Despite its reputation as a moneyless business, blogging is quickly becoming an easy way to turn a profit for writers all over the Web.
Believe it or not, one in four bloggers keep their blogs running as a way to generate money, and over 85 percent of bloggers earn some kind of monetary profit through maintaining them. The following three bloggers should serve as inspiration for those seeking monetary gain through blogging.
About the blog: Matthew Woodward is something of an SEO guru. His blog's primary focus is to turn struggling blogger newbies into overnight successes with his tips and tricks. His site boasts several success stories from bloggers his tips have positively affected, as well as in-depth 'how to's' on everything from search engine rankings to ways to make money on your blog.
March 2016 earnings: $22,208.26
How Matthew earns his money: By taking a look at Matthew's March 2016 income report, we can clearly see that the majority of his monthly earnings come from his affiliations. As a matter of fact, it's more than $12,000 of the total $22,000 he earned this month.
What are affiliate earnings, you ask? It is money that bloggers earn by referring their readers to another site or program. For every person that signs up for the program under Matthew's influence, he receives a predetermined sum.
As seen from Matthew's income report, he is a part of over 50 affiliate programs, which are making him some serious cash each and every month.
-GSA Captcha Breaker
-Kontent Machine
-SEMrush
About the blog: Justin is primarily a finance blogger who purchased this website from someone else in 2013. Since taking over the blog, he has put his focus into writing about what he knows best -- finance. He works in corporate finance by day and turns into a finance blogger by night, which means that finance is essentially his entire life.
March 2016 earnings: $22,791.00
How Justin earns his money: By taking a look at Justin's March 2016 income report, we know right off the bat that his money-making method varies drastically from Matthew's. While Matthew earned more than half of his monthly income from affiliate marketing, Justin earned only $43 using this method in the month of March.
Instead, Justin has implemented the use of direct ad revenue on his website. What this means is that people pay money to have their product or website displayed somewhere on Justin's site. He sells the space, almost as if he is charging them rent, and makes a sizeable profit from promoting them.
Although he doesn't detail what companies he sells ad space to, he does explain that he owns various websites and earns ad revenue from each.
He also makes a point to note that he places ads for clients of his, and that he keeps a percentage of those earnings for himself as well, and includes this in his direct ad income.
About the blog: A self-proclaimed sidekick to infopreneurs (freelancers, coaches, teachers), Regina states that the purpose of her blog is to help people tap into their creativity and develop the best products and services they possibly can. The main focus of her blog is marketing and helping people make their blogs better with some much needed creativity.
January 2015 earnings: $16,382.91
How Regina earns her money: Here's the thing Regina doesn't post her income reports religiously. As a matter of fact, the last one she posted was from February of 2015. Still, she deserved to be added to this list for one very important reason: she makes her money very differently than Justin and Matthew do.
She sells products and services, which is something differently entirely. With e-books, an editorial planner, some online classes, several workbooks, a few guides and a couple of seminars, Regina has earned an important lesson in the fact that there are few things more valuable to a blogger than their own knowledge.
Regina's products are sold in various places, though most can be purchased directly from her on-site store.
-#50Workdays- Zero to Blog
-EpicBlog-Editorial Planner
-Grow Your Blog Traffic with Social Media-The eBook + Workbook
-3-Day Create-The Workbook to Help You Create Your Own Information Product
-The Small Business Manual
-The Guide to Creating a Stellar Content Plan
-WordPress Class Registrations
-The Epic Brand Identity Workbook
-How to Start a Business in Texas
-How to Promote Your Business Online
-EpicDay Notepad
This is just a small sampling of three sites that are crushing it with their online earnings, there are thousands of sites just like this where normal people like you and me are making a living (and sometimes a huge sum of money) "just" by blogging.