If you have seen the hype about blogging and are wondering how to monetize your blog without ads and making commissions, I can show you how to become an authority using different methods. Using these methods, you will not be missing ad revenue at all.
The internet is filled with stories of bloggers who make money blogging with ads. Some are even making around $80,000 a month or more. But this is a small percentage. And most of the advice you see online today is hype, beginners should ignore.
But what if you don’t want to put advertisements on your blog or maybe you have not been accepted by a ad network. Or worse yet, maybe you were using Google AdSense and now you’ve been kicked out for some dumb reason. And all you want to do is get a commission from every blog post.
Well, fear not, there are many other ways to bring in the cash for a new and older blog. You just have to be creative and put your noggin and expertise to use.
I’m going to share some tips I figured out along the way, some tips and anything else I learned doing this for 27 years.
My Short Story With Ads
I was making around $2000 a month with Google AdSense for about 5 years. I had one blog between 2005 to 2010. I was creating the best content I could and I really enjoyed it as a hobby while working a fulltime job.
And then in 2011 disaster struck. I received an email from Google stating I was kicked out of AdSense. It was a regular day at work. I was in Michigan working for a company doing some IT work and I logged into Google as saw my numbers where zero.
It really sucked, that extra money was very useful back then and then they took it all way. The email I received stated I was using automated link building tools which were against Google’s guidelines.
Think Relevance
The first thing you need to do is think relevance. What I mean by that is, thinking what kinds of things would be relevant to your website. For instance, let’s say you have a camping blog and you talk about everything camping.
Think, what kinds of things you can add to your blog that your readers would love? This is the very first step.
Treat Each Page As It’s Own Entity
Then, once you figure out relevance and what to add to your site. You need to see that each and every page is it’s own city.
I see it all the time, people add a popup or something general to their site as a lead magnet. They then place that same thing on every page. And guess what? They get half the sales or leads they could be getting.
Don’t take the easy way out and blindly add one thing. Think about how you can make each page more relevant to your site visitors.
HubSpot is a very good example of a company who does this on their blog. One each page they have a lead magnet that is very relevant to the page content.
You Will Need Lots Of Traffic
I’ve said this before, you will need a lot of traffic. And most of that traffic will be from Google. You will have to put effort into blogging if you really want to make a full-time go of it.
Many people who are beginning are closer than they think to success with blogging. They just give up too soon because they want to see profit right away. But let’s say you are working a full-time job and love to write. You could work on blogging nights and weekends writing posts. Now, it may take a few years to get 200 articles written. But later on it can be very well worth it.
Blogging is used by businesses and brands all over the world to bring in leads and sales. The benefits of blogging can be huge when you hit real traffic numbers. It can be a huge investment when done correctly.
Now On To The Monetizing Strategies
So, let’s now talk about other ways to monetize your blog or website without ads. I’m going to go over the ways that I have used in the past and some other ways I have not, but have known about for a long time.
Selling Your Own Ad Space
Once you start getting a significant amount of traffic, you can start selling your own ads. But do not be fooled here. You will need a heavy amount of traffic for this to work or a decent amount of popularity.
Depending on the amount of traffic you are getting, you could see revenues upwards of $100,000 a year or more. Now, you can’t live on that but it’s a decent start! Kidding! Ha Ha!
If you have a WordPress blog this can be accomplished very easy with the help of a plugin such as AdSanity.
Adsanity allows you to serve your own ads on your blog or you can connect in and show network ads. There are other plugins, so do your due diligence and see what plugins you can find.
You want to find a plugin that is as hands off as you can get it.
With this method you can also, be a go getter and use ad places such as BuysellAds.
Just make sure to create an advertising page on your site and place a prominent link in your menu and footer so your visitors will see.
Making Your Own Ads
If you think about it you can come up with many ways and reasons to create your own ads. These can be advertising affiliate products in AdSense style, ads for your service or ads you have a as a partnership with another company.
You can use a plugin like Advanced Ads. This plugin will allow you to post relevant ads per categories which is really useful and using relevance.
