Nowadays, it is extremely common for people to earn a full-time income from work based on internet communications. One popular method is the monetization of blogs. If you’re looking to make money from your blog, look no further: here are some stats on what percentage and genres of blogs make money and how you can do it too.
What percentage of blogs make money? Bloggers can make anywhere between $10 a day to a six-figure annual income. Those who make over $1000 per month make up about 9% of bloggers. 5% earn a full-time income, and 63% of bloggers make less than $3.50 per day.
The question of what percentage blogs make money is a complicated one because one must consider the amount of money intended to be earned, whether the money is earned from the blogger’s own blog site and what type of bloggers the money-makers are.
How to Monetize Your Blog
There is no one surefire way of earning a part- or full-time income from blogging. No “formula” or a certain list of steps can guarantee that you’ll be making money by blogging in any given period.
That’s not to say it is impossible to predict or plan for such an accomplishment but instead to say you are best off carving your own path into the blog-o-sphere.
On average, older blogs (typically 4-5 years old), which already have an established history, reputation, and are full of several years of content are the ones that are more likely to be successful in monetization. Newer blogs will have a tougher time earning money since the opportunity to build an audience and authority in a given genre has not yet been fully taken advantage of.
Regardless of the age and niche of your content, here are a few popular methods by which bloggers monetize their platforms.
Google Adsense (or General Advertising)
In Meera Kothand’s breakdown of what generates income for bloggers, Google Adsense is listed under the “Ad Revenue” category in “Ad Networks.” This is because Google Adsense isn’t limited to only one market or interest but connects the blogger to an entire network of advertising opportunities optimized for its website and audience.
When your audience visits your website (depending on whether or not your site uses cookies), advertised content is specific to your niche and/or your audience’s online search patterns, enhancing opportunities for you to earn revenue for any clicks generated by the ads.
If you’re not keen on using Google Adsense for ad-based income, don’t worry!
Methods such as sponsored content (i.e. product reviews) or advertising a product or service in content such as videos or podcasts are some high-impact alternatives to sprinkling advertisements throughout your blogging platform.
Offer Products and/or Services
This is one route that many content creators have taken. Offering products and services such as eBooks and online courses is a powerful tool, as it aids in establishing you as an authority in your niche and allows your audience to learn from, and therefore, build trust in you.
Offering educational or otherwise informative products is an extremely reliable way of building rapport with your audience. This serves to foster a relationship in which your audience trusts your content enough to return to your platform regularly.
Affiliate Links
An affiliate link is a link to a product or subscription of sorts provided by another entity/individual. Typically affiliate links show up in sponsored content, and when your audience purchases the product, you get a portion of the profit.
The use of affiliate links is versatile in that it can be adapted to any type of content. Whether a podcast, video, or written content, you have the opportunity as a blogger to direct your audience to products specific to your niche and so contribute to your growing reputation as an authority in that niche.
For example, an outdoor blog would have affiliate links to REI hiking gear. A blogger whose opinion of a product or service is affirmed by hundreds of customer reviews, and ultimately, their own audience’s experience, is building their reputation not only as an authority in their given niche but also as a trustworthy, informative content creator.
Top 3 Genres for Money-Making Blogs
Many articles that claim to provide the notorious secret to “How to Make Money From Blogging” encourage aspiring bloggers to find their passion and make that passion their blogging niche.
Although there is truth in the idea that blogging about your passion will aid you in finding “success” in the blogging realm, the truth is: if you’re good at writing, internet research, and have a strong self-motivated workflow, you can find success in blogging.
Those bloggers who make over $10,000 monthly can certainly not be passionate about everything they write about: travel, fashion, and… a blog about blogging (yes, those are some of the most successful blogs)? Yet, despite that, the consistent self-motivated work ethic is a large part of what drives their success.
That said, you can find lots of ways to have fun with blogging, whether you’re passionate about the topic or not. A fun genre to work in certainly helps. A few of the most reliable genres which catapult you further into the blogging world are below:
Travel
Many of us are guilty of enviously following travel bloggers, living our pipe dreams vicariously through them, making bucket lists we’re never sure will be completed. This is part of the power behind the influence of travel bloggers.
Interestingly, you can take many perspectives on a travel blog: it can be educational, in terms of teaching others about cultures, history or wildlife around the world; it can be for fun, for example, a blogger who capitalizes on such ideas as “Top 10 Travel Destinations For Your Anniversary” and general leisure or celebration travel; or informative, such as suggesting the best hotels in a given city.
Food
Everybody loves a foodie!
Think of Buzzfeed’s Tasty – an entire brand that grew out of a few How-To cooking tutorials that weren’t even really all that technical, but simply made everyone feel like they had a chance at making yummy food.
This is another genre that can be made formal or informal, and there are many opportunities for new frontiers, now that we are in a new wave of the “plant-based movement” and finding and creating healthy, environmentally-conscious eating habits.
You can extend your influential reach with such a blog by using a social media platform where photos are a huge focus, such as Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook. Otherwise, what is a food blog without #foodporn photography?
Lifestyle
This genre may offer the most creative freedom, in that it can encompass many in one, including the two previously listed.
“Lifestyle” can include outdoors content spanning over many topics: bushcraft is a fast-growing niche right now, showing backcountry travel and survival tips (many opportunities for affiliate links in this niche, mainly for gear). In the bushcraft niche, one can cover food, for example, “The 10 Best Dehydrated Foods for Backpacking and How to Cook Them;” and travel “5 Must-Visit Hiking Destination in…”.
This genre is generous in its many “sub-niches” and connections to other blogging communities.
Monetization of a Blog is Unpredictable
Many who have ventured into the journey of making a living by blogging have done so based on their own merit and hard work. There is no guarantee that a given platform will make money, or even that those niches that are popular right now will be so next year.
Some have experienced financial success with their blogs within four months – for others, it took over five years.
Your secret to success in making money from blogging will be your drive, patience and – truthfully – whether you enjoy writing or not.
