sure your reviews are legitimate, well-written, and unbiased, and your user base should find them worthy of content.
When writing reviews and product listicles, make sure that the content is SEO optimized. If your site has some authority, and you target keywords that you know, you can get on the first page of Google search, the review will rank well and you will get users coming to the review earning you passive income in the long run as well as in the short run.
How To Create Legitimate Reviews
When creating content for affiliate reviews and listicles, there are two important considerations:
- Legal rules. I cannot say much about this as I am not a lawyer but you do need to make it clear that you are going to make a commission if anyone clicks some of your links.
- Google’s requirements. Google has been working hard to ensure affiliate sites provide valuable and useful content, so they have been doing so-called Product Reviews Updates (PRUs) fighting sites that produce made-for-affiliate-income sites.
Google offers a long list of tips on how to avoid your site being impacted by those updates, and some of these factors are summarized below:
| Tactics | Impact | Observations |
| Linking to multiple sellers (not just Amazon) to give readers choice. | Linking to multiple sellers (not just Amazon) to give readers choice. | |
| Add original images and videos | Encouraged “to support your expertise and reinforce the authenticity of your review.” | |
Low-quality lists of products | Not mentioned. | These (i.e. list of “best products” with minimal content) seem to rank well |
| Expertise | “Demonstrate that you are knowledgeable about the products reviewed” | |
Create quantitative measurements | Ratings measure how a product measures up in various categories of performance. | |
Wirecutter approach | Implied in the guidelines. | NY Times has a good example of a page explaining their approach. good housekeeping and verywellfit also have very detailed info |
Additionally, affiliate marketing has gone beyond your own site. There are more and more influencers making affiliate income through social media.
So keep an eye on social media trends and make sure you expand your success to social media where you can.
Sponsored Posts
This is just like affiliate marketing; the only difference is that clients contact you and pay for you to write about them (In affiliate marketing, you are paid through commissions).
In both cases, you are writing about a product (that, hopefully, you tried and experimented with). Your blog niche is very important here, as there are certain niches where sponsored posts won’t necessarily work, as a consistent method to make money.
Plus, there is not much you can do upfront (to get clients), other than building up your blog/website (which of course, should be your primary goal in the first place).
Just like with affiliate marketing, sponsored posts must be clearly disclaimed as sponsored, and all the clients’ links inside must have a rel=” sponsored” attribute.
How To Earn Money Blogging With Digital Downloads
Creating digital products is another solid monetization strategy that can drive income and recognition your way.
These products can come in many forms, including checklists, cheat sheets, ebooks, etc.
Don’t take this easy though:
- It takes time to come up with a product idea that will be in demand. Take some time researching keywords and finding an idea for a product that will be useful and helpful. Take a good look at other bloggers and what kinds of products they promote.
- Not only that but it takes time to create something really worth the money.
Create trustworthy content by sharing research data. It may sound difficult to collect data around a certain subject, but actually, the threshold is not as high as you might think. You can create a questionnaire that you openly share on your website and/or social channels. If you need a specific audience, send out the questionnaire by email.
Visuals
However, once you have gathered enough data to make significant conclusions, you can share the results in the form of an assessment report or an infographic. This is very attractive content for bloggers and journalists to refer to. They love numbers, especially if they’re backed by thorough research.
Then, once you have your product created, make sure your site is optimized for digital sales. Shopify can be a good option here because it comes with a built-in shopping cart functionality.
There are also multiple platforms to help you drive more sales to your digital downloads.
Call To Action: How You Earn Money Blogging With This Step
Make sure your blog CTAs are aligning with your monetization strategy. There are a few plugins and business phone apps that will help you set up effective conversion channels based on your goals.
Furthermore, other ways include creating your own (video) course and marketing it, creating a newsletter to push products. Remember, DON’T get carried away, and always make sure you are creating quality content to go along with this. There are also many more ideas on creating a home-based business that can be driven by your blog.
Your Take
Before you over-monetize your blog site, consider easing up on the ads, because you need to grow your user base by creating quality content before you populate your website with ads.
Are you making your living from your blog? Do you personally know anyone who does? Please share your most successful monetization methods!
FAQS: How To Earn Money Blogging Without Ads
What are the best ways how to earn money blogging?
You can earn money by selling ebooks, sponsored posts, services, or affiliate marketing.
Can you make money from a free blog?
It’s possible but not likely. You will need to invest in hosting and other types of WordPress plugins to grow your traffic.
What do you need before placing ads or affiliate links on your blog?
You need more blog traffic before placing ads or trying affiliate marketing.
Why is blog traffic important to make money blogging?
Without traffic, you have no one to see your sponsored posts or affiliate links.
What are sponsored posts on a blog?
A sponsored post is when an advertiser pays for content, a blog post on your website.
How much can you charge for your sponsored posts?
It is oftentimes based on your website’s traffic and authority.
How does affiliate marketing work?
You post about products or services with a link to them, an affiliate pays for the clicks or purchases made through that link.
How long does it take a blogger to make money from blogging without ads?
It depends on the niche and the amount of time put into the blog.
How much does the average blogger make per year?
As of Oct 31, 2024, the average hourly pay for a Blogger in the United States is $29.94 an hour. While ZipRecruiter is seeing hourly wages as high as $60.34 and as low as $16.83, the majority of Blogger wages currently range between $19.23 (25th percentile) to $24.04 (75th percentile) across the United States.
How can a blogger make money from services?
By blogging about topics they know about and provide services for. They will position themselves as an expert in that niche.