7 Best Ways to Monetize WordPress Blog in 2022

When you are about to monetize WordPress blog, there is a fatal (and very common) myth that surrounds you. Everyone advises;

“Wait 4 to 6 months and publish 30 to 40 posts first and then thinking of monetization your blog.”

No matter for what reasons you created your blog (to express your thoughts, or to share information, or following passion), but one thing is for sure.

You should monetize WordPress blog from day 1. It’s because most of the methods to monetize your blog take some time. If you wait couple of months to start monetizing, you are leaving the money on the table.

Don’t listen to the people that tell you to wait until you hit a certain number of visitors to start monetizing. Did you know that most blogs have a conversion rate (number of visitors that actually make a purchase) of less than 3%? 

That means that for every 100 visitors, 3 of them may purchase something from your website. 

You’ll be sorry for waiting later on in your journey to start as you play catch-up.

In this post, you’ll learn the best techniques to monetize your WordPress blog.

— Watch Summary of 7 Best Ways to Monetize Blog —

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today!”. 

No matter the goal of your blog, monetizing it will eventually become something that you will be interested in doing. So why not get started right away?

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7 BEST WAYS TO MONETIZE WORDPRESS BLOG

There are so many ways to monetize a WordPress blog, and many of them will be specific to your micro-niche (micro-niche means blog targeted to very specific customers). 

No matter what the purpose of your blog is, your audience always comes first. Your success in blogging depends on this factor as learning your audience will lead to you picking the products and services you will offer them.

Take some time to think about your visitors and what they might benefit from. This will help you to pick from one of these ways of monetizing your blog.

1. Affiliate Marketing – The Best Way to Monetize WordPress Blog

In simple words, affiliate marketing is when you promote the products and services of an online business and gain a commission on each sale that you get.

Not only is this the number one way of making money online, affiliate marketing is also the number one way to monetize your blog.

The top bloggers make over $1 million a year monetizing their website, and over 70% of that revenue is made from affiliate products.

There are thousands of affiliate programs that you can join today. Getting started with affiliate marketing is so much easier than you think, especially when you use it to monetize your blog. This is also the fastest way to monetize a WordPress blog.

By promoting your affiliate products, you will also be promoting your blog in the process. It’s a win-win-win scenario!

No matter what your micro-niche is, there are hundreds of affiliate products out there for your audience. ClickBank is the perfect place to get started no matter what micro-niche you are in. They have affiliate offers in EVERY micro-niche imaginable and it is completely free to join them!

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3 Steps to Start ClickBank Affiliate Marketing

Step 1. Go to ClickBank.com and signup for free.

Step 2. Say, you are in Health and Fitness niche, so on the ClickBank dashboard, go to the top menu bar and click ‘Market Place’. From the niches on the left sidebar, click Health and Fitness and you’ll see many health-related products. Select the product that passes the following 3 tests.

Test 1. It should have gravity between 30 to 100.

Gravity means how many affiliates are getting commissions selling this product. Less than 30 means low demand in the market and more than 100 shows high competition.

Test 2. Sales Page of Product Must Have A Video

When you click the name of the product, the sales page opens up. Some products have text-based sales pages, while some have a video on the sales page. It is proven that the products that have a video sale page are more effective and their conversion rate is much higher than text-based sales pages.

Test 3. Recurring / Rebilling

While selecting a product, also note that it should have a recurring/rebelling feature. This means that the vendor offers commissions on a monthly basis. This will give earn you passive income each month.

When you select a product that fulfills these 3 conditions, then click the ‘Promote’ button next to the product. On the next page, enter your nickname and then click ‘Create Hoplink’. Copy this hoplink (or affiliate link) and save it in Word document or Google Docs.

Step 3. Promote your affiliate link and bring visitors (also known as traffic) to your affiliate link, and this is the hardest part of all.

The traffic is of 2 types. Free traffic and Paid traffic.

Free traffic includes blogging, social media (especially Pinterest), Quora, email marketing, and Youtube channels.

Paid traffic means running ads on Facebook, Google, Bing, or Youtube and bringing visitors to your website.

Both kinds of traffic have their own pros and cons. Free traffic takes time and effort to gain credibility, but once it happens, the sales and commissions almost go on autopilot. On the other hand, Paid traffic gives fast results, but it is very expensive and requires continuous engagement to watch the trends of ad campaigns.

Signup for Clickbank University today to monetize your blog! 

2. Google Adsense – Passive Income At Its Best!

When the internet first started, placing ads on your blog was the only way to monetize WordPress blog. Today, millions of blogs still use this method and some blogs even make $5,000 a month with Google Adsense alone.

Adsense is Google’s advertising program that runs ads of different companies on your blog and when a visitor clicks on that ad, you gain a commission.

When you run advertisements on your blog, you gain a commission based on the CPC (cost per click) per ad. When a visitor clicks on your link, you will receive a payment. These payments range, on average, from $0.05 – $15 per click, depending upon the niches. Insurance and loans are the niches yielding high CPC while parenting and meditation get low CPC.

