You may already have a successful blog with lots of subscribers up-and-running, or you have some great ideas inside your head that you want to start writing down somewhere on the internet and sharing them with the whole World. The motivations for this can be as simple as enjoying writing and honing those particular skills that are needed to do so, or perhaps it’s relaxing for the mind to pour out your thoughts like writing a diary can be. Of course, another reason for writing blog posts – and in fact for doing pretty much anything at all in life! – is to earn some money from it. But is that just easier said than done, or can you really earn a respectable income by blogging? Keep on reading to find out more…
How to earn money by writing blogs
One way to earn money from your blog, and perhaps the most immediately obvious method, is through different types of advertising that reaches a large audience. For this to work, in terms of generating a healthy income, your blog must generate a lot of traffic so that either pay-per-click (PPC) adverts start to pay well because of the sheer volume of visitors to your site or so that you can attract strong affiliate marketing sponsorships, for example. Basically, if you want to earn a steady income by advertising through your blog you will first need three things: traffic, traffic and more traffic. This can be a problem for those bloggers who just have a love, passion, and / or a strong artistic license for the skill of writing, but at the same time perhaps aren’t so well versed in social media management, marketing expertise, website design, search engine optimization or copywriting.It could even be the other way around – you have great ideas and / or excel in gaining attention to your content, but not the best writing skills or grammar to go with it. It’s very rare that someone can do everything after all, and even then they are likely to be a jack-of-all-trades but a master of none. In any case, there is another way of earning money from blogging, and this is being paid by an existing website to perform blogging related tasks for them.
It still helps to have a strong, loyal subscribership on your own blog, of course, which in turn helps to demonstrate to any potential employers that your writing is strong and popular with readers. This means that you should still follow some key rules of writing a good blog: have a focus or niche interest that your writing tends to concentrate on, offer something of value that is informative to your readers as a take-away nugget of information, provide quality over quantity whilst maintaining a regular output of content, be an authoritative or expert figure on your chosen topic, and engage your audience so that they are immersed in the subject area. However, if this is already the case, then it should be clear to anyone looking to publish great articles that you are already a great writer who is worth hiring to do some blog-based work.
Ways a blogger can earn money from paid sites
We’ve established that you may have amazing ideas and a love of writing great articles, or excellent social media and traffic-driving skills – but probably not all of them. Depending on which particular skill set fits you as a blogger the best, there are many services that you can get paid for: offering freelance writing, provide graphic designing, writing a blog and generating advertising revenue, offering social media management, and providing WordPress management, for example. Bloggers can earn money by offering one, or multiple, of these and plenty of other tasks to external sites.
If you have excellent writing skills and grammar, then you should start applying for freelance writing jobs. If, on the other hand, your talent lies in social media or creative design, for instance, then offer your services accordingly. However, you can still go for a paid writing roll even you don’t necessarily have the desired experience or skills – as long as you have a brilliant idea, then a pitch, much like an interview, can often be the all important deciding factor about whether someone will hire you. An intriguing story or out-of-the-box creative idea with which you can inspire and guide a website’s readers with your own experiences is, at the end of the day, likely to be more enthralling to an audience and potential employer than a perfectly written, but perhaps mundane, everyday run-of-the-mill article.
Once you are ready to apply for a position or make a pitch to a website for a paid blogging job, you should be prepared for what to look out for, and what to avoid. Most jobs have regular posting schedules and pay for each – usually between 300 and 500 words each and with typical rates of between $5 and $50 for that. The payment amount depends on the writing level of the post, among many other factors. Some jobs pay instead based on advert revenue sharing, which you ought to be wary of. It can work out well if the site is large and has a lot of traffic – thus generating them a lot of income that they can pass on to writers and other staff – but if the site is new and / or does not receive many visitors, then payment is likely to be relatively low or even not very forthcoming. Now you know what is the going rate, it’s time to steer you in the right direction of some of the best website that offer freelance work for bloggers.
The best sites to find paid blogging jobs
In the list below you’ll find some recommended websites to start looking for paid work around blogging skills. The best place for each person will naturally depend on their individual areas of expertise, so try them out and find what works best for you.
A popular listing site for freelance writers. Click on the Writing Gigs link to find several daily updates of job listings in different categories. They do sometimes require authors to be from certain countries though
Formerly called Elance. A posting board where freelancers can connect with employers in many different categories of work. A large marketplace with multiple new postings every day.
Be employed as a creative writer here in many different niche interest categories. Articles must be full of interesting, fully-researched facts and well written. They don’t accept guest articles on a freelance basis, so be prepared to commit if they like your ideas
Work here for Great Escape Publishing if you are a keen traveller with lots of interesting travel stories to tell. They don’t have to just be written either – The Travel Writer’s Life are interested in photography, articles and tours, among other specialties, but they aren’t interested in ordinary, straight-up travel narratives.
Freelance writing job offers posted here with a weekly roundup and recently added markets. Old school site that looks stuck in the 90’s, but a great resource nonetheless.
Well known and very popular, simple looking website offering noticeboard style listings to buy or sell any type of product or service that you can think, and many more that you can’t on top of that! All ads are city-specific (you should be directed to the relevant part of the site for your location automatically) classifieds, and you can check out the Writing/Editing category of listings for paid blogging-type work.
That’s just a small sample of websites where you can find paid blogging work. There are many, many more out there – too many to list or go into detail on here. As so often is the case, Google is your friend with finding other sites.
Now that you’ve read this article you should hopefully have all of the information that you could ever need about paid blogging. This includes a few tips about what makes a successful blog or just great article writing, some different ways to earn money through blogging, information about what to expect from offers relating to paid blog services, and some recommended websites that already offer such opportunities. Armed with this knowledge, you now have every chance of success at turning your skills that have been developed by being involved with blogs – be it writing articles or otherwise – into a respectable revenue stream. Good luck out there on the blogosphere!
