How To Make Money Blogging (The Practical Guide for 2024)

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Earn Money Blogging
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  • Can you make money blogging?
  • What are the various ways to make money from blogging?
  • How much can I earn?
  • Can I talk about my life and make money?
  • What should I blog about to make money?

If you are asking any of the above questions, well you have come to the right place. In this mega guide to make money from blogging, you will learn all the aspects that will help you get started.

These methods are based on my 14 years of professional blogging experience. I have also shared screenshots of payments of a few income streams to give you a wider perspective.

If this is your first time here at ShoutMeLoud, I recommend you to read our about page to know what I do (Opens in a new tab).

A few years back, blogging was just another hobby that some people did in addition to working full-time jobs. Today, blogging still functions in that way, but a lot has changed.

In 2024,  blogging has become a profitable online profession, and people at large start a blog to get into this noble profession.

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"Harsh Agrawal is one of the most willing teachers I've come across in recent times. He wants people to succeed and hence is doing everything possible." - Dora Devasher Suri

Before we learn the various ways to make money from blogging, let’s see the potential:

How much money can you make from blogging?

Just like any profession (Doctor, Lawyer, financial advising), there are different levels of bloggers who are earning anywhere from $1000-$2 million a year. I make close to a million dollars a year with the help of blogging.

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The chart above is the income graph of ShoutMeLoud. In 2009, I started earning a mere $434/month and now this blog is earning more than $30,000/month.

How much money you can make depends solely on a few factors such as:

  • Which niche you are picking?
  • How much time you are dedicating to learning and implementing?
  • How much traffic do you drive to your blog?
  • What digital marketing techniques do you implement?

There are various other factors like consistency, your network, personal motivation, and goals that also contribute a lot.

However, niche and your digital marketing skills alone can help you move really fast in the field of blogging.

You can browse other articles on ShoutMeLoud to learn more about mindset and motivation, but in this guide, we will purely focus on making money from the blog.

Just to make things easier for you, I have answered many frequently asked questions related to blogging at the end of this guide.

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What are the ways bloggers make money (Various Income streams)

There are various methods that you can use to monetize your blog. Depending upon your level of blogging and the kind of blog, you could pick the method that matches your style. Do check the end of this article to get the answers to many important questions asked by bloggers like you.

Ways To Make Money from Your Blog
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  1. Ad Networks like AdSense, Ezoic
  2. Direct Advertisements
  3. Affiliate marketing
  4. Native Advertising
  5. Paid reviews/Sponsored posts
  6. Sell Digital products (eBooks, Blueprints)
  7. Launch an Online Course
  8. Offer Online consulting
  9. Offer Services based on your skills

Apart from the traditional forms of advertising, you can work on other monetization tricks. Instead of just adding ads, work on adding value for your advertiser.

Here is a detailed webinar on how to make money blogging in 2022-2024. This masterclass will help you learn about the various stages of blog monetization:

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It’s better to have 1 high paying ad than 4 low paying ads.

1. Ad networks: (Beginners)

There are ad networks that are the simplest and most widely used method for monetizing a blog.

The two Ad networks which are most popular are:

You need to have a blog to get approval on these ad networks. They show ads automatically based on the context of your article and also based on user interest. Most of the new blogs use these methods to monetize as it gives recurring income. Since the ads shown are of high quality, they don’t affect the user experience.

If your blog is having less than 300 views/day, then there are other ad networks that are listed here that you can use. However, your goal should be to get AdSense or Setupad approval as soon as you could.

The below screenshot is from my AdSense account to give you a clear picture of earnings:

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If you are using contextual advertisements and are not making enough that way, you should try moving to direct advertisements or affiliate advertisements.

2. Affiliate Marketing: (Most profitable method): Intermediate + Advanced

Affiliate advertisements are one of the best ways to make money since a single sale will make you a lot more money than a single click on a contextual ad.

