Unlock Passive Income: 9 Ways to Monetize Your Blog!

Can you really make money from blogging? Based on my personal experience running three blogs, I can confidently say: Yes, you can! Currently, my blogs generate tens of thousands in passive income each month. So, even ordinary people like me can earn money through blogging, and there’s potential to develop it into a source of passive income!

How can you make money through blogging?

Earning money through blogging can be broadly divided into two stages: beginner and advanced.

Beginner stage: This is when you’re just starting out with blogging, learning how to set up a website, install plugins, write articles, and build a community.

Advanced stage: At this point, you have at least one established website, are familiar with SEO article ranking, and have stable website traffic.

If you’re still at the beginner stage, you might not have many people aware of your blog or clients willing to pay high prices. So, you’ll need to start with low-barrier monetization methods. These are relatively simple to implement, without too many complex procedures or high requirements.

If you’re already proficient in blog operations, have some traffic, and paying clients, you can start exploring higher-barrier methods to provide better products and solutions for your clients. While these methods may be more challenging and time-consuming, they can potentially increase your income several times over.

Beginner Stage: Selling Digital Printables

Digital printables refer to downloadable digital files such as PDFs, Excel sheets, and templates that users can print themselves. These are not physical newspapers, magazines, or other tangible items.

Some popular digital printables in the market include side hustle planners, schedules, journals, blog planners, and design templates.

You can create these printable products on your computer and sell the digital versions on your own website or on relevant sales platforms like Etsy, Gumroad, and Creative Market.

Selling on your own website means you keep all the profits without sharing with anyone else.

While selling on platforms requires sharing some profits, they can help increase your exposure and potentially lead to more sales.

Printables are online assets that can be sold and distributed repeatedly to different users without restocking. You only need to create them once to sell multiple times on your website, generating true automated income.

Advantages:

A project worth long-term investment

Provides additional income for your website

Low cost and repeatable sales

Disadvantages:

Prices can’t be set too high, usually recommended between $9-$49

Need to sell a large number of digital files to reach five-figure income

Once your digital printables reach a certain sales volume, you can identify which products are truly popular with users. At this point, you might consider selling physical versions of these market-tested products, such as physical books (e.g., travel guides, financial management guides, social media management strategies, etc.).

Beginner Stage: Accepting Support/Donations

Sometimes when browsing other people’s blogs, you might notice a sponsorship button at the end of their articles or in the sidebar. This allows readers who find the content helpful to click and donate.

This income can be unpredictable and depends entirely on the readers’ mood. It’s a way of accepting appreciation from readers, and some people are willing to support you financially through online platforms, showing their support for your content or you as a person. You might think this approach seems a bit far-fetched, but some bloggers do earn decent income from donations.

After you publish your blog post, readers will see and read it. If they find that article helpful and it solves a problem they’re currently facing, they might give you a tip.

Additionally, some readers might think you’re excellent and want to support you, so they’ll give you a tip.

I’ve also seen YouTubers seeking support in their videos, asking subscribers to sponsor them on their Patreon account. If your content is solid and provides helpful information, quite a few people will give you tips.

Because you help readers solve problems and provide them with the most effective methods, they are also very willing to like and support your content creation.

Over time, it can accumulate into a nice income~

Advantages:

Encourages you to continue creating

It’s a small extra income

Disadvantages:

Requires some luck and popularity, after all, not everyone will like your articles

It takes a long time to actually monetize

How to apply for a tip account?

You can go to Buy me a coffee, LikeCoin, Patreon to apply for an account and start your tipping journey. These are currently very popular and suitable platforms for creators to receive tips.

Beginner Stage: Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a method many bloggers and influencers are using, mainly because it’s zero cost, you don’t need to invest in making your own products. Affiliate marketing is very suitable for newcomers who are just starting to run a blog, meaning you don’t need to spend too much time on product creation, but instead focus on increasing blog traffic.

The profit model of affiliate marketing is to make money by promoting other people’s products. When you find suitable products that match your blog theme, you can start promoting them to your readers.

You only need to apply for an account on the affiliate platform and get links, without paying any fees. For example, if your blog theme is fitness, you can promote related products such as sports shoes, sportswear, fitness equipment, etc.

Affiliate marketing is a profitable business model, with commissions for digital products reaching 20~30%, and physical product commissions around 5%-10%.

As your blog operation time extends, traffic steadily increases, and you learn to select high-profit products to promote, you can earn higher commissions, with monthly income potentially easily reaching 5 figures.

Affiliate marketing is also the main source of income for my current blog! It accounts for about 90% of total income, bringing me a five-figure income every month.

