Blogging is one of the most popular ways to make money online. In the last few years, technology has evolved and made things easier for people without any technical background. So, you don’t have to be a techie to start and promote your own blog. Creative freedom, promoting your business, or building your side hustle—a blog can help you with all of that.
If you’re interested in blogging, then you have probably heard about WordPress too. WordPress is the world’s most popular Content Management System (CMS) that powers around 42% of the internet!
While starting a WordPress blog is easy, monetizing it can be a significant struggle. For making money on a WordPress blog, you need to drive consistent traffic to it and find ways to monetize. Start with speeding up WordPress, advancing hosting like virtual machine hosting, and implementing several SEO techniques to increase your website traffic. For a comprehensive solution, consider opting for top WordPress hosting providers that offer not only enhanced performance but also specialized features and support to help you achieve your online goals.
In this comprehensive guide, you’ll understand how to start making money from your WordPress blog by turning it into a business. You’ll also get an insight into how much money you can make through the same.
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What is a WordPress blog?
WordPress is a popular CMS that helps you create and launch your website. A blogging website built on WordPress CMS is usually known as a WordPress blog.
The user-friendly nature of the platform, paired with the versatile plugin and theme options, makes WordPress one of the best choices for starting a blog. Using WordPress learning to blog and making money from it gets much easier due to the flexibility and versatility of the platform.
How much money can you make from a wordpress blog?
Creating your WordPress blog and promoting it may take a significant chunk of your precious time. So, you must be wondering if the money you can potentially make from it is even worth the effort?
The truth is the potential revenue you can generate from a WordPress blog is almost limitless. So when you pick a profitable niche, develop a sales funnel strategy, and satisfy a hungry market—you’re on the right path.
For example, consider Financial Samurai, one of the popular bloggers in the finance niches. According to him, you can make anywhere between $1,000 to $10,000 in the first year by publishing strategic content three times a week. By year 10, this can go as high as $500,000 to $1,000,000!
Of course, you also need to consider the expenses and costs that you incur as you grow your WordPress blog. To start with, this number might only include your WordPress hosting costs. The expenses will increase as your blog drives more traffic.
9 proven ways to make money on your wordpress blog
By now, you’d have an idea about the promising revenue potential of a WordPress blog. In this section, let’s dive deeper into the different ways in which you can earn money on your WordPress blog.
Note that you can apply more than one of these ways to expand your revenue streams and earn more from your WordPress blog. We suggest you go through the list and invest your time and effort into the ideas that suit you best.
1. Market your freelance services
The key idea behind making money online is serving a hungry audience with products and services they need. So, if you have any skill sets or services to offer your target audience, then your WordPress blog is the best way to leverage them.
By creating a WordPress blog, you project your expertise on a skill. The skill can be social media marketing, graphic designing, UX development, etc. So why not turn your blog visitors into customers by offering your expert freelance services?
WordPress offers a variety of themes and plugins for freelancers looking to sell their services. This includes invoice plugins, portfolio designers, landing page builders, payment gateway integrations, and more. These plugins can help you easily start earning money from your WordPress blog.
For example, Sergio from SOSFactory leverages his blog to offer freelance design and illustrator services.
2. Create an online course
When you want to scale the income from your WordPress blog, you can package your services and sell them as online courses.
Online courses and digital learning hubs have gained immense popularity, especially in the post-COVID era. Whether you’re looking to improve your job skills or simply want to learn Spanish, enrolling in a collaborative learning platform can be a great way to achieve your goals. So, this may be the right time to hop on the bandwagon and try your luck at it.
You can start by understanding your blog visitors and identifying gaps in the existing market. If you can package your expertise and experiences into a range of online courses, then nothing like it!
WordPress offers a variety of plugins and integrations with some of the best online teaching platforms. You can use WordPress plugins such as Learndash, Lifter LMS, and LearnPress to create and host your online courses.
The best part about creating online courses is they’re more of a passive source of income, unlike freelance or consultation services. Once you make the initial investment in money and time, you can sit back and relax while your courses make money on autopilot.
A great example of this would be Marginal Revolution, one of the best economic blogs on the web owned by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok. They offer a variety of online courses that cater to their target audience.
In addition, you could create your own affiliate program to further boost the income of your online courses without spending your own time and money on marketing. After setting it up, all you’ll need to do is pay a set amount of commission each time an affiliate makes a sale.
3. Create a paid membership program
Membership programs are one of the most lucrative options for pro bloggers with a loyal community of fans. When you have unique, never-seen-before content to offer that drives consistent traffic month-on-month, you should consider offering membership subscriptions using tools like WordPress membership plugin.
Creating a paid membership program requires you to offer some exclusive content or learning resources for a monthly/yearly subscription fee. Subscriptions are a recurring revenue stream, and your profits from the WordPress blog will quickly add up.
If you plan to start your paid membership website or program, you must drive engagement and build a loyal audience on your WordPress blog. This leads the way for exclusive paid content, for which you can charge an extra fee.
For instance, Brain Dean from Backlinko is one of the most talked-about bloggers in the SEO space. He leverages this opportunity to offer an exclusive membership website, SEOThatWorks, that costs nearly $2,000 to join. Imagine the revenue potential of such a paid membership program!
