How To Monetize A WordPress Blog: 6 Best Ways & Ad Networks
So you’ve been developing your blog for months, it’s generating a steady stream of traffic, and you’re finally ready to earn money from your blog.
But which method should you use to monetize a WordPress blog? If you’re not sure where to start, we’ll help you figure things out.
In this post, we look at some of the best options for monetizing a WordPress website. We also found a few decent ad networks you can join to run ads on your site as well.
Without further ado, let’s dive in.
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Is Your Blog Ready To Be Monetized?
There’s no point monetizing a website if it doesn’t have an audience or generate enough traffic.
Before you explore monetization options, look into your website traffic stats to see whether it has a consistent stream of traffic.
While you can start monetizing your site from day one, you won’t generate any revenue until enough people come to visit your site.
For example, you need your blog to generate at least 10,000 visits a month before you attempt to run ads with an ad network like AdSense. This is not a requirement but a general rule you should try to follow. If you place ads too early, it will slow down your website, affect the user experience, and might even affect your search rankings.
But, if you plan on selling a product, like an eBook, you can start whenever you want. However, you’ll still need to generate more traffic to sell more copies.
We recommend that you wait until your site generates at least 1,000 visitors per month before considering any type of monetization.
How Much Money Can You Earn From A Blog?
The amount of money you earn from a WordPress blog entirely depends on the amount of traffic your site generates and the monetization methods you use.
Most bloggers use a mix of a few different monetization methods to make the most of their websites. Like using AdSense while selling an eBook and promoting affiliate products at the same time.
Using such methods, bloggers earn somewhere between $200 a month to over $10,000 a month, according to this big list of blog income reports.
And, over time, you could even earn around $1 million dollars a year, just like how Adam Enfroy does with his blog.
Best Ways To Monetize WordPress Sites
As we mentioned earlier, there are a few different methods you can use to monetize your blog. You can pick one or use multiple methods to monetize your website.
1. Sell Digital Products
This is arguably the most effective way to monetize a blog. Especially since it doesn’t involve a monetary investment or a monthly traffic requirement.
If your blog is fairly new, you can monetize it by selling a digital product like an eBook. If you have experience and knowledge in a specific field, you can share that experience as a PDF book and sell it directly to your blog audience and avoid having to deal with competition on platforms like Amazon.
Once you establish authority as a professional blogger and gain a bigger audience, you can start selling other products like an online course or a coaching program. It’s arguably the most profitable method to monetize a blog.
- Gumroad and Sellfy are great for selling digital products like eBooks
- Teachable and LearnDash are great for selling online courses
2. Promote Affiliate Products
If you don’t have the time or the experience to create and sell your own digital products, the next best thing is to sell products made by others.
This is called affiliate marketing. You join an affiliate network, find products that are relevant to your blog, and start promoting them on your website using a special tracking link.
Whenever someone visits your blog, clicks on that affiliate link, and buys the product, you earn a commission.
It’s an effortless way to earn money from your blog without any investment. But, you will need an audience that trusts you to be able to sell them a product that someone else made.
There are several affiliate networks you can join to find good products to promote.
- Amazon Associates allows you to sell products from the Amazon marketplace
- Impact is a platform full of brands and companies seeking affiliate marketers. It’s fairly easy to join the site
- CJ Affiliate also features a huge collection of niche products for promoting on your blog
3. Publish Sponsored Articles
When your blog becomes an authoritative source of information in your niche, brands and businesses will often reach out to you to promote their products or websites on your blog.
They will provide you with free copies of products and even a monetary incentive to write a review about their product or service. This is called publishing a sponsored article.
You can charge somewhere from $100 to $1,000 per sponsored post or even more, depending on the quality and the amount of traffic your blog generates.
Of course, you need to have a loyal audience or generate lots of traffic to be able to offer sponsored articles. Your website’s domain authority and rankings will also play a role in how much you can charge per sponsored post.
4. Offer Members-Only Exclusive Content
Another strategy you could use to monetize your blog is to create exclusive content for paid members. Save your best advice, tips, and hacks and share those with your most loyal followers who are willing to pay for your content.
This method is quite popular among established bloggers with valuable knowledge to share. They create a membership community for loyal blog visitors with paid tiers. And offer exclusive content just for registered members.
It could be something as simple as sharing details about your work, sharing tips, or creating a special training program. It’s not that different from what most creators now do using Patreon.
