If you want to learn how to monetize a personal blog in practice and get real revenue instead of fairy-tails from online courses, this guide will help you develop a monetization strategy and increase revenue from content writing within the planned time with the use of the checklist below. AdSense and affiliate marketing are great tools for getting passive revenue after active work at the start. Use both methods on your personal blog for revenue maximization plus selling your digital products.
Table of Contents
- What You Need Before Monetizing Your Blog
- What Is Google AdSense & How Does It Work?
- What Is Affiliate Marketing & How Can You Start?
- How to Monetize a Personal Blog Using Commercial Intent Keywords: SEO Tip
- How to Monetize a Personal Blog Combining AdSense and Affiliate Marketing (Without Overload)
- What Plugins Can Help Increase Ad Revenue?
1. What You Need Before Monetizing Your Blog
Before starting personal blog monetization with AdSense and affiliate marketing, use this checklist to tune your website.
The choice of hosting is one of the critical steps because it will affect technical issues, website safety, and loading speed. Read hosting provider reviews before deciding on the one that is the most suitable based on weighting hosting prices and services offered.
Remember that many hosting providers offer lucrative prices at the start to attract customers but in a year or two, after the next billing for the hosting plan, you may face extra high charges that can even make you think of changing the hosting provider.
Use a custom domain for professional branding. Start with fixing technical issues like the time to load your blog page. Check this with Google Search Console, Core Web Vitals, and then PageSpeed Insights. Aim at achieving the Speed Index that is below 3 seconds. Choose a mobile friendly theme for better user experience.
Next, create your website content plan and publish the first 20 posts within a selected profitable niche, planning each publication strategically.
You can create a Privacy Page, using external tools. Make sure your personal blog looks professional with About and Contact pages and Navigation Menu(s).
Finally, work on SEO, answer engine optimization, and traffic generation channels.
When applying for AdSense or affiliate program, make sure you comply with their policies. Include a disclaimer or disclosure statement for affiliate links.
2. What Is Google AdSense & How Does It Work?
Google AdSense is a great platform serving as a medium between advertisers and publishers. It pays for both views and clicks. After applying and starting displaying ads, you can check your cost per click and rate per mile.
After getting approval, you can either choose Auto Ads or place ads manually by inserting the HTML code for each ad type. For a personal blog on WordPress, you can use a plugin like Ad Inserter or a plugin for inserting ads.txt. The calculator below will help you estimate revenue.
AdSense Revenue Calculator
AdSense Best Practices
Place AdSense ads strategically by testing different options: display, in-feed, in-article, or multiplex ads. Keep the number of ads up to 3-5 per page.
3. What Is Affiliate Marketing & How Can You Start?
Affiliate marketing refers to serving as an advocate of other business products or services by promoting them.
Start with thinking like an online entrepreneur, that is, choose products with high conversion rates and customer loyalty.
How to Get Started
Disclaimer: the post contains affiliate links, which means that EEssays may get commissions at no cost to you.
- Choose companies, the products and services of which you want to promote:
- These can be products you use yourself and those that relate to the theme of your blog.
- You can test new products and then promote them if they are worth it.
- It is possible to find affiliate programs on platforms like ShareASale or company’s websites directly.
- Create appropriate content:
- Reviews and comparisons of products or services
- Product lists like gifts for special occasions
- Tutorials of how to use these products
- Resource page for tools you use on your blog
- Add a disclaimer that your blog posts contain affiliate links (see above for example).
4. How to Monetize a Personal Blog Using Commercial Intent Keywords: SEO Tip
When optimizing your blog post for search engines (SEO), choose keywords with commercial intent (or buyer intent), both high-volume and long-tail keywords:
- Best product to use…
- Product review
- Top product for…
Use Sitechecker.pro to find keywords and analyze your personal blog. It is a great alternative to famous Semrush that can drain all your money.
5. How to Monetize a Personal Blog Combining AdSense and Affiliate Marketing (Without Overload)
The main answer is that you should think strategically by creating different types of content:
- Informational for AdSense ads
- Commercial for affiliate marketing
| Content Type | Monetization | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Informational | AdSense | What is affiliate marketing? |
| Commercial | Affiliate marketing | Best affiliate marketing platforms to find partners |
6. What Plugins Can Help Increase Ad Revenue?
MonterInsights
It can help you monitor user behavior, conversions, and analytics in real time in WordPress.
Find it in WP Admin → Plugins → Add New → Search
WPForms
Create professional Contact, Registration, and Newsletter forms with affiliate products.
Free Yoast SEO Plugin
Use it to improve SEO rankings to get more organic traffic and earn from AdSense. The rate per mile (RPM) and earnings from organic traffic are higher than those from referrals or social media. Organic traffic is a top priority if you want to learn how to monetize a personal blog with AdSense.
Sitechecker.pro
It can help you take action as soon as your ranking decreases. Analyze your SEO and technical issues for better personal blog revenue based on actual traffic.
WP Product Review / AffiliateX (Free + Pro)
This plugin can help you create user friendly product reviews and roundups. You can also use simple tables for product comparison without installing any plugin.
Final Compliance Check
Add Disclosure at the top of all affiliate posts. Include a sentence pointing to the presence of affiliate links in the post and explaining that you may get commissions if the reader purchases the product that you promote.
Avoid putting AdSense ads next to misleading links. Experiment with ad placement, but do not try to mislead the reader.
Install a Cookie plugin for GDPR compliance to get revenue from AdSense ads in the United Kingdom or Europe.
Key Takeaways
If you want to take a strategic approach to your blogging and learn how to monetize a personal blog, check these steps:
- Prepare your blog for monetization
- Check website speed and technical issues
- Create both informational and commercial posts
- Place ads strategically and test their performance
- Ensure compliance with laws through Privacy and Cookie Policy, Terms and Conditions page, and a Cookie consent banner.
Leave Your Feedback