There are other payment factors that apply, like your CTR – or click through rate, and the number of visitors that you have on your blog.

This may seem like a low amount, but if you have a lot of traffic to your website, this can quickly snowball into a nice chunk of change.

One important thing to remember about running ads is that too many ads will slow down your site.

If your blog is already heavily designed with a lot of images, and if you have a lot of plugins installed, your site might already be loading slower than average. 

You want to make sure that you keep your advertisements low on your account. This will keep your readers coming back and keep your site running fast and smooth. Ads are still an effective way of monetizing your blog.

3. Selling Courses – Monetize WordPress Blog With Your Knowledge

Well, it may seem intimidating to launch a course, but actually, it isn’t.

The fact is that you need not be a Ph.D., or an expert, or have the 20-year experience to launch your course. The only thing required is that you have some expertise and knowledge on your topic (for example how to use Excel), and you can use your WordPress blog to launch your course for beginners.

Courses can be created in any micro-niche. Think of the needs of your audience to craft the perfect course. What problems do they face that you are able to help them fix?

Use this to create a valuable course that will guide them out of that painful position they are in, and into the spot of their dreams.

Courses do take time to make, but your efforts will be well rewarded. You can also use the content in your course to craft other blog posts that you can further monetize with the other methods I mentioned.

When you create a useful course and market it wisely, you pull in more and more loyal readers that will stick with you till the end.

The great thing about creating courses to monetize your blog?

You set the price of your course, meaning your earning potential is only limited by the amount of value you provide to your audience. Many online courses are priced from $100 to $2,000.

And the revenue you will make from this course will also become passive, meaning you won’t have to lift a finger to make money. Courses are an awesome way to both make money on your blog and to engage with your audience.

4. Selling eBooks – Super Easy Monetization Method

This is another way to monetize your blog that will take a bit of time to create, but it will generate passive income for you once it’s done.

Creating your own ebook is an exciting process! And, designing it with free online software isn’t difficult either.

Taking all of the knowledge that you have about your micro-niche, pick one topic and use that to create an entire ebook. When creating this beautiful masterpiece, provide incredible value that your readers can’t get within your free blog posts.

Many people sell their eBooks on Amazon and sell them at $2.99. When you set your eBook at this price, on average you will make $2 per sell.

Selling eBooks won’t get you incredibly rich in most cases, but why not earn a pretty penny on something you are going to write about on your blog anyway?

If you have the manuscript but don’t have the time to create your own ebook, search for someone on Fiverr. There are hundreds of designers who are ready to design your book from $10 to $50.

5. Work As A Freelancer

One of the simplest ways to monetize your blog is to work as a freelance writer for other companies in need of content. For this purpose, you can use your WordPress website as a portfolio and promote your skills and services online.

As a freelance blogger, your job is to write content that attracts visitors to a business’s website, with the hope that some of these visitors will convert into customers.

It is estimated that freelancers with personal websites charge an average of 66% more per hour than those without having one.

According to Glassdoor data, the average freelancer in the United States earns around $45k per year. Keep in mind that your level of experience and the niche in which you write has a high impact on this figure.

All you have to do is to set up a ‘Hire Me’ page on your blog!

With the freelance economy expanding year after year, you won’t be without work for long. The best thing about freelance writing is that you don’t need a lot of traffic on your blog to start making money; all businesses care that you can write great content.

Jorden Roper, for example, earned $5,000 in her fourth month as a freelance writer, and Jennifer Gregory earns six figures from her freelance writing business.

6. Sell Digital Downloads

This is a little know way to make money utilizing your blog. There is a couple that makes $50,000 a month selling digital products!

No matter your niche, you can create all types of documents and charge anywhere from $0.99 per download to $50 or more.

A couple of ideas for some digital downloads are:

• Tutorials
• Recipes/Meal Plans
• Patterns
• Reports/Budgeting Templates
• Audio downloads (ringtones, sound effects, voice overs)
• Short films

Get creative and make a digital download that your audience needs and will get amazing value from. Utilize programs like Microsoft Office or Google Docs to create your downloadable documents.

A great way to get started with this is to offer one for free as a lead magnet to provide your readers with a sample of your work.

This is a good way of hooking your readers into your products.

7. Email Marketing – A Long-Lasting Method

Email marketing should be used even if you don’t want to monetize your blog. Why?

Because email marketing allows you to stay in touch with your audience at all times. Think about it. Normally, as bloggers, we wait for our audience to come to us.

With powerful email marketing tools, the tables are turned. You decide when your audience hears from you. No more waiting for visitors to stroll through your site!

Email marketing is the most powerful tool for any blogger.

Right now, use this link and try GetResponse Free for 30 days. And let me tell you, there is A LOT that you can get done in 30 days with them. Within just two days of the free trial, I managed to get 10 email subscribers with their awesome tool!

