Table of Contents
There are lots of guides about how to make money blogging,
Are you looking for the best ways to make money online from that is not FRAUD? WordPress is the largest publishing platform on the planet and powers over 30% of all websites.
You can use WordPress and blogs by doing what you love to make money online. You can work from home, right now, and there is no limit to how much money you can make.
In this article, we will share good ways on how to make money blogging with WordPress.
How to Make Money Blogging (Free Guide for 2019)
First and foremost, warning: there are no “Be Rich” schemes. If you are looking for ways to make money online, you are in the wrong place.
Don’t be fooled by expensive cars, palaces or the beach. Each of these is a scam, and you waste your time and money on the courses or training you buy from these guys.
Unlike other “online money” articles, this is a comprehensive guide to legitimately making money at home, using blogs and WordPress.
Many of these methods require you to invest time and/or money to get started. If you are keen to make efforts, you will receive the prize.
Before you start using any of these methods, you must have your own WordPress blog. We need to get started on how to start a WordPress blog for beginners.
The process is really easy whether you are 20 or 60 years old. However, if you need help, our expert team can help you set up your blog for free. → Click here to set up a Free WordPress Blog! ←
Once you have set up your blog, you are ready to follow this guide.
As a long article, we created a table of contents below for easy navigation
Monetize Your Blog Content
When you think about money on the blog, advertising is the first thing that comes to mind.
Yes, you can make money with WordPress ads, but there are other ways to make money for your blog content. Here are some of the methods that work:
1. Make Money With Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is done when you recommend a specific product or service to track your audience and then click on that link to get a commission every time someone buys it.
A real life example of support marketing would be when you help a friend open a bank account. Usually, they give you a gift card or a voucher of some kind.
The online products and services you make can be similar to the affiliate programs you can join. There are affiliate programs available in all industries (niches).
If you want to get started with affiliate marketing, you can start thinking about products that readers might also be interested in. Then you can see if they have a membership program that you can sign up for.
You can find a huge list of products to promote from:
Once you have selected the products to promote, then you can use a WordPress plugin like PrettyLinks to manage your affiliate links.
It allows you to quickly insert links into posts, create branded links, auto-replace keywords in links, and see how each link is performing on your site.
Affiliate marketing is the easiest way to make money because you can promote different types of products. Every popular store like Walmart, Bestbuy, Amazon and others has an affiliate program.
To learn more, see beginner’s guide to affiliate marketing and also check out these affiliate marketing tools and plugins which will help you increase your earnings.
2. Display Google AdSense on WordPress
Google Adsense is an easy way to make money from your blog. All you need to do is add Google Scripts to your website and start showing ads.
Every time a user clicks on an ad, you get paid. These are called CPC advertisements.
What is CPC? The cost-per-click represents a “cost-per-click”. By using Google Adsense to display cost-per-click ads, you’ll be charged a fee each time a visitor clicks on your ad.
CPC is set by the advertiser. (This is the opposite of CPM ads. In CPM ads, you pay for ad views instead of clicks. CPM means “CPM,” where M is a Roman numeral of 1,000.)
When you first started your business, Google Adsense was a great way to start making money online.
You can find a guide on how to monetize your WordPress blog with Google AdSense and this tutorial on how to optimize your AdSense earnings for more tips.
Looking for a replacement for Google AdSense? Try Media.net. They also have a large number of advertisers, and their spending is good.
3. Sell ads directly using the WordPress ad plugin
Google AdSense is easy to set up, but the money you can earn is limited. The revenue per click on your ad will vary.
It may be more profitable to sell banner space directly on your website. You don’t have to rely on intermediaries to make money, you can negotiate prices and terms yourself.
Above we mentioned the difference between CPC and CPM ads, which charge you by click or per thousand views. Although you can use one of these modes to sell banner ads, most blogs charge a flat fee instead. It’s easier to charge a flat fee than to track views or clicks.
Still, direct sales ads require more work to manage than using Google AdSense. Not only do you need to add some code to the site, but you also need to negotiate prices, make agreements and terms, and do administrative work such as billing.
However, using the WordPress ad management plugin can make this process easier. We recommend using AdSanity, which allows you to manage Google AdSense and your own ads.
For more information, see the guide on how to sell ads on WordPress blogs.
4. Sell sponsored blog posts
Some bloggers are not interested in showing ads to their audience and want to know how to monetize their blogs without ads.
