Making money through blogs is still quite a profitable enterprise these days, even with the emergence of other sources of online income and the intense competition. This can be done even with blogs where you don’t have to pay for hosting, either. However, it needs to be done right or you will be wasting a lot of time and effort.
The first point that needs to be addressed here, of course, is where to get free or cheap blogs. You can certainly find a good list of free blogs, but not all of them would be suitable for your purpose, which is to make money online off of them. There are also paid blogs that cost about $1.00 a month, which should be more than within your reach. From there, we can discuss the various methods to monetize them.
Issues with Monetizing Free Blogs
Blogs can be monetized and the amount of money you get from them would depend on a wide variety of factors. Naturally, a lot of this would depend on the amount of traffic you bring in, but it’s not as simple as just having high visitor numbers. You can buy bot traffic if you want, but that’s not going to give you the conversions you are looking for, except for some very rare circumstances.
In any case, the problems with monetizing free blogs largely have to do with the terms and services that come with the blogging sites. Sure, you can build the blog, attract a lot of visitors, which would then entitle you to a lot of ad revenue. However, if the terms and services dictate that almost none of that money goes to you, then it would make no difference.
There is also the issue of authority. That is to say, free blogs are almost always going to be at a disadvantage to paid blogs when it comes to being trusted by either the search engines or by people. If you do it right and have built enough of a following that it would not matter, though, this issue can be easily resolved.
Differences Between Free and Paid Blogs
The differences between free blogs and those that cost money can vary depending on where you are getting your blog, to begin with. However, the most glaring of them has to do with the amount of control that you have. Simply put, if you paid for your blog, you are afforded significantly more control over what happens to it and how you make money from it.
This goes doubly true for blogs or websites that you built from scratch via CMS like WordPress. If you only needed the domain hosting and you were the one to code everything else, you would effectively be the only master of your blog. This does not apply to many of the most popular free blogging websites.
In most cases, you are only permitted a small percentage of the money you might have earned.
On top of that, paid websites also tend to be looked more favorably by users who are looking for quality information. This means that it can be quite difficult for you to build credibility if you don’t put in the appropriate amount of effort.
Partners for affiliate marketing and even e-commerce can also involve a ton of obstacles that you are going to need to overcome. However, for a lot of aspiring web owners, the biggest difference between free and paid blogs is the freedom in naming their blog.
You are limited to only a certain set of names or URLs, which would then affect user access and website visibility. Fortunately, none of those are obstacles that are so overwhelming that they are impossible to overcome. You just need to know how.
Monetizing Free Blogs
Even with all of those difficulties to monetize free blogs, it is actually being regularly done. All things being equal, free blogs might not be able to compete with paid blogs, but they can still present a decent chance at earning money. This goes doubly true for those who would rather not or do not have the capacity to pay for the domain name and the upkeep of the site, in the first place.
That absence of initial out of pocket cost can make a huge difference when you are trying to make money and don’t yet have the capital for the investment. Then, once you are established, you can simply transfer everything to a paid blog if you want or keep everything as it is.
How to Monetize Free Blogs
Now, we come to the actual methods that you can use to monetize free blogs. As already mentioned, you will be limited by a lot of things, but there are always ways around them.
On that note, it is important to point out that there is a difference between making money with your blog and living off of your blog. If your only concern is that you earn from your blog in some way, then there should be practically no obstacle for you to do that. However, if you are thinking of blogging full-time and make enough to support yourself with a free blog, this is where things become more complicated.
Fortunately, the following should help with providing you with options regarding the matter:
AdSense
Even if you are using a free blogging site, you can still actually be entitled to ad revenue by applying for Google AdSense. You just likely get a lot less from it than you would if you actually own the site. If you are content with what basically amounts to a side income, this should be a good option for you.
On that note, it’s not actually impossible to earn a living using this method but you would need a considerable amount of traffic to achieve that. It is actually possible to buy bulk traffic just to get the ball rolling. From there, you can maintain your momentum by having an excellent website design and lots of engaging content to fill your blog.
Paid But Cheap
There is an alternative to free blogging if you want more control over your website and these are the super cheap options. You can literally find hosting sites where you only need to pay $1.00 a month. The downside here is that you get a .info domain name most of the time, which can be harder to rank and grow.
Still, this doesn’t mean that you won’t get a decent result from it. If your contents are interesting enough and you put a lot of effort in your SEO and social media campaigns, you should see some good results.
Subscription
Assuming that your blog has grown big enough, it is actually possible for you to create a subscription service where you are asking your users to pay for access to some exclusive contents. This is a fairly common source of income for those who are providing desirable online services that involve information, narrative, or connections.
If you have a web novel, for example, you can easily set up a payment system where you are providing access whenever you put up a new chapter or series of chapters. If you are running a webinar, you can do the same thing for online sessions.
Sponsorship
There are now a ton of excellent options that basically allow you to be sponsored by your visitors or by other entities, if you wanted to. This can be done via donation systems such as through Patreon and the like. You can also make use of a bunch of other services that involve chat systems or comment sections where your visitors can send you gifts in the form of cash.
A lot of free blogging sites have these features enabled and if your contents are good enough, you can make a decent living through this method. As long as you have the appropriate online finance systems to facilitate the transactions, you will be able to receive a steady stream of income. There are even methods where e-checks can be deposited in your account.
Naturally, this means that you would have to make your blog worthy of such sponsorship, in the first place. You cannot approach your blogging in a halfhearted manner if you are going down this route.
Affiliate Marketing
Finally, even if you are running a free blog, you can still do affiliate marketing. You just won’t be able to do it as overtly as you normally would be able to if you had a paid blog. For starters, some free blogging sites will not allow you to determine which banners you will add to your pages.
However, you can still do links, product reviews, recommendations, promotions, and the like. Doing this will essentially allow you to earn money by bypassing the many obstacles that you would normally have to deal with when running a free blog. As a result, you will be able to make the most amount of money as you are actually capable of earning.
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