How to monetize a blog or business online

Gone are the old ways where you only get paid for exchanging your time for money or by having a physical store where you sell a ton of products. There are so many ways to monetize a blog or business online. Blogging is not the only way to monetize a business online. In fact, blogging is simply just a platform that houses the content. Blogging can be compared to a brick and mortar store, except that it not only houses products that make one transaction, but it also houses many other monetization ways that include passive income, recurring income, and active income.

A lot of these methods don’t require a blog, but a blog really makes it easier to implement these monetization methods. Blog are evergreen, which means that it is always around. The content on a blog can be found through a Google search. If you just ran your business online with social media, you will never pop up on a Google search.

People who search on Google have a problem and are looking for a solution, which is where the content of a blog comes in handy. With a blog, you have the potential to make more money without having to keep exchanging your time for money because your content has been published and able to be found. With social media postings, your content dies if not many people look at it. You will always have to keep posting consistently to show up in other people’s feed.

If you haven’t started a blog yet, here are some articles to help you get started:

• How to start a WordPress blog to make money
• How to start a successful blog with these 10 steps
• Top 14 tools for bloggers and digital marketers
• How to write an about me page for a blog
• How to increase blog traffic with Tailwind
• Top 10 WordPress plugins for blogs

Here are 13 different ways to monetize your blog or business online.

#1 Done for you service

Done for your service is one of the old school ways to make money. This method is considered an active income source as you are exchanging your time for money. There are many people making money with their services. Projects in digital marketing are very popular online. Some of these digital marketing services include social media managing, graphic design, and video editing. Services are not limited to these alone. There are many more ways your blog can make money through a service you provide.

Check out these two articles regarding done for your services:

• How to make money designing websites
• How to start a digital marketing agency with ClickFunnels

#2 Coaching & Consulting

The coaching and consulting industry has become a very popular and lucrative way to monetize a blog or business. Simply put it that you are ahead of many people, and you can simply coach or consult them from your experiences.

Coaching and consulting are often intertwined online, though these two are very different from each other. A consultant is someone who can go in and tell you what to do. They can literally go and do it for you if needed. A coach on the other hand can help keep you accountable and help coach you through things. For example, a football coach tells the players the game, but they can’t go in the game. A marketing consultant can go in and fix a problem you are having on one of your ads.

Coaching and consulting usually have a contract in place and duties are performed in exchange for money, therefore making this monetization source active income.

#3 Run a Mastermind

Masterminds are also a very popular way to monetize a blog or business with coaches. A mastermind is similar to a 1:1 coaching session, but instead it is a group of people masterminding. Some masterminds run for months. These masterminds that lasts for several months have a contract and usually are monthly recurring income source. Though it is monthly recurring income, it is still considered active income because time has to be spent doing the mastermind with others.

ClickFunnels can be used to set up these monthly recurring charges so that you don’t have to bother chasing people around to get paid.

#4 Do a Live Event

Even though a live event is done in person, the monetization can be done online by setting up a system where people can purchase the tickets. Live events is a great way to monetize a large sum of money at once.

You can sell tickets by using ClickFunnels.

#5 Sponsorships

Blog sponsorships or social media sponsorships are usually marketing campaigns for other brands. It involves writing content for or about the brand while leveraging your audience. Sometimes these sponsorships require you to also shoot some photos for the write up. Examples of sponsorships that require photographs would be in the food niche or travel niche.

You can pitch to brands you would like to work with. These usually come with sending them your media kit and a great reason of what you can do for their business.

Don’t want to pitch to anyone? You don’t have to. You can sign up for Izea if you want to find brands to work with. It’s a platform that connects creators with brands to collaborate with. They have one of the best payouts. Linqia is another great platform where you can find brands to work with.

#6 Cost-Per-Click Advertisement or Cost Per 1000 Impression Advertisement

CPC and CPM advertisement like Google Adsense is a good way to monetize a blog. This is a monetization method that does require a blog to implement.

Making money with Google Adsense is easy. You simply put a code on your blog where Google Ads will be placed, and you start making money from it. The money isn’t great at first, but once you build a good amount of traffic coming onto your website, these ads will start paying a good amount.