With the ad network, you won’t be able to control what’s displayed on your site. Some readers are annoyed or offended by ads, and more and more people are using ad blockers, which can affect your revenue potential.
Another way to monetize your blog is through sponsorship.
Sponsorship is like in sports, TV shows or other industries. Basically, a company will pay you a product that represents them, talk about it, and promote it to your readers.
First, it’s a good idea to put together a one-page media kit that details your traffic statistics, social media attention, demographics, and any other data that makes your site more attractive to advertisers. You can then negotiate a sponsorship agreement with the company.
When posting sponsored posts, it is important to understand the laws regarding disclosure in your area.
For example, in the United States, bloggers who post sponsored posts must follow the FTC’s Endorsement Guide. This includes making the post public when the post is sponsored. You can do this by adding a sponsor post prefix to your WordPress title.
5. Get paid to write reviews
Similar to sponsored posts, you can also make money by writing paid reviews on the site.
As mentioned above, this is a slightly different way of monetizing a review site with a member link.
Instead, you can try out products related to your niche for free, or even get paid by writing a review.
The process of doing this may be similar to getting a sponsorship position. You need to look at products related to your niche market and your audience may be interested in them.
You can contact the company to ask if you want to make a paid comment. There are also sites like PayPerPost that can help you connect with companies you might be interested in.
6. Make money online by flipping the website
If you know how to build a WordPress site, you will be ahead of most people. Sometimes entrepreneurs like to buy an established website for their own business.
If you can build a WordPress blog and start attracting traffic, you can sell it and make money for your efforts.
This requires understanding the types of sites you need and how to price and sell them. A website like Flippa can be used as an auction site or as a broker for a sales website.
7. Get Public Speaking Gigs as an Influencer
If you promote your brand with a blog, you will get a good return over time as you become an influential person in your field.
You can use this recognition to get some public speaking positions. Many bloggers made a lot of money by speaking at the conference.
Giving a speech at the event, whether you are paid or not, can help you promote your blog and personal brand. If you’re good at networking and public speaking, you’ll be able to find many new opportunities in the process.
Here are some general tips you need to keep in mind if you want to make money as a paid public speaker.
- Be an expert in your field. If you don’t have enough knowledge/skills at the moment, then start learning right away.
- Be consistent – You need to continuously promote your expertise on the topic through your blogging and social media activities.
- Let people know that you are available. You can announce on social media or privately reach out to event organizers.
You may not find paid public speaking gigs right away. Many successful speakers start their public speaking career from smaller, more casual, and free community events and meetups
8. Create restricted member content
Your most loyal readers are big fans and may be willing to pay if you want to read more of your work. You can only create areas for them where only in-depth blog posts, downloads, videos, audio content, and more can participate.
Membership sites can be a big time investment because you have to constantly create premium content for your paying members. However, they can be very profitable as they generate recurring revenue (orders).
You can easily create a membership site using the WordPress membership plugin. We recommend using MemberPress, the most friendly and robust membership plugin for WordPress.
We have a complete guide to creating a WordPress Membership Website with step-by-step instructions to help you get started.
9. Create a private forum
Another way to create a paid membership site is to create private forums that users have to pay to access. Forums are a great way for your audience to get one-on-one advice from you. Other community members can also interact and help each other.
While forum moderation can be a lot of trouble, a paid forum is a great way to earn repeat revenue from your WordPress site.
You need to set up a forum on your site to get started. Here are our top 9 forum-based plugins for WordPress.
10. Create a Q&A community
The Q&A communities like Stack Exchange and Quora are huge. They help you create a web environment that is motivated, motivated and highly engaged.
Like forums, you need to spend some time building a large community. After that, you can monetize user-generated content on your website with ads, affiliate advertising, and other methods.
Popular Q&A websites receive direct advertising and sponsorship deals from advertisers in their industry. This will help them negotiate a much higher tariff and additional benefits.
See our guide to launching a Q&A website using WordPress.
Create a directory website with WordPress
Another way to make money with WordPress online is to create a directory or listing website. You can then charge visitors to promote their ads on their site.
Here are some different directory ideas to get you started.
11. Create a paid business directory
Business directories can make you think about the beginnings of the web before robots started to automatically index everything, but they are not completely outdated.
