I’m often asked how to make money blogging so want in this article to lay out some basic steps that I see most bloggers who make a living from blogging go through.
Here is how to make money from a blog:
- Set up your blog
- Start creating useful content
- Get off your blog and start finding readers
- Build engagement with the readers that come
- Start making money from the readership you have through one or more of a variety of income streams
Sounds easy doesn’t it! On some levels the process is simple – but you need to know up front that there’s a lot to each step and below I’m going to give you some pointers on each including some further reading.
Here’s how to make money from a blog.
1. Start a Blog
In order to make money blogging you’re going to need to have a blog. While this is pretty obvious it is also a stumbling block for many PreBloggers who come to the idea of blogging with little or no technical background.
If that’s you – don’t worry! It was my story too and most bloggers start out feeling a little overwhelmed by the process of starting their blog.
If you need a little help I would highly recommend you check out my article
How to Start a Blog in which I run through the steps you need to take to get up and running. It’s really not as hard as you might think!
Further Reading on starting a blog:
2. Start Creating Useful Content
A blog is not a blog without content so once you’ve set your blog up you need to focus your attention upon creating useful content. What you choose to create will depend a little on the topic that you choose to write about (on that note, most successful bloggers have some focus to their blogging whether that be a
niche or a demographic that they write for).
The key with creating content is to make it as useful as possible. Focus upon creating content that changes people’s lives in some way will be the type of content that people will value the most and it will help people to feel like they know, like and trust you – which is really important if you later want to make money from your blog.
3. Get off your blog and start finding readers
As you create the most useful content that you possibly can it is easy to get very insular with your focus and spend most of your time looking at building your blog. Many bloggers have a ‘build it and they will come mentality’ with their blogging but this is a bit of a trap.
If you want to make money from your blog you need to not only focus upon building a great blog but it is also necessary to get off your blog and to start promoting it.
There are many ways to experiment with growing your blog’s audience that I’ve written in previous blog posts and talked about in podcasts (I’ll share some further reading and listening below) but it is important to enter into all these strategies remembering that you should not just be looking for ‘traffic’ but ‘readers’.
Each of these places that you reader might already be gathering has opportunities to develop a presence whether that be by leaving good comments, offering to create guest posts or simply by being helpful and answering questions.
With this list of blogs, focus, podcasts, social media accounts in hand you will have some good spots to begin to hang out and create value.
The key is to build a presence, to add value, to foster relationships – not to engage in spammy practices.
4. Build engagement with the readers that come
With sustained focus upon creating great content and finding readers for your blog you’ll begin to notice people visiting your blog and engaging with your content.
At this point you need to switch your focus to engaging with those readers and building community.
Respond to comments, reach out to those readers personally and do everything that you can to keep them coming back again and again by
building a ‘sticky blog’.
Look after the readers you already have well and you’ll find they spread the word of your blog for you and help make your blog even more widely read.
Having an engaged reader is also much easier to make money from
5. Start making money from the readership you have through one or more of a variety of income streams
OK – the first four steps of 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.
There’s no avoiding that what we’ve covered is a lot of work but if you do it well you’ll be setting yourself up well and giving yourself every chance of being able to make money from your blog.
With these foundations in place you’re now ready to start attempting to make money from your blog but you do need to be aware that just because you have set up your blog, have content and have engaged readers that the money won’t just automatically flow.
It takes continued work and experimentation to make money from your blog.
I’ve written many articles here on ProBlogger on the topic of making money blogging and will link to some suggested further reading on the topic below but let me share a few introductory words on the topic first.
There are Many Ways to Make Money Blogging
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.
A few years ago I decided to sit down and list all the ways that I saw bloggers making money from their blogs and created this ‘money map’ (click to enlarge).
1. Advertising Income
This is where many bloggers start. In many ways this model of making money from blogs is not dissimilar to how a magazine or newspaper sells ads. As your traffic and brand grows you’ll find advertisers will be willing to pay to get exposure to your audience.
While you need decent traffic to do a direct deal with an advertisers there are ad networks (like Google AdSense) that act as a middleman and enable smaller publishers to run ads on their blogs. This is where many bloggers start (I did too).
2. Affiliate Income
A recent survey of ProBlogger readers found that affiliate promotions was the most common type of income that our readers have.
To put it most simply – affiliate income is when you link to a product that is for sale on another site (take Amazon for example) and if someone follows your link and ends up buying that product you earn a commission on that sale.
There’s more to it than that but this is another great place to start with monetising your blog as affiliate programs are easy to sign up for and if you have an engaged audience you will find they follow the recommendations that you make on products.
