Get 15 (Proven Ways) to Monetize a WordPress Blog in 2023

As of now, you have created your WordPress blog and are looking for legit ways to monetize it.

Great!

Getting started with a WordPress blog is easy; the real game-changer is the traffic and monetization part.

It’s a fact that there is no denying- it takes hard work to generate traffic and monetize a blog.

The best part is that there are still LEGIT ways to monetize your WordPress blog without any hassles. To be more specific, there are many beginner-friendly ways that can help you monetize your blog.

A word of caution: no such thing exists that can help you generate money overnight from your WordPress blog.

However, in this post, we have compiled a list of 15+ PROVEN WAYS to help you monetize a WordPress blog with ease.

Right before getting started with monetizing your WordPress blog, we assume you have a self-hosted WordPress blog. If that isn’t the case, check out our in-depth, step-by-step guide to starting a WordPress blog.

After creating your blog and publishing it, you might be thinking about monetizing your blog and generating revenue. Starting a blog is quite easy, but generating traffic and monetizing it is way hard but not impossible.

All you need to have is traffic relevant to your blog niche so that you can convert it later.

There is no scheme to get rich quick with blogging, but over time, if you plan to execute the listed monetization techniques, you’re going to monetize your WordPress blog.

So let’s dive in.

15 Legit Ways to Monetize a WordPress Blog in 2023

1. Affiliate Marketing

monetize wordpress blog by affiliate marketing

Most probably, you have heard of affiliate marketing while doing your research on starting a WordPress blog. Affiliate Marketing is, by far, the most common and best way to monetize your WordPress blog.

All you need to do is recommend niche relevant products to your visitors and every successful sale made through your referral will earn you a commission.

The commission depends on the affiliate programs you choose and the percentage of commissions they are offering. Many affiliate programs also offer recurring commissions.

There are various affiliate platforms where you can find good affiliate programs to join, such as ShareASale and CJ Affiliate, among others.

Check out this step-by-step guide to affiliate marketing if you want to learn more about affiliate marketing.

2. Create Membership Content

membership content for monetize wordpress blog

If you have an audience who loves to read your blog posts, they might be interested in more in-depth knowledge, for which they might be willing to pay you.

In such a case, you can create a members-only area where you put exclusive content for them in the form of in-depth blog posts, downloads, videos, audio content, and more.

Membership websites and membership only content is trending nowadays. You can see that bloggers are creating members only paid content that they only provide access to for registered and paid users.

Through membership, they are generating recurring revenue.

With the help of WordPress membership plugins, you can create membership websites with ease. You can check out our step-by-step guide to create a membership website.

For instance, if you’re into the cooking niche, you can create in-depth guides, video series on expert cooking tips, audio content, downloadable content, and only make it available to paid members.

So this is how you can create membership only content and start generating recurring revenue with your WordPress blog.

Monetizing a WordPress Blog With Ads

3. Approve Google AdSense

Google Adsense allows publishers, aka website/blog owners, to make money online by placing ads on their websites. Plenty of bloggers out there make money online through Google AdSense.

Before getting started with Google AdSense, you need to get approval from Google AdSense itself to see whether or not your site is eligible to show Google Ads.

Once you get your AdSense account verified, your WordPress blog is ready to show ads to your visitors. If a visitor clicks on the Ads and you get a commission for that. You can learn more about Google AdSense here.

No doubt, Google AdSense is the largest advertising platform out there that works as a middle man between the advertiser, aka the bidder, and publishers like you, who allow Google Adsense to show ads on your website.

You’ll get paid whenever a user clicks on the ads placed on your WordPress blog; these ads are known as CPC (cost per click).

The beauty of CPC ads is that you’ll get paid every time users click on the advertisements placed on your website. Also, the cost per click of any ad is set by the advertiser.

You can check out this guide on monetizing your WordPress blog with Google AdSense.

4. Sell Ads Directly (Better Than Google AdSense)

Google AdSense is an elite way to monetize your blogs. Still, the revenue you generate with AdSense is limited. You will only get paid when someone clicks on ads, and each ad click’s meaning will vary.

However, selling ads directly on your website is the best solution to generate revenue on the go. Directly selling the ads will help you eliminate the third party, which takes commissions and cuts into your money.

The best part is that with the direct ads, you can negotiate the price and terms on your own with the advertiser.

Directly selling ads takes more effort when compared to using Google AdSense. You don’t need to add any codes or scripts on your website, but you need to negotiate the pricing with advertisers to charge a flat rate, percentage, and so on.

WordPress ads management plugins make it super easy to manage direct ads. You can use plugins like AdSanity which simplifies ad management for WordPress.

With the help of the AdSanity plugin, you can easily insert self-hosted and network ads onto your WordPress blog.

Advertiser Networks to Monetize WordPress Blog

5. Media.net

There are various platforms that could potentially help you showcase direct advertisements on your WordPress blog.

One of the most reliable advertiser networks is Media.net, a popular contextual ad network that you can use to monetize your WordPress blog.

Media.net is one of the leading global advertising companies and has the most comprehensive portfolio of advertising techniques, such as native, display, mobile, local, products, and video.