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“The Handbook To Affiliate Marketing By Harsh Agrawal is the only resource you will ever need to learn about Affiliate marketing” – James Rowett

It’s something most bloggers are using these days and one of the most profitable avenues to make money from a blog.

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If you are new to it, read my beginner’s guide on what is affiliate marketing or join ShoutUniversity affiliate marketing course.

In below screenshot you could see affiliate income from one of the programs:

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Million dollars from blogging – ShoutMeLoud

That is more than a million dollars, and I have not spent even a single penny on paid ads.

I have already covered affiliate marketing in depth:

And of course, ShoutMeLoud’s affiliate marketing eBook.

Here are some of the popular Affiliate marketing marketplace that you could join:

  1. Amazon Affiliate Program
  2. ShareASale
  3. PartnerStack
  4. ImpactRadius
  5. Awin
  6. Commission Junction

Another great thing about Affiliate marketing is, that you can use this technique on any blogging platform such as BlogSpot, Wix, Squarespace, Medium, or even LinkedIn. However, I prefer self-hosted WordPress, as it gives better advantages over other blogging platforms.

All you need to do is, share your unique affiliate link of the product you are recommending, and when someone makes a purchase, you will end up earning a huge commission on the sale amount.

Affiliate marketing is the way, how a lot of bloggers are making millions of dollars every year from their blogs.

If you are wondering how much money you can make from affiliate marketing, below is my first 5-year earning report on affiliate earnings:

3. Sell your own eBooks: (Intermediate)

If you notice, the business model of top bloggers has to do with selling their own products such as an eBook.

All you need to do is pick a topic, compile an eBook on that topic, and put it on sale on your blog or on Amazon. Once you are used to this process, you can earn a decent amount of money by selling eBooks online.

Moreover, having your own product to sell is the best thing that you can do to generate passive income.

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You can compile your articles into a well-structured book and sell it on your blog or on other platforms such as kdp.Amazon.com to earn money. This will also give you the credibility of becoming an author.

I have created three such books and have been selling them on various platforms.  Here at ShoutMeLoud, I use EDD WordPress plugin to sell books and you can see an example listing here.

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One of my most popular books “Affiliate marketing Book” is also being sold on Amazon and this is adding recurring income.

You can use a freelancing network like Fiverr to get someone to design a book cover.

You can also consider selling physical products on your blog using WooCommerce.

Here are 3 guides that you can refer to learn more about launching your book:

4. Native Advertising

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Native advertising has been one of the forefronts of making money from blogging. Especially, news and jobs kind of blogs can make a really high income with Native advertising.

There are a few native advertising solutions that are worth your time and effort of implementation.

5. Launch online course (Membership site): Advanced

  • Can you convert your textbook into a video format? 
  • Can you add the checklist, downloadable templates?
  • Can you create a 1-2 hour video course?

If your answer is yes, then this method is definitely for you. Thanks to technology, now launching an online course are easy for anyone and if you are giving the unique course, your chances of reaching $ 1 million goals are really high.

To sell your online course. Here is a screenshot of ShoutUniversity, where you can learn WordPress, Affiliate marketing, and AdSense by just watching videos.

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You can use platforms like:

To create and sell your online course.

6. Direct Advertisements (Intermediate)

There’s no question that AdSense is the best advertisement program for bloggers, but it has some limitations. The biggest limitation is the amount you get paid per click.

If you manage to grab direct advertisements, replace those AdSense units with direct ads instead.

The best way to get started with direct advertisement is by trying different networks and adding a page on your blog called “Media-kit or Advertise with us” to get new deals. Here is an example of the ShoutMeLoud advertisement page.

You can also use a plugin like WPAdvancedAds to manage the ads.

The best way to do it is, create a professional email address like [email protected] using Google apps.

(Optional) Then use HubSpot free CRM to set up the process. The below workflow is what I use here at ShoutMeLoud to handle such inquiries.