Another great example is the SUCCS community membership for people passionate about growing succulents. This is a perfect example of a unique, niche blog turned into a popular membership site. Cassidy Tuttle offers premium content on nurturing succulent plants through this community.
4. Become a coach and sell your services
We live in an era where virtual coaching has become immensely popular and accessible. Pick any niche—health and fitness, finance, fashion, or marketing, and there is a significant demand for coaches who help people get closer to their goals through expert guidance.
As discussed before, a WordPress blog is an excellent platform to establish your thought leadership and authority in any niche where your expertise lies. This is why blogs are a great medium to attract coaching clients ready to pay a premium for your coaching services.
You can use your WordPress blog to generate and nurture leads for your coaching services automatically. Using WordPress’ flexible theme and plugin options, you can accept bookings and payments through your website. Hiring help through virtual assistance can be a great way to learn how to scale an online coaching business and earn more money from your WordPress blog.
A great example here would be Tonal, an online service that offers fitness coaching solutions and home workout programs.
5. Get sponsorships from brands and influencers
Brands and influencers are always on the lookout for influential blogs in their niche. Such brands and influencers can benefit from established bloggers through sponsored posts, product reviews, etc.
When you own an established WordPress blog with a considerable following, you can charge a fee ranging from $50 to $500 for every sponsored post. This can be a fantastic earning opportunity for niche bloggers with an authoritative voice in the niche.
You can try this strategy by searching for brands ready to partner with micro-influencers for marketing their products or services. It is a cost-effective influencer marketing strategy of promotion. Then, you can reach out to such brands via cold emails and grow your sponsorship network.
If you’re an established blogger in your niche community, brands may contact you for sponsorships. Either way, it’s essential to endorse only those products or services you genuinely believe in, and your audience would like.
6. Use affiliate links
Using affiliate links is perhaps the most popular and easiest way to start making money from your WordPress blog. The earning potential with affiliate marketing is also huge. In fact, stats show that almost 50% of affiliate marketers are earning an average of $20k a year!
Bloggers can place affiliate links in their blog content. When visitors click on these links, they are redirected to a third-party website with the product or service you are promoting. When the user makes a purchase using your affiliate link, you earn a certain commission.
You can start by signing up for different affiliate programs for bloggers offering products or services in your niche or use a service like Shopper with which you can start promoting thousands of products right after a free signup. Creating relevant, valuable blog content can be an excellent opportunity to place such affiliate links and earn a commission.
An apt example of a blogger earning millions of dollars through an affiliate blog is the Shoemoney blog by Jeremy Schoemaker. The Shoemoney blog has been named the Best Affiliate Marketing Blog, having made millions of dollars over the past five years.
7. Sell digital products
If you want to sell your products without the hassle of warehousing and shipping, then consider selling digital products on your WordPress blog. Digital products are relatively easy to produce and highly cost-effective, especially for beginner bloggers.
For instance, you can use your expertise to sell ebooks on your blog.
You can sell digital products in various forms such as ebooks, software, checklists, white papers, templates, stock photos, audio samples, spreadsheets, etc. Digital products are a more passive income option where you have to put in the initial investment and earn returns for a long time.
WordPress has some great plugin options for selling digital products, one such popular plugin being Easy Digital Downloads. You can set up your digital products store, accept payments, offer discounts, and do many more things using such a WordPress plugin.
For instance, Kate Galliett, from Fit For Real Life, uses the Easy Digital Downloads WordPress plugin to sell numerous digital products on her blog.
8. Sell physical products
Selling physical products can be one of the most profitable and scalable business ideas to make money from your WordPress blog. WordPress plugins offer a way to set up a highly personalized eCommerce store with hundreds of physical products. You can also find various ways to optimize the product pages for higher conversion rates.
You can leverage your WordPress blog content to attract customers to your eCommerce store. This way, chances of converting your website visitors increase. One of the most popular WordPress eCommerce plugins is WooCommerce.
A great example of a successful eCommerce store built using WooCommerce would be the Official All Blacks online store that sells replica team jerseys, supporter gear, and training kits to All Blacks fans worldwide.
9. Run Ads
Ad networks such as Adsense and Mediavine are also great ways of generating consistent month-on-month income from your WordPress blog. Such ad networks typically use up specific spaces on your blog and sell them to advertisers.
Ad networks usually work on a pay-per-click basis where you get paid whenever a user clicks on the ad on your blog. You can also directly sell banner space on your blog to advertisers, as this gives you more control over the kind of ads you’d like to display on your blog.
Here are a few examples of banner ads and how they look like in blogs:
The biggest disadvantage with using ads as your revenue source is that you need a high-traffic WordPress blog to see significant earnings through Ad networks. This is because the earnings for each click from these networks are usually relatively low. Hence, you will have to invest in SEO and strategies for link building to generate high traffic before you start using Ad networks.
Conclusion
WordPress is the most popular CMS solution that offers anyone (even a non-techie) an easy way to create and monetize a blog. Once you build a profitable WordPress blog and start driving considerable traffic, the options to make money are numerous.
This comprehensive guide on making money on a WordPress blog offers you nine different proven ways to do the same. You can use this article as a guide to pick your options and turn your WordPress blog into a recurring revenue stream.
