How to make money from a wordpress blog

Do you have a WordPress blog or thinking to start one and wondering how you can make a good income from it, be it part-time or full-time? If this is so, here’s a full guide on it.

2008 was the time I started one WordPress blog but didn’t know what I was doing. It was not until 2013, when I received my first dollar selling a service thanks to my blog, leading people to my services.

Soon after that, I realised that I am not just earning from blogging, but I’ve used WordPress to create an online machine with proven ways to make money.

When it comes to learning how to monetize or make money from a WordPress website, you won’t miss anything in this guide. 

I’ve made more than 6-figures on all my WordPress websites combined, and failed a ton while doing so.

You don’t have to make the same mistakes I did to build a successful blog. And no, you don’t have to be a software engineer or a computer genius to do this. All you have to do is to turn on your “Creator-mode” mindset and treat this as a business and not a hobby.

Here’s everything you need to fast-track your path to a successful side hustle or even turn it into a full-time income.

Why I use WordPress to Make Money

I’ve been intrigued by making money online since the day I learned to design websites. I still remember using Macromedia Dreamweaver when I was 20, and it was such a pain.

Receiving payments from clients was slow, too, because PayPal, Stripe, ThriveCart, Gumroad, and the like were nonexistent back then. Hence, clients either post checks to my mailing address or remit my fees via bank-to-bank transfer. 

Now, with just a one-time setup, I can write and publish content and use my WordPress blog directly to accept payments, which are processed instantly without any manual action on my part.

You can say it’s a set-and-forget process, except for specific updates that occur only a few times a year and last only a few minutes each.

Why I Add ClickFunnels to My WordPress Setup

To make that “set-and-forget” even easier today, I pair WordPress with tools that handle advanced payments, funnels, and checkouts seamlessly, such as ClickFunnels.

ClickFunnels is another platform that can work as a sales funnel on its own, but not for blogging. Hence, I needed WordPress to publish and organise my content and link to ClickFunnels to supercharge conversions without me being a bottleneck.

Right now (as of January 2026), ClickFunnels is offering an incredible limited-time deal for new users: full access to their Scale plan, including unlimited funnels, CRM, email automations, payments, AI tools, and more, for just $99 total for the first 3 months.

That’s roughly 83% off the regular $197/month rate (saving you around $492 upfront) and gives you 90 days to test high-converting sales pages, one-click upsells, and lead funnels without a big commitment.

For example, when launching digital products or high-ticket offers, I use ClickFunnels for its drag-and-drop sales funnels and one-click upsells, it integrates perfectly with WordPress (link from blog posts or embed forms) without replacing my core site.

This combo (WordPress for content/SEO/ownership + specialized tools for conversions) is how I scaled from hobby to 6 figures. WordPress remains my foundation because of full control and no platform fees skimming my earnings.

Why WordPress Is Still the Best Platform for Making Money Online Today

For me, it’s all about having the freedom to control my website settings and create my own way to monetize and make money online.

I wasn’t crystal clear about what I wanted at the start, but over time, I figured out that if I want to sell a product or service, it has to be as seamless as possible, and I never want to be the bottleneck.

Unlike other apps and platforms, there are enough WordPress themes and plugins out there for you to put together to make money using display ads, sponsored posts, and affiliate programs to earn a commission.

With WordPress, I can decide with a lot of flexibility where I want to place my content, what I want my blog to include, and the payment process I want.

You are only limited by your motivation to learn how to build your blog into a 6-figure and beyond. The sky’s the limit!

How I Built a 6-Figure Income with My WordPress Blog: My Top 5 Monetization Methods

From a high-level, you can use your blog in the following ways:

1. Start a blog and make money from it
2. Create services and products, then use your blog to drive sales
3. Do both

I’m now doing both. Of all related WordPress blog income, my major ones come from selling my services through membership or subscription, display ads and digital products. Here are the top 5 methods you can leverage:

Method 1: Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is such that you promote something and if someone buys from you, you can earn a commission on sales. 

The best thing about doing this online is that you don’t have to physically do the sales activity. Just write about something related to the product you are promoting that’s helpful and hyperlink it to your affiliate link. 

Anyone who clicks on that link and eventually buys through that link leads to you making money.

