Insights from a Six-Figure Blogger

Can you still make money from blogging? Absolutely. I asked a six figure blogger to spill the beans on how she’s monetizing her blog and here are the insights she shared:

Display Ads: Elevating Your Earnings with Ad Networks

Despite the changing landscape, she’s still making a portion of her income from display ads. She suggests you explore options beyond Google AdSense, such as Ezoic and Mediavine. And she praises Mediavine for higher returns, although entry requirements may pose a challenge for newcomers.

Affiliate Marketing: Your Gateway to Substantial Income

Affiliate marketing involves promoting others’ products for a commission. Amazon offers a standard 5% commission, but some digital product vendors provide commissions as high as 50%. Building an engaged online community becomes crucial for success in this realm.

In our bloggers case, she works under a pen name in the make money online realm.

Her affiliate income is through the roof. She makes serious money with recurring commissions on hosting, SaaS, autoresponders and other tools new marketers need. She also sells a couple of ClickBank products regularly as well as being a top affiliate in a handful of launches each year.

Sponsorships: A Tricky Trade of Time for Money

While sponsorships through portals were once lucrative, recent Google algorithm changes have diminished their profitability. Our six-figure blogger says it is NOT worth her time, as it often involves trading time for money. But she does suggest that it could be something worth looking at for other bloggers.

Digital Products: A Personal Touch to Profitability

Our blogger does offer digital products of her own. They’re mainly evergreen so she only needs to update them once a year. And when she does update them, she sends them out for free to previous buyers as well as holding a major launch with affiliates to make new sales. Giving out the upgraded version for free to previous buyers goes a long way to securing them as customers for life and filling her courses and coaching offers.

Online Courses: The Holy Grail of Online Income

According to our seasoned blogger, online courses represent the holy grail of online income. People pay not just for content but for personal interaction. Crafting multiple courses can significantly boost your revenue. She has a dozen different courses and offers each one twice per year. Keep in mind it took her 5 years to create those courses, but now they provide solid income with minimal work. She gets on a live webinar once per week with her students and has an assistant handle all emails and assignments. Seriously, she’s doing very little work, mainly because she has an assistant who knows her courses inside and out.

Coaching and 1-to-1 Services: High Pay, but a Time Trade-off

While coaching and personalized services can be lucrative, they do involve trading time for money. Our blogger recommends engaging in such services only if you genuinely enjoy them. In the beginning she did a great deal of coaching, but now she only does it if clients are willing to pay serious money.

Exploring an Exit: Monetizing Your Site

At times, your enthusiasm for a blog wanes, and the once-beloved topic starts to lose its appeal. When that happens, instead of harboring guilt, consider a different approach—sell your blog.

Our blogger sold her first two blogs when she realized she wasn’t enjoying them anymore. She’s also considering selling her online marketing blog in the near future, along with all of the courses, but it’s so lucrative I have a hard time imagining she’s really going to do that.

A side note: Creating and selling a blog doesn’t have to be a lengthy affair, and you don’t need to wait until you’re bored with your blog. In fact, you can create a compact yet impactful blog with the sole purpose of selling it.

With just 15 posts, a freebie, an autoresponder sequence, and a sellable report, you can swiftly list it on platforms like Flippa as a starter blog.

While this strategy alone may not catapult you to a $10,000-per-month income, it becomes a valuable component when multiplied. Earning $5,000 here, another $1,000 there, and an additional $4,000, the cumulative effect can contribute significantly to your overall income.

The 7 Steps to Kickstart Your Blog from Scratch:

Launch your blog – Begin imperfectly; perfection is not the prerequisite for success.

Create consistent content – Regularly publish high-quality content to build your audience.

Sign up for relevant affiliate programs – Identify what your audience wants through a freebie, turning it into a low-ticket offer.

Transform affiliate products or low-ticket offers into an online course – Elevate your offerings as your audience grows.

Consider display ads after gaining traffic – Once established, explore display ads for an additional income stream.

Maintain content consistency – Keep your audience engaged with a continuous stream of valuable content.

Create new online courses – Evolve your offerings to provide the “next, best step” for your growing audience.

Begin your online journey armed with these insights and watch your blog flourish in 2024.