Further reading on affiliate income:
3. Events
While not something most bloggers do I have noticed an increase in the number of bloggers making money by running events.
These range from big conferences and events like our
ProBlogger Conference which hosts hundreds of bloggers every year right down to smaller meet-ups for a blogger’s readers where money is made either through charging readers to attend or by finding a sponsor for the event.
Alternatively online events or summits are getting more popular.
4. Recurring Income
Another growing category of income that I’m seeing more and more bloggers are experimenting is recurring income streams (sometimes called continuity programs or membership programs).
This is where readers pay a regular recurring amount (usually on a monthly or annual basis) for access to either premium content, a community area, some kind of service, tools, coaching (or some combination of these things).
6. Promoting a Business
Many brick and mortar businesses indirectly make money from their blogs by using their blogs to grow their profile and direct readers to their business.
7. Services
A common way that many bloggers make money is through offering services to their readers. These might be anything from coaching and consulting, to writing or copywriting, to design, training or other freelance services.
8. Products
While I started out making money from my blogs through advertising and affiliate promotions today my #1 source of income is through selling eBooks and courses on my blogs. These ‘virtual products’ take work to create but have been lucrative for me and many other bloggers.
Products can of course take many forms and income virtual information products like eBooks or courses but also other virtual products like software, reports etc.
The other type of product some bloggers sell is physical products. This is most common when the blogger has a business but sometimes bloggers also create merchandise (T-shirts etc) or other physical products to sell.
Beyond the YouTube Ad boycott telling us that Big Brands are actually willing to cut ties with the powerhouse video platform, it also revealed how many creators on YouTube don’t know how to monetize their YouTube Channel without Adsense.
If you’ve been out of the loop, Google lost up to $750 million dollars in revenue, when massive brands like Walmart, Pepsi , Starbucks and a bunch of others, pulled their ads from YouTube, when they discovered that their ads were being inadvertently displayed on videos that were racist, homophobic or anti-semitic in nature.
The news rocketed through the YouTube community, as Creators realized that ads weren’t being shown on their videos due to so many Advertisers pulling out.
YouTube responded by tightening up their Partner Program, and only allowing channels with 10,000 or more views to join — which in return, gives YouTube a chance to evaluate an applicants channel as a whole and decide whether or not said applicant fits the Partner Program.
I mean, yes.
Of course, these Brands wouldn’t have even had this problem if they asked their advertisers to take three seconds out of their day while setting up their ad campaign to opt out of placing ads on content with hateful, shocking or any other negative messaging.
The reality is, the Brands have the money which means it’s YouTube’s problem even if it’s the Brand’s fault.
And what else can we expect but for Google to do what makes the most business sense for them which is to cater to their customer.
We’re now almost three weeks in, and slowly but surely, some Advertisers are coming back.
So what does this mean for you?
Well — Yay! Advertisers are coming back.
And if you’re new to YouTube, but serious about your YouTube channel, 10K views may seem like a lot but truly its only $10 in Adsense revenue and if you’re consistent with your channel, you will reach it in no time!
The real problem here is not whether you’re in the Partner Program or not but the fact that you don’t own your YouTube Channel–Google does.
This means that both Google and the brand’s that invest into them, can yo-yo with your money when they please.
And the only way to counteract this is to stop thinking of your YouTube channel as a channel, and start thinking of it as a Brand and Business.
In today’s post, I am going to share with you how to monetize your YouTube channel without Adsense.
Email List
The first thing you’re going to need if your want to monetize your YouTube channel without Adsense is an Email List.
Yes, I know, YouTube emails your subscribers whenever you put out a new video.
But did you know, it’s estimated that only 20-40% of your subscribers actually receive this email from YouTube? The rest have to somehow stumble upon it on YouTube’s actual subscription feed.
Unless your subscribers are clicking the bell in the right corner next to the Subscribe button, and asking to be notified about all updates regarding your channel, they’re most likely NOT seeing your new videos when you drop them.
In fact, most of your subscribers are NOT seeing your new videos. Your video views mainly come from YouTube Search.
So major tip, if you want more of the people that are interested in your videos to actually see them, you will want an Email List so you can send them an email whenever you put out a new email.
The second reason you want an Email list is because an Email List is going to allow you to monetize your audience, and make significant income without 100k YouTube views , 1000 ads, and a HUGE following.
An Email list is also going to allow you to make money without Brand Endorsements.
So what is so special about an email list?
People who give up their email are more likely to become actual customers because they trust you enough to give up their personal information.
