Blogging can be an incredibly rewarding activity especially if you’re a passionate writer whether you’re using it to promote your business or simply as something to supplement your writing career. But in the oversaturated online space of this day, it may be difficult to imagine that your blog could turn out to be a great source of income. You may wonder how much money bloggers make especially because a good number of them just seem to slave away for years only to manage to scrap together a little dough or the occasional free PR product.
Nowadays blogging has developed many variants that include traditional blogs, the blogging on third-party platforms such as LinkedIn or Medium. There is also micro-blogging happening on social platforms to video blogging also called vlogging.
As a matter of fact, most former traditional bloggers have morphed into influencers and are using other platforms such as Instagram and YouTube to blog. All these variants have come up with more innovative ways to create content either to promote their brands or market other brands.
For this reason, it’s getting harder to define blogging since most content creators consider themselves bloggers.
With that said, there are millions of traditional bloggers that are making a killing out of blogging as a career. Some of the highest-paid bloggers are making millions purely from blogging. So, what gives?
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4 Key Elements of a Successful Blog
What constitutes a successful blog that makes it lucrative?
There are certain characteristics that a blog must have to be considered good irrespective of the topic or niche. Whether you’re writing about a product, whether you’re telling a story, or teaching your audience how to go about something, a good blog must have these 4 key elements.
A Clear Subject
From the word go, you must be clear about your point of view in order to have a clear subject. For your content to have an impact and make sense to your audience, you must be able to communicate well through a well-defined subject matter.
Meaning it must be an area you’re well knowledgeable about and also passionate enough to be able to bring out that personal appeal to your audience.
A Great Headline
An attractive, punchy strong headline is a must. This is the first thing that will draw your reader’s attention in the first place.
A great headline properly optimized for SEO will also generate hits, and if you’re looking to earn from your blog, then you want as many hits as possible.
Make good use of customized sub-headings, and utilize bullet points as well.
The important factor to always have in mind when drafting headlines and sub-headlines is search engine optimization. Realize detailed keyword research to find the best keywords to use. As such, besides attracting the audience with that punchy headline that will make them want to read your content, make it easy for search engines to rank you as well.
Have a Hook
How much money do fashion bloggers make? Sometimes all they do is use a good hook and voila! The magic starts to happen. Good blog content hooks the audience with a problem that’s first indicated in the headline.
And as they enter into the body of the content for solutions, they’re drawn deeper by a promise of even more solutions. Again, this is about persuasion no matter the subject or niche. A good blog must be able to show the audience a certain point of view or angle.
Must Offer a Solution to a Problem
The highest-paid bloggers are successful mainly because they offer their audience a certain solution to their daily struggles.
After establishing a succinct subject with the problems at hand, it’s now time to offer your readers the solution that will change their experience. This is one of the reasons readers will come again to your blog. Because your solutions have created that connection with them, your solutions have built a certain degree of trust.
Let your solutions be personalized and as real as possible. People are looking for authenticity more than anything else.
What Are the Most Profitable Blogging Income Strategies?
As a blogger, one of your main tasks is to find resources that will continually enhance your content creation and make your blog thrive financially. The strategies below are what most of the highest-paid bloggers use, no matter the industry they’re in.
Handle Compelling Topics
Who is your target audience and what appeals to them most?
Identify these topics and address them in your content. When you appeal to the interests of your audience, getting their attention will be a job half done for you. Put your effort into creating quality content that focuses on these areas.
Use Great Post Titles
The knack to use catchy titles leaves your audience drooling for more. Without an attractive title, even the best content can waste away. Get creative with catchy titles to hook your readers and make them desire to read the whole content and possibly come for more.
Outline Your Blog Post
The beauty of blogs is that they allow you to experiment with form and structure.
How do you want to lay out your thoughts and what outline will best work for you? This is important because it’s the pattern in which you will walk your readers through your own thought process in order for them to fully understand you. And be able to relate to what you’re saying.
Pick an outline that will achieve this in the easiest way possible.
Link Your Connection to the Subject
This is simply about demonstrating your connection through your blog content with your audience. It’s a personal touch to build that deeper link that will show your readers that you’re connecting with them on matters they can relate to. It builds trust.
Pick an Elaborate Layout
The best way to create a reader-friendly layout is to use clear topics, short paragraphs, utilize bullet points and ensure your entire work is visually clean and appealing.
It helps your readers follow your ideas with more ease. And helps them pick out the key points they’re looking for rather than have to skim through the whole post to get to a single relevant point.
Get Personal
Before you wonder how much bloggers make, know that any successful blogger must know how to connect deeply on a personal level with their readers.
This cannot be repeated enough. People are in need of authenticity. And for them to feel that you can relate to them, you need to get personal.
Consider it a labor of love, you can easily achieve this by penning down content that you’re passionate about. A small trick makes it easier and also lessens the burden of having to overcome writer’s block. When readers connect with you, selling them your ideas or products will be so much easier.
