How to Make Money on Your Blog AND Keep Your Readers Happy

By Leo Babauta

There’s a question that many people ask me, and that is how to make money from one’s blog. That’s important, because if you really enjoy blogging and want a lifestyle where you’re free (or at least partly free) of your ordinary day job, you’ll want to build your blog in a way that produces a decent income. That was my goal on Zen Habits, and I’m happy to say that I’ve accomplished that.

There are many marketers out there who suggest an aggressive way of making sales through one’s blog by plastering ads all over it, or by selling all sorts of stuff that the reader may not like. I don’t believe that’s the best way to go — it’s important to maintain your integrity. I recommend a win-win strategy where you can earn money from your blog, but only promote things that are really useful to your readers and can help them in some way.

You can read my ideas on how to do this further down. But, let me first say that there are some things we have changed about our upcoming A-List Blogging Bootcamp, “Skyrocket Your Subscriber Count”:

First of all, some readers have contacted me and explained that they would love to join, but they are in a financial situation where it’s difficult to stump up the whole cost of the course straight away. In view of that, we’ve now established an easy-pay option where people can pay in three monthly instalments of $132. I hope that makes it easier for people. The page where you can read more about our upcoming course, and join us if you like is here.

Secondly, quite a few of you were upset because you missed out on the bonuses I promised to the first ones who joined. I’ve now decided to give everyone the same special bonuses, in hopes that they’ll help more people. You can find more out about the special bonuses here.

Read on to find out how to make money from your blog:

How to Make Money from Your Blog – AND Keep Your Readers Happy

How to make money on your blog is definitely a question that every blogger wants to know. And it’s something I’ve experimented with from the early days. When I first started, I didn’t intend to make tons of money from Zen Habits, but I did hope I’d be able to make a nice little side income to help my family.

Now, I am a full-time blogger and all my income is derived directly or indirectly from blogging.

When I first started Zen Habits, the first thing I did was to put Adsense ads on because it was the easiest thing to do, but after that I experimented with other ad systems. For a little while I tried Yahoo ads, but that didn’t do very well. I tried something I read about, called Chitika which was small ads for products. That didn’t work very well for the kind of content I was creating — Chitika works better if you do product reviews, and readers are already planning to buy something. I also became an Amazon affiliate, which I’ll talk about in a minute.

Adsense is a really easy way to get ads onto your site and to earn a little money right from the beginning. It’s not a lot of money — you might make 30 cents in one day if you have a little traffic, or a few dollars if you have a decent amount of readers, or $10-15/day if you have a lot of traffic. But eventually I removed Adsense (only recently actually) mostly because I got a lot of complaints from readers that the Adsense ads were either inappropriate, or spam type ads. One reader actually asked me whether I had actually tried the products I was advertising (I think it was milk from cloned cows), and I had to honestly say, “No.”

The problem with Adsense, as I saw it, was that I couldn’t actually endorse products, but here I was, putting them onto my site. And I didn’t feel good about that. It was like making money on selling products that I didn’t really want my readers to use. That wasn’t in line with my values. So, eventually I got rid of Adsense, even though it was a convenient way to get at least some income from my blog. And truthfully, it wasn’t a huge money maker — I would get between $400-1,000 per month, at the peak of my traffic, which is nice but it’s not going to support my family.

Amazon is a decent source of regular income for me. I have a lot of book reviews on my blog, as well as lists of book, for example: books for children. I also share list of books I’m reading and really like. People actually appreciate that. They like those kind of posts, because I’m helping them find good books. The links I put into the post are Amazon affiliate links and I get a small cut from every sale. It adds up because my readership is huge. Once you have that big readership, Amazon affiliate links can be a good source of income. And this is money earned from products I actually recommend.

It’s important to put links for books in that you really believe in, and not just put them in to make money. Because once they buy a book I recommended, they’ll enjoy it and come back for more. People trust you if you recommend good things, but if you advertise things that aren’t good, they’ll learn not to trust you.

After that I joined a bunch of other blog networks that you had to be invited into, you couldn’t just sign up and paste the code into your blog. One was BlogAds, another was GreenAdWorks, and there were one or two others. They worked fairly well, although the problem was that they weren’t able to fill my inventory — they couldn’t sell enough ads with enough impressions to meet the number of pageviews I had — which meant I wasn’t making as much money as I could. The other problem was that with so many ads on my site, I was making a decent income (because four ad networks add up), but it was cluttering my site.

So recently I decided to cut back on other people’s ads and sell my own on Zen Habits. It has reduced the clutter of my site tremendously, which means that I have created a better reader experience for my readers. It also means I am able to make money in a way I’m happy with. And I finally have the minimalist blog design I’ve always wanted.

How I make money on Zen Habits

So now that you know a little of the history of what I’ve tried, and what didn’t work so well, let’s talk about what does work.

1. Form a platform first.

First of all, the number one most important thing is to create a blog with a following, a readership. Without a readership you’ll basically not be able to make any money. You can put up all the ads you like, if nobody is visiting your site, the ads won’t make any money. Nor will the other strategies that I’ll tell you about in a moment.

That’s why the course I’m offering “Skyrocket Your Subscriber Count’” is basically how you build a platform to make money on your blog. You can’t just start from day one, put lots of ads onto your blog, and expect to make money. You have to build up your readership first — and we’ll go into detail about how to do that in the A-list Blogging Bootcamp.

In fact, my recommendation is to have no ads on your blog when you first start — you won’t make much money from them anyway. And readers will be more likely to subscribe if your blog isn’t filled with ads. They’ll come for the content. Once you have a decent readership, you’ll have the platform to make money in different ways — see the best options below.