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You can set this up on Hubspot free CRM and this will improve your workflow in a great way.

Here are a few articles to check out:

7. Sponsored Reviews (All level)

Paid reviews are a great way to boost your monthly income. You can quickly make $10 or more from a small review post. I personally make a minimum of $1200 from every review at ShoutMeLoud.

When doing paid reviews, there are a few things that you need to take care of:

Here are a few websites to find paid reviews/sponsored content opportunities:

8. Run campaign for brands: (Intermediate and advanced)

This one is perfect for any type of blog with an established audience base. You could help brands reach the target audience by running the campaign for them. For this, you will be doing a brand collaboration, running webinars, and even paid Ads, or making videos.

You will see an increased number of blogs doing it with various brands. Keep an eye on this type as it’s already becoming one of the hottest ways to monetize a blog.

9. Services

Based on your skills, you can offer various services.  Depending on what are you good at, you can offer content writing, logo creation, SEO, and so on.

In the past, I used to offer WordPress, SEO, and hosting related services. Offering services not only help you to make money but also gives you more use cases that help you hone your skills. I have had a time when I was earning more than $2000/month only by offering services.

In fact, launching your own services is pretty easy. All you need to do is create a page on your blog and list the services that you are offering. Make sure to place the link of that page in your blog navbar and prominent space for maximum visibility.

Make it easier for your audience to contact you and inquire more about your services. As you deal with your first 2-3 clients, you will have ample ideas to improve the sales process of your services. In fact, you will be able to automate some of the things like payment and follow-up.

Can you blog about your life and make money from blogging?

This is another growing form of blogging where a lot of people talk about their day to day life and create a community around it. You may have seen a lot of them on YouTube as a Video blogger and you can do the same on the blog or even on YouTube.

Some of the popular topic for this kind of blogging is:

  • Lifestyle
  • Fashion
  • Travel
  • Motivation
  • Entertainment

The key here is to keep it entertaining, add value and create a community around your brand. Depending on your style and consistency, you could mint a lot of money with this strategy.

A lot of beginners also ask, should I focus on blogging or vBlogging?

Well, it’s a good idea to have a mix of both. Producing video content (Recording, editing, and publishing) is time and money intensive, whereas creating text content takes lesser time. Having a good blend of both techniques will help you to grow faster and start significant earning sooner.

Gone are the days when we bloggers were only dependent on AdSense to make money from blogging. Now we have many more ad networks and monetization methods available which we can have increased the income potential from a blog to a great extent.

If you have been using these traditional methods of making money from your blog, it’s time to revise your blogging business plan. Make some new tweaks, change the design, and optimize the marketing aspects of your blog.

FAQ’s about How to Make Money Blogging

Can you actually make money blogging?

I’m living proof of someone who can make a handsome living with blogging. A lot depends on how consistent and persistent you are. In my case, I was working almost 14 hours every day for 4 years to reach this stage where I’m earning more than $40K/month from blogging.

As the online space has matured, now there are more opportunities to make money via blogging. The only thing is, you need to be consistent for almost a year before you start making decent money to quit your job or to plan your life on blogging income.

What should I blog about to make money?

In case you don’t want to blog about your life and wondering about the best topic from the blog monetization perspective, here are 4 factors that you should consider.

