How to Make Money From a Free Blog

OK…So you’ve read about how people make money from a blog, sitting around in their underwear all morning writing about random stuff before going out all afternoon while the money rolls in….

Now you want to know how to make money blogging, and you want to know how to make money from a free blog.

There are many free blog platforms out there, and are often a good way to start and get your toes in the water.

The biggest problem with most free blogging platforms is that you have no control over your website.

 

Here are 3 examples of problems.

 

1). Essentially the blog platform is supplied and hosted for free, and can be just as easily taken away.

2). You are stuck with a sub-domain address. What this means is that your web address might be something like YOURWEBSITE@blogspot.com.

If your website was in let’s say the Poker Niche, you might want to call it Ace of Spades.

But by using a free site, your domain address might be “www.aceofspades@freesite.com” or “www.freesite.aceofspades.com” for example.

It doesn’t sound that great does it? Especially when it could be “www.aceofspades.com”

 

3). You might just start a great blog, work hard on it, create lots of traffic and start earning money. It happens, and it happens on free blog sites. Google ranks pages from free blogs providing the content is good and relevant to what their users are searching for.

However, once your website is established, you then might start to feel vulnerable about losing your site and want to host it somewhere more secure, or you might want to switch it over to a paid service with your own domain name.

The trouble is it’s a free site and you don’t own anything. Moreover, the owners of the platform won’t be interested in helping you switch. That’s not in their interest. And kicking up a fuss won’t help because they’ll most likely pull the plug, killing off your site, your content, your traffic and your income.

However, there is a way to start blogging on a free platform with a free site builder that has over 2,000 templates to choose from, AND will let you transfer over to a fully supported paid hosting account when your business is up and running.

 

More on that later… For now Let’s continue looking at ways to make money from a free blog.

 

There are many ways to make money from a free blog.

 

1. Advertising Income

This is generally the first income that bloggers attempt to start with.

The easiest way to start is with Google Adsense.

In many ways this model of making money is very effective as it targets the interest of individual users in different parts of the world. Although it’s pays pennies on the dollar to start with, it is very targeted and gives most bloggers their first taste of making passive income online.

 

2. Affiliate Income.

Affiliate income is a method of selling other people’s products or services on your website in return for a commission paid on every sale.

The beauty of this method of monetizing your site is that you don’t need to produce anything, purchase anything or hold any stock.

You act as an affiliate seller for a product or service and the product or service owner takes care of sending out the goods, dealing with customer service and returns, plus paying out the commissions to the affiliates.

A very good example of this is the Amazon Affiliate Program whereby you get paid for directing customers from links on your website to the Amazon website, and when a customer makes a purchase, you get paid a commission.

It works really well with digital downloadable products, such as training and ‘How to Do’ type e-books. And typically you might set yourself up as an affiliate with ClickBank, the world biggest digital products site.

ClickBank stock info-products on everything from curing illness to building sheds, and typical commission payouts are between 50 to 75% of the sale.

Obviously this is a very lucrative business for those that get it right (And there is a right way and a wrong way to do this. You just need to be shown and learn from those who are earning 6 and 7 figures a year from affiliate marketing).

 

Again, more on this later….

 

3. Membership Income.

More and more bloggers are realising the income potential of membership style sites (sometimes known as continuity sites)

This is where readers of a blog pay a regular recurring amount (usually on a monthly or annual basis) for access to either premium content, a community area, some kind of service, tools or coaching.

The beauty of this type of program is that one customer can be a reoccurring source of income for many months or even years.

 

4. Promoting a business through a blog

Offline businesses regularly update their blogs with topical information, special offers and discount codes.

Although they don’t sell anything directly off their blog, it keeps the readers engaged and returning. In turn this keeps the profile of the company high in the consumers mind and traffic flowing through the store. This can be classed as indirect sales.

 

5. Service based blog

Aside from affiliate sales, another very lucrative income is through offering services to the readers. Typically, this might be writing, consulting, coaching, training, graphic or web design.

This can work really well and be highly profitable as potentially you are selling your skills to a worldwide audience at no cost to yourself.

 

6. Selling your own products.

Moving up a notch from the affiliate model, you’ll find that many 6, 7 and 8 figure earners are developing and selling their own products.

Obviously with this model your getting 100% of the sale plus the customer contact details to promote further products at a later date.

In fact, for most marketers the real money is made from the ability to keep promoting to these warm customers.

 

It is literally cash on demand, like having your own money pump…

 

Products take many forms and can include things such as e-books, courses, software or reports for example. And while they may take some upfront work to create, they can be evergreen which means they make passive income for you year-on-year.

 

Other products might take the form of physical items.

 

A friend of mine has a blog covering and promoting events. He makes a very nice income from reviewing the event and selling tickets through an affiliate link with a ticket agent.

However, he also has a very nice line in selling T-shirts off the same blog which have designs linked to the events he’s promoting…

So you can see that one form of promotion often lends itself to another and in fact most bloggers end up with multiple related streams of income all from one blog!

 

Which is best to have. Direct or indirect income streams?

The best way is to have a combination of both, or certainly several income stream linking out from your blog.

For example, I promote educational training courses on how to build your own successful online business, I have a website design service aimed at local business where I also promote SEO services, I promote my various books and reports on product creation and niche research, plus I also have other niche websites that earn me affiliate income and advertising income.

Therefore, my direct income streams might be from direct clicks from my website on Adsense adverts or affiliate links for example. Whereas my indirect income will develop as my reputation grows as a blogger and include sales from my book, SEO consulting services or web building. And this will develop not directly from my blog, but because of my blog as I write more and more quality and informative content.

 

Free or paid blogging platform?

 

So, with all that laid out, let’s get back to the initial question. Is it best to start with a free blogging platform to test the water, or dive in and invest in a paid service?

Earlier in this article I mentioned that there was a way to start free, then when you start to see results, seamlessly move over to a professional subscription platform.

(After all, there’s no such thing as a free business. At some point you do have to start spending a little money to grow and move forward to success.)

 

Anyway, the platform I’m talking about is one that I use and highly recommend.

 

===> It’s called Wealthy Affiliate…<===

 

I have a full review of what is on offer here >>> Highly Recommended and Worth looking Into

 

Check it out, but essentially you can start off with a FREE account (no upfront payment, deposit or any card details required)

The free account allows you to build 2 websites with hundreds of themes to choose from and host them on their super fast servers.

You also get access to hundreds of hours training and support from an amazing network of experts who are willing you to succeed.

 

Plus, you’ll also be able to pick up some great bonuses!

 

The amazing thing though is when you are ready to step up your game and become a monthly professional member, you can simply pick the domain name of your choice and move your treasured blog directly onto it.

It then becomes your very own web business that will earn you money and become a valuable saleable asset.

 

Take a look at the opportunity to start free and upscale in your own time HERE.

 

Whatever you decide to do in life, I wish you the very best and please leave any comments or questions below. I’ll get back to you a soon as I can.