With WordPress, you can use a plugin like WP-Members to easily create a membership platform inside your website.
5. Ask for Donations
Streaming is now a big industry. Most streamers, especially on Twitch, almost entirely rely on donations to monetize their channels. So why not use the same method for your blog?
This method is a good way to monetize a blog that shares information. And it’s especially more effective if you have an ad-free blog.
The Marginalian (previously BrainPickings) is an ad-free blog that uses donations to monetize the blog.
You can easily create a donate button using your PayPal account or you can use a plugin like GiveWP to add a donate button to your website.
6. Coaching and Consulting
Offering consulting and coaching sessions is another great way to monetize your blog. Many professional bloggers offer private coaching sessions to share their knowledge with others.
This is not limited to industry professionals and business experts. Whether you have experience in diet planning, fitness, cooking, traveling, making websites, or even working online as a freelancer, you can create a simple program to offer coaching to others.
The only downside to this method is that it can be time-consuming. You will have to dedicate time out of your day to coach other people and be involved in the program.
7. Join an Ad Network
Joining an ad network, like Google AdSense, is a great way to run ads on your blog and generate revenue. It’s actually the most popular choice among beginners since it’s so easy to get started.
However, you need to generate a lot of traffic to be able to earn a decent amount of income from ad networks. Even if your blog generates 10,000 visits per month, you’ll struggle to earn $100 per month from AdSense.
Another downside to using ad networks is that they require you to place big display ads everywhere on your blog. This often interferes with the user experience. It’s not something you should experiment with when you’re trying to grow your blog.
Still, there’s good money in running ads. So if you have a solid audience and generate regular traffic, consider using an ad network.
Best Ad Networks for WordPress Sites
There are several ad networks you can join to run ads on your blog. The good news is that when using these ad networks, you don’t have to worry about picking or choosing the ads to show. They will automatically show the best ads that fit your content and audience.
1. Google AdSense
Google AdSense is the most popular ad network used by all kinds of blogs and websites, including the most popular news magazines.
AdSense is also a popular choice among beginners since it’s easier to get accepted into the program. Unlike most other ad networks, AdSense doesn’t have strict requirements. As long as you create high-quality content and have an audience, you can get accepted into AdSense quite easily.
2. Mediavine
Mediavine is the most recommended ad network by pro-bloggers that offers higher payouts than any other ad network. They offer high-quality ads and with higher click-through rates.
However, getting accepted to Mediavine is much more difficult than other networks as well. To get into this platform, your website needs to generate at least 50,000 sessions (or 60,000 page views) per month.
Mediavine is most suitable for websites that generate more stable and high traffic numbers every month.
3. Ezoic
Ezoic is another great ad network suitable for beginners. Similar to AdSense, getting into this platform is quite easy and it does not have any strict requirements.
Most bloggers claim Ezoic to be better than Adsense, as it offers higher rates than AdSense. Ezoic also offers more hands-on support to help you setup ads on your website as well as to optimize your site for performance by assigning you a support representative.
One downside to using Ezoic is that it adds a heavy load of ads to your website. This could affect the loading speeds. Some bloggers have also complained about the quality of Ezoic ads.
4. Media.net
Media.net is another great ad network that offers a service quite similar to AdSense. It allows you to choose from multiple types of ads, including contextual ads, display ads, and native ads to monetize your blog.
Some of the biggest blogs and news websites on the web use Media.Net to monetize their sites.
5. Monumetric
Monumetric offers multiple monetization programs depending on the amount of traffic your blog generates. The starting program requires a minimum of 10,000 monthly pageviews with 50% of traffic from the UK, US, Canada, or Australia.
It also requires you to pay a one-time implementation fee of $99, which can be an inconvenience. However, many bloggers have given good reviews for its service.
6. Infolinks
Infolinks is a different type of ad network that allows you to insert monetized contextual links into your articles. It automatically targets keywords in your blog posts and turns them into ad links.
While it’s a clever way to get more visitors to click on ads, this type of ads could affect your Google rankings as well as the user experience. Use it wisely.
Conclusion
While using a mix of a few monetization methods is best for generating more revenue, you should also avoid adding too many ads to your blog. You should also try to avoid showing ads from more than one ad network. It could even lead to your AdSense account getting banned.
Go with Adsense or Ezoic when you first starting out. After growing your blog to 50k visitors a month, try to join Mediavine. In the meantime, make sure to develop some digital products or services to sell on your website.
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