7 Alternative Ways to Earn from Your Blog in 2017 [ Adsense Excluded]

Agree or not we always wanted to earn by Blogging. It was every teen's dream, especially with having so many references in movies about : How a blog goes viral and that teen becomes famous all of a sudden. This is not just limited to teenagers but to every age group present out there. But with so much competition out there, instant fame is kinda optional but there comes a time when you may want to start making money from your blog. Or perhaps you’re starting a blog with the intention of creating an income from it. Whatever the case, blogging has grown to be a hugely profitable business over the past few years and it’s only natural to want a slice of the pie. But I was asked a lot about how someone can earn from their blog other than placing Ads via Adsense? Not to forget the new rule of 2017 for newbies getting accepted into the Adsense program only if they are eligible. (Eligibility criteria of having atleast 10000 lifetime views)

I am not going to sugar-coat things: making a decent income from your blog takes a lot of time and work. It may take 6 months, 2 years or 4, who knows. It all depends on your niche and content creation. I am not saying it will take so long but it doesn’t happen overnight. So be mentally prepared for the best and the worst before starting out.

Before monetizing (term used for making money through methods) your blog, you should always work on creating great free content to help build trust. You will have to give it to the existing community out there before taking it in. Add some value to your desired audience and then map out an overall income strategy. Start to think of your blog as not just a hobby, but a business… because once you start earning money from your blog, you are no longer a hobby blogger, you are operating a small business which turns out as a large business. (If you come up with ideas)

Why would you make money overnight?: Because you have to first work on building trust with your audience and allow them to grasp your knowledge. Are you copy other blogs? quick that. I would rather suggest you to grab the ideas. It's important to look at what successful bloggers are doing out there. Take some ideas and follow the pattern but keep it unique. Building trust is SO important if you plan on selling to visitors and subscribers. Think about it, who are you more likely to purchase from or click on an affiliate link that was recommended to you? Somebody you’ve just come across or somebody whose knowledge you’ve grown to trust? You might buy some goods from a real street store that's new but you won't just buy from a new site that you just came across. So build your brand with trusted audience.



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Having said that, here are some of the most lucrative ways to start earning money from your blog, and they don’t involve setting up CPC ads (keep reading for that): I listed down these working methods even in 2017 so start building up now:

1. Relate-able Digital Goods

Selling digital goods is like the holy grail of blog monetization. Everywhere you look or wherever you land, there are bloggers selling downloadable content livestock photography, templates, graphics, software, and the list goes on. The reason is because it works! It works every single time. But ONLY if you are offering something of value and relateable to them.

Based on your free blog content and the type of posts you create, you can try to come up with a product that connects with your audience and then advertise that product on your blog. For example, You can't expect Adidas to sell notebooks. Because that's not there area of expertise, moreover you would even visit their site because they are know for their sport shoes.

2. Sell Physical Goods

Physical goods require more effort than digital and downloadable goods because that's not easy. As I said before, I won't sugar coat but I will not discourage you because if you have that desire to learn and progress. Noone can stop you on that. There are ample amount of courses out there where you can learn and then you can implement it. May be even master it in no time. If you don't have a dime then there are always incredible free courses, you just need to search for them.

You can make E-Commerce store or just your personal store. Frankly speaking, it's not difficult. Creating a shop that ties in with your overall blog theme and content is good practice and can be advertised on your blog to drive sales. Showcasing your physical products in blog posts regularly can also help improve awareness.

Physical goods can include things like:

• Clothing
• Art
• Electronics
• Handmade goods
• Equipment or supplies
• Food

catch more eye-balls by sharing your behind-the-scenes process, or offering advice within your posts that can be linked to your own products in a relate-able way. 

3. Education aka Learning

Once you’ve built up trust and have consistently shared your expertise on a subject with your audience, try looking into education products to earn some cash. The cash flow is fabulous in the education sector and there's not stop to it.