To monetize this, you want to send offers to your readers using one of the other methods listed above. Throwing your affiliate products into the emails is a great way to earn some extra cash. You also want to link back to your blog posts in these emails where your other offers are.

Email marketing will monetize your blog and pull your readers back into your awesome content with every email that you send. And this process can become 100% automated after an initial setup.

It really is something that you shouldn’t overlook.

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WHAT ARE THE STEPS TO MONETIZE WORDPRESS BLOG?

Okay, so you’ve picked your method of monetizing from the list above.

Now what?

Turning your blog into your next income generator is very easy and simple. You’ll hear a lot about strategies you need to try, and requirements that you need to meet to see success.

But in reality, starting is the best first step to take!

Follow these basic steps to start monetizing your blog:

1. Have your blog up and running!
2. Choose your method of monetizing.
3. Implement your method.
4. Test your results.
5. Modify and add new methods.

Let’s discuss them one by one briefly.

1. Have your blog up and running

If you haven’t started your blog yet, this is going to be the first step.

Set up your blog using WordPress. How?

Read this in-depth and step by step guide: How to Build A Website From Scratch

WordPress will also allow you to monetize your blogs, as some other platforms won’t work with some of the methods listed above. Make sure your blog is designed how you want it, your message is clear and you have a few articles up on your site. Once this is done, you are ready to begin monetizing.

2. Choose your method of monetizing

If your goal is to start seeing your blog monetized quickly and with minimal effort, signing up for an affiliate program in your micro-niche is going to be the fastest way to get started. In most cases, it takes no time to get your affiliate links! 

Google Adsense is the second fastest way, though verifying your account can take up to 2 weeks. So get started now if you plan to go this route!

Make sure that you pick a method that will be easy for you to monetize within your micro-niche and one that will be helpful to your audience.

3. Implement your method

Depending on the path that you choose, this step will be carried out differently.

If you are affiliate marketing, you want to learn all about your affiliate products first. It’s imperative that you not only pick ethical products that will help your audience, but it’s also important that you know all about them.

If digital downloads are going to be your way, an almost fail-proof way of getting your readers to download your products is to provide a free sample as a lead magnet.

If you are using WordPress for your blog, MailOptin is a very easy-to-use free plugin for lead generation. You can create popups using WordPress’ customize the tool and see the changes live on your screen.

Combine this method with email marketing using GetResponse, and you will be able to send your downloads directly to your audience instead of waiting for them to come to you!

Whatever your method is, make sure you learn all about it before you start implementing it.

4. Test and track your results

Now comes the fun part! It’s time to put your method into action!

Try out different ways of implementing your strategies. No matter your monetizing method, there are hundreds of different ways for you to test them out.

If you are doing affiliate marketing, try out different placements of your links. If you are doing Google Adsense, test different areas on your blog to place your ads (Google Adsense makes this easy for you to do).

With digital downloads, you can get feedback from your readers on what was helpful for them and what wasn’t. Visit forums to get opinions on your eBooks and other products and use that data to improve your content. (This will also pull more readers into your blog).

The goal of this phase is to see what is working and what isn’t. Utilize the data you receive from your strategies to craft new ones.

Use every blog post as a new opportunity to monetize.

Most strategies that you can use will come with a tracking system already installed (this is especially true for affiliate networks). This makes tracking easy for you.

The testing phase of your strategies may not go exactly as you planned, but you will have time to modify it later.

5. Modify and add new methods

Once you have tested out some strategies, use your feedback to craft out even better ones.

Only a few people clicked on the links in your blogs? Try adding photos to your blog post and embed your affiliate links there.

Are you getting low open rates for your GetResponse emails? Craft new subject lines for your emails and research trending strategies. Or, are you seeing a ton of success with one method you used and not another?

Pick apart what is working for that strategy that isn’t working for your others.

Go out into the internet and lookup strategies that working for people within your niche already. Replicating success is the best way to find your own success.

One of my favorite ways of getting positive feedback on my strategies is to utilize forums.

From Reddit to Facebook and even “underground” forums, thousands of daily users still engage in these forums. Ask people what worked for them and what didn’t. Post topics on trending monetizing strategies and stay active in the posts.

Forums are the perfect way to engage with people within your niche and to build relationships.

Final Words

Starting a blog today is very easy, but monetizing a WordPress blog is still an area where the majority of bloggers fail.

The key to success here is to identify only ONE monetization strategy and then follow it wholeheartedly until you get success. The main cause of bloggers’ failure is that many of them start trying all the monetization strategies at a time, and can’t focus on just ONE method.

And as most of the examples have proved, you don’t need that much traffic or leads to start generating income from your blog. And while your niche does matter, it’s not the most important factor that determines if you’ll succeed.

Another major contributor to bloggers’ failure is the inability to take action. I’ve seen many students who watched videos after videos and have all the knowledge, but they never try to implement what they learned.

With this note of caution, I hope that when you follow anyone of the above strategies, you’ll get the results and start earning money with your blog.