However, affiliate marketing is not as simple as just placing links to make money. As a consumer, faced with numerous promotional bloggers and products, why would they choose a recommendation from a particular blog?

This must be because the blog has gained the trust of others, so you need to continuously provide valuable content. Readers may not buy immediately when they first see your content, but as time goes by and they see it more often, trust will gradually accumulate. One day, they will place an order. So, if you want to do well in affiliate marketing, one of the core principles is to focus on consistently providing quality content for readers.

Here’s a must-remind:

Don’t randomly promote products to readers just to get high commissions, this will actually cause readers to dislike you.

The products you promote must be relevant to readers, something they need and beneficial to them, not forcefully selling unrelated products to readers.

Advantages:

It’s a good form of passive income

Low cost, no need to make your own products

You earn income every time someone purchases a product through your link

Disadvantages:

Requires patience to operate

Some products have low profit margins, need to know how to choose high-profit products

Beginner Stage: Advertising (Ads)

Another common way for blogs to make money is through advertising. For example, when you’re browsing someone else’s blog website, ads might appear halfway through an article, or on the right sidebar of the webpage. Ad revenue is calculated based on the number of visitors to your blog and click-through rates.

Making money through advertising on your blog is something every creator can do because it’s relatively straightforward and simple. You can choose which advertising platforms you want to work with, such as Google Adsense and Mediavine.

These two advertising platforms are considered among the best in the industry, offering many different types and sizes of ads, allowing creators to decide which ads to display.

You can choose the type of ads, control which ads appear on your website, and where to place them.

Ted Marketing suggests placing ads in the sidebar or within article content, which can easily blend with the website design without disrupting the reading experience.

Google Adsense has no minimum traffic requirements, making it very suitable for beginner bloggers. You can directly apply for an account and start earning your first passive income.

In contrast, Mediavine has traffic requirements for websites that can display ads. You need to reach a certain level of traffic before they will approve your application.

You can wait until your website has at least 8-10 articles before applying for an ad account, which makes it easier to get approved. As your website traffic increases, your ad revenue will naturally increase.

Ted wants to remind new bloggers not to rely on ad revenue as their main source of income, as initial ad revenue is very low. You can earn ad revenue while planning other monetization channels, such as email marketing, offering consulting services, and creating online courses. I’ll mention all these money-making channels below.

Advantages:

It’s a relatively conservative online money-making model

You earn income every time someone clicks on an ad

Disadvantages:

Too many ads can affect the reader’s experience

Compared to other money-making methods, the profit is not high

Small sharing: My ad revenue in the first month (when traffic was low) was about $3.3.

Beginner Stage: Freelancing

If you’re an expert in a certain field or have worked in the same industry for many years, consider launching your own online freelance services.

Isn’t the knowledge you share on your blog already your professional expertise? Why not make good use of it and monetize it in multiple ways?

Freelance services can include: article writing, website building, virtual assistance, etc. Many large companies and businesses need talents in these areas, and they’re willing to pay considerable fees for your high-value services because you can help them solve problems.

The advantage of getting freelance work through a blog is that you can directly receive all the profits without sharing with freelance platforms, allowing you to focus on serving clients.

Surveys show that the average hourly rate for freelancers is between $35-$50. This is just for reference, of course you can increase your rates based on your experience.

It’s recommended not to set your hourly rate too low when you start freelancing, like $10. Although this might help you quickly get some clients, in the long run, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. Low-price clients often can’t see your true abilities because they only care about price. If you attract a group of low-price clients, it will not only affect your personal brand but also cause you to face lower quality clients in the long term, creating mental stress.

Advantages:

Build a personal brand and establish your own client base

Earn all profits without sharing with platforms

Low cost, high profit

Disadvantages:

Need to carefully choose clients to avoid being led by the nose

Difficult to achieve true passive income, essentially exchanging time for high income

Note: When freelancing, make sure your services are in demand and have a potential client base. Otherwise, you might not make money and instead waste time and energy

Beginner Stage: Local Events

Some bloggers organize offline gatherings or book clubs, regularly meeting with creators or readers to share insights.

For example, fitness bloggers might organize outdoor group exercise events, allowing many people to participate together. Moreover, as their fan base grows, they might start charging participants for these events.

Whenever they organize offline events, they inform their fans through social media platforms or email, inviting them to sign up and participate. The registration fees collected, after deducting all expenses, become pure profit. This is how they make money through offline events.

Additionally, hosting offline events can attract more sponsors or establish some long-term cooperation opportunities.

Advantages: