The top 4 ways to monetize your blog in 2023

When we talk about making money blogging, perhaps the first thing that comes to mind is selling advertising space, You’ve probably read about some 13-year-old kid who manages to make $5,000 a month from Adsense on his blog.  However, while ads represent a major source of revenue, they are not the best way to monetize your blog.

The top 4 ways to monetize your blog in 2023

1. Sell your own product or service

Selling your own goods or services is, at least based on my own experience, the best method to earn money from blogging. For instance, if your blog is about PHP coding, it only makes sense that you would use it to advertise your PHP book or programming company. I have successfully promoted my site directory submission and search engine submission services through my blogs.

People don’t visit commercial sites unless they have to. But they’ll visit blogs to find useful information from trusted individuals who know what they’re talking about.  Therefore, your blog is the ideal place to pre-sell a product or service related to your area of expertise.

2. Sell other people’s stuff

Are you not available for your product or service for sale?

Not to worry– you can make money by selling other people’s stuff.  It’s called affiliate marketing.  Sign up with sites like ClickBank and Commission Junction, all you’ll find hundreds of products and services that you can sell on your blog.  Aside from selling your own product, affiliate marketing represents the next best thing to monetize your blog.

Marketing affiliate products on your blog shouldn’t be limited to sticking affiliate links and ads on your sidebar.  You should incorporate the affiliate links into the texts of your posts.  You might write a review on an info product you’ve just bought through ClickBank. Of course, try to be objective and avoid blatantly hyping a product to make a sale, or you will risk losing credibility (remember, your job is to pre-sell a product; let the product’s sales page do the actual selling).

3. Sell ad space

The third best way to make money from a blog is to sell ad space.  You may have noticed the plasters of 125 x 125 ads on your favorite blogs.  You can sell ad space directly on your site by providing a Paypal link for advertisers to pay you.  

You can set your rates based on your traffic, niche, banner sizes, number of ads on your site, and so on. There is really no rule of thumb for deciding how much to charge.  A technical blog, for instance, commands a much higher rate than a blog about your daily ramblings.

If you don’t have the traffic to sell ad space directly to advertisers, you can join the various blog advertising networks like Entrecard, CMF Ads, Adgitize, and Project Wonderful.  I’ll talk a lot more about these services later.

4. Contextual ads

Contextual ads, particularly Adsense, remain a viable option to monetize your blog, but they’re hardly the cash cows they used to be.  Many people have grown accustomed to ignoring them. You need a lot of traffic to make any money from Adsense at all.  

How much traffic?  I support that depends on your niche.  If you run a popular blog about the insurance industry, for instance, you may make a killing from those high-paying car insurance ads.  

If your blog is a place where people visit primarily to kill a few minutes of their time, on the other hand, don’t expect to make much money if you’ve managed to build a huge following.