The amount of money you can make depends on the individual brand of product you are promoting.

For example, I’ve been talking a lot about Envato’s fonts and templates because they are created with deeper design thinking than others. I receive 30% of every sale from purchases that come from my link shares.

Don’t think of this as being fake or cheating. I’m doing this to help a creator get unstuck with the products I’m selling. Those who buy from me don’t have to pay extra for my commissions. That comes from the product’s owner.

What makes affiliate marketing especially powerful on WordPress is that your content works for you long after you’ve published it.

A blog post you wrote six months ago can still be sending clicks and generating commissions today. A post from two years ago can suddenly take off because it ranks on Google or gets picked up on Pinterest.

You don’t need to hunt people down or follow up with them to sell them anything. What you have to do is build the affiliate system, and the system does the work for you. 

Method 2: Display Advertising

This is my current most passive income yet. Display advertising refers to using an advertising network to display ads on your website. It’s what you see here on my site, Funnel Graphic.

You get paid based on visitors who land on your site and click on the ads. The actual revenue you get from this is based on several factors. A simpler way to understand this is that with more traffic or visitors going to your blog, you have a higher chance of earning more.

Examples of display advertising networks are Google AdSense, Mediavine, and Raptive. There are many more, but these are the more popular ones among bloggers.

Different networks have their own criteria for accepting blogs to work with. This also means nobody can just submit their blogs and immediately make 100% of their money from display ads. You will have to adhere to their various individual submission processes. 

My first try was with Google AdSense more than ten years ago, and it was easier to get accepted back then. My second try was with Mediavine in November 2023, and I got rejected for not having enough visitors from higher-income countries.

In March 2024, Mediavine launched a separate advertising network that offers a lower acceptance rate (traffic sessions of 1000 or more). I applied and got in to that sometime in September 2024. 

That was when I finally monetized this blog for the first time. Then, in 2025, my traffic sessions exceeded 50,000, so I signed up for the main Mediavine network and got in. 

The change was to allow more premium advertisements to be displayed than on Mediavine Journey, which I hope will lead to higher income for the same number of visitors. 

Once you are in a network, there usually isn’t much you need to do unless you want to configure how many advertisements appear in different parts of your website.

For me, I’m just adding and updating my content to provide as much help as I can anytime I want, and let the income flow in.

Method 3: Digital Products/Online Courses

With your blog and having readers on an ongoing basis, you can now package or convert all your blog posts into online courses, and create digital products to further help your readers.

The first thing that changes when you switch to digital products from blogging is how you use the numbers; no longer do you have to rely solely on volume of traffic to monetize your audience.

Instead you monetize through the depth of each individual member of your audience. In other words, while thousands of readers may help generate revenue, hundreds of readers can also generate revenue by helping to resolve their specific problems.

A digital product does not necessarily have to be complex to be effective. A PDF guide, checklist, template, or spreadsheet are all examples of a simple digital product.

The complexity and cost of creating a digital product are irrelevant as long as there is some form of pain or problem being resolved for the consumer and the product is a valid solution to their needs.

Most of my digital products were created out of necessity (i.e., I was consistently answering the same questions) and realized that it would make more sense to package these answers together as a product rather than continue to answer the question individually.

WordPress will then be the engine that allows you to sell multiple types of digital products such as downloads, gated content, bundled content, and drip-fed content.

Furthermore, you control the pricing structure, the way the product is delivered and the overall structure of the product itself.

An online course takes the basic concept of selling a digital product and adds more depth to it. Creating an online course will require more effort and planning at the beginning.

However, once complete, you will be able to charge a higher price due to the additional value being offered to the customer versus the single piece of advice.

In order to create an online course, you do not have to have extensive experience or qualifications. All you have to have is knowledge that is slightly advanced than what the potential customers know.

When I initially started creating digital products, I quickly found out that it is better to build less and validate the demand before making more improvements and changes based upon the feedback received.

WordPress provides you the ability to improve your digital products over time as opposed to having to get every detail correct from the initial launch date.

Creating digital products will allow you to take your experience and turn it into an asset which can then be used to create passive income; you create the product once and can sell it over and over again. This type of leverage is difficult to find.

