Are you wondering how to make money blogging without ads? Well, this post rounds up nine monetization alternatives as opposed to display advertising.
Let’s face it, display advertising is an excellent form of passive income, but it can clutter your interface, slow down your site speed, and draw users away from your blog.
I’ve decided not to display ads on my blog until at least 10,000 monthly page views, so I completely agree with your decision not to want ads on your blog.
Regardless of your reasoning, here’s the roundup on nine monetization methods (that aren’t ads) that you can get started with today.
Let’s begin! 😃
How to Monetize Without Ads
Here are the nine different methods on how to make money blogging without ads.
Just a reminder that to make money in blogging, you need to provide high-quality, informative content to your audience.
Without that, your audience won’t trust you, your recommendations, or want to purchase products from you.
So make high-quality content your main priority before you focus on monetization methods.
Recommended read: How to Start a Profitable Blog in 2021
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is by far the best way that bloggers can make money from blogging without ads, and it involves zero overhead costs.
It involves getting a tracking link for a product or service and adding it to your blog posts. If someone clicks on the tracked link and buys the product/service, you’ll earn a commission, often ranging between 5% – 70% of the final purchase cost.
The affiliate link also has a duration cookie, meaning it could last from 24-hours to 365 days. This means that if someone clicked on your affiliate link, didn’t buy the product at that moment, but decided to buy it a week later, you’ll still earn a commission.
Any blogger can get started with affiliate marketing from day one; it doesn’t matter your niche.
To find affiliate programs to join, do a quick Google search of: [Brand/Service] affiliate program.
This way, you’ll find affiliate programs relevant to your niche.
Also, here are some affiliate networks that host thousands of products and services to choose from:
– Amazon Associates (commission rates vary from 1% – 10%, with millions of products to choose from)
– ShareASale (16,500+ merchants, 180+ million sales generated in 2020)
– ClickBank (available in over 200 countries with $4+ billion paid out)
Affiliate marketing tips:
- Only become an affiliate for products you use and trust.
- Mention the pros and cons of the products/services.
- Choose quality over quantity.
Sell Digital Products
The second way to make money blogging without ads is by selling digital products.
Digital products are another great way to make money without having many overheads. This is because once the product is made, it can be sold repeatedly.
They’re also great to sell due to their high profit margins and the ease of automation.
Digital products to consider selling:
– Ebooks: $3 – $100
– Courses: $9 – $1000+
– Stock images: 25c – 45c per image
– Stock videos: Up to 40% commission on Shutterstock
– Templates: $2 – $30
– Printables: $1 – $20
You can sell digital products on Gumroad, Sellfy, or Etsy. Here are also another 12 platforms to consider selling digital products on.
Selling digital products tips:
- Ensure your product specifications are precise (file size, file format, number of files, etc.)
- Create excellent product photos.
- Provide genuine user reviews (consider doing a trial run and giving out ten products for free.)
Courses
Selling courses also come under selling digital products. You can sell courses in a text or video format, and they can be about anything (as long as there’s an audience).
Courses can sell anywhere from $9 to $1000+; it all depends on your ‘authority’ in your blog niche, how much information you include in the course, and whether it’s video or text-based.
You can sell courses on platforms like Thinkific, Kajabi, and heaps more.
Selling courses can be highly lucrative, but you also need to ensure an audience willing to buy from you. Most new bloggers won’t have much luck selling courses.
Freelancing
Freelancing is an excellent way for bloggers to provide services and get paid for them. This is the primary way many new bloggers monetize because they can start earning money from day one.
As a freelancer, you can choose your cost, the hours you want to work, and which customers you want to work with.
Freelancing services:
– Web design: Build functional and creative websites.
– Writing: Write blog posts & SEO-friendly articles for other bloggers.
– Social media manager: Create, optimize, and schedule content for brands on social media.
– Data entry: Enter information into spreadsheets or documents.
You can join sites like Fiverr or Freelancer to display your freelancing jobs or display them directly on your blog. Many bloggers choose to freelance while waiting for SEO to kick in.
Freelancing tips:
- Always have a contract that outlines everything about the job.
- Stick to your price and avoid low negotiations.
- Turn down work if you’re not confident or unsure if you’ll meet the deadline.
Read next: How to Make Money From Fiverr [5 Methods]
Write Sponsored Posts
Another monetization method to consider as a blogger is to write sponsored posts.
A sponsored post is when a business will pay you to give your review about their product or service and promote it to your readers. You can also earn more if you advertise it on social media or your email list.
There’s no set pricing for writing sponsored articles, as it relies on your page views and audience loyalty.
This is a monetization method that I’d hold off on doing for the first year, as you won’t have an audience that trusts you yet, or enough page views to make decent money.
You need at least 10,000 pageviews a month to be deemed valuable to a company, so don’t go pitching sponsored post ideas until then.
How to get sponsored posts:
Blog Meets Brand: A marketplace that connects influencers and bloggers with brands. It’s so straightforward to sign up with, and they have 40,000+ influencers they already work with.
