How to make Extra Income from your Business’ Blog

There are different types of blogs out there - and for the purpose of this article, we’ll divide it into two main categories.

The first category is where your blog is the main source of income for your business venture.

This is where your website is your main asset, and you keep adding new content to it; this could be just written blog posts, but you could add video to it (vlogging) or audio (podcasting).

If you’re looking for ways to make a full income from a blog, that’s not what this article is about; in that case, I’d HIGHLY recommend Victoria Pruett’s book, Make Money Blogging (At Any Level). It’s the ebook that got my first blog from hobby to making recurring income (almost) overnight.

The second category is when you’ve got a business of whatever type, and are looking for a bit of leveraged side income. Hey, it’s nice to do the work once - and see the money coming in over and over again…

There are four ways in which you could make that extra income - without compromising on the ethical side of it… not more than you’d want to, at any rate.

1. Adding affiliate links to your blog posts

Affiliate or referral marketing is about making money promoting other people’s (or another company’s) products. You take a product you love (ideally, you’re using it yourself, or maybe it’s a course you’ve taken in the past) and you share it with others… then if they end up purchasing it, you make a commission. 

You can start small: maybe in one of your blog posts, you talk about a book you read and would recommend? If you’re an affiliate with Amazon (or a different online bookstore), you could add an affiliate link in that blog post.

E.g. I believe every business owner (online or offline) should read Building a Storybrand by Donald Miller. Now I just put an affiliate link on the book’s name - and I’ll add in an image of the book below for some extra exposure.

This literally cost me 10 seconds extra while writing this article, to add in an affiliate link + the code for the image. Seriously guys, if you’re talking about other people’s stuff and you don’t add in affiliate links, you’re leaving money on the table…

(Also, having links is the nice thing to do. Imagine I’d be talking about books and every time, you’d have to go and google it to see if you can find it?)

The above example was a book - but you can apply it to anything. Cooking ingredients, furniture, even digital products.

One thing to keep in mind though, is that affiliate links come with their own rules; you have to disclose the link is an affiliate (the exact requirements depend on what country you’re in + whose products you’re promoting). In most cases, a note in your website’s footer could be enough - in some, you have to literally tell people what an affiliate link does every single time you post one.

Read more about how affiliate marketing works (and how to use it if you don’t have a big audience) in this article.

2. Writing dedicated blog posts about products or services

If there’s something you’re using and loving, a course you’ve taken and would recommend, or someone you’d like to refer your readers to - why not write a blog post just about that?

This technique has even better conversion rates than just adding a single link to an article about something completely different…

Mostly because it’s also easy to promote that specific blog post on social media. Some social platforms will recognise an affiliate link (or the algorithms will see the disclosure you’re adding to it) and give it less reach - while they will happily show a well-written blog post in everyone’s news feed.

There are three ways to make money off a dedicated blog post:

1. Either by using affiliate links (the only difference being that the whole article would be about this one product or group of products). For instance, that’s what I did in this article about growing an audience on social media: all the affiliate links in there link to one platform.

2. Or by getting paid to write the article. This usually doesn’t happen unless you have a good number of people reading your blog posts, and the deal would usually include social media content as well. It doesn’t fit my business setup so I can’t give you an example on this blog, but let’s say you own a catering company and one of your suppliers pays you to write about their delicious cheese; this could be an extra source of income.

3. Selling your own products or services (in a blog post)

Now… don’t forget your own stuff! If you want to direct some extra attention to your own products, services or packages, you could write an article about it. How about sharing the success story of one of your clients? Describing 10 different ways to use one of your products? Celebrating your last retreat when it’s time to start promoting the next?

Use your blog post to build your audience’s trust and establish yourself as an expert - so they keep coming back to you for anything about this topic.

4. Should you have ads on your website?

When someone wants to make money from a blog (the first category we talked about on top - where your website IS your product), putting ads on that website is a no-brainer. From Google AdSense over GourmetAds to MediaVine or AdThrive - there’s some good recurring income to be made there if you get LOTS of visitors to your website each month.

However, if your website’s visitor count isn’t that high and you’ve got better income streams already, consider if it’s worth defiling your nice-looking professional website with ads for just a little bit of extra money.

If you don’t mind that and want more info about making money by placing advertisements on your blog, I’d again like to refer to Victoria Pruett’s book “Make Money Blogging - At Any Level”. She goes into different ad networks that will (or will not) work with smaller bloggers, ways to optimise your blog to make the most of your income streams, and so much more. 

Bonus: Always add a “next step” for the reader.

If you’ve got a bit of extra time, do go through your own older blog posts and check them… for a call to action.

At the end of every article (and sometimes also at the beginning and in the middle), make sure people see exactly where this is going.

Make sure you add in links to your lead magnets or paid products - and tell people to go get them!

Not sure how this could apply to you, or looking for even more ways to make recurring income? Get in touch or schedule a call with me - it’s free and there are no strings attached. I’d be happy to brainstorm with you!