Passion: Things that you are already passionate about or have an interest in. This thing doesn’t have to be something you are learning at an academy or at your job, but it could be as simple as something that your friends, family, and others call you to take your opinion. For example, Cars, Food, Finance, Travel.  Take a pen and paper, and label it as “Passion list”. Now, list down every topic that you think you have an interest in and you could blog about.
Traffic and trend: You would want to ensure that there are decent traffic and interest in the topic that you have discovered by creating your passion list. Trends will give you an idea if this topic is growing or dying. Trends.google.com is a free tool that let you gauge the traffic trend of any topic.
Monetization: The 3rd factor that will help you to find profitable blogging idea is an option for monetization. You need to see how you plan to monetize your blog. Is it going to be Ad network such as AdSense or is it going to be Affiliate marketing? To give you a perspective, “Whatsapp” as a topic is growing really fast and you may be passionate about it, but monetization sucks. Even with high traffic, making money is negligible.
Competition: This is the last but not the least factor. If you are getting into a competitive niche, you will find it hard to stand out and also outrank existing big players. I don’t mean to demotivate you but if you have a choice between 2-3 topics, pick the one with medium or low competition. If you end up picking a broader niche, for example, fashion, in a competitive niche, it would just take a few extra months to ace it. So, you need to keep this in mind when looking at the competition.
I suggest you browse more articles of ShoutMeLoud to get a clear understanding of picking up a niche.

How will you receive Blogging payments?

Your advertisers could be sitting at a different part of the world and there are 5 popular ways by which you can receive payment from all over the world. These are also popular ways by which these companies pay.
PayPal
Payoneer
Wise
Wire transfer (Your bank)
CoinBase (Crypto payment)
Once you start making money, it’s a good idea to have an account on all the above websites which let you receive payments. They are all free to join and easy to use. You can also use these above services to pay freelancers or virtual assistants in the future.

There are a lot of ways you can make money from blogging, but I would recommend not overwhelming yourself and instead implementing them one by one.

All the above ideas work great, and you should find out what works best for your specific blogging niche.

Here are a few more articles that will help you to make money from your blog:

What strategy do you use to earn money from your blog? Let me know in the comments below.

Like this article? Don’t forget to share it!

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

80 thoughts on “How To Make Money Blogging (The Practical Guide for 2024)”

  1. JusticeForSammi

    I think a blog should start out as an enjoyable hobby, and if it catches on, then you can monetize it.
    I’ve seen many people get in to blogging for the fame and money, only to be disappointed when their blog gets 20 views a month and they have earned nothing from affiliate links or ads.

    Be Careful with Google Adsense. A buddy of mine was making $200 a month from his SCUBA blog. One day, Google cut him off and stiffed him of that month’s commission for “violating their terms.” No specific explanation was ever given. To this day, he still doesn’t know why.

  2. Hi Harsh,
    After Inspired form you. I started my financial blogging journey. I did promise to my self that I will be consistent.
    But Thanks to you for sharing the content which is helping people like me to work daily. 🙂

  3. Hello Harsh
    Excellent review of all the options for making money blogging.
    Of course they all require dedication and hard work.
    I often recommend that bloggers launch their own service because it’s often the simplest and most direct way to start getting some income.
    Never consider shortcuts, though – they just don’t work.
    Your story is very inspirational, and something to keep us focused on as we push forward in 2022 toward our goals of making our blog profitable.
    -Donna

  4. @Vishal
    That’s a very good question, and in 2022 Vlogging seems to be more apt for many niches. However, the best approach is to have a combination of both text blogging + video blogging. So that you pick the right content type for the right topics…

  5. First of all a big thanks for sharing such beautiful post. I have a one question?
    Is there is any plugin Or software available to write an ebook?
    Or you simply use Microsoft Word for the same

  6. Thank you Harsh, for sharing good blog. your article about ‘make money from blogging’ is very useful for me. I learnt here many things, which i did’t know before. I will try these tip now, Whatever the result will be, I must share with you.

  7. Hi Harsh,

    This is a great post, thanks for sharing it.

    Blogging is perhaps the most efficient way to do affiliate marketing. It’s just that you need to write impartially.

    Thanks again and keep up the great work.

  8. With Amazon recently pulling the rug out from under their affiliates (basically they massively slashed commissions using the pandemic as an excuse), and Google Adsense only making sense if your website’s target audience is in the US (so your ads can earn the most per-click – I used to have a website that targeted an international audience, and in spite of massive traffic, never earned more than $2k per month even at its peak), I think the best long-term, recession-proof, platform-proof, safest best is to promote your own products and services primarily, and use affiliate links and other promos to supplement them.

