How to Make Money Blogging While Leveraging AI

Here are 3 stats that will make you excited about making money blogging:

• There are around 73.3 million freelancers in the U.S. as of 2023 (according to Statistica.com). In 2017, there were only 57.3 million.
• Freelance Writers make around $42,000 annually (according to a comprehensive Upwork survey).
• The blog "The imperfect idealist" reported a total blogging income of over $50,000 in 2022.

Do you want to join the cash party and make money blogging?

Bear in mind, building a consistent income from blogging isn't easy!

In this guide, I will breakdown the two main tasks you need to do to make money: create content (your traffic generator), and turn traffic into money (I'll show ten of the best ways I found to do that).

Make money using AI

Before we start, let me remind you there's only one formula for you to achieve blogging success: Time+Effort=Money. 

A Productive Blogging survey reveals bloggers earn their first dollar only after 24 months. However, with consistent efforts, 1⁄3 of bloggers start making it within six months and turn it into a full-time profession. In 2023, if you want to blog consistently, AI tools like Wordtune can help you save time, remove errors, and publish plagiarism-free content. 

Ok, enough with the stats! Let's get to the juicy part. 

If you already have a blog, jump over to the second part of this article (10 ways to make money blogging). 

What is blogging? (And how it started)

Your blog is your online diary or journal. You can use it to share knowledge, thoughts, tips, stories, or personal life events that people resonate with. These blogs are usually conversational and have comment sections at the end for people to leave their thoughts. 

Blogging history dates back to the 90s'. Justin Hall created Links.net in 1994. He used this blog as a medium to share his thoughts with links to resources he admired and his own work. People were hooked on this concept and followed it with their own blogs. 

Following people's keen interest in sharing their work, Open Diary was launched on October 20th, 1998. It was the earliest instance of an online community commenting on engaging with other individuals' work. 

In 2003, Google launched its blog advertising service AdSense. Other major websites followed. 

Today, a tonne of businesses have blog pages, and individuals create websites to share their posts. 

Now, blogs are no longer just a hobby—you can use them to earn money, build your personal brand, influence people, sell products/services, redirect readers to multiple destinations, and rank higher on the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages). 

According to the Web Tribunal, over 600 million blogs are on the internet today. With the current obsession with remote and online work, more numbers add to this stat daily. 

Build a blog using AI

To shape those ideas stored in your notes apps into a money-making blog (while using AI), start by following these simple steps to setup your own blog:

1. Choose your blog name and niche

The first step is to choose your niche and content pillars. 

These niches can be:

• Food blogging
• Travel blogging
• Fashion blogging 
• Tech blogging
• Personal blogging (slice of life)
• Finance blogging
• Marketing blogging
• Productive blogging

These are top blogging niches, but you can also start with more intricate subjects that fit your experience. 

Also, your niche is not just defined by your topic but also depends on the demographics, industry, and geography. For example, a blogger who wants to target an audience of the age group 15-25 years or Gen Z will focus on more laid-back, slangish, and concise language. Emojis, slang, and GIFs will dominate your content in this case.

Use the Wordtune extension to shave the fluff and add more variety to my work. Its features to shorten, expand, and add a casual approach really help bloggers save time. 

Next comes the name:

Once you double down on your niche, choose a befitting name that matches your personality and is catchy. 

The signs of a good blog name are short, unforgettable, easy pronunciation, and suggestive of niche.

If your blog is about your personal brand, you can use your name as the blog name—for example, Katie Keen Marketing Blog, Brody Chance.com, etc. 

In this age of Ai, you can also use them to generate blog name ideas and mix and match them to create the perfect blend. 

You can use ChatGPT to generate a blog name, as seen in the example bellow:

2. Choose a blogging platform

To publish any blog online, you need to build a website. 

On average, you can expect to spend anywhere between $80 to $350 to get your blog set up. After that, your monthly costs should sit at around $60 to $100 per month. 

