How to Monetize Blogs on WordPress

Have you ever wondered, you can earn money from WordPress Blogging? Yes, you heard right! WordPress is the most popular CMS for building websites. The opportunity of monetization gives this platform an extra highlight. But how to monetize blogs on wordpress? 

After building and growing your website monetization is the next step you should apply. You can turn your traffic into revenue and start to reap the rewards of your hard work. 

In this article, we’ll discuss why you should monetize your blog and how to monetize your blogs on WordPress effectively. 

Let’s get started!

Why You Should Consider Monetizing WordPress Blog?

You can have a full-time job by running a website. You need to post quality content consistently. This will make the readers come back to your website. 

What starts as a business can turn into a revenue generated business.

Blogging is expensive. Making money through monetization is the best way to tackle up the costs. You can cover up the payment of hosting providers, domain fees, and the costs of creating blogs. 

How to Monetize Blogs on WordPress

You need to apply different strategies to monetize your WordPress blogs. But, the main point is, you need to provide high-quality content consistently to create an authentic loyal audience. After that, you can use different monetization methods that match your goal.

Below, we’ve briefly discussed different ways on how to monetize blogs on WordPress.

1. Display Advertising

A common way of monetization in WordPress blogs is displaying different types of ads. The ads can be in dynamic or static format. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Pay-Per-Impression (PPI) are the two most common payment models. PPC occurs when customers click on the displaying ads. In PPI, you’ll earn money when visitors see the ads. 

Firstly, you need to have partnership with advertising networks. This network will pay you for each click/impression.

In WordPress, the most popular ad network is Google AdSense. This is a beginner-friendly and free to use ad network. It is based on the PPC model and as a blogger, you can get 68% of profit per click. 

You just simply need to apply on AdSense to run ads on your web site. The support team will review your application and check if you qualify for ads. This may take up to 8 hours.

You can use Mediavine, an alternative to Google Adsense. This site is suitable for higher traffic and offers ad revenue for per page view (RPM). 

You need to optimize ad placements for greater results. Placing ads on high-traffic areas like header, side-bar, between content can get you more earning. But try to avoid using too many ads in a single place. This can create ‘’Banner Blindness’’ or frustrate the reader. Ultimately they will leave your site and the bounce rate will be increased.

Clearly optimize the ad size, banner design, font, color, and placement on your site. Also analyze the CTR (Click-Through-Rate). Ensure the site-speed and faster loading pages to get better results on ads display.  

2. Affiliate Marketing 

The second popular monetization option is affiliate marketing. In this process, you can earn a commission by promoting products and services of other companies on your blog. You don’t need to create your own products or provide any customer support. This is a clever way to have passive income from WordPress blog. 

In-short, you’ll promote third-party products on your blogs by placing special affiliate links. But, how will you earn money from this? Basically, each affiliate link on your site has special tracking code. This will notify the merchant that the traffic came from your site. You’ll receive commission whenever the customers purchase from their website by using your affiliate links.

To start, you can join large affiliate networks like Amazon Associates, ShareASale, or Impact. You can easily get access to a large number of products and bands through these sites. To manage, organize, and track affiliate links you can use WordPress Plugin Pretty Links. 

The success of affiliate marketing is connected with trust and authenticity. You should promote products that you use, and genuinely believe in. It should also match with your niche. 

3. Sponsored Posts

High-quality blogs always get the attention of the audience. If you’ve a large audience on your site, then most companies offer you to write a sponsored blog on their niche. Brands are willing to pay you to review their product or services in your write up. That’s how they can reach your large audience.

Sponsored posts are a straightforward way to monetize your blogs on WordPress. Also the brands can increase traffic, awareness, and generate leads. This method is also known as native advertising.

Brands always want to approach the sites that have valuable content with vast loyal readers. You can also reach out to brands for sponsored marketing, if companies aren’t contacting you for sponsored content. 

Remember, you should only partner with brands that align with your niche. You need to maintain the trust and credibility of your audience. 

When you establish yourself as a blogger, you can market your content as an influencer. You can use different platforms where brands are looking for sponsored content. Some of the popular platforms are IZEA and Sway.

Your content should be useful and informative to your audience. It should not feel like a sales pitch. Provide insightful content or short tutorials of the products in your sponsored content.  

4. Sell Digital Products ( Like eBooks, Courses, Templates, etc)

One of the profitable and scalable ways to earn money on WordPress Blog is selling digital products. The most relieved part? You don’t need to worry about any inventory management or shipping cost. With minimal effort, you can sell your digital product repeatedly.

There are some popular options to choose a digital product. But you need to research your niche, audience, and skills to get the best outcome. Some in-demand digital products are eBooks, online courses, templates, and printable designs.