Acorn Influence: Another marketplace that matches you with ideal brands. You receive a campaign offer, pitch an idea, and get paid after you’ve been selected and completed the work.
Sponsored posts tips:
- Make yourself easily contactable (create a contact page on your blog.)
- Create high-quality content that attracts brands.
- Pitch sponsorships to brands in your niche (or ones that do a lot of influencer advertising already).
Build an Email List
Building an email list is a more challenging monetization option, as it can take a long time to create a solid email list. Although once built, you can make really good money from it.
You may be wondering, how can I make money from an email list?
Well, it’s relatively straightforward. Here are three methods you can use to make money from your email list:
Affiliate marketing: You can include affiliate links in your emails to your subscribers. This could consist of flash deals or a product you currently love using.
Sell your own products: Advertise your digital or physical products to your subscribers. It can be as simple as leaving a link to your ‘shop’ page at the bottom of every email.
Write sponsored emails: Instead of filling your blog up with sponsored posts, you can write sponsored emails instead.
Remember that it does take a while to build an email list, so you should focus on creating high-quality content and building your pageviews to subsequently build your list.
Building an email list tips:
- Nurture a relationship with your subscribers, don’t just promote products all the time.
- Create free email opt-ins to encourage people to sign up to your list (example below).
Do Coaching/Consulting
Coaching and consulting is when you offer one-on-one services to clients.
Coaching draws the answers out of clients, whereas consulting provides them with a clear guide to achieve their intended results.
You could offer coaching or consulting jobs via hourly phone calls, video calls, or monthly packages.
Examples of coaching:
– Business coach: Help guide clients by aligning their business goals with their personal goals.
– Accountability coach: Help clients who set goals but can’t stick with them.
Examples of consulting:
– Finance consultant: Assist clients through self-analysis of finances and goals. It also assists with tax returns, budgets, and financial management.
– Management consultant: Helping businesses improve their performance and strategies.
Coaching and consulting prices can range anywhere from $40/hr to over $1000/hr. It just depends on your experience and credibility.
Sell Physical Products
Selling tangible products is another way to diversify your income stream as a blogger.
You can reduce overheads in the beginning by choosing to sell with print-on-demand services. These services will only make your product after it has been ordered, and you don’t have to do anything apart from making and listing the product.
Printing on demand keeps your overheads low and your profits high as a beginner.
Print-on-demand services:
Printful: 280+ products, beginner-friendly, sell within minutes, fulfillment services worldwide.
Printify: 300+ products, beginner-friendly, used by over 500K merchants.
You could sell clothing (hoodies, t-shirts, pants, etc.), accessories (phone cases, bags, face masks), wall art, and heaps more with print-on-demand services.
Every niche will have different products to sell, like photographers could sell canvas prints, or travel bloggers could sell backpacks and suitcases. The options are literally endless.
Selling physical products tips:
- Spend time creating and customizing the products, don’t just slap a logo on and think you’re done.
- Choose only a couple of colors for each clothing item. Choosing between 1 – 2 colors as a customer is a lot easier than choosing between 30 colors. More color options can lead to doubt and zero purchases.
Accept Donations
Another way to make money blogging without ads is to accept donations. Accepting donations is as simple as adding a Paypal donate button to the sidebar of your blog.
Donations are among the few used monetization methods, as they rely solely on the audience’s generosity to make you money.
If you’re a personal blog that doesn’t use other monetization options, accepting donations could be used to cover domain and web hosting costs.
Accepting donations can be a lucrative monetization option, too, with Wikipedia making $129 million in donations from 2019 – 2020 from the support of millions of donors.
Your blog just needs to provide exceptional value to its readers, like how Wikipedia’s website does.
Accepting donations tips:
- Include a reason as to why you need donations. Is it because you want to fund your blog?
- Make a customized donation page.
Paid Membership Sites
The final way of making money blogging without ads is by doing a paid membership site.
Membership sites can host more informational content like in-depth articles, videos, lessons, webinars, and more. This content comes at a monthly recurring fee to the audience.
This monthly membership price may range from $9 to $50 a month, depending on the amount of high-quality content.
While paid memberships are a great form of income, you need to have built a solid loyal following willing to fork out money every month for your content.
These sites also require regular new content and updates; otherwise, they are not worth the money.
Starting a membership site is as easy as buying a plugin like MemberPress or LearnDash that does all the work for you.
Paid membership site tips:
- Engage with members frequently, and build a relationship with everyone; they’ll be more inclined to stick around longer.
- Give out free spots to your loyal readers. This will build reviews and incline more people to join.
Wrapping Up
So that wraps up the nine different ways of how to make money blogging without ads.
Hopefully, this roundup article has helped you decide on which monetization options to choose, as there are many more than just display advertising.
While display advertising is the most passive form of income, it can also ruin the user experience and create an ugly-looking blog. It’s worth mentioning that you’ll barely make pennies if you have low traffic.
It can take a while to make money blogging, but once you start earning money, the sky’s the limit in earnings potential.
How do you plan on monetizing your blog without ads?
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