Have you ever wondered how successful bloggers turn their websites into full-time businesses? Whether you want to earn passive income or build a thriving online brand, your WordPress blog can be a powerful money-making tool.
At OptinMonster, we’ve been running a blog for over a decade, and we use many of these monetization tactics ourselves. From affiliate marketing to selling online courses, we’ve tested what works (and what doesn’t) to grow a profitable blog.
In this guide, I’ll share 12 proven ways to make money from your WordPress blog, including strategies that generate recurring revenue and passive income. Whether you’re just starting or looking to scale, there’s an option for every stage of your blogging journey.
- How Do Bloggers Make Money?
- How Can I Make Money From My WordPress Blog?
- How Do I Start a Blog to Make Money on WordPress?
How Do Bloggers Make Money?
There are 2 main ways that bloggers make money:
- From the content itself.
- From the audience you build around the content.
To earn revenue from your content, you can run ads through Google AdSense or similar services. Advertisers will pay you for clicks or views on ads your blog displays. You can also sign up for affiliate links and earn commission when a visitor purchases something through that link.
You can also monetize your blog audience. Readers may purchase products or services directly from you. Brands may also pay to sponsor content on your blog based on the size and interests of your audience. You can collect donations from readers or run crowdfunding campaigns. Finally, you can sell memberships or subscriptions granting access to premium content, events, or products.
Building your email list is critical if you want to make money from your blog. Email allows you to reach your readers instead of just waiting for them to wander onto your blog. Learn more ways to grow your email list with our complete guide.
How Can I Make Money From My WordPress Blog?
Now, let’s take a look at some specific ways to make money from a WordPress blog.
Need help getting started with your blog? Check out this beginner-friendly guide to starting a blog.
1. Share Affiliate Links
New to Affiliate Marketing?
No worries! Our beginner’s guide to affiliate marketing has everything you need to get started.
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money from your WordPress blog. It allows you to earn commissions by recommending products or services you trust. Every time someone clicks on your affiliate link and makes a purchase, you get paid.
How to Make Money with Affiliate Links
To be successful, focus on relevance and trust:
- Recommend Products You Actually Use: Readers can tell when a recommendation is genuine. If you’ve used a product and can vouch for it, your endorsement will carry more weight.
- Create In-Depth Reviews & Tutorials: Instead of just dropping links into posts, write detailed guides, comparisons, and case studies. Show readers how the product solves a problem.
- Use High-Converting Placement Strategies: Add links naturally within blog content, buttons, or call-to-action boxes. You can also use exit-intent popups to promote top affiliate offers.
- Disclose Affiliate Links: Be transparent by adding a disclosure statement. This builds trust with your audience and keeps you compliant with FTC guidelines.
Best Types of Blog Posts for Affiliate Links
Some of the highest-converting types of affiliate content include:
- Product Reviews: Compare pros and cons, share personal experience, and include screenshots or video demos.
- “Best of” Lists: Example: “The 10 Best WordPress Hosting Providers (Tested & Compared)” with affiliate links to recommended services.
- Step-by-Step Tutorials: Teach readers how to use a product (e.g., “How to Start a Blog with Bluehost”), and include affiliate links to tools you mention.
In this example, WPBeginner has placed an affiliate link for BlueHost in a blog post about building WordPress websites.
2. Run Paid Ads
Displaying ads on your blog is one of the easiest ways to earn passive income, but it works best if you have high traffic.
Monitor Your Website Traffic (Without Leaving WordPress)
MonsterInsights brings your Google Analytics data right into your WordPress dashboard. Plus, it creates easy-to-understand reports that save you time and hassle.
Services like Google AdSense, Mediavine, and Raptive (formerly AdThrive) automatically place ads on your site and pay you based on impressions or clicks. Mediavine requires at least 50,000 monthly sessions, while Raptive requires 100,000 monthly pageviews. But both offer higher payouts than AdSense.
To maximize earnings without hurting user experience:
- Place ads strategically: Inline ads between paragraphs can catch the attention of readers.
- Optimize site speed: Too many ads can slow your site, reducing engagement and revenue.
- Diversify income: Combine ads with affiliate marketing, digital products, or memberships for better results.
Ads can bring in extra revenue, but they work best when paired with the other monetization strategies in this list.
3. Sell eBooks and Digital Downloads
Another easy way to earn money from your blog is to sell eBooks and digital downloads.
You could compile popular blog content into an eBook that readers can purchase. The convenience of having the best content curated and formatted for easy reading would be worth paying for. Ebooks could also contain entirely new content that isn’t available on your public blog.
This strategy can also work in reverse. If you’ve already published a physical or digital book, you can write blog posts to attract people who would also like your book.
Digital downloads such as checklists, calendars, templates, or printables are easy to sell on WordPress. Use a plugin like Easy Digital Downloads to manage your digital download store.
As you can see below, Mandarin Mama offers some of her best blog posts along with new content in an eBook available on Amazon.
4. Sell Online Courses
Online courses are a great way to earn money from your blog.