Again, Offer Solutions
To make money in blogging, it’s not enough to just give an overview of your subject. Remember your readers visit your blog for more than just information. They’re there to get actual solutions with properly sourced case studies that are relevant to the topic at hand.
For this reason, you need to have a clear conclusion with a solution that you have found to be effective. This is what readers want and it’s what’s making the highest-paid bloggers stand out.
Optimization Plays a Key Role
Ensure your search engine optimization is up to snuff or else you will not get the clicks, and neither will you get new visitors to your blog. Depending on your niche and topic, research and identify the trending SEO terms and key phrases and compare your content against the top-ranking blogs for terms relevant to your subject or topic.
Ensure your blog content nears the top search results.
Proofread
This is one thing that most (even refined writers) tend to forget. You need to proofread your blog to check for typos or awkward phrases that will get better with a tweak, or other errors.
A very beautifully aligned blog post with all the necessary optimization and design can let you down so much if you skip the old dusty proofreading. It simply might make readers not take you seriously.
Promote Your Blog
Well, this final strategy has a lot to do with how much you will end up making from your writing career. You need to promote your blog especially if it’s about your business.
How can you promote your blog? Consider email lists, featuring as a guest blogger in another related blog for the purpose of promoting your own blog; you can use social media platforms, podcasts, and so on. Marketing your blog content plays a paramount role in your quest to make money from your blog.
When networking as you promote it, ensure to use your best work, you want this to bait the readers back to your blog for more, use your best content. Engage with your readers and find out more about what they like and create it.
How Much Do Bloggers Make? What Are the Most Lucrative Blogging Niches?
By creating blog content within the popular niches and on the most popular topics, you increase your chances of having a huge following and a greater chance of making money through various monetization opportunities.
Questions like how much bloggers make or how much does a fashion blogger make are frequent. And the strait answer is “it depends on a bunch of factors”. But to have a general idea of the earning level read this article till the end.
Here are the most profitable blogging niches:
Health and Fitness
Anything to do with health and fitness is bound to find a ready audience because obviously everyone wants to keep healthy.
Even though there are tons of similar blogs out there, you can still earn from it if you, for instance, narrow it down to smaller aspects e.g. focus on the vegan diet, or focus on pastries or quick home workouts, acupuncture, and so on.
You can also choose to focus on either gender or kids only. The options are endless, and you’d still manage to make money from your blog because most health topics are also evergreen in nature.
Finance
This is another lucrative niche and also evergreen in nature. People are continually looking for ways to earn more money, save more, or pay debts. Such content can never go out of style. This niche is also quite wide, so you can narrow your focus down to personal finance, frugality, investments, or even budgeting.
Fashion
How much do fashion bloggers make? The truth is that some of the highest-paid bloggers come from this category. It’s immensely popular and equally an enormous niche.
This niche is one of the easiest to monetize especially if you link your blog to social media platforms such as Instagram and double up as an influencer. Just like the other lucrative niches, you can narrow this down to hair and makeup, style and outfit, shoes and accessories, men’s style, and so on.
Lifestyle
This is another good blogging niche and it’s also pretty clever since it spreads its tentacles across many other niches.
For instance, you can blog about food, what to wear at work, as well as parenting, you can also talk about your skincare routine and beauty products that help you through your self-care.
Thus, these touch on almost all niches, but the trick is in knowing your audience and being sure that the content you create shall still be useful and relevant to them. It’s also lucrative since it spreads across other niches that are also profitable. The blend is really up to you and your audience.
Business and Marketing
Now some of the highest-paid bloggers also fall in this category. It might be so popular that every other blog you read might just be business and marketing related.
Another huge niche can have lots of evergreen content and can be narrowed down to various sub-categories depending on your background.
You can blog about entrepreneurship e.g. start-ups and how to grow them, you can blog about starting a small business as side hustle, you can blog about B2B or B2C marketing or networking and so much more. The options here are also endless.
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Technology
How much money do bloggers make in the tech industry?
Probably the largest number of the highest-paid bloggers come from this niche. This is a fast-paced niche but oh so wide.
From gaming, gadgets, and tutorials on software to the latest news on ever-changing technology. If you’re a tech lover, then you’re spoilt for choice on the kind of stuff you can blog about.
It’s lucrative because you can earn through affiliate marketing, product reviews or advertising, and more. You can even link directly to the manufacturers of these products and get paid through any of the above methods or other you’ll read below.
Travel
This niche has been getting more and more popular as people embrace traveling more. It’s also very popular because of the free opportunities for vacations.
A travel blog goes hand in hand with great photography skills. You need to know how to showcase your locations in a way to entice your readers to want to go there and get that experience.
As this niche is also relatively wide, you can narrow it down to writing about traveling gear, solo traveling, activities to do in certain specific locations, travel deals around the world, and so on.