Method 4: Memberships

Another way I make money using my WordPress blog is through memberships, that is my graphic design service business.

If you are not running a service and not intending to run one, your membership business could be community-based, coaching, or dripping new content every month.

Unlike selling a single item and never hearing from that person again, when you have a membership site, people pay each month (or per year) to continue having access to premium information, templates, tools and/or exclusive areas of your site.

When you start a membership site, you’re promising to appear at least monthly (for a minimum). The money your members pay isn’t just for what you’ve already created, it’s for what you will create for them in the future.

If you like creating lots of new stuff, and have a small group of super engaged people, then this might be a good option for you.

This model is much more about developing relationships with your community, rather than increasing your customer base to increase your sales.

WordPress does a great job of helping you develop a membership site. You can control how different users see your content, create multiple user groups, and even handle the payment processing, all while keeping 100% of the profit, without giving any of it to someone else.

After you get into a membership site and start making money from it, everything changes, you’ll have steady, predictable income.

You’ll know exactly what you can expect to get paid every month, and knowing what to expect will make it a heck of a lot easier to plan and grow your business.

However, membership sites aren’t for everyone. If you prefer creating a piece of art once and selling it, rather than creating new things over and over for your customers, then a digital product might be a better fit for you.

The thing to remember is that there is no right or wrong way to make money using WordPress, it’s whatever works best for you, and allows you to produce the kind of work you want to do, regardless of the amount of money you want to make.

Whether you decide to use WordPress to generate one-time income through the sale of digital products, or if you decide to use WordPress to generate recurring income through a membership program, the decision is up to you.

Method 5: Sponsored Content

“Sponsored content” is when brands pay you to mention their product/service on your blog.

The structure of how sponsored content is done does not matter as much as finding something that fits well in the overall theme of your blog. 

I have always approached sponsored content with caution since trust is so fragile. If your readers begin to feel as though they are being sold something (without your real endorsement) they will leave and never come back.

Therefore, I only consider brand sponsorships that fit very closely to the types of things I normally write about and use. If I would not normally endorse something, I will not take payment to endorse it.

To find new ways to gain brand sponsors for myself, I begin by creating a media kit that showcases information about my audience and blogs visitors and why I am interested in working with them. You will also have to set your own pricing.

Creating the media kit can usually take some time and overthinking. If you want to skip all the colors, fonts guessing and design chaos, I have a lifestyle media kit template and a travel media kit template you can get started with to create your own real quick.

With that, I contact the brands via either Email or LinkedIn which typically leads to a zoom meeting.

At this point I explain the brand sponsorship pricing to the brand, and they will look at my media kit and my blog to determine if they want to partner with me.

How to Actually Get Readers and Traffic to Your WordPress Blog

Now that you have your blog and plan in place, the next thing is to get people to come visit it for real. That’s the only chance they can buy from you or click on the advertisements in your blog.

This is also the part most people get wrong. They assume traffic magically appears once a blog is published.

Or they expect results in weeks and feel discouraged when nothing happens. The truth is much less exciting, but far more reliable.

Traffic is built slowly at first.

Then all at once.

The Realistic Traffic Timeline Most Bloggers Experience

Most WordPress blogs see little results or success for the first few months. You publish content. You check the analytics 10 minutes later. You may not see any visits.

This is actually quite ordinary. For most examples: there are no movement at all from search engines till one to two months later.

Reason is, they have to learn about your site, pick up on the topics and assess whether any of your content is worth letting people in on at all.

For many great bloggers, they start getting meaningful traffic around the 6-9 month stage. Sometimes sooner. Sometimes later.

It can be frustrating and many bloggers ended up unsure if this is even worth their time. I started to see many giving up.

I was in that situation too as my website wasn’t monetized only after more than a year later. The results didn’t show immediately, but getting there isn’t tough.

You just have to be willing to find out what works, take consistent action on the right areas and time will lead you there.

SEO Is Still the #1 Long-Term Traffic Channel in 2026

Even with AI and as every self-styled guru has a different story or opinion to tell, one thing is true: search engine optimization (SEO) remains the most enduring source of traffic for bloggers.

Search traffic sustains itself. A good article can bring readers every day, year in year out, without your lifting a finger.

