Blog For Money: Passive Income And 6 Ways To Get It

If you have been writing on your site for a while and hustling to blog for money, passive income is probably on your mind.

Blogging is a lot of work. We all start out because we like writing. It begins as fun, then we get good at it. And when you like something and you are good at it, why not try and make it your job or earn some money from it? But earning money from a blog is a lot of work, and it can take some serious time to set up and build content. And that’s before we talk about traffic.

Or maybe you use a blog to supplement your business. My specialty is using blogs to generate traffic and buzz and establish online entrepreneurs as authorities with a strong message. So your blog creates a networking space for your audience to get information. And traffic is already coming to your website…

Sometimes it feels like a shame that all that traffic is going to waste when you could be doing more with it.

If you blog for money, passive income is the ultimate goal for online entrepreneurs. And there are actually a surprising number of ways to blog for money, passive income being your sole source of revenue.

I am going to start with some stuff that is easy to get running and then get more advanced.

Blog For Money: Passive Income For Beginners

Ad Revenue

I talk about ads all the time, but I think it is a missed piece of passive income for bloggers. Even if you have hardly any traffic, it’s a good idea to get ads on your site early on if you ever think you might want ads. This gets your audience used to seeing them instead of having them go through a major change to your site later on.

The basic requirement to get approved is to have a website with valid content. (Actual articles, not just landing pages.) Google Ads was easy for me to get approved for with a new blog of only 10 articles.

After your traffic increases, you can qualify for higher paying ad providers.

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Affiliates Programs

There are tons of affiliate programs out there, and plenty for even beginners to choose from.

Amazon is an easy affiliate to qualify for, but the payout is very low. If you have a good post with plenty of links that gets traffic, you might be able to cover your web hosting costs as a beginner blogger.

Affiliate programs work by promoting someone else’s product, which is great as a new blogger if you don’t have anything to sell yet. Try to pick things that are relevant to your audience and that you actually stand behind so that you still build trust with your list.

Write An Ebook

And Ebook is fairly simple to create and you can sell an unlimited amount of digital copies once it has been created.

Create a document that has valuable content for your audience. Don’t let “book” scare you off. Think the length of a short blog to start with.

Then use a free design tool like Canva to create stylized pages with a nice cover. You can sell it on a landing page on your blog. Or what I love to do is add little freebies or small products like this to my welcome email sequence. That way as people opt into my list, they slowly get fed content, freebies and passive income offers.

Blog For Money: Passive Income For Experienced Bloggers

Just a note to say that even though I am qualifying this as experienced, you totally don’t have to be. I coach plenty of new bloggers who create courses and sell $5k products. I am simply suggesting that some passive income is easier than others. Yes, it is passive, but the prep work is a lot more for the below examples.

Create A Course

Now you don’t have to sell a $5 course. There are $10 courses out there, too. Consider your brand, your audience and your niche when creating and pricing. The more niche and detailed the info, the more you can charge.

And remember, people don’t care about how big it is. They care about the transformation. So forget about filler and don;t waste your time on stuff to bulk up your course. Do things that guide your client to change.

There are a few ways to create a course for free and sell it on your blog or in your welcome sequence. But especially for ease (because we are talking passive, right) I absolutely recommend a paid tool. Something that can combine your shopping cart needs to your course platform. It will save you time and stress.

Sell Your List

This is something you can;’t really do in the beginning because… duh, you have to have a list!

A list rental is when you have an established audience and someone else pays you to promote a product to your list They will probably send a sales script and some copy. I always recommend adjusting the language to suit your audience.

Again, only promote products that you stand behind and that you think are valuable to your audience. Maintaining trust with your list is important for maintaining and building passive income over time.

Create A Membership Site

Creating membership sites that offer resources are much more passive than offering membership sites with products, like a subscription box. So that’s not where I am going here.

Creating a site that charges a membership fee is a great way to generate passive income. An example is to build a Facebook group with content and charge people a membership fee to access the group and be able to use the content and resources in the group.

Blog For Money, Passive Income? Which Comes First?

Maybe you are a business who already has established income and are looking to ad some passive income to your successful site.

But you certainly do not have to be established or have a ton of traffic to start generating passive income. If you already blog for money, passive income is an easy transition.

But I also impress upon new bloggers that there is no time like the present to get started. Position yourself now to be prepared to make passive income. Get ads approved and network with other bloggers for potential partnerships and affiliate opportunities.

Looking for more than passive income? You can also turn your blog into a career…

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Content marketing is powerful – but it’s also easy to make mistakes that can lead to spinning your wheels instead of making an income. I can help make sure that doesn’t happen.

If you’d like some help growing your business, let’s chat.