Find out what t ypes of blogs make the most money with this indepth starter guide to help you decide on what style of blog you want to start to help you build a successful side hustle!
This post is a comprehensive look over all the aspects of what makes a successful blog.
It’s a long post, so get comfy!
Is Blogging Profitable?
Some people don’t believe that there are successful bloggers actually making money in 2020.
They think it’s all lies and those rich bloggers are just scammers out to make a quick buck.
I think it’s because starting a blog is actually very easy. Almost too easy perhaps.
And what’s more, people are starting blogs all over the place. Did you know there are over 500 MILLION blogs on the internet? And a new blog post is published every 0.5 seconds?
Blogging has the reputation of being a hobby, something people do in their free time or because they like the idea of being a famous influencer. And because of this, people don’t view blogging as a real business.
The idea of a professional blogger doesn’t make sense to people.
Related: Is Blogging Worth It?
The Truth About Making Money Blogging
But what people don’t realise is that although starting a blog might be easy, making your blog profitable is HARD.
If you want to make money blogging in 2019 and become a successful blogger, then you need to be prepared to work extremely hard.
Blogging is just like any new business. You need to work very hard for months, even years before any profit is made.
I’m talking putting in 50-70 hour weeks for months on end without seeing any results.
The most successful bloggers have been blogging for years to get where they are today.
Related: How To Start A Blog Today
How Much Time Is Needed To Make A Successful Blog
A blog should be viewed in exactly the same way as a physical business.
It takes consistency and dedication to make it profitable.
Blogging is exactly the same as any other business. Your results are directly correlated to your hard work.
That means you want to be putting in time every single day if you want to make your blog your full-time income.
I’m writing this post on a Saturday after working all week as a freelancer on Upwork.
Related: How To Earn $4000/month On Upwork
What Types Of Blogs Make The Most Money
I did some research into the most profitable bloggers to find out how much time and effort went into creating their blogs.
Do you want the honest answer? I don’t think you’re going to like it though. . .
The reality is that most bloggers make ZERO.
Most bloggers start a blog because it is easy and so they expect that the making money part will be easy to.
When they realise that blogging is hard work, they give up.
Only 5% of bloggers make a full-time income with their blog.
Now there are two ways to look at this statistic. . . you can either be a Negative Nancy and decide that blogging seems like to much like hard work and go back to your job that you hate.
OR you could choose to believe in yourself, put in the hard work for months on end and become 1 out of 20 people who do manage to make a full-time income from blogging!
Negative Nancy or Positive Polly? Take your pick!
Related: The Ultimate Guide To Starting A Blog In 2020
How Much Do Successful Bloggers Make In 2020?
Helllooo Positive Polly! Glad to see you’ve decided to stick around and make blogging your career. I’ve rounded up some of the most inspirational bloggers and their incomes for some much needed motivation!
Can you believe that some of these bloggers make over $1,000,000 a year? It’s incredible!
Reading about how much these successful bloggers make is enough to keep me going when I’m working hard away at my laptop on a lonely Saturday night.
Create And Go – Teaching the invaluable skills of blogging, this duo are truly inspirational and make over $50,000/month with their blogging courses!
Pinch of Yum – A blog focusing entirely on cooking and delicius recipes, it took her seven years but now this food blog makes over $50,000/month!
Smart Passive Income – The name gives it away but Pat Flynn has been blogging about passive income for six years and is currently making well over $100,000/month, absolutely incredible, right!
Making Sense of Cents – Michelle is a personal source of inspiration because she is only a couple years older than me and I love how down to earth she seems. Blogging for five years about frugal living, personal finance and now blogging itself, she makes over $100,000/month.
Learning Herbs – This blog is amazing because it is such a niche subject. All he does is blog about herbs! And guess how much this successful blog makes with this super-niche topic? Over $20,000/month!
Avocadu.com – This is also run by the Create And Go duo, but was their first blog. They blog all about yoga, health and fitness and this blog makes over $15,000 per month. They then used the process from making this blog successful as the basis for their blogging courses on Create And Go.
Related: Is Blogging Worth It?
What Types Of Blogs Make The Most Money
I think most people seem to think that the only blogs that make money are blogs that blog about bloggings.
This isn’t true.
You are able to make money from any type of blog if you drive enough traffic to it.
And the great thing about the internet is that it brings all types of people together, you might not know many people who love sewing in real life, but online you could build a community of people all over the world and create a successful blog.
It’s important to choose a blog topic that you are interested AND one that you can monetize.
There’s no point blogging about your passion if you don’t have a long-term plan on how to make money from the topic.
But to give you some possible blogging topic ideas, here is a list of different types of blogs! (It is by no means an exhaustive list!)
- How to Make Money
- Health And Fitness
- Gardening
- Yoga
- Parenting
- City Guides
- Recipes
- Smoothies
- Sourkraut
- Environment
- Sustainable Living
- Gardening
- Parenting
- Sewing
- Frugal Living
- Personal Finance
- Freelancing
- Digital Nomading
- Parenting
- Writing
- Religious Blogs
- Survival (huge)
- Home/Outdoor Decor
- Organization
- Travel
- Upwork
- Raising Teenagers
- Fashion
- Hair
As you can see, the list goes on and on! Get creative and do some brainstorming, see what inventive topics you can come up with!
Related: The Easy Guide To Starting A Blog
How To Decide On What Type Of Blog
Write First – Decide On Niche Later
But what if you have NO IDEA what kind of blog you want to write? Should you wait until you have an idea?
NO!
When I first started this blog a year ago, I had no idea what topic I wanted to focus on to make this a successful blog.