    1. Muhammad Shahid Iqbal

      Harsh, thank you for these tips, they are very helpful. I am wondering about a few things.That’s a very good question, and in 2022 Vlogging seems to be more apt for many niches. However, the best approach is to have a combination of both text blogging + video blogging. So that you pick the right content type for the right topics. I have also started Powerful SEO Tips For Beginners To Rank #1 on Google in 2022-23

  9. George C

    Harsh, thank you for these tips, they are very helpful. I am wondering about a few things.

    1. The blog site has to be an actual web site, with a domain and everything? I thought WordPress had options for blog sites that do not require a domain name, or maybe I am misunderstanding this concept?

    2. If I want to write about a subject matter that serves two purposes, which potentially targets two different types of audience, could this be a problem in the long run? Or, maybe I should reserve one site for one purpose, and do another site for the other one.

    3. Having more than one site can cost quite a bit per year, right? I have a career web site that I maintain already.

    4. Should the ads be related to the content I am writing about? Will that be decided based on the content? Or do we get to choose what type of ads we can host?

    5. Will certain topics generate more traffic than others? Or does it matter more that I am passionate about what I’m writing?

    6. My greatest fear is I won’t have enough to write about. How much content do I need to be putting out each week? Should I be writing daily, few times per week, once a week? Every other week? Once a month?

    All I know is I love to write, and I love the content I would like to write about. I attended WordCamp in San Francisco a couple of times some years ago, but I wasn’t confident enough at the time, and there didn’t seem to be as many ways of generating income a sense there are now.

    Would love to know your thoughts…

    George
    Los Angeles

  10. Muhammad Yasir

    Your tips are so Amazing. You are great person. I am confused about how to start a blogging and you clear all the things.
    Can You tell me please that It’s really important to write an article in blog or can start other kind of blogs. I mean that is article writing necessary for blogging ? I want to start other kind of making money blogging. is this possible ?

    1. Hey Muhammad,

      Thank you so much. Well, if you are not interested in writing, you can do video blogging. Find a topic that you are interested in, make YouTube videos and post in online.

  11. Jonathan

    Hi Harsh,

    This is a great post, thanks for sharing it.

    I couldn’t agree more with your points regarding affiliate advertisements. I recently shared a blog post with my audience that compared the income reports of six trusted bloggers.

    In terms of profitability, the top blog used 100% affiliate marketing, while the bottom blog used 94% advertising. The top blog needed only 51,000 page views to earn almost $6,000 a month, while the bottom blog required nearly 900,000 page views to make approximately $5,500.

    These figures really sum up how unprofitable contextual advertising can be (almost 1900% less profitable in this case!)

    Thanks again and keep up the great work.

    Jonathan

  12. Denise Hilton

    Many people say that affiliate marketing through blogging is dead but I still disagree with them. Blogging is perhaps the most efficient way to do affiliate marketing. It’s just that you need to write impartially.

  13. Asad Awan

    Thanks for sharing this useful information about adding up value to our blogs with earning more revenue, i was wondering for earning more than regular adsense amounts as they acquire a lot of efforts to be put but the results of earning via adsense don’t satisfy all the time. I do appreciate the information you shared with us and will love to know more about Affiliate Marketing and go with this method to improve my blogging revenues.

    Stay Blessed and have a wonderful life.

  14. Kirti

    You have shared an Inspiring Post here!
    The first four steps Include starting a blog, creating content, finding readers and building engagement with those readers are important foundations that you really do need to get in place before you’ll be able to build long term income for your blog.One of the biggest misconceptions that I see bloggers having about monetising blogs is that they have to do it in one of a handful of ways. The reality is that there are many ways to make money from blogs.

  15. umesh pal

    Thanks for sharing valuable content. This will surely help lots of bloggers to increase their revenue.

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