Proven Methods to Monetize Your WordPress Blog

Over 43% of all websites are run by WordPress, making it the most popular publishing platform in the world.

Using WordPress and a blog, you can make a living doing interesting work online. There is no ceiling on how much money you can make working from home, and you can set your own hours.

We’ll be discussing some of the best “proven” methods for monetizing your WordPress blog online.

Don’t let the pictures of flashy cars, mansions, and beachside offices fool you. It’s a waste of time and money to purchase any kind of training or education from any of them; they’re all scams.

This is a comprehensive guide on how to make money from home legally through blogging and WordPress, unlike any other “make money online” article.

You’ll likely need to put in some time and/or money before you can get started with many of these strategies. If you put in the time and effort, you will succeed.

However, our seasoned staff is available to assist you in setting up your blog at no cost.

How to Make Money from Your Blog

Ads are often the first thing that people think of when they consider monetizing a blog.

While displaying advertisements is one option for monetizing your WordPress blog, there are others.

Making Money with Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing entails endorsing a product or service to your readership in exchange for a referral commission on any sales made through your unique tracking links.

For example, if you help a friend open a bank account at your bank, you are engaging in affiliate marketing.

Similarly, you can become an affiliate for many different kinds of products and services on the web. Affiliate programs are readily available for every market imaginable (niche).

To launch an affiliate marketing campaign, consider which of the products you already buy and use could be of interest to your readers.

An affiliate link management plugin for WordPress is a useful tool once you’ve decided on the products to promote.

You can easily insert links into posts, brand them, automatically replace keywords, and track the success of each link.

Most major retailers, including Walmart, Best Buy, Amazon, and others, offer affiliate programs.

Make Money by Using an Ad Plugin for WordPress Directly

In spite of the simplicity of the Google AdSense setup process, its potential financial rewards are low. The amount earned from each ad click varies.

You can make more money by selling banner ads on your website directly. Without a middleman to pay, you can set your own terms and price.

we compared cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-thousand (CPM) advertising models. If you want to sell banner ads, you could use one of those models, but most bloggers prefer to charge a flat rate. Flat-rate pricing eliminates the need to monitor page views or clicks.

Direct ad sales require more management time than Google AdSense but can yield higher profits. You won’t just be able to slap some code on your site; you’ll need to negotiate pricing and terms and handle paperwork like invoices.

But it can be simplified with the help of a WordPress ad management plugin. AdSanity is highly recommended because it can handle both Google AdSense and your own ads.

Get paid to write blog posts (Sponsored Content)

Some blog owners don’t want to bother their readers with advertising and wonder what other options there are for making money.

Some of the discretion over what users see on your site is forfeited when you use an ad network. However, some readers may find the ads offensive, and an increasing number of people are turning to ad blockers to avoid being exposed to them.

Sponsorships are an alternative method of generating income from a blog.

As in sports, on television, and in other fields, a business can benefit from a sponsorship deal. A company will pay you to advocate for their product online and share your thoughts about it with your audience.

To attract advertisers, you should first compile a one-page media kit that describes your site’s audience, traffic, social media following, and demographics. After that, approach businesses in your area to discuss potential sponsorship deals.

It’s important to be aware of local disclosure laws when publishing sponsored posts.

When writing about a product or service that has paid for the blogger’s time, the blogger must follow the FTC’s Endorsement Guides if they are based in the United States. One such requirement is the disclosure of any paid-for content. The WordPress plugin “Sponsored Post Title Suffix” allows you to do just that.

Get Paid to Write Reviews

Paid reviews are another way to monetize your blog, just like sponsored posts.

As was mentioned up top, this method of monetization differs slightly from that of a review site using affiliate links.

Instead, you can receive free samples of products that fall within your specialty and even get paid to provide feedback in the form of a review.

Getting here can be a lot like getting sponsored posts. You should only review products that are appropriate for your target market and that you think will pique their interest.

Independently approaching businesses to inquire about paid review work is entirely possible.

Most people don’t have your level of expertise if you know how to create a WordPress website. Online businesses often benefit from the purchase of preexisting sites by ambitious business owners.

It is possible to monetize a WordPress blog after building it and attracting an audience by selling the blog.

For this, you’ll need to have an understanding of the market and how to price and sell websites. Websites like Flippa act as auction houses and brokers for the purchase and sale of other websites.

Develop a forum for questions and answers

Stack Exchange and Quora are two of the most popular question-and-answer sites online. They aid in the development of an enthusiastic and actively involved online community.

As with discussion boards, it takes time to attract many users. After that is done, you can start making money off of the user-generated content on your site through means such as advertising and affiliate marketing.

Advertisers in the same field as popular question-and-answer websites can negotiate direct deals with them to place their ads on those sites. Using this information, they are able to bargain for a much better salary and additional benefits.

If you’re looking for additional ways to monetize your WordPress site, consider making a listing or directory website. Then, you can charge people to promote their ads on your site.

To help you get started, I’ve provided a few examples of possible directory categories.

Build a Job Board on WordPress and Charge for Postings

Setting up a premium job board is another choice. Companies that want to reach your audience with job openings will pay you to post the ad.

The creation of a successful job board is simplified when its focus is narrowed. If you do this, you’ll have a leg up on the competition and become the go-to site for people searching for jobs in that field.

This strategy is particularly effective for well-established niche blogs. A well-known example is the job board provided by ProBlogger.

Install a Paid Submissions Event Calendar in WordPress

One alternative to a job board is an event calendar where organizers pay to have their events advertised. If you already have a substantial following, businesses will pay to advertise to your followers.

Local or niche-focused websites can benefit from a paid events calendar. Market local events, industry conferences, online seminars, or even live streams if that’s what you’re interested in doing.