And while we can’t guarantee that every person that watches our video content is truly interested in it, an email list contains a targeted group of people that you can be pretty sure actually care about what you have to say or offer, because they’ve offered up their personal information in exchange for the opportunity to build a deeper connection with you.
In addition, if your YouTube channel ever got mysteriously banned or deleted, you can always alert your email list of your new channel which prevents you from starting all over completely, or you could ask your email list to follow you on a new social media platform.
The best part of all of this is…
Once you have your email list, you can monetize YouTube without Adsense.
Let’s get into some examples…
If you have a cooking channel, you could create a CookBook, if you’re a Comedian, you could design a T-Shirt with your most popular catch phrase.
A lot of Creators, think the only time they can create a product is when they have a hundred thousand or more followers.
What if I told you that is simply not true.
Here is how an email list can change all of that.
Let’s say you have a small vegan cooking channel with only 2,000 subscribers, and you average between 200-600 views per video and post two videos every week.
You create a small PDF with a week’s worth of vegan lunch recipes.
In the description of each of your videos, you leave a link for your viewers to download this mini cookbook.
5 people a day download this mini-cookbook in exchange for giving you their email address.
After 30 days, you have 150 email subscribers.
Let’s say that you come out with an actual cookbook, price it at $19.99 and only 2% of your audience purchases it within the first 24 hours. That’s 3 people. In 24 hours, you’ve made $60 from your cookbook.
Let’s say your email list is growing, you’re keeping in touch with your list, sending out emails to those who have yet to buy, and you get 5 more sales for a total of 8 sales over a 30 day period.
In 30 days, you’ve made $159 from your cookbook. Compare this to the $5 you would’ve made through Adsense from the video views of your small YouTube channel..
Now imagine your list growing and you’ve reached 2000 email subscribers.
You release a new cookbook, price it at $19.99, and again, only 2% of your audience purchases within the first 24 hours of its release. That means 40 people have purchased your product which means you’ve made $800 within 24 hours
You take the same steps as you did last release, and over a 30 day period, a total of 60 people buy.
Well guess what?!
You’ve just made $1200.
Your first 1K!
Even if your YouTube channel has grown to 5,000 subscribers at this point, and you’re averaging 1,000 views a day, over a period of 30 days, that’s only going to be between $30-$100 of ad revenue.
See where I’m getting at here?
$100 vs $1200.
Not even in the same ballpark.
Nor does this example even take in the fact that your conversion rate could even be higher.
In order for you to make the same amount of money with your Adsense, you would have to average between 75K-100k views on your YouTube channel per month.
In addition, your cookbook is passive income and you can keep sharing it with new email subscribers and continuously rack up new purchases.
Now couldn’t you just promote your cookbook on your YouTube channel and get any results?
Well sure!
But consider this — if MOST of your YouTube views come from YouTube search, that means that most of your viewers don’t really even know you like that when they stumble upon your videos to just buy your product.
And if you don’t have the social proof–I’m talking 20k-100k views per video–it may take a random stranger a few videos and sometime before they trust you, but how can you guarantee that they will come back and watch more?
An email list and keeping in contact with your dedicated community, allows you to engage with your audience and build trust with them by giving them free valuable information.
And once you have someone’s email list, until they unsubscribe from you, you’re kind of in the friend zone and have permission to update them about what’s new.
So let’s dig into the power of 2000 email list subscribers vs. 2000 YouTube subscribers.
Email lists give ALL of your subscribed members a chance to see your content. And while open rates may vary, at least you’re given a real shot. This is why I gave the low conversion rate of 2% as an example, because for a lot of businesses, email sales conversion rates can average between 2%-3%. And while it’s not unheard of to see conversion rates as high as 10-15%, 2-3% is pretty average.
YouTube on the other hand, only alerts about 20-30% of your subscribers which means instead of 2000 people receiving an email from you, only 200-300 people will get an email from YouTube about your content. Now let’s take into consideration that only 50% of your audience actually opens their emails.
With an email list, that’s 1000 people who have opened your email, compared to at most 150 people opening up an email from YouTube.
See now why you have a higher chance of more people seeing your videos with an email list?
Or why you can actually make more money with an email list than a list of subscribers you can’t even personally connect with outside of YouTube?
The other good thing about Email lists is that they will capture both people that have subscribed to your YouTube channel and people that may have just stumbled upon your video, but forgot to hit the subscribe button.
The methods I described in this post will help you monetize YouTube without Adsense no matter if you’re selling physical or digital products or something like services. But if you want to monetize your YouTube channel without Adsense, you will need an Email List first.
