5 Smart Ways to Make More Money from Your Blog (No Extra Traffic)

Growing your income as a blogger is a never-ending journey. 

From affiliate marketing to for-profit partnerships with brands, there’s always an opportunity to increase your blogging income. 

In this post, we’ll cover five out-of-the-box strategies to help you make more money from your blog.

Let’s get started. 

1. Turn Your Most Popular Blog Posts Into Info Products (Effortless Digital Monetization)

Selling info products like eBooks and online courses is among the staple monetization strategies of full-time bloggers. 

Unfortunately, building a full-fledged online course from scratch can take weeks — if not months — of mind-numbing preparation and content creation. 

With tools like LearnDash, you can effortlessly convert your top-performing blog content into enriching, top-quality educational experiences. 

LearnDash is a Learning Management System (LMS) with all the features you need to create profitable online courses directly within your WordPress website. 

The centerpiece of LearnDash is the drag-and-drop course creation workflow. You can set up everything — from your supported online course formats to your payment details — straight from the onboarding process.

For this particular monetization tactic, however, we’re not going to create a course from scratch. 

Rather, we’ll take your most popular and valuable piece of content and convert it into a single product. 

Use Google Analytics to analyze your website’s traffic and use data to pinpoint your best-performing blog post.

In the “Reports” section, click ‘Pages and screens’ under the ‘Engagement’ submenu. You should be able to identify your top-performing content in the table at the bottom of the report.

Tip: Make sure the popular content you choose solves a problem with step-by-step, actionable information.

Your list of top-performing URLs will most likely contain non-informational pages such as your contact page, homepage, and content category pages. Use your discretion to select a piece of content that makes sense as an informational product — something with an “ultimate guide” blog post structure. 

The next step is to use the Post Type Switcher plugin to convert your blog post into a LearnDash lesson. Just use the “Quick Edit” feature, unroll the ‘Post Type’ submenu, select ‘Lesson,’ and click ‘Update.’ 

This will move your post into the lessons section of the LearnDash LMS plugin. 

To find it, go to ‘LearnDash LMS’ from your WordPress dashboard and click ‘Lessons.’ Here, you can start editing the lesson normally as well as modify settings like video course controls, assignments, supplementary learning materials, course schedules, and more.

Now, before you can monetize your lesson, you must first package it into an online course.

In the “Courses” section, click ‘Add New Course’ to get down to the fun part. This is where you can design your landing page as well as put together the lessons, topics, and quizzes for your product.

Finally, head to the ‘Settings’ tab to set up how you’re going to get paid.

Monetized LearnDash courses can use two formats: “buy now” and “recurring.” 

Choose ‘Buy now’ if you want your course to be available after a one-time payment. Or, select ‘Recurring’ to generate residual income (perfect if you’re planning to update your online course over time).

That’s it — you now know the essential steps needed to publish a premium online course and bolster your blogging income. 

For example, let’s say that I suddenly decided to turn my post, 89 Blog Monetization Strategies, into an online course. 

With the help of LearnDash, I can easily turn this post into a multi-part online course. I just need to beef it up by creating additional resources, including a certificate, downloadables, or quizzes.

Remember, we barely scratched the surface in terms of LearnDash’s features.

Here’s a quick list of other things you should check out:

It’s also a good idea to beef up your course with downloadables, like checklists, cheat sheets, and templates, to maximize the perceived value of your course. 

Just focus on the creative side and let LearnDash handle the technical aspects — from payment management to access controls.

Click here to learn more about LearnDash features!

2. Repurpose Email Replies into Mini Paid Courses

Maintaining communication with leads through email is crucial to moving them down your sales funnel. 

However, manually maintaining communication is not only time-consuming but also highly inefficient.

Apart from automation through email marketing tools, another profitable workaround is to repurpose your email replies into paid learning resources. This can be an eBook, a paid add-on to an existing course, or its own mini-course. 

And, just like with website content, the repurposing process can be streamlined with the help of LearnDash.

For example, let’s say you run a food blog and regularly get tons of emails asking about your favorite, 10-minute keto snacks. Rather than providing a fresh answer each time, you can compile all the information into a quick mini-course or paid PDF called “50 Easy Keto Snack Recipes to Stake Your Life On.“

Feel free to get creative with the structure and format of your course. For instance, you can spread access to the recipes over a span of multiple days — offering a more relaxed learning experience for your audience where they can focus more on quality.

3. Put a “Monetization Callout” in Your Blog Sidebar

Affiliate marketing is one of the cornerstones of passive income from blogging — or any online publication for that matter.

However, optimizing your affiliate links for visibility and clicks can be challenging. This is especially true if you have dozens, if not hundreds, of affiliate products in your strategy.

An easy solution to this is to compile your main money-makers into a sticky sidebar. 

One strategy is to only focus on one (or a few) affiliate offers. Your affiliate program should have the media or creative you need — you simply have to create the sidebar element in WordPress and embed the affiliate link. 

Alternatively, you can create a dedicated resource page that presents all of your affiliate offers. 

I personally tried and tested this strategy on my own blog. And, I have to say, it has been a reliable source of passive income for years.

For starters, you have to create a resource page that highlights the benefits of your offer:

To promote this page, I make it a point to include a monetization callout on posts related to my core niche.

The whole strategy is straightforward, but remember that you need to use the right tools to make this happen. 

I personally use the pro feature ‘Hooked Elements‘ in the Kadence Theme to easily create sidebar CTAs that direct users to my blogging deals page.

4. Negotiate Higher Commission Rates for Products Driving Sales

This next strategy doesn’t involve technical skills or specialized tools. 

Rather, you’ll be relying on your negotiation abilities (plus a pinch of confidence) to generate a quick increase in blog income.

If you’ve already proven your worth as an affiliate marketer, consider reaching out to your affiliate manager and requesting a higher commission rate for your best-performing products. 

The first order of business is to find your leverage. That is, look for the particular affiliate program that has been steadily generating sales. 

If you’re part of an affiliate marketing network like ShareASale or Amazon, use your platform’s dashboard or built-in reporting features. Once you identify your top-selling affiliate product, it’s time to write an email.

Here’s the game plan:

For your reference, take a look at the sample email below:

5. Leverage Your Blog’s Authority for Sponsored Content Retainers

If your blog attracts a consistent audience, brands may see value in collaborating with you to reach your readers.

Typically, this involves publishing content that highlights the brand’s product or service. In exchange, you’re compensated for both creating the content and promoting it through your blog.

This is usually a one-and-done kind of deal. 

But once you’ve amassed enough authority, some brands will start wanting more. That’s when you should consider moving up from one-time sponsored content arrangements into sponsored content retainers. 

TL;DR: The company pays you a monthly retainer, while you provide recurring content marketing packages, like:

You can rely on platforms like PayPerPost or any other influencer marketing platform to find potential brand sponsors. 

Of course, you can also search professional social platforms like LinkedIn for companies that have already worked with your competitors. 

These prospects already know what sponsored content can bring. As such, you need to prepare an offer that will knock their socks off.

Below are some pointers:

Your Next Steps

You don’t need to overhaul your entire blog overnight to increase your earnings. You just need to take smart, focused steps — using the right tools at the right time.

Here’s how you can get started today:

Each of these steps can move the needle on your income — and when combined, they create unstoppable momentum.

Take the first step today.

Because the longer you wait, the more money you leave on the table.