The options are many and you can get paid to promote these places. Flight companies can also pay you to promote their travel experience and so on. All these are beside the free perks.
The Least Lucrative Blogging Niches Include:
- DIYs and Crafts
- Parenting
- Educational
- Music
- Politics and Current Affairs
- Religion
- Gardening
What Are the Possible Blog Income Sources?
There are many ways on how you can monetize your blog. Here are the main ways:
Cost per Click – Potential income: $0.1 – $0.5 per click
The most popular CPC network is Google AdSense. CPCs mean you get paid whenever someone clicks on Ads on your blog.
It could be very little or about 2 dollars, it’s going to depend on how lucrative it is. AdThrive is a better platform and has better CPC rates especially if you have over 100k page views per month.
Affiliate Links – Potential income: $5 – $500 per click
Affiliate marketing is about earning revenue when you place affiliate ads on your blog. The ads must be related to your content. When you recommend products or services and customers buy or sign up through your link, you earn money.
This can earn you more money than CPCs and works best if you have a reasonable audience of about 30,000 a month. Some of the highest-paid bloggers use affiliate marketing. It’s most effective if you use products that blend in well with your content.
Sponsored Content – Potential income $50 – $1,000 for each post
When you grow big, brands will want to tap into your already established audience by offering to display their content on your blog. And they can offer some good amount for that.
Besides earning you some revenue, this would be a good way to gain links especially when the sponsoring website is a great reputable brand. How much do bloggers make from sponsored content? It would depend on your brand and bargaining power. It can go up to $5000 per post.
However, always indicate when a blog is sponsored, this is to avoid being blocked by search engines.
Direct Display Advertisement Buys – Potential income $200 – $2,000 per display
How much do travel bloggers make? Have you seen ad banners of beautiful resorts on their blogs? This is most likely a direct display advertisement buy.
Businesses related to your industry may reach out to you to display their ads and promote their business on your blog. You can have up to three banner ad buys on your page.
Social Media Influencer/Promotion – Potential income $500-$3,000
Getting paid as a blogger doesn’t only happen on your blog. Social media is another area where you can earn money.
If you’re an expert or a reputable authority in your niche, you can be paid to post for instance a tweet or an Instagram picture that promotes a product or service. If you have a huge following, the better in terms of how much you can charge.
This is another way travel bloggers and fashion bloggers make money. You can make more when you go live either on Instagram or Facebook live or Twitter chats. All these platforms offer a good place to earn money as an influencer.
Consulting – Potential income $500 – $15,000
As a voice of authority, brands can approach you to do a couple of consulting services such as: giving feedback about a certain product or service, giving your opinion about various aspects of your niche, offering advice on how to build a platform, start-ups, and so on.
To improve your chances of getting such opportunities, network through platforms such as LinkedIn where you can showcase your expertise.
Paid Brand Partnerships – Potential income $5,000 – $25,000
As you build your audience and gain a good engagement level with them, brands will often approach you to work together with them. This is a win-win situation especially when you partner with the right brands where you not only get paid but also gain exposure when they share your content with their audience. Because ideally, you both should be having a similar audience.
And since partnerships often happen with big brands, it means bigger budgets and more $$ for you. This is how some of the highest-paid bloggers earn their money. Don’t undersell yourself.
Other possible avenues of how to make money with your blog include:
- Coaching and courses
- Speaking at events
- Sponsorships
Bonus – Tips on How to Make Money from Blogging
Earning income from your blogging career has everything to do with traffic.
Here are a few tips on how to actually get that traffic, organically:
The Type
There are certain types of blog posts that get shared easily. These are:
How to blogs – These simply explain how to go about certain tasks to solve a certain problem. They’re in high demand because whenever someone is stuck with something (say a phone stop working), the first thing they’ll do is Google how to fix it. This will get you that much-needed traffic.
Such blogs offer you an opportunity to dig deeper into a certain topic to prove your expertise.
The listicles – a blog type that thrives with ease. These simply offer quick lists of just about anything you can think of. They’re great because they’re quick and straight to the point. And people like quick solutions or tips. The sub-headers help people zoom in on the key points and move right along if they don’t need to read the entire article.
Question-based blogs – these blogs respond or pose questions, “How much do bloggers make?” They tend to address a specific subject. They offer deeper insights about the subject and the question framing piques the reader’s curiosity.
The Scroll-friendly Format
The easier your blog post is to read, the easier it is to share. Consider using a format that makes these two functions easy. Use a format that moves the reader easily to the next paragraph.
It’s an explanation of why the best bloggers don’t have a paragraph with more than 3 sentences. It allows a smooth flow and is easy when reading from a mobile device. Include visuals especially because 65% of people are visual learners.
Conclusion
How much money do bloggers make? Quite much! As this article has proven, if you want to make money, you should create content that benefits the reader. Secondly, you must stay creative as you discover all the possible ways to monetize your content even beyond your blog.