You can apply for Media.net here. Once your account gets approved, you need to generate the ad codes and then you can easily place it on your blog by using any ads plugin or by merely editing your themes.

6. BuySellAds

monetize wordpress blog site using buysellads

BuySellAds is a reliable marketplace that connects bloggers with advertisers.

Getting started with BuySellAds is straightforward; register for an account, add inventory on BuySellAds, get the code, and embed it on your blog.

Once you set it up, the advertiser can click on the blank placeholder and then buy the ad. BuySellAds will then take care of the payments, as well as serving the ads.

The best part is that BuySellAds only takes 25% of the commission on returns, which is a way less than Google AdSense.

What’s more, the quality of ads on BuySellAds is good, which indicates you don’t need to put effort into getting direct advertisements; it has everything in process for you.

The complicated thing is that getting approval for BuySellAds is quite complex, as they have various criteria to approve your BuySellAds accounts, such as traffic, quality, and design of your blog.

If you fulfill these criteria, you can go ahead and sign up for BuySellAds right away. Once your account gets approved, you can start placing ads and monetizing your WordPress blog with BuySellAds.

Create & Sell Digital Products

7. Create & Sell Ebooks by WordPress Blog

Yes, many bloggers out there are creating ebooks on various niches and generating handsome revenue. Selling ebooks is selling a type of digital product, and you can easily create ebooks.

To help you create a leveraging ebook, you need reliable content that isn’t available for free on the Internet, so that people will want to invest money and learn from ebooks they purchase.

You can easily learn how to create an ebook from scratch. Once you create your ebook, you should give it a compelling cover design; try tools like Canva to get it done efficiently and for free.

You can create any kind of ebooks related to your niche, whether it’s blogging, cooking, photography, fitness, or any other niche.

Let’s say; you have a blog where you write about cooking; you can create an ebook telling people to do breakfast meal prep for the whole week with less time and ingredients than cooking each day.

8. Create & Sell Online Courses

With the boom of the Internet, online courses are everywhere and they are slowly replacing traditional education.

No doubt, creating and selling online courses is one of the finest ways to make money online through WordPress.

Online courses help you generate more revenue when compared to ebooks because they usually sell for a higher price. You have the liberty to charge any amount, which depends on the course and your expertise level.

Creating an online course is easy and straightforward, but selling online courses takes a bit of work. However, there are platforms, such as Thinkfic and Teachable, which help you create online courses and market them.

These are fully-fledged platforms; you can create lessons for your course and add additional resources such as templates, downloads, slides, a checklist, etc.

You can create a free course and premium courses as well, then use the free course to generate leads, and the paid ones to generate revenue.

The best part of using platforms like Thinkific and Teachable is that you need not worry about anything, you can easily create a profitable online course with ease.

You can check out this guide to create & sell online courses – step by step.

9. Get Paid Product Reviews

If you have traffic on your blog that is relevant to certain products, companies are willing to pay a good amount of money for a shout out and sponsored review.

You can reach out to a product owner whose products are related to your niche, strike a deal, do the product review on your blog, and get paid.

What’s more, even with paid product reviews, you can add product affiliate links within the article to get affiliate commissions as well.

Additionally, many product owners are willing to provide product access for free, which you can use for your blogging purposes and get paid for it.

This way, you can approach a company on your own and ask whether they are interested in a paid review.

If they find the traffic of your website relevant to them, they’ll willingly pay for the paid shout out.

You can use various platforms such as PayPerPost to connect with interested companies looking for paid promotions.

These are some proven ways through which you can monetize your WordPress blog.

There are other ways to monetize your blog, but we find these five very helpful for a beginner just getting started.

Selling Physical Products Online Using WordPress

Selling physical products on your WordPress website is not rocket science. Selling physical products is as simple as creating and selling digital products or services on your WordPress blog.

Many bloggers are selling physical products directly to their audience. Some bloggers have even shifted their WordPress blog to a fully-fledged WooCommerce store, and generate a six-figure income easily.

10. Starting an E-Commerce Store With WordPress & WooCommerce

If you have some product ideas to get started and want to start selling them on your ecommerce store, this is the right time.

The best part is that WordPress makes it flexible and easy to create a fully-functional shop or even turn your existing WordPress blog into a fully-fledged ecommerce store using the WooCommerce plugin.

Getting started with ecommerce isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, especially with WordPress. However, platforms such as Shopify, Volusion or BigCommerce are also available to help you create a fully-fledged ecommerce store from scratch.

11. Earn Money by Flipping Websites

Creating a fully-functional WordPress site and selling it to others is known as flipping. If you know the art of creating responsive and fast websites, people are willing to buy a ready-made WordPress blog/website.

Most non-tech savvy entrepreneurs prefer to buy already established WordPress websites/blogs, which they can then use for their business.

The process is simple: you set up a fully-fledged WordPress website/blog, drive some organic traffic, and flip it to others to generate revenue.

Before rushing to create any WordPress website/blog, you need to do your research on which kind of niches are in demand, what the selling price is, and so on.