This is Wix’s web hosting plan, and the amount varies platform-wise. These web hosting platforms have both free and paid versions, it’s your need that defines the cost you’re going to pay. 

Before you create a website, you also need to buy a domain name. You can check the availability of a domain name on websites like GoDaddy, Siteground, and more. If your preferred name isn’t available, these platforms will suggest some alternative and similar names you can select from. 

Best practices for a domain name:

• A “.com” domain name is standard and the most popular. You can also use “,net” or “.co”. 
• Keep it short and memorable 
• Try not to add special characters or numbers in the mix (it leads to complexity).

If you like to fuel your inner creativity, you can self-design your website through drag-and-drop features that platforms offer or you can get your blog professionally by a web designer. 

3. Create a content calendar

A content calendar tracks your ideas, and posting schedules, and avoids repetition of content. 

This step is crucial! 

Even your great ideas will sink if your posting schedule isn’t reasonable and in line with the active hours of your audience. You need a constant influx of content on your website, especially when you’re starting if you want to make money from it.

Here’s a step-by-step process for a posting schedule

• Get 6-10 blog posts ready in advance (this will help you beat lazy days, when you don’t feel inspired to create).

• Create a content calendar that’ll house information about dates to be posted and other activities related to your blog. You can find free calendar templates on websites like Canva or create your own. Note: Many people also use Google sheets for this. 

• The number of times you want to post in a month or week is up to you though, I’d recommend finding the best time when your audience is active through assessment of their activities before you schedule. This allows you to attract traffic to your blog.

• High-Quality content is a must! Make sure any content you publish is well thought out. You have to create actionable content that people learn from. Understanding SEO basics is also a plus as you’ll be able to boost the rank of your blogs with simple tweaks and keyword research. 

4. Start blogging!

Your ultimate goal is to build a community, popularize your brand, and earn money, which we’ll discuss in the next section. 

This part takes some time, but the results are really fruitful when combined with consistent efforts. 

Using AI drastically reduces the time it takes you to write blog posts, as we detail in this article. By churning out high-quality articles faster, you'll be able to focus on the second part on your path to making money blogging - turning traffic into revenue.

Turning traffic into revenue: 10 ways to make money blogging using AI

Blogging has evolved into a creative business that can open doors to incredible opportunities. Today, people make an average of $45,000—with most bloggers earning somewhere between $38,440 to $51,906. 

Pretty neat! Right?

But this is not just the result of writing; multiple variables work together to create a successful blog. It’s not just the content but other incentives that increase bloggers' income. 

These are:

1. Offer services

If you can pair your content with some services, you’ll quickly make blogging your full-time career. You can offer freelance work, one-time projects, or consultations based on your expertise.

Check out this example. This writer uses her writing skills to create blog posts on her website and then subtly sell them with a CTA like, “For more information on how to start a freelance writing business, please visit the Products Page.”

Her offer is simple and to the point. She writes about tips and tricks to freelance and then redirects her readers to her products, where they can buy authentic resources to learn. To make it more seamless, you can add a ‘Hire me’ page on your website. 

Some services you can offer through a blog include:

• Writing
• Photography
• Consultation
• Coaching 
• Courses
• Marketing (content marketing, digital marketing, SEO expertise)
• Run ads
• Social media management, and more 

This list is as long as the number of skills people have, but these are some of the most popular ones. 

To create CTAs for blogs, I prefer using Wordtune, as it provides multiple alternatives and saves me from writing blocks!

2. Affiliate marketing

Tom Dupuis from Online Media Masters makes $150k/year from affiliate marketing on his blog! 

Affiliate marketing is a strategy that benefits both bloggers and advertisers. It involves promoting or selling other people’s products or services (physical or digital) through your blog or website. 

In exchange, you earn a small commission of a fixed amount on each sale your affiliate link makes!

For example, this post by Wire cutter promotes a coffee machine. For every coffee machine that sells through this link, they’ll get a commission. 

The best thing about affiliate marketing? You’re not obliged to dive deep into your innovative sense and create a product or need a new skill. You’ll just earn for the way you attract people towards other products. 

