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Can I make money from a free WordPress blog?
Yes! You can make money from your free WordPress blog.
Although WordPress.com does display advertisements on WordPress blogs hosted on their platform’s Free Blog plan, it doesn’t share the revenue with the blog publisher, nor does WordPress.com allow their Free Blog publishers to put display ads on their blogs. However, don’t be discouraged! Here are 11 ways you can still make money from a free WordPress blog:
- Sell eBooks or White Papers.
- Offer Online Courses.
- Offer Webinars.
- Offer Freelancing Services.
- Become an affiliate marketer.
- Write sponsored blog posts.
- Sell exclusive content.
- Create an Amazon Affiliate Store.
- Sell Your Own Physical Products.
- Sell an eCourse.
- Set up a dropshipping store.
Just as an example, you can make money with a free WordPress blog by doing freelance work and posting a portfolio on your free WordPress blog.
By becoming an affiliate for your favorite products and services by posting their links within your free WordPress blog and receive a commission for each click that results in a purchase.
There are many other ways that you can monetize and make money from a free WordPress blog.
In this post, I’m going to go over these ways in which you can make money from a free WordPress blog.
How can I monetize my free WordPress blog or website?
Making money from a free WordPress blog seems like an oxymoron, but the fact is that there are thousands of people who have turned their blogging hobby into six-figure incomes. It can even lead to making more than your day job!
The key is realizing that if you can monetize your blog, you can make money while working at home while doing what you love.
Most people can make money blogging because they either:
- Already have a popular blog.
- Can create one that is monetized properly.
If you can meet either of those two criteria, then there are some good opportunities for making money from your WordPress blog.
However, you may like to start with a free WordPress blog to test the waters, but when you want to take your monetization to the next level, get serious and possibly replace your full time job or at least make a very nice supplementary income from your blogging efforts, eventually you’re going to have to move from a “free WordPress Blog” plan to either a paid WordPress Hosting plan from WordPress.com or self host your Blog from another Web Hosting Provider.
Making money can be either active or passive. Active income is earned by doing work each time you get paid, like writing a blog post for $50. Passive income can take more time upfront but can still earn big money.
What you can do will depend on your interests and expertise.
The pay can be pretty good if you can monetize your WordPress blog.
Now that you can make money from your WordPress blog and can see that it can be free, start thinking about what you would like to do. Here are some more ideas:
1) Develop an app for a mobile device such as iPad or iPhone.
2) Become a Freelance Writer and display your portfolio on your Blog.
3) Sponsor posts can pay $400 – $2,000 each through platforms such as BlogHer and other Blogger type online publications.
4) Sell a book on a topic you can blog about through Amazon’s direct publishing service
5) We all like to eat, right? Well, blog about food and get paid to do product reviews for restaurants or grocery stores looking to promote their new products
6) Blog about your favorite hobby or field of expertise. Use your content as part of your Freelance Writing portfolio and/or find relevant products and services to sell.
Reach out to companies producing them and offer to feature them on your WordPress blog.
If you do a good enough job, they may even offer you some freelance work or to become a staff writer.
7) Create an informational product, earn affiliate commissions or sell your own information products through ClickBank
8) Teach online classes through a service such as Udemy or offer them through your own WordPress blog.
9) Get paid to write for some of your favorite websites. Online publications, specialized ones in particular are always looking for new content creators and bloggers.
10) Write an ebook and sell it through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and display it on your own WordPress blog with links to Amazon so your readers can buy it..
Can do any of these? If so, then there are some really good opportunities for making money from your Free WordPress blog.
Start by thinking about what you can do and developing an idea or strategy for monetizing your free WordPress blog.
Some of the most popular ways to make money with a WordPress blog include:
- Selling advertising.
- Selling your own products and services.
- Affiliate programs.
- Sponsored posts.
- Being paid to blog for others.
- Paid speaking engagements
- Develop an app.
Can I use AdSense on free WordPress?
Unfortunately, WordPress.com’s free WordPress blog plan does not allow you to monetize your free WordPress blog with AdSense.
Does free WordPress have ads?
Yes, free WordPress does have ads. However, you do not receive any money from those ads WordPress will display on your free WordPress blog. Why?
Well, someone has to pay for the hosting and support of your free WordPress blog. So if it’s not going to be you, it’s going to be advertisers.
Unfortunately, WordPress does not share any of the ad revenue from the ads displayed on your free WordPress blog either.
Free WordPress Blog monetization limitations.
The two main free WordPress blog monetization limits are, as mentioned above, your inability to display ADsense on your free WordPress blog.
Another monetization limitation is that you cannot have your own custom domain name. You can of course, create whatever domain name you like, however in the URL of your free WordPress blog will be WordPress.com.
For example, your blog’s URL address will be: www.myfreeblog.wordpress.com.
If you expect to take your free WordPress blog to the next level and in order for potential clients and advertisers to take you more seriously, you’re going to have to commit to not only getting your own domain name, but you will eventually have to pay for your own hosting.
The good news is both are rather cheap. You could pick up a custom domain name for as little as $10 to $15 a year.
There are quite a few web hosting providers where you can self-host your WordPress blog or website for less than $100 a year.
But in order for you to put display advertising on your blog and get paid for it, whether that’s from AdSense or another third party display advertising network, you’re going to have to have your own domain name as well as pay for hosting.
Can I make money from a free WordPress blog? Conclusion.
As you can see, you can make money from a free WordPress blog. It does take a little imagination and thinking outside of the box.
However, the possibilities are endless if you think about it.
But in order for you to take your WordPress blog to the next level you’re going to have to get more serious and eventually move off of the free WordPress blog plan to either one of WordPress.com’s paid hosting plans or self-host your WordPress blog from another web hosting provider as well as buy your own custom domain name.
You never know, you too can join the ranks of all those who started out with a free WordPress blog and eventually replaced their full-time job. You can make money with WordPress even if you’re just starting out with a free WordPress blog.