General business directories are no longer needed, but local or niche directories can be extremely useful.
Directories can gather reviews of local businesses, share the best podcasts on the topic, or list the best products in a particular niche.
You can easily create a web directory in WordPress following our tutorial. There are also many directory extensions for WordPress to choose from, many of which allow you to accept payment acceptances.
12. Create a WordPress desktop with paid submissions
Another option is to create a paid desktop. Companies that want to promote an open position for your audience can pay you to submit a listing.
Creating a successful desktop is easier than narrowing down a specific niche. That way, you can become a site looking for work in the industry with minimal competition.
This is great for a well-established niche for established blogs. For example, ProBlogger is now famous for its professional bloggers desktop.
With WordPress, creating a paid job board is easy. See our tutorial on how to create a job board in WordPress with WP Job Manager for a step-by-step walkthrough. You can use the WooCommerce Paid Listings addon to charge for job post submissions.
13. Create a WordPress Event Calendar With Paid Submissions
Instead of a job board, you could create an event calendar where you charge people to advertise their events. This also works well if you already have an established audience, because businesses will be willing to pay to reach your audience.
A paid event calendar is a good monetization method for local or industry-specific websites. You might choose to advertise events in your local city, conferences in a certain industry, or even webinars or live streaming events.
To set this up on your site, see our guide on the best WordPress event calendar plugins.
Sell Digital Products With WordPress
If you’re looking for a more low-maintenance way to make money online blogging with WordPress, then selling your own digital products may be a good choice. While you do have to invest the time to create the product upfront after it’s created your work is very minimal.
Here are a few digital products you can create and sell on your website.
14. Sell Ebooks on WordPress
Ebooks are an obvious choice for creating digital products. They are relatively simple to write and produce. If you’ve been blogging for a while, then you can collect some of your old blog posts and turn them into chapters of a book.
Once your book is written, you can design a cover using a tool like Canva and create a PDF of your ebook.
Selling digital products on WordPress is easy with a plugin. To get started, you can see a guide on the best WordPress eCommerce plugins compared.
For digital downloads, we recommend Easy Digital Downloads. It’s relatively easy to use and includes all the features you need to create your online store.
15. Sell Online Courses
Selling an online course is another great way to make money online.
Courses usually sell for a much higher price point than ebooks. You can charge a premium for your expertise.
You’ll need to create the lessons for your course, plus any supporting materials that you want to include such as downloads, slides, checklists, templates, etc.
You will also need to decide whether you want to offer personalized support for your course. Some sites offer two tiers of each course: a basic version without support, and a premium version with email support.
Once your course is ready, you can use a learning management system (LMS) plugin to deliver the course to your audience.
We recommend using LearnDash with MemberPress.
16. Host a Paid Webinar
Webinars are a great way to build your audience, share your experience, and grow your business. But did you know they’re also a smart way to make money online?
Webinars are similar to online courses, but a webinar is live and often includes a question and answer section.
WordPress makes it easy to host a paid webinar. Whether you’re using your site to actually host the webinar, or just to advertise your webinar and register participants, it’s crucial for your webinar success.
For more details on how you can host a paid webinar, see our list of the 9 best webinar software for WordPress users.
Sell of online services through WordPress
If you are looking for easy ways to make money online, selling services is the fastest way to get started. There is no early investment to create a product or invest in inventory.
Instead, you can only create a “contract me” page on your website and start searching for the first client.
Here are some ideas to get you started.
17. Offer freelance services
As a blogger, you are an expert in your niche. You can start earning income by offering your skills and knowledge as a freelancer.
The freelancer is a popular way to earn money online because it does not necessarily require any initial investment of time or money. You can simply start offering your services to your current audience.
Once you start the freelancer, you must have a way to bill and collect the payments of your clients. We recommend using FreshBooks, but there are also other billing add-ons for WordPress.
If you are interested in the self-employed to earn serious money online, check out our list of the main tools for self-employed, designers and WordPress developers to help you get started.
18. Start your own consulting business
Checking is another way to make money online from your blog and share your experience.
Instead of offering your services, a consultant offers advice and strategy so that your clients can be more effective.
As in the self-employed, there is no initial investment. You can start offering consulting services in your existing blog. All you need is to create a page with a form so that users can request more information.
To easily create a professional and mobile form, we recommend WPForms. You can see this tutorial on how to create a budget request form in WordPress to get started.