Once you sort it out, create a WordPress website and flip it over website flipping platforms such as Flippa.

12. Create a Private Forum

Private Forums are mostly the same as membership websites; anyone who wants access to the private forum needs to pay the subscription fee.

In private forums, the visitors/audience of your WordPress blog can easily get one on one advice right from you and other members as well. The best part is that other members can also participate in the conversation and help each other out.

The tricky part is to manage forums; there will be too much work if you don’t use forum plugins on your blog. Forum plugins such as BuddyPress enable you to build fully-fledged private forums with ease.

With the help of BuddyPress, you can easily create a fully-fledged online community where you can add user profiles and user groups, send private messages, and so on.

Creating a private forum is one option for monetizing your WordPress blog.

13. Hosting a Paid Webinar

Nowadays, you can see there are a lot of bloggers and influencers who create webinars on various topics. In webinars, bloggers and influencers share their experiences, valuable strategies, and tips to promote and grow their business.

To be more specific, webinars are similar to online courses, but the webinar is often hosted live, including question and answer sections.

You can use various webinar platforms, such as WebinarJam, WebinarNinja, and EverWebnar to create and host webinars.

With the help of these tools and WordPress, you can easily create paid webinars for your audience. Instead of creating paid webinars, you can create and host some free webinars; just advertise your webinars and generate more leads.

You can integrate WebinarNinja with WordPress and start creating webinars on the go.

Selling Online Services Using Your WordPress Blog

Selling online services with your WordPress blog is one of the fastest and easiest ways to make money online by monetizing your WordPress blog. The best part of selling online services is that there’s no upfront investment.

First, you build an online presence and add some valuable content to show your expertise in your niche. Next, you create a “Hire Me” page on your WordPress website/blog and then start selling your services.

Here are some great ways to sell online services on your blog:

14. Freelance Services

Offering freelance services is a great way to monetize your WordPress blog, as you’re an expert on your niche. You can offer your services, such as content writing, website optimization, website development, or other skills and expertise as a freelancer.

The best part is that offering freelancing services doesn’t require any investment; all you need are your skills to generate revenue. You can start offering freelancing services to your existing blog’s audience and other clients as well.

Once you start providing online services, you need some invoice plugins and platforms to receive payments from your clients.

You can use PayPal to collect payments as well as other platforms, such as FreshBooks, and plugins, such as WP-Invoice.

If you build a good portfolio, clients are going to come and assign you projects to work on, and this way, you can quickly generate revenue on your WordPress blog.

15. Start a Consulting Business

Most probably, you have heard of consulting at some point while starting your WordPress blog or website.

You can literally find hundreds of consultants who are generating six-figure incomes just by offering consulting services. It’s no doubt, consulting is another reliable way to make money online from your WordPress blog.

A consulting business is a bit different from offering your services as a freelancer, because as a consultant, you’ll provide advice and strategy to help your clients grow.

The best part is that you can start your consulting business on your existing WordPress blog. To start offering consulting services, you need to create a catchy page with a sign-up form so that clients can ask for more information.

You can also add a form asking clients to schedule a call with you to discuss the consultancy charges and services offered.

Expert Tip: Once you get clients and offer them consulting services, ask them to share their experience of your services and write a testimonial.

You can add these testimonials on your ‘consulting service‘ page, and this helps visitors trust your services, and it works as social proof for you.

When Should You Start Monetizing Your Blog?

The thing is, when you have just created your blog, you can’t monetize it right away. It’s better to know when to optimize your WordPress blog.

Here are the conditions for when should you start monetizing your WordPress blog:

Get Stable Traffic: In the beginning, you need steady traffic on your blog. To monetize your WordPress blog, there’s no necessity to get hundreds of thousands of visitors on your blog. If you’ve reached a point where you start getting thousands of visitors a month, kudos, you’re on the right path. If you start getting steady traffic on your blog, you should plan to monetize it.
Building & Growing Your Email List: Email marketing experts say, the money is in the list. You heard it right, you need to grow and build your email list, but make sure you’re building your email list the right way. First, choose a monetization strategy and then start growing your email list.

Conclusion: How to Monetize a WordPress Blog

These are the top 15 methods for monetizing your WordPress blog. Methods listed above don’t require any level of expertise or large investment; you can start with any of them and monetize your WordPress blog.

Getting started with WordPress and creating a WordPress blog is easy. Experts say, however, that driving traffic and monetizing a WordPress blog isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

Keep one thing in mind; blogging isn’t an overnight riches scheme; you need to put effort in and learn, adapt, and grow your blog over time. Also, you need to find a monetization strategy that actually works for your WordPress blog.

Many of the ways listed here don’t require much traffic or many leads to start generating revenue from your WordPress blog. The methods listed here are capable of monetizing any niche of WordPress blog.

We hope this post gives you plenty of WORKING ways to monetize your WordPress blog.

Which monetization strategy are you going to use? Did we miss any reliable means of monetizing a WordPress blog?

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Read Other Guides:

How to Monetize a WordPress Blog in 2023 (Proven Ways)