2. Ads — in a network or on your own.

So, let’s assume that you’ve built a platform. After you’ve built a strong readership, the possibilities are really wide open. Putting ads on your blog is a good option. Once you’ve built a readership, you can join exclusive ad networks — BlogAds is one of the biggest, but there are many niche ad networks that aim at certain blogs and readers and advertisers. In fact, they might come to you — they’ll want you to be in their network because you have a lot of readers. The good thing about these networks is that they will sell the ads for you, do all the connecting and pitching to advertisers, and arrange all the technical details. It’s basically like having an outsourced ad agency working for you — but of course they take a cut of the action, and they don’t always sell all your page impressions.

Having said that, I find that selling my own ads is more profitable, although it’s also more work. The problem is finding advertisers — if you’re like me, you don’t have the time to contact hundreds of advertisers, like a real ad network would do. You could hire someone to do this for you. What I’ve found is now that I’ve built up my readership, advertisers come to me. I just put an “advertise” link below the ad on my site, and they click on it and find out more. I started with a fairly low rate for a blog of my size, but have been raising it as I’ve seen a great demand for my ads. A good sales page is important — mine isn’t the best, but it shows them the stats and other info they want to know, gives them the price and other specs, and lets them buy immediately with no hassle.

I’ve been experimenting with doing just one ad on my site. I don’t think it’s the best option for everyone — once you have the readership, you can do several 125×125 ads (the little square ones you see everywhere) or a bigger banner ad across the top or “skyscraper” ad (a narrow, tall ad) in your sidebar. I personally prefer the 125s, because everyone uses them and they’re not too huge. I don’t like huge ads because they practically scream at you.

But the single ad has been effective for me: I only have to sell one ad per month, it greatly reduces clutter, and for the advertiser it’s great because when there’s only one ad on your site and lots of white space (empty space, not necessarily white in color), then the ad really stands out. The advertiser is getting more for her money, because she doesn’t have to compete with a bunch of other ads for the reader’s attention.

3. Donations

I also have a ‘donate’ option on my blog. I first put up a ‘donate’ button when I had made a decision to become a full-time blogger and told my readers that they could help me reach the goal through donating. I was surprised how many readers were very generous, and I still get regular donations today. The key is to build a great relationship with your readers. Then they’ll be willing to support you. Donations won’t allow you to quit your day job, but they’re a nice side addition to the other types of income listed here.

4. Ebooks.

The thing that’s actually most profitable for me is selling my own ebooks. Just like building a large readership, ebooks are about creating great content that’s really useful to your reader. You package it in a way that’s nice and easy to read (I use professional designers) and is a great reference that they can access any time. I sell my ebooks on my site and that makes me a steady income — actually the most income I make from my blog. The cool thing about ebooks is that they’re passive income — you write them once, do the work once, and then put them on your site, and they’ll sell for months and months. My first ebook (Zen To Done) still has steady sales, almost two years after I first put it up for sale.

5. Writing a print book

Another source of income for me that has come with being a successful blog is writing a print book. I got a publishing deal with a major publisher in New York (Hyperion) and sold the rights to my book. They gave me a fairly sizable “advance” (they pay me some of my royalties in advance) and it helped pay a lot of my bills. Actually, I’ve been selling the rights world-wide in different countries and the income from that has been great.

But I would never had had this opportunity if I hadn’t built the readership first.

6. Freelancing.

I don’t do freelancing anymore, but when I first started blogging I made a purposeful effort to get freelancing gigs with a number of large blogs: Lifehack.org, Dumb Little Man, Web Worker Daily, and Freelanceswitch, for example. This had the double effect of giving me a nice steady income each month, and even better, exposing my writing and brand to a wide number of readers each week. It’s one of the things that helped me grow so quickly, actually.

7. Consulting.

Another thing that has come with building a solid platform of readership is that I’m now a consultant. People see a certain expertise in me and want more help than I can provide on my blog and are willing to pay for a one-to-one relationship. So, consulting is another great way to make money on their blog — but again, you have to build up your readership, and along with that, your expertise in your field.

8. Seminars and other information products.

I’m also producing different types of seminars and courses to give people more in-depth help than I can on my blog. The A-list Blogging Bootcamp is just one — I also plan to do one on personal development, and also create some sort of online course on fitness and getting healthy. Each of these is an information product, similar to an ebook, but with way more content (sometimes live content, as in the seminars), and because of that, I can charge more.

So, building a solid readership really opens up many possibilities. Advertising is one way, but there are many other ways. All depends on creating a readership first.

The Importance of Integrity and Helping Your Readers

For me, integrity is very important. I want to make money from my blog in a way that is useful for my readers. But everyone is different in this respect. Some bloggers just want to make money — and they do, in any way they can.

I think it’s important to think of your readers, because if you have no integrity with your readers, your readers will know that and they’ll say, “This guy is not really trying to help us, he’s just trying to make us come to his blog in order to make a lot of money.” If you make your blog all about the readers and create a good readership experience for them, create great content for them, put up a design that’s something they enjoy coming to and looking at, and have advertising and other forms of creating income that are actually helpful to them, people will appreciate that – and they’ll keep coming back.

So, if you have a relationship with your readers, you build that with everything that you do. Every email that you send to them, every comment that you answer, every blogpost you write, every design change, and every money-making decision that you make is part of the relationship that you’re forming with them.

And if you build a solid relationship, that’s based on trust and respect, good things will come from it — you’ll be able to make a living doing something you’re happy with, not just make a quick buck off unsuspecting readers.