19. Become a coach
If the “consultant” does not look like the right title for you, you can consider it as a technician.
A vital coach offers advice, guidance and responsibility to set goals and improve your life. There are also other types of coaches, such as blog coaches, writing coaches and much more.
Regardless of your area of expertise, you can provide individual help to your session with training sessions.
To save time and make things comfortable for your customers, you can set up a reservation form so that readers can schedule coaching sessions directly from your WordPress blog.
Check out the list of the 5 best add-ons and WordPress reservation options to get started.
Sell physical products online through WordPress
While selling digital products or services can be an easy way to start making money online, there is nothing like the sale of real physical products. Here are some ways to start selling products with WordPress.
20. Start an e-commerce business with WooCommerce
Do you have an idea for your own product? Why not start your own online store?
WordPress facilitates the creation of a store or even the possibility of adding a store to the existing block through the free add-on for WooCommerce.
Starting an online store can be a lot of work since you need to create or buy the products and send them by yourself.
But selling physical products can be a rewarding experience, and sometimes a physical product is exactly what your audience wants.
To get started, check our tutorial on how to start an online store with WooCommerce.
You can also use Shopify or BigCommerce as a WooCommerce alternative.
21. Create an online store of T-shirts with WordPress
Creating your own t-shirt store is easy with WordPress. Almost everyone wears t-shirts, so opening a t-shirt store is an excellent way to generate money with any type of blog. T-shirt design allows you to be creative and offer something unique to your audience.
It’s easy because there are services that allow you to load your own designs and print them out and send it to you. Get a benefit fee.
You can create your own T-shirt store on your WordPress site using WP-Spreadplugin by Spreadshirt.
If you want a faster solution, you can use a Shopify store that connects with dozens of T-shirt printing companies.
Multi-vendor add-ons
For step-by-step instructions, see the guide on how to create an eBay like auction website using WordPress.
22. Create a WooCommerce Dropshipping Store
Dropshipping is another way you can create an eCommerce store on your WordPress website without having to handle inventory or ship items yourself.
With dropshipping, you create the store, manage the website, and customer service. But a dropshipping service will take your orders and ship them out to your customers. They’re an invisible third party that your customers don’t even know about.
You can use the WooCommerce plugin to create a dropshipping store. There’s also a WooCommerce Dropshipping addon plugin that allows you to automate the process.
23. Create an Amazon Affiliate WordPress Shop
One downside of dropshipping is that you have to find a good supplier, which can be a challenge, and sometimes you have to place a large order upfront. This can make it difficult to get started without investing a lot of money.
If you want an easier way to set up an ecommerce site without having to ship products yourself, then you may want to try an Amazon Affiliate shop.
As with many of the items on this list, this works best if you specialize in a niche. If you offer everything, it’s impossible to compete with a big shop like Amazon. But in a small niche, you can differentiate yourself and really stand out.
For complete instructions, see our tutorial on how to create an Amazon affiliate store using WordPress.
Offering Platform as a Service
WordPress comes with some incredibly powerful plugins that are actually full-fledged platforms in their own right.
You can add such a platform to your blog or e-commerce store and offer it as a paid service. You get a cut from each sale, which allows you to earn passive income from user activity on your website.
24.Create an Online Marketplace Website
An online marketplace is like an eCommerce store where users cannot just buy but also sell their own products. Normally, WooCommerce assumes that you run a single vendor website.
You will need a plugin like WC Vendors to turn WooCommerce into a multi-vendor capable platform. After that, vendors will be able to register on your site and start selling.
You can make money by charging a commission on each sale, or you can allow vendors to buy membership packages for their listings.
For more details, see our guide on how to make an online marketplace using WordPress.
25. Make an Auctions Website
An auctions website allows users to bid on products to purchase them. This allows the sellers to maximize their profits and customers to find unique deals.
eBay is probably the best example of an online auctions marketplace.
You can run auctions on your WordPress website and even allow third-party vendors to list their products as well. You can make money by charging for the listing or by getting a cut on each sell.
To build an auctions marketplace with WordPress, you will need the following add-ons.
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WooCommerce (for shopping cart and payment features).
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An auctions add-on
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A multi-vendor add-on
For step by step instructions, see our guide on how to build an eBay like auctions website using WordPress.