To earn the most from affiliate marketing, you can follow these steps:

• Check if the affiliate program matches your niche: For instance, as a photographer, you shouldn’t be signing up as an affiliate to sell cooking products when the majority of your audience is photography enthusiasts. 

• Learn the art of persuasion: You don’t have to resort to hard selling. Instead, share your experience and instill a desire in people to share that experience. 

• Be mindful of the link placement: Misleading link placement can confuse your readers. 

Affiliate marketing is one of the most sustainable money-maker for blogs. You just have to be a virtual salesman and everything else is handled by the seller themselves. 

Finding the right affiliate marketing program can take time, and usually the best programs are through direct connections you make with specific companies. That's why you might need to send a lot of outreach emails to companies. You can use AI to write that custom-made outreach email, as we explained in this article.

3. Ad Networks (The OG method to earn through blogs)

When you have a lot of white space on your blog—leverage it! 

Ad networks are the key to this part. They’re companies that connect you to websites willing to host advertisements for a specific niche product or service on your blog. 

You’ll get paid to display ads on your blogs and the concerned company gets more customers. You’ll either get paid through “Per Impression”, in this case, your reader doesn’t have to click the link. You’ll get paid on the views the ads get. 

The other method is “Per click”, the more clicks you receive, the more commission you earn. 

You can display these ads in exchange for a monthly fixed fee too. . 

There are 2 ways to run ads:

You can use platforms like Google AdSense or AdThrive, who’ll buy your blog space and use it to run ads for multiple advertisers. You won’t be in direct contact with the company running ads; your commission will also come from AdSense, not the said company. 

Here’s a quick run-through of how to set up your AdSense:

The second way is direct negotiation with the company that runs the ads. This is a time-consuming approach as you’ll have to develop a relationship and convince them about the effectiveness of your blog. But, it’s also the long-term approach that rakes in more bucks for each ad. 

Let’s take a look at an example of running ads:

Here’s how PinchOfYum runs ads on the blog. If she’s running ads through AdSense, it pays bloggers per 1,000 impressions (CPM). The average CPM for display ads is between $0.50 to $4 CPM.

4. Review products in exchange for a fee

Companies are always on the lookout for new customers and seek out people who can enhance their experience and attract new paying consumers.. 

That’s where your role comes in. You can get paid to include your review of the product or service in your blog. You can reach out to brands who are in your niche and tell them about your experience with the product. Then, negotiate a fee in exchange for the review to feature on your blog. 

To close the deal, focus on the number of subscribers, how niche popular you are, and the commissions you’ve earned through affiliates or ads. 

You’ll need to be careful while earning through this method. If your review isn’t genuine, readers have the right to file a case against you. You can avoid this by:

• Disclosing it’s a sponsored review
• Sharing real-time experience to deliver benefits for your users and increase your subscribers 

Here’s an example of a product review on a blog:

Writing a review with AI is easy. Look at the example below and you'll get the picture.

5. Turn content into podcasts

What if I told you there's something you can earn twice from the same content?

But just by changing the format, you can earn twice or even thrice from the same content. 

One of those methods is turning blogs into podcasts. 

Podcasting is the preparation and distribution of audio files using RSS feeds to the computers of subscribed users.

You can upload these podcasts on Spotify and earn through podcast sponsorships! You’ll need a microphone to record the episodes. Other than that, it’s pretty much expense-free. 

You can later convert the podcast sponsorships to blog sponsorships and even double your income. You can also invite prominent personalities to speak on your podcast after you gain a substantial number of subscribers.

You can use an AI tool like Veed to turn text into audio, and then publish it as a podcast.

6. Email Newsletters

A loyal readership equals more money through blogging. To build this readership, you can send out regular emails to new leads and existing customers, promoting your content. 

You can encourage people to sign up by adding a pop-up form to your blog; once they opt in  you have the right to send emails to them regarding offers, new posts, and more. 