The best part about having these ads on your blog is that it is passive income. You will forever be paid for this so long as you have traffic coming into your blog. Why wouldn’t you want to have a blog for this very reason? It’s like free money!

#7 Sell your own ad space

The concept is the same with the advertisement above, but instead your blog becomes the advertising agency for other businesses to run ads on. The client would pay you a monthly flat fee, per impression, or per click, to have their banner ad on your website. This form of monetization is active and passive as you have to collect the agreement, money, and place the advertisement on your website, but once it is up, it’s just running. If they pay for several months, that’s passive income coming in.

#8 Sell a product

Selling a product on your blog is one of the greatest forms of passive income. The products can be digital like a download, or an actual physical product that you ship out. Examples of products to sell could be a pdf download, worksheet, videos, or graphics. You can make many digital products using Adobe Creative Cloud.

Physical products could be done through dropshipping where you don’t actually own the products yourself. You order these products from a supplier, and the suppliers sends it out directly to your customer. There is no need to buy the product in bulk. With dropshipping, you simply pay for your product when a customer places an order. Profits are usually 30%-40%.

Check out this blog post to learn how to start an online store without inventory.

#9 Sell a Course

Courses are one of the hottest ways to monetize a blog or business these days. We are living through the information age. No longer do you have to go to college to learn something. A ton of people are learning from online courses and quickly replacing college. Courses don’t come with huge debt, unlike college. No matter what your niche is, you can very well sell a course in it. In weight loss niche? Sell a weight loss course or program. Currently a Facebook Advertisement expert? Sell a course on how to do Facebook ads. Anything can be turned into a course. It is also a passive way to monetize your blog.

Teachable is a great software that can make your course transactions as well as housing your online course.

#10 Sell a Membership

Like courses, you can sell memberships. The membership could either be active or passive income depending on what it is you are selling. The sky is the limit when it comes to memberships. You can sell monthly memberships. A membership could be a monthly on-going course. You could also sell memberships for group coaching where you show up to a group of people every week or once a month. Your membership could be 1:1 calls with you. Your membership could be a software you created that someone pays monthly for. A gym is an example of a monthly membership. Your membership can be anything.

If you are doing on going courses, you can use Teachable to manage your course and payment plan.

#11 Sell a digital book

Selling a book is a passive way to monetize your blog or business. You can self-publish so you take all the profit created from the book. Your book can be listed on your blog as well as on Amazon. By listing the book to be purchased on Amazon, you are leveraging Amazon’s traffic to sell more of your book.

You can use Adobe Creative Cloud to design your whole book.

#12 Network Marketing

Network Marketing or MLM has a negative stigma with a lot of people because of the way most people conduct the business model. Most people are messaging or calling people to buy their products. However, with a blog, you can absolutely make your network marketing products work that does not require ever messaging and bugging people. You can simply write a blog post and link out to the products that help people. This allows you to make sales passively.

The good thing about network marketing is that most products have autoship programs so you can get a monthly commission from one customer. You are also able to make more money if the customer decides to make other product purchase through the company. You will always get the commission for the customer’s purchases forever as they are tied to your account. If the network marketing company sends the customer an email announcing a new product and the customer buys it, you receive the commission for it.

If your network marketing company product is makeup, you can have a beauty and makeup blog and suggest your MLM products within the blog. The blog does not have to be about your network marketing company so that you monetize it any way you want.

#13 Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is similar to network marketing where you are selling a product from another company. You can sell many different products from many different companies with affiliate marketing. The good thing about affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to deal with the customer service or fulfillment, which is just like network marketing. You simply just sell the product without having to deal with returns. Affiliate marketing is a very passive way to monetize a blog. Some companies reward top affiliates with prizes. Some affiliate marketing programs have recurring monthly commission based on the product being sold. Other programs are high ticket offers and bring in lots of commission. Commissions in affiliate marketing are between 10%-75%. It’s best to choose affiliate programs that pay at least a 40% commission, a monthly recurring commission, or a high-ticket offer.

Here are some more articles about affiliate marketing:

• Make $100 a day with affiliate marketing
• How to make money with affiliate marketing for beginners
• Legendary Marketer Online Business Builder Challenge Review

Now that you’ve read about all the different ways to monetize your blog or business online, it’s time to start implementing them. Which monetization method are you going to implement into your blog or business?