At least 70% of people in the world work 8-hours day jobs. The majority of these people are still struggling with finances, barely able to break even each month.
That’s why some people develop a side hustle. It not only adds financial independence and flexibility to your life but also allows you to explore your ideas and test your limits.
A recent study by Zapier showed that 34% of Americans have a side hustle and around 61.1 million Americans plan to start one in 2021. The numbers are staggering, especially when people also have busy lives and families to tend to. The survey also reported that more than 62% of the people do it for the money rather than mere interest
Starting a side hustling can be different for everyone. To one person a side hustle may mean to rent out something they own while for others (usually the younger generation), a side hustle could mean blogging or freelancing online.
Blogging as a Side Hustle
31 million out of 600 million active blogs are based in America according to a brief report by Growth Badger. The majority of B2B and B2C companies consider blogging as their top priority to build a brand or reach customers online by using targeted ads. This means that you have a decent chance of success if you stay consistent with blogging.
The best thing about this venture is that it has tremendous growth potential if you do everything right, even though it can be hard work.
Eventually, if you keep at it, you might even be able to make more money than your primary job. Most people choose freelancing and blogging as their side hustle because all it requires is a laptop and some free time.
Earning Through Your Blog
A blogger can earn an average of $32,000 per year through a decent blog. We aren’t talking about the big players right now which make around $500,000 a year.
$30,000 is the realistic amount you can make after a year or so of blogging, which is a very valuable side hustle that can exponentially increase with time.
The question is, how do bloggers get paid? There are a number of ways you can make money from a blog:
- Advertisements
- Affiliate Marketing
- Sponsorships
- E-commerce store
Here we specifically focusing on whether you should show advertising your blog or not.
Should You Put Ads on Your Blog?
If you are pondering about utilizing ads or not, the chances are that you are interested to make some money. You may also be interested in providing a seamless and pleasant user experience, for your viewers, that is uninterrupted by ads (as better user experience = more views = more money). In this case, everything comes down to ways to make money and increase your visitors.
You can design a product, create it, and market it through your website, however that can be hard work! Alternatively, there are various ways to make money without selling a product – through affiliate networks and sponsors.
But the question is, is your blogging niche capable of any affiliate marketing or sponsorships?
If yes then by using affiliate links, you can earn you a lot more than ads would. The click-through rates for affiliate marketing are a lot higher than for ads. An affiliate ad can make you between $5-$500 per click depending on your niche and product’s value.
So with that in mind, cutting ads from your blog (and focusing on affiliate marketing) seems like a viable solution to enhance the reader’s experience and allow your to promote affiliate links.
Affiliate Ads
The most common way to start off affiliating is through Amazon affiliate ads. Promoting Amazon products and getting a commission at every purchase or click makes you decent money.
However, if you don’t write product articles, there are still a massive amount of affiliate programs that will match your niche.
Even if you write something as different as philosophy essays, you will still have some programs that want you to sell their books, therapy programs, or take their online courses. You can use that to your advantage.
Sponsorships
Once you are further down the track on your blogging journey, you can also reach out to potential sponsors and persuade them for specific advertisement or link on your website. However, for this you must have a decent and consistent readership of the blog.
If you are unable to do affiliate marketing or sponsorships, the final way for you to make money is through ad networks.
The Biggest Mistake in Blog Advertisement
The biggest blunder that bloggers make is to quickly apply for AdSense approval. AdSense has some of the worst ad rates in the market.
The only advantage is that the majority of the blogs get approved and the process is simpler. There is little or no restrictions for approvals.
However, most people ignore how low AdSense’s ad rate is.
On average, you can get around $7 – $8 per 1,000 views with a decent click-through rate to make a sizeable revenue. AdSense pays for clicks and the rate is dependent on what type of ad is being shown to the user. Several types of ads have different pay rates and AdSense takes a huge commission. However, if your click-through rate is poor, the return is substantially less.
Also, if you are residing in a developing country, the ad rates will be even lower. Even with an out-there estimate, you will barely make around $70 – 80 for 10,000 views per month, which is too low.
The Best Way to Make Money Through Your Blog
The best way is to wait until you have a decent readership and then apply for private affiliate programs or look for relevant sponsors.
The second-best way is premium ad networks. What are those? Premium ad networks have a higher pay rate per click. These networks usually have valuable ads and optimize the ad positions to increase the chances of clicks.
For 10,000 views, you can make an average of $100 – $200 through premium ad networks compared to $20-$30 through AdSense.
The only catch is that you need to have a certain number of monthly views to qualify for these ad networks. These can range between 30,000 to 100,000 views per month to qualify.
However, some premium platforms like Ezoic have recently removed their pageview limits.
Final Thoughts
You may be better to not go all-in with the ads from AdSense as your first monetisation option. It may be more worthwhile to wait until the blog reaches a set amount of pageview.
Patience is very important in the success of a blog. Putting up ads, in the beginning, can be a costly blunder. However, if you do go down this path, put ads on meaningful places and remember to not over-stuff them as that can destroy the experience of your readers.
Using affiliate programs and sponsors make things easier for you as you only have to promote a highly relevant product. In AdSense, you get ads based on your search history rather than the website’s relevance. For example, you might get dog food ads while reading about your knee injury.
So, make sure that you conduct proper research to align your financial interests with the reader’s experience and figure something out for yourself.