So. . . I decided to write about EVERYTHING!
Seriously, I would write blog posts about whatever topic interested me that particular day.
After a few months, when my traffic started creeping up, I decided to see which blog posts were most popular.
It seemed people loved me writing about being a digital nomad and working online.
Great! My niche was decided for me!
This method will work for you too but be careful not to choose a domain name that is too specific when you are first starting your blog.
Yes, it’s important to consider the question What types of blogs make the most money BUT you don’t want to box yourself, allow your blog space to evolve and grow.
If after a few months, you still don’t know what blog topic is best for you, then screw it!
You can have a multi-niche blog!
This can still be profitable because as long as you are able to drive consistent traffic to your blog then you will be able to make money from advertising. No matter the niche!
The only point to consider is that advertising is not the most lucrative method to making money with a blog.
Creating and selling a digital product is bar far the most profitable strategy to making money with a blog.
This is how the super successful bloggers are making their millions.
Honestly, though, if you are creating and selling a course or a product, then it better be pretty damn amazing and useful.
Otherwise your blog readers will feel conned and not return to your blog.
Related: 5 Blogging Tools For Beginner Bloggers
The MOST Profitable Types Of Blogs
As you can see from the list above, the answer to the question what types of blogs make the most money is ALL OF THEM. There are tonnes of options for you to blog about.
But it must be stated that it’s true, some types of blogs are more profitable than others.
The most profitable blogs are usually something to do with money.
- Make money online
- Stock trading
- Insurance
In fact, this website definitely has a making money online angle on it.
Blogging about making money online is always going to popular because it is hitting a pain point for people who are wanting to level up their life in some way.
People are always looking for a quick fix solution for their life, they type into google ‘How to make money online fast’ and up pops a gazillion and one blogs giving them a supposed solution.
Make no mistake though, any blog promising you riches overnight by blogging, is LYING.
Blogging is definitely a viable income source but only if you put in the blood, sweat and tears to make it happen.
But HOW Are Bloggers Making Money From Blogging In 2020?
If you plan on making a serious income with blogging, there are four many ways to go about it.
1 Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing sounds like a fancy term but like most things in life, it’s actually really simple to understand.
All affiliate marketing is earning a commission from the promotion of other people’s products. So for instance, I review a product and write blog posts on my experience with the company. I then link to the product and if you then choose to purchase the product from them, I earn a small commission from that sale. There are thousands of companies to team up with to earn money from affiliate marketing, Amazon affiliates is probably the most well known program.
This is often the most consistent and lucrative strategy to make money from a blog. Like anything though, you need a strategy to be successful at affiliate marketing. That’s one of the major advantages of blogging courses. After a couple of months of struggling to make any money with affiliate marketing. I decided to buy Create And Go’s course – Launch Your Blog Biz, it’s not cheap but it’s well worth the investment if you want to make your blog a business.
If you’re serious about making money with affiliate marketing, I would highly recommend you check out the Create And Go Courses.
Related: My Experience With The Create And Go Blogging Course
2 Adverts
Displaying adverts in return for money is a good way to make money for beginner bloggers because you can start displaying ads almost straight away with the big Google Adsense. But, unless, you have serious traffic (I’m talking tens of thousands of page views per month), then you won’t make any decent money.
However, once your blog is established then adverts might be a good second source of income for your blog. MediaVine is a popular ad network with decent rates for publishers (bloggers). To get accepted into MediaVine, you need to have at leat 25,000 page views per month. So get working on that traffic!
Related: Top 5 SEO Tips For Beginner Bloggers
Related: How To Make Money Blogging
3 Sponsored Posts
Sponsored posts are when you team up with a certain brand to produce sponsored content for a certain product or service of theirs.
To be honest, I don’t know much about it and it’s not something I am particularly interested in because I want my blog to remain as impartial as possible. Personally, I don’t like the idea of being paid to talk a certain way about a product or brand.
Read my review of the Create & Go Course HERE!
4 Digital Products
The most successful bloggers, those who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, they all have one thing in common. What is it?
They sell digital products or online courses.
Creating your own online course is always going to be the most profitable avenue because you get to keep 100% of the income generated. And once the course or product is finished, the income is passive. As long as you develop a solid marketing strategy then you will consistently sell your courses or products.
There are tonnes of different products you could produce as well, they don’t have to just be online courses. You could start a n online shop selling downloadable personalised calendars, weight loss and nutritions plans, digital artwork, recipe books or maybe printable journals. There are literally different ideas for every blog niche.
Related: How To Start A Blog – FREE GUIDE
Conclusion To What Types Of Blogs Make The Most Money
As you can see, the answer to what types of blogs make the most money is that any type of blog can be successful! Provided that you work hard, remain consistent and educate yourself.
My number one secret for making money with my blog is through education.
Blogging is like any skill, you need to learn how to do it.I learned how to blog with the Create And Go blogging course but you can do it for free with all the free information out there on the internet as well.
Related: My Honest Review Of The Create And Go Blogging Course
I think I opted into affiliate links way to early…I haven’t gotten a single comment on my blog nor click yet I have a short period to get a purchase via links to stay on with Amazon and Sharesale…oops! Any advice on what to do? Was I too early?
Hi Katherine, making money on affiliate sales is all about building up trust with your audience. Have you started building your email list yet?
This is great! I’ve had my blog for a little over a year now and I honestly started it to help out folks in my niche. I only recently discovered all these Facebook groups about blogging and the business of blogging. Your post answered a lot of questions for me. Thank you!
Thanks Paul, glad it helped answer some questions!