Similar to eBooks, you can create online courses to teach about your content area. The advantage of online courses is that you can use video, audio, and interactive elements that aren’t available in eBooks.
You can also sell live workshops to your blog audience.
In the example below, the child development blog Play Learn Thrive offers an online course that dives deep into creating a purposeful play space.
Want to learn more about selling online courses? Check out these resources:
- How to Market Online Courses: 7+ Strategies to Reach Potential Students
- Conquering Course Creation: Top WordPress LMS Plugins Compared
5. Sell Merchandise
Loyal readers might want to show off their love for your blog with branded merchandise.
Print-on-demand companies can make T-shirts, stickers, tote bags, posters, and other products with your blog branding. These companies can even ship for you, and integrate well with Shopify and other eCommerce platforms.
You can use OptinMonster’s onsite retargeting to show repeat visitors popup campaigns for merchandise. You could even create your own affiliate program with the plugin AffiliateWP. This is a great way to reward your biggest fans for promoting your blog and merchandise.
For example, The Pioneer Woman sells blog branded merchandise online and in a brick and mortar store.
6. Market Your Services
If you run an agency or provide a professional service, your blog can share your industry or role-specific knowledge. It’s like having a public portfolio that companies can discover at any time. You could even write guest blogs for other people or businesses!
Use WPForms to create a contact form that potential clients can use to inquire about hiring you. You can also create a booking form that collects payment.
In the example below, Watershed DNA subtly promotes their coaching services at the end of a blog post on a related topic.
7. Sell Sponsored Content
A favorite way to make money from blogging is to create sponsored content.
This means that brands pay you to write content related to their product, service, or brand. Sponsored content builds brand awareness for the sponsor, and can also contain affiliate links.
Sponsored content can include product reviews, roundups that include the sponsor, or simply articles related to the sponsor’s products or brand.
When you start publishing sponsored posts, you need to disclose which posts are sponsored. Learn how to automatically add a sponsored post prefix to your post titles in WordPress. You can also use AIOSEO to optimize your sponsored and affiliate links.
For example, I’m Not the Nanny shares a post sponsored by Xfinity. The post mentions Xfinity Rewards in the context of fun family activities, which the blog’s readers are already interested in.
8. Receive Donations
You can also simply ask your readers for donations to keep the blog running. This strategy is especially effective if you don’t run paid ads or sponsored content.
Perhaps you’ve chosen not to display advertising or sponsored content to create a better reading experience or more authentic content. Either way, you can invite readers to support your blog financially.
WP Simple Pay is an easy way to accept one-time and recurring payments on your WordPress website. You don’t need to fuss with coding or setting up an entire eCommerce system.
In the example below, The Writer’s Co-op invites listeners to donate to support production costs for their podcast.
9. Offer Memberships
Another way to make money from a blog is to offer memberships. You can sell ongoing access to premium content, workshops, courses, videos, and more.
MemberPress makes it easy to sell membership programs.
For example, Good Inside is a podcast and Instagram account with millions of followers. The Good Inside membership offers access to all of the founder’s workshops, videos, scripts, and other resources in one package.
10. Host a Virtual Conference
When you’ve built up a large audience around your blog content, you can bring them together for a conference.
A virtual conference can feature workshops, speakers, resource downloads, and more. Your blog’s conference can take place in real time, with or without recordings. You can also offer pre-recorded content that attendees can access at will. Learn more about how to host a virtual conference.
For example, Cindy Wang Brandt started a parenting blog and podcast. Then she hosted a virtual conference with a series of guest speakers discussing parenting topics.
11. Create a Podcast
A podcast can be very similar to a blog, just in audio form. If you prefer speaking to writing, a podcast could be a great format for you. There are many WordPress podcast plugins you can use to display your podcast on your WordPress website.
Just like a blog, you can share affiliate links or codes in your podcast episodes. You can also accept sponsorship or sell merchandise.
12. Start a YouTube Channel
Another format for blogging is video. People often use YouTube as a search engine to find tutorials, reviews, and other content. Creating YouTube videos can help you get your content in front of more people.
You can make money from YouTube by running ads, building your influence, or selling merchandise. Another option is to take your YouTube videos and create a video membership site.
Check out these important video marketing statistics if you’re interested in creating videos.
How Do I Start a Blog to Make Money on WordPress?
You can start a blog on WordPress in just 30 minutes. Read this great step-by-step guide for starting a blog that makes money.
It’s easy to install WordPress once you have a domain name and web hosting. Bluehost even offers a free domain name with your web hosting package.
After you have WordPress installed, you can use some of our favorite plugins for making money with your blog:
- OptinMonster: the premium lead generation plugin for WordPress that helps you build your email list and sell more productsmember
- Easy Digital Downloads: the best plugin for selling digital products like eBooks, PDFs, and even software
- WP Simple Pay: the #1 Stripe payments plugin for WordPress lets you collect payment without setting up a shopping cart
- AIOSEO: the world’s best SEO plugin and toolkit helps Google and readers find your blog more easily
- MonsterInsights: the best WordPress analytics plugin lets you learn about your blog visitors so you can optimize your content and offers to make more money
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