But make sure you are skilled enough or else you are about to ruin your money and time which is fine but you are gonna build up some damaged relations with clients. And
ultimately a bad reputation. Avoid that! so education includes the following:

• Ebooks
• Books
• Coaching
• Courses
• Seminars

Once again, these products should offer something of great value and be something that your ideal reader would want. Use your skills and expertise in a certain area to teach others your ways! You don't want to upset your audience by selling them random courses of low quality. That way they won't ever buy from you again. Don’t even worry if your educational idea has been done already because there are so many different perspectives and ways to learn. What makes your unique? Use that and go with it.

4. Services

My Business Card

If you don’t have a digital or physical product to sell, how about selling your service? It can be done just from home. You can take your skills and package them into a unique service that offers your audience help in a certain area. Think about what your readers might benefit from and how you can be of use to them. Enough of "Just do it" words, let me take an example to add more sense to it. For example: I provide SEO, Internet Marketing services to various clients. So that is related to my blog but also of vast benefit for my clients. So offer lots of value and don’t ever price yourself low just to “beat the competition”.  I used to do that myself, but I figured out that my services are far more better and well delivered to the customers. Also, thanx to one of my friend who is also my business partner who pointed it out to me. So don't under-price yourself. You don’t have to…...you are worth it!

Some of the ideas include:

• Marketing
• Design/art
• Copyrighting
• Book formatting
• Financial
• Virtual assistance

5. Someone else’s products

If you don’t have any physical, digital, or service products to offer, try making money from someone else’s products instead. You don't have to steal it HAHA! There is something called as affiliate market. So this comes in the form of affiliate marketing and can be a huge money-maker if you choose your partnerships correctly.

Affiliates are different than CPC ads (like Adsense, for example) in that you are actually promoting a single, specific product or service and encouraging your visitors to buy it. You often make much more money through affiliate marketing than banner ads because you have complete control over the promotion aspects.

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Come leave a like on my Facebook page and ping me so that I can tell you the best existing affiliate website of all time.

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How this works is you get a commission from promoting and selling items as an affiliate. You can pick up ANY item. But it would be of better conversion rate if the product you choose to promote is well aligned with the type of content you produce to make a better impact. If you can somehow incorporate affiliate links to their products in your free written blog post content as “recommended by you”, you’ll increase the chances of making money from a single post.



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6. Offer Memberships

Offering special memberships can be a great way to make an ongoing monthly income. I’ve seen some bloggers offer paid access to special areas of their websites, where the value of content is high and educational. And often UPDATED, while others offer digital goods to their members each month.

Some ideas for offering memberships:

• Offer a number of exclusive downloads each month via email (i.e. recipes, templates, graphics, etc.)
• Offer password access to course sections
• Exclusive video content
• Create a special member’s area with forums
• Monthly group coaching/webinars
• Expert advice and chats

7. Selling Advertisement on your blog

Selling advertising to individual businesses is a proven way to make a little extra pocket cash, though it might not be the best option in the long run. When starting out, a lot of bloggers will accept paid advertisements on their sites to test the waters and see if their blogs can actually make them some money. While this is a good option for some, it can also be much more effective to advertise your OWN products in place of those ads. Sending someone away from your site and onto someone else’s is never a great idea, especially when you are trying to sell your own products/services as well. Think about this option carefully to determine whether or not it will work for you.

You might be wondering why I failed to mention CPC ad networks like Adsense or private networks. The truth is, those services can be good for a little extra money, but for a lot of bloggers, it’s not worth the time and ad real estate space on their sites. With these networks, you earn money for each ad impression, and you don’t have control over the ads that display even if that's your setting niche, or the rates that come with them. Your income is not consistent and these type of ads should never be used as a sole source of monetization.
I use CPC ads on my blogs, however I have a specific purpose for them and my overall business plan. The ads that run on this blog merely cover the costs of web hosting and upkeep, website related fees. They don’t add anything to my revenue at all.

The myth is that if you place ads on your website, you will automatically start earning money. LOL No, god. That doesn’t happen, quite frankly, and it takes quite a bit of daily traffic to be able to make a few hundred bucks a month. If you don't see any reliable traffic everyday then you are not there yet. If you’re looking for a more reliable way to make income that you can control, definitely try the other methods mentioned above. And don’t rely solely on CPC ads to boost your revenue.