Consult our article on the top WordPress plugins for creating an events calendar to learn how to implement this on your site.

Using WordPress to Market and Sell Digital Goods

Sell your own digital products on your WordPress blog to make money with minimal effort. You’ll have to put in some effort upfront to make the product, but after that, your involvement will be minimal.

Here are some examples of informational digital products that would do well on your online store.

Use WordPress to market eBooks

When it comes to making digital goods, eBooks are a no-brainer. They’re easy to create and require little effort to write. After a while of blogging, you may find that you have enough material to compile into a book.

After you have finished writing your book, you can turn it into an eBook by converting it to PDF format and designing a cover using software like Canva.

With a plugin for WordPress, selling digital downloads is a breeze.

Promote and Sell Online Classes

One of the best ways to earn money on the web is to offer a course to interested parties.

The typical course price tag is significantly higher than that of an eBook. Because of your level of knowledge, you should be compensated handsomely.

The course’s lessons must be developed, as well as any supplementary materials like downloads, slideshows, checklists, templates, etc.

You’ll need to think about whether or not to provide individualized help for your class as well. There is often a free, no-support version of a course and a paid, email-support version on some sites.

As soon as your course is complete, you can share it with your students by using an LMS extension.

Provide your expertise for free.

You’ve reached the level of authority in your field as a blogger. As a freelancer, you can immediately begin receiving payment for your services.

Due to the low barrier to entry, freelancing has grown in popularity as a means to generate income via the Internet. The people who are already familiar with your brand can be the first to purchase your products.

If you want to get paid once you start freelancing, you’ll need an invoice system. You can also find other invoicing plugins for WordPress, but our top picks are WP Simple Pay and FreshBooks.

Make a Consulting Business Pitch One more way to monetize your blog and spread your business knowledge is to offer consulting services online.

A consultant is someone who, instead of providing their own services, provides advice and strategy to help their clients improve their own performance.

There is no initial investment, just like with freelancing. Consulting services can be added to your current blog. All that’s required is a page with a form where interested parties can submit their inquiries.

Use WooCommerce to Launch Your Online Store

Make your own product? You should definitely open up your own web store.

The free WooCommerce plugin for WordPress makes it simple to open a store or incorporate a store into an existing blog.

Having to manufacture or source products and then ship them out to customers can make opening an online store a daunting task.

However, selling tangible goods can be extremely satisfying, and in some cases, a tangible good is precisely what your target market needs.

Establish an Amazon Affiliate Store Using WordPress

Finding a reliable supplier can be difficult when drop shipping, and large initial orders are sometimes required. In some cases, this can make getting started prohibitively expensive.

An Amazon Affiliate store can be a good option if you want to sell products online but don’t want to handle the fulfillment yourself.

As with many of the other suggestions here, success is more likely if you focus on a narrow area. Trying to compete with a massive online retailer like Amazon by stocking everything is doomed to failure. The key to standing out is to specialize.

Providers of a “Platform as a Service”

Numerous plugins included with WordPress are so robust that they can be used as standalone systems.

You can integrate such a system into your website, blog, or online store and charge users for using it. To put it simply, when people buy something on your website, you get a commission.

Make a Website for an Electronic Market

A virtual marketplace functions similarly to an electronic marketplace, except that in addition to buying and selling, customers can also list their own goods for sale. WooCommerce is designed for sites that only offer products from one supplier.

To enable multiple sellers on your WooCommerce store, you’ll need a plugin like WC Vendors. Then, sellers will be able to sign up for an account and begin offering their wares on your website.

Make money by charging a commission on sales or by selling advertising space to sellers.

Transform Yourself Into A WordPress Expert

Make money online by becoming a WordPress developer or designer if you have a technical background. More technical knowledge is required, but it’s not rocket science to get started.

Create a WordPress Add-On

The plugin system is what gives WordPress its extensibility and power. Plugins are similar to apps in that they allow you to alter and expand upon any aspect of your WordPress site.

There is a wide range of complexity in plugins, from those that merely modify existing code to those that create entirely new programs. You can make your own WordPress plugin if you know the fundamentals of WordPress and have some familiarity with PHP.

There are numerous channels open to you as a plugin developer for getting your work out there. As long as it complies with the WordPress plugin guidelines, anyone can upload a free plugin to the WordPress.org plugin directory. This is a fantastic opportunity to work with other developers in the WordPress community and gain valuable experience and exposure.

When the time comes to start selling premium plugins, you can leverage your current WordPress site to do so. Before releasing your plugin for sale, you should ensure that it solves a problem faced by your target market. In order to find out what issues WordPress users have and develop a plugin to address them, you can conduct a survey.

After that, you can use a service like Easy Digital Downloads to start selling the plugin on your website.

Put WordPress templates up for sale

In case you’re interested in web design and development, you could try your hand at making and selling WordPress themes.

Both creative and technical abilities are needed for this. You need to be proficient in both design and coding in order to work with WordPress.

For a jump start, try using a premade WordPress theme framework like Genesis. The next step is to craft an attractive child theme through coding.

Making Money with WordPress and Graphics

If you’d rather spend your time creating visuals than writing code, you can always use WordPress to start a business selling digital artwork.

You can use an online store plugin to sell your original artwork, such as logos and stock images. As an alternative, you can sell your graphics by signing up for online marketplaces.

Take in Funding

 conclusion

one way to monetize your WordPress blog is to ask for donations.

There are a number of ways you can start collecting contributions immediately. You can accept donations through your website by installing a PayPal button or a Stripe button. You could also use WP Forms to build a donation page on your WordPress site with a more polished appearance and advanced features like email marketing integration.

Because they are so dependent on the goodwill of your audience, donations are last on the list. Offering them something in return is usually more profitable.