26. Create a Job Marketplace Website
Unlike a regular job listing website, a job market allows you to make money on each job listing. Fiverr and Upwork are probably the best examples of online job marketplace websites.
You can promote your job market as a micro-job platform for people who work in the same niche as your blog. You can select a very specific niche to make your platform more competitive.
This will help you easily find customers and professionals who are unable to use the larger platform due to very irrelevant competition.
You can get a small fee for a job listing or when a job is finished. More successful completion of the job will bring you more customers and freelancers in the future.
Become a WordPress Designer or developer
If you are more tech-savvy, you can become a WordPress developer or designer to make money online. It will take more technical skills, but it is not too difficult to get started.
27. Develop WordPress Plugins
Plugins are what makes WordPress so flexible and powerful. Plugins act like applications and allow you to extend and modify any feature of your WordPress site.
Plugins come in all variations, from very simple code editing to complex software applications. If you have a basic overview of how WordPress works and some simple PHP knowledge, you can create your own WordPress plugin.
As a plug-in developer, you can distribute your plug-ins in many ways. Anyone can submit a free plugin to the WordPress.org plugin directory as long as they follow the WordPress plugin instructions. It’s a great way to gain experience and build a reputation for WordPress plugin developers.
When you’re ready to start selling premium plugins, you can choose to sell them on a website like MOJO Marketplace or on your own WordPress site.
If you use your existing WordPress blog to sell plug-ins, you should make sure that the plug-in you create directly matches the needs of your audience. You can investigate them to see what problems they need to solve on your WordPress site, and then create a plugin to solve the problem.
You can then sell the plugin on your site using Easy Digital Downloads.
28. Sell WordPress Themes
If you like web design and development, you can start creating your own WordPress themes for sale.
This requires both design and technical skills. You need to know how to create a good looking design, as well as how to encode it for WordPress.
Using a WordPress thematic framework, such as Genesis, can give you a head start. Then you have to design and encode a beautiful child’s theme.
29. Sell graphics on your WordPress site
If you love to design more than coding, another option is to design and sell graphics on your WordPress site.
You can create graphics, such as images or logos, and sell them on your site using the eCommerce plugin. You can also connect to online marketplaces and sell your graphics.
30. Accept Donations
Last but not least, one way you can make money from your WordPress blog is simply to ask for it.
You can begin accepting donations in a few different ways. You could add a Paypal donate button or a Stripe donate button to your website. Or for a more professional look and advanced features like email marketing integration, you could use WPForms to create a donation form on your WordPress site.
Donations are last on the list because of their limited effectiveness, since you have to rely on the generosity of your readers. It’s usually more lucrative to offer them something in return.
FAQs about making money blogging with WordPress?
At Audio Visual Lab, we have helped hundreds of beginner bloggers get started. We’ve heard almost every question you can think of. Here are the top questions for beginners about how to make money from us through the blog.
1. Which of these proven avenues for me is appropriate?
Your hobby and your method would work best for your blog topics.
For example, if you run a blog about photography, affiliate marketing, advertising, and paid memberships may work well for your blog.
Use useful attention to provide quality content that will make money for your users and make money. Or as the saying goes, do what you love and the money will continue.
2. How much money can I make from the blog?
It really depends on the effort you make and the time you are ready to invest. Truth be told, many beginner bloggers lose interest and give in quickly.
You will earn money on how much traffic you get, the monetization methods you use, and the work you do. Many successful bloggers earn six and even seven figures.
3. How long before you start making some serious money?
Making money online is not a “rich-quick” scam. Anyone else telling you is trying to cheat. If you want to make money starting a blog, you will have to work hard and spend a lot of time on it.
There is no easy way to tell if you were going to start making money soon. Some bloggers start making small amounts soon after starting their blogs. Others are trying to get rid of blogs.
However, those who are constantly working and adhering to a planned strategy are very good at driving early results.
4. How to get started
Getting started with your WordPress blog is easy. However, make sure you are using the right platform.
Basically, there are two types of WordPress available. WordPress.com is a hosted solution, and WordPress.org, also known as WordPress headquarters.
We recommend using WordPress.org because it will allow you to start making money without any restrictions. For more details, see our comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.
You will need a domain name and a web hosting account to start blogging with WordPress.org. Typically, a domain costs $ 14.99 per year, and hosting $ 7.99 per month, usually pays for an entire year.