If you have a hero section on your blog you can use it to place hero ads for a relevant product or service also.
Just make sure to place your ads in in places that are one relevant and a few times on your pages depending on how much content a page has. In other words, if a post is only 500 words don’t place 3 large ads on that page. That’s too much.
You can get a feel for ad placement from Google.
Many of these strategies fall under affiliate marketing which I will talk about down below.
Affiliate Marketing Opportunities
Affiliate marketing is a big money maker for those who have truly figured out how it works. And there are several ways to make affiliate sales from your blog. You can sign up for affiliate programs for just about anything these days. You can sell ebooks, photography, tutorials, your knowledge and make an affiliate commission.
Its best if you create a website from your current user experience as you will tend to see better SEO results when you are a current expert.
Site Note: When it comes to affiliate marketing and Google, many SEOs and others think they are fully against it. I do not see this as the real case. Just make sure and make your content as best as you can and be helpful.
Placing in content links
One of the ways many bloggers use this type of marketing is by placing links in their blog posts to a merchant. This strategy fully works and can be very viable for generating lots of revenue.
The only issue I have with this is it can go away at any moment if you lose all traffic from Google. Which is why you need to build an email list.
As I talked about above, just make sure to place your links within your content a few times. Of course, the amount of revenue you generate will depend on content quality and how many pageviews you are generating.
You can also use a program like Slimlinks that will allow you to place ads on your blog for vendors.
Building Your Email List For Affiliate Marketing
One of the best ways to earn income for an online business is to get email subscribers. I encourage anyone to do so. It’s important, especially for trust.
With the emails method, you can use it alongside with ads and links or you can focus on capturing email leads only. Then, once you have their email, you can promote your affiliate products on your list.
This is a key strategy Jim Daniels from Bizweb2000.com is still used to this very day and has been since 1996. He also does a lot of joint venturing with others, but email is one of his top strategies.
Using WooCommerce
Another way is to use WooCommerce. Install Woo on your blog and use the product feature to create affiliate products.
If you create quality content for each Woo product, this can be a very viable strategy. Also, you may not want to load up the store with hundreds of products. But you could create products for the best ones.
Using this, you could compete with other companies selling digital and psychical goods.
Create a Course
Is your blog about something you do, love or even a serious hobby? Then, you could create courses and sell them from your site as a guide.
And once you have traffic, it just may sell.
There are many platforms today that offer a place to take your course. You could put it on Udemy or even use course software for WordPress such as LearnDash.
Ebook Sales
E-books were hot back in the early 2000’s. Everyone seemed to have one and was making money hand over fist. These days, people still buy them and they are also great to give away for a viral effect also.
You could show people the tricks you know and package them all in a nice e-book.
Create A Membership Site
Membership sites have been around for a while as we were promoting these back in the day, even around the year 1999. But they can work really well if you are an expert in your field.
The one thing, though, is you need to keep content updated regularly and deal with customer issues and questions. But they can be great money makers when done the right way.
With this method, you are building a community of members that want to hear what you have to say. As each one joins, they will be on your email list. Then, along with your coaching information, you can send relevant offers via an affiliate link. This will allow you to not only make revenue from their memberships but also affiliate commissions.
Selling Your Services
Consulting
Are you an expert in a business or even have a side business? Then you can sell consulting services to any client from your blog. This will take content or ads to get it off the ground, but if you keep your content relevant to your audience, then you can use some of the ways above to add links and ads to your blog. When done correctly, you could profit with a decent number of clients.
Selling Your Software
If you are a developer and have software, then you can sell it on your site. Even today, with AI such as ChatGPT, it’s even easier to do. All you need is a landing page, decent copywriting and you are in business. Success will depend on the type of amount of traffic you receive.
Make Sales With Writing
Are you good at writing? If you are, then you should sell your skills as a copywriter or blog article writer. Ai is out and people need quality articles from real people.
Art Skills
If you are decent with art and programs like Adobe Photoshop or Canva, then you can sell your digital art skills.
