Let’s talk about some ways to make money blogging.

“We’ve sent you $3,839.35.”

That was an email I got from Medium in January of 2020. They just paid me nearly $4,000..for writing blog posts–this is one of the must lucrative ways to make money blogging in 2021. There’s a picture a few paragraphs down to prove it.

The truth is, there’s tens of thousands of writers making money on Medium every single month. The highest a writer ever made with one blog post was somewhere near $20,000.

Most of that money came from three separate blog posts.

Dear readers, here are five different ways to make money blogging in 2021.

1. Writing On Medium

Medium is like Instagram for writers. Before you say “EW!” and leave this page, let me explain. It’s like Instagram for writers without the pictures and videos. You only post articles. You can create a profile, follow other writers, and get their articles on your homepage.

For some reason, barely anybody has heard of it.

So.. how do you make money?

Medium sells $5 subscriptions that allow readers to unlock unlimited blog posts on Medium. It’s like a Netflix subscription, except it’s for blog posts.

The readers pay $5 per month to Medium, and if a reader reads YOUR blog post, then YOU earn a portion of that reader’s monthly fee.

Imagine someone reads 5 blog posts in December written by 5 different authors. Each author would then receive $1 since the reader pays Medium $5 per month. It’s $5 divided by 5 different blog posts.

For simplicity’s sake, that’s the gist.

Here’s the stats of a blog post that made me nearly $4,000..

You can see that the more views this post got, the more money I made with it. 3,000 views made me over $60! Medium is a very healthy social media platform with two offices in San Francisco and New York City, and memberships continue increasing month over month.

That means higher earnings for bloggers as time goes on.

Here’s a few examples of posts from other writers..

In 2017, it became possible for writers to get paid directly through Medium. While the earning power wasn’t exactly sky high at the start, it has since become unbelievably ludicrous.  Below is a side-by-side comparison of 2020 earning capability to 2018 earning capability.

I always exceed $1,000 per month in earnings, which is something I can teach you how to do if you want.

For me, Medium is the easiest way to make money online as a blogger right now. I’m about to get into online courses, ebooks, coaching, and other things, but as far as finding ways to make money blogging TOMORROW, Medium is your best bet.

I’ve had so many students start on Medium and within a few months they’re already earning well over $100 per month on the platform (and beyond).

I strongly suggest you look at Medium first if you want to make money online as a blogger.

2. Selling Online Courses

Online courses are sort of my bread and butter. Here’s a quick snapshot of my earnings breakdown from 2019..

Okay so on Medium I made close to $20,000, but my Teachable courses made up the clear bulk of my income. Online courses are all about funnels, so here’s mine..

Medium Article –> Call To Action at the end –> 5 Day Email Course –> Webinar –> Sell Online Course

Without my Medium articles and presence, I would be making *maybe* $5,000 per year with online courses. It’s the truth. I get over 100,000 views per month on Medium, and almost all those views come across my call to action at the end of my blog post.

I basically tell people “Hey, if you want to get some free writing tips, just sign up for my 5-day course here." I typically get about 2 sign ups per 100 views, so if I get 10,000 views that’s about 200 email subscribers right there.

Email subscribers are the life blood of online courses and, really, selling anything online. To be honest, Medium is one of the best places to get your initial 1,000 email subscribers because it’s really easy to get views there while really tough to get views elsewhere, like your own Wordpress site.

Of all the ways to make money blogging, online courses take the longest to create. It took me about 250 hours of work to create my first online course. Selling it took me another 120 or so. It’s a huge time investment, not to mention you sort of need a big email list to even make it profitable at first.

That’s why I think writing on Medium is such a good option here because you can build your email list while making money. It’s the easiest way to make money online as a writer right now.

3. Selling Coaching

Coaching is another relatively good option for those who want to make money blogging. The gist is, you write a blog post, get people to sign up for your email list, then sell coaching to them eventually.

One way to sell coaching is to give away free 20-minute calls with you and then sell your coaching program at the end of it. It’s very direct, one-to-one, and works for those who like that intimate selling environment.

For me, coaching is a bit of a hassle, though.

That’s weird because I oddly enough have the most fun doing it. It’s nice to talk to my clients face-to-face and be very specific with instruction.. However, it’s essentially selling your time for money. If you charge $100 per session which is very very high, then you’d have to put on 20 different sessions with 20 different people to make $2,000. That’s not exactly a live-able monthly wage. Let’s say you want to try for $4,000–then you’d have to put on 40 calls.

That’s more than 1 call per day if you’re doing 40 per month.

My gosh. That sounds like a lot of work to schedule the calls, prepare, put on the calls, then send clients detailed notes afterwards.

Coaching can be a really viable option for those who don’t quite have the email list to sell an online course yet. It’s actually good to prove to yourself that you can be a good teacher and that your “method” works. I’d recommend coaching, too, as one of the ways to make money blogging.

4. Sell Ebooks on Amazon

Some of my friends make a pretty hefty sum selling their ebooks on Amazon. For me personally, I’ve never actually tried it. Why? Well, because you only make a few dollars every time you sell a book. If you want to sell something, why not sell a $200 online course? You sell the same amount of stuff and make infinitely more money doing it.

I’ll give you some insider tips, though..

Try Amazon ads. I hear that when you get Amazon ads working right, you can really make a pretty solid chunk of change from it. If you get them working right, you don’t need an email list to help you sell anything.

Just spend more on ads, and make more money.

5. Write Sponsored Content

Recently I’ve started writing a few blog posts every month for a company online. Know how they found me?

Through Medium.

My blog posts are read every month by 100,000+ people. I’ve been published on Thought Catalog, the Huffington Post, and been a featured story on NowThis. That was quite the crazy day.

The truth is that writing online for yourself can get you noticed by all kinds of people. I was noticed through my writing on Medium by Thought Catalog and NowThis. These days I write for a company online (who found me through Medium) and make about $500 per blog post with them.

I think that once you make it far in the blogging world, all kinds of ways to make money blogging start appearing. I’m currently creating an online course for a company online who found me through Medium. It’s a 5-figure payday for me.

Writing sponsored content comes much later on in the blogging journey, but it can actually be one of the more lucrative ways to make money blogging.