The email list can entice your customers through incentives like:

• Ebooks
• Free gift cards
• Tutorials
• Checklists 
• Excerpts from your content
• Offers on products

In this example, the blogger is providing a toolkit and bonuses if people sign up to their newsletter. 

Once people sign up, the challenge is to retain them. To do this, ensure you provide a constant influx of educational material to them. 

You can automate the email-sending part through tools like MailChimp, Zapier, and many others on the market. This helps you achieve an automated flow and shift your focus to your core goal—blogging.

Again, use our AI email writing guide to shorten the time it takes you to produce the email.

7. Business Partnerships/Collaborations

You loved a product or service and want your readers to know about the experience? Guess what, business partnerships and collabs make it possible.

These essentially mean you promote the product or service in exchange for a collab fee or barter (you get the product or service for free), write about it on your blog, and urge people to use it (not aggressive marketing but subtle mentions in content).  

These partnerships do two things—promote your collaboration partner, and humanize your content with mentions of your personal experience. This includes guest blogging, collaborative blog posts, or appearances on podcasts. 

To score such partnerships, reach out to a brand, and explain why you love their products and that you want to collaborate. Tell them about your niche and the number of readers/subscribers, and finalize the terms. You cannot reach out to them abruptly without a cause because they'll be paying you a fee and trust you to bring more customers to them. 

8. Don’t be afraid to ask for donations

Your blogs educate people, and you’ve built a loyal readership because of posting consistently. To continue putting time and effort into your work, you can ask for donations on your blog. 

A suggestion: you can do so on your social media profile or at the bottom of each post by saying that it helps you attain a specific goal and continue your work in the industry..

You can ask for support through websites like Buy Me A Coffee or Patreon. These websites allows people to accept donations, start a membership, or promote their products. 

If you ask for donations only on your social media, not every reader will be able to see your posts (because they don’t follow you, or aren’t active, for example). However, funding platforms allow you to automate the whole process, add donation buttons to your blog posts and track your donations in real time so you can account for all the money your blog earns. 

Moreover, you’ll know who supports your work for future endeavors or campaigns you might run. 

The purpose of websites that facilitate donations is to assist members in collecting funds, your profile will be able to rank if someone searches your blog or name and attract more donations from search engines. 

9. Offer free courses

Can you repurpose your content into a course? 

Turn it into an ebook?

Create templates out of it?

Or a video diary?

Using your blog as an educational course could be a great way to monetize your blog. You can publish your content on Udemy, record your writing process, or record your editing process and create the courses. 

My original sentence was, “If your answer is yes to any of these, you need to start turning your blog into an educational course.”

I used Wordtune to make it more concise and remove the fluff words.

A course gives people incentives to share your content if they like it. If the course is free, you can exchange it for a shoutout or feature it in your newsletter to get more subscribers. 

10. Find speaking opportunities

Your blog is the definition and proof of your expertise in your field. You can use that to anchor your blogs to find speaking opportunities and charge for them. As a speaker, you’ll need confidence, skill, punctuality, and control over your voice. You assert all these qualities through your blog. 

To find these opportunities:

• Send cold emails (to speakers, colleges, events)
• Google search “Speaking events near me”
• Speak as an alumnus at your college or school
• Reach out to event organizers

Even when you don’t charge for these sessions, you can still gain exposure as a blogger. 

To cash in long-term benefits from your speaking events, create a separate section titled “Featured” on your website to establish your authority in the industry. This section will create social proof for your achievements. Event organizers looking for new speaking guests will be able to check out your work and reach out to you for partnerships. 

Create a lucrative blog and attract a loyal readership

A survey by Orbit Media reveals 80% of bloggers have achieved results from their content. People still spend a lot of time reading blogs and extracting information, be it in the form of videos, vlogs, or text. Through the tips we’ve shared today, you can set up a well-earning blog with ease. 

To make your blog enticing, do deep research, add tips, and above-all—have fun! You can use Wordtune as a trustworthy assistant in your blogging journey.