Create valuable content that aligns with your niche and audience are willing to buy them. For example, as a cooking blogger, you can share ebooks on quick meal recipes. 

You can start by installing an e-commerce plugin like Easy Digital Downloads or WooCommerce. These plugins are very effective in handling secured payment, digital product delivery, and sales process.

On the other hand, courses often sell at a higher price than eBooks. If your audience loves your content or your expertise, they are pretty likely to learn from you. Firstly, generate videos and share your knowledge and expertise on the ecourse. You can use WordPress LMS plugins to simplify your ecourse management.  

Most importantly, effective marketing is crucial in selling digital products. You need to increase your email list and nurture your potential customers. Promote your digital products on different social media platforms. Always emphasize on providing value and building trust among your audience.   

5. Sell Professional Services ( Like Consulting, Coaching, etc)

By showcasing your skills and expertise, you can sell professional services on WordPress blog. You can turn your valued readers into high-paying clients. 

Start with creating content-rich blogs, and showcasing your expertise as a portfolio format on ‘’About Us’’ page. Try to publish case studies and client testimonials to represent real-world expertise to your audience. 

As a consultant, you can offer advice and strategy to your clients. You can consider becoming a coach also. Start providing advice and guidelines to change one’s life. There are many  examples of coaches, like blog coaches, life coaches, and writing coaches. 

You can manage one-on-one sessions with your audience by providing consulting or coaching services. To ease the process, incorporate a booking plugin on your WordPress blog. In this way, clients can schedule and complete payment for sessions directly from your site. 

The most fun part of this method is, you don’t need any start-up investment. You can start offering services on your blogs. Share your blog posts and client success stories on different social media platforms. This will attract more potential customers and drive them to your WordPress blog site. 

To grab attention, always try to use clear Call-To-Action like ‘’Schedule a Free Call’’ or ‘’Book a Free Consultation’’. Moreover, use email marketing to nurture your leads and shower them with your exclusive deals and offers. 

6. Offer Membership/Subscriptions

If you want a recurring revenue stream, you can go for membership or subscription model. Restrict exclusive content or features within a modest paywall. Ask for payments to your loyal readers and create a repeating source of income. 

This will be most suitable for you, if you produce high-quality, in-depth content to your audience. They will love to pay some extra to get more of your content. This will also create a more stronger community. 

To incorporate the membership/subscriptions process, you need to use a dedicated WordPress plugin. We will recommend using MemberPress. This comes with an all-in-one solution and super easy for beginners to set-up. 

Make your membership model successful by offering valuable content that is not available for free. This valuable content might be premium articles, exclusive video content, and access to private resources. 

You can offer a tiered subscription model, where different levels uncover different features. To attract customers, you can start with providing a free trial and promote the benefits of having a membership of your site. 

7. Sell Guest Posts

You can allow other businesses or individuals to publish content on your site for a fixed payment. Keep in mind, your site should have enough traffic to encourage people to write content on your site in exchange for a fee. 

Accepting guest content can save your time, and provide you fresh posts for your site. But, you need to be extra careful in managing the content to avoid google penalties. 

Google considers it as a scam in selling or buying links for SEO purposes. This will directly affect your site’s search rankings. So, you need to clearly disclose all paid links  using a rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow” tag. So, both your audience and Google will be informed about the commercial nature of the posts.

This transparency will generate revenue from your site without affecting the site’s search ranking. 

8. Ask for Donations

One of the easiest and direct ways to monetize your WordPress blog is to simply ask for it. When you provide value and information through your blog consistently, your audience is more likely to donate on your site. 

This is a low-effort process and you can fully focus on your content writing. Share a personal story to emotionally connect with your audience. Be transparent on why you need this donation. 

Tell your readers what their donation will work for. For example, you can write ‘’Your $5 donation can cover the whole month’s cost of this site’’. This is a more approachable way to attract the readers for donation. 

Always show gratitude to your donors. You can send an automated thank you email or mention them on your blog. This will encourage the donors for future support and make them feel appreciated. 

The most user friendly way to accept donations is implementing a specialized plugin. You can use the Easy PayPal Donation plugin. This is a lightweight free option to accept payment via PayPal and Stripe. 

Try to add your donate call-to-action on some specific areas of your site. You can place them on the header or navigation bar, end of the blog post, or in the side bar. Remember, the donation process fully depends on the audience’s goodwill. Don’t repeat it too many times. This may break the trust and credibility of your readers.

FAQ

Final Thoughts

Precisely, WordPress offers endless opportunities to earn revenue. From display advertising, affiliate marketing, to selling guest posts, you can try all types of WordPress monetization strategies.

After reading the full blog, you can clearly understand how to monetize a blog on WordPress. The best approach for you will be to experiment with different monetization methods and apply the best-matched one. Keep patience, maintain consistency, and always deliver authentic content.