The essence of modern-day SEO is not simply to set up websites that fool algorithms. It is to answer genuine user questions, such as this one.

WordPress offers a good environment for constructing well-organized blogs that keep evolving over time and thus gain expertise in their field.

As a matter of fact, if you ask me about long-term traffic channels, I would still pick SEO alone. It’s not just helping in search, but also helps you show up more on Pinterest and AI LLMs like ChatGPT.

Keyword Research That Actually Works Now

If you’ve tried keyword research before, what was done before 2026 has to change. Now, nobody gets away with following the largest search volume.

What works today are intentions. Rather than just words, knowing what people are truly looking for is key.

I look for keywords in which someone is actively trying to solve a problem, make a decision, or learn some thing distinct. Such readers are more likely to remain, click, and buy.

Low to medium-competition keywords with a specific intention outperform broad, high volume topics in almost every case. For newer bloggers, in particular.

If a keyword does not feel particular enough, I will skip and move on to another.

Helpful Content and E-E-A-T in Practice

Engines now wish to show you the experience of someone who has truly done what they’re talking about.

When I write, I don’t attempt to mimic an expert air. Rather I seek to sound as someone who has been through the thing. What worked; what didn’t work at all, and what I should have done instead.

Furthermore, this is just what E–A-T actually looks like. Not a theory, but practice.

Pinterest As a Traffic Channel

After I got my hands real solid on SEO, I decided to not put all my eggs in one basket and learn Pinterest to drive more traffic to my website.

I’ve been using it for more than 2 years, and it has helped me raised my per click income in my display ads revenue.

Pinterest is not a type of social network. It’s more like an image search engine.

It works best for design, lifestyle, food and home niches. You don’t have to be an expert right off the bat. It can even bring very substantial traffic to a site that starts from scratch.

Unlike Instagram and TikTok, a single pin can produce tons of traffic now and even years later.

How to Accept Payments on WordPress: Seamless Integrations with Stripe, PayPal, and More

One of the most important paradigm shifts I’ve had as an online business founder was that I should not have to do anything to collect money from people.

If someone wishes to buy something at 2 in the morning when I am fast asleep, then the mechanism should be able to handle it all itself. No emails. No invoices. No follow-up. Just money in and stuff out.

It is precisely in these situations that WordPress works wonders.

Receiving payments on WordPress today is nothing like it was years ago. At that time, it was all custom scripts, clumsy checkouts, and so much manual labor. Now, as long as you have the necessary information, it’s a mostly plug-and-play situation.

I know, you don’t need a website to take payment, but without a website, you still need a home to build your content, using that to link to any payment system you want.

If you were to build your payment system on another channel that isn’t yours, any changes to their platforms will affect your income dramatically.

For me, almost any conceivable scenario is covered by Stripe and PayPal.

Stripe handles credit cards and debit cards exceptionally well. Processing payments is rapid and reliable. The entire checkout experience is very modern.

PayPal on the other hand provides a level of recognition and trust to the user, especially for international buyers.

So by having both options available (which is virtually costless), you reduce friction between buyer and seller. People can pay in the manner that suits them best.

Both of these processors are incorporated into WordPress via tools such as WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.

Once you have made the tie-up, they undertake their work silently in the background. Orders are processed instantaneously. Digital products are delivered automatically. Membership cards are given out without your having to move a finger.

That is what makes WordPress learn to be an “earnings machine” rather than simply an amusement that you have to constantly mind.

Another thing to think about is control.

When you do it through WordPress, you get to decide how your payment behaves. One-time payments. Monthly subscriptions. Payment schedules. Free trials. Bundles. There isn’t a way that someone else makes you do or price just to take another look. It’s up in the air.

Fees are also transparent in this case. You pay straightforward processing fees, those are mainly Stripe or PayPal native charges. No one skims off your income by adding their commission to that.

I also use external checkout platforms in the past till now, and while those are handy to use, I don’t like being completely dependent on them.

If a platform revises its policies or closes down a feature, your business is immediately affected. The checkout is a part of your website under WordPress so everything is under your control.

There are other risks as well. As everyone knows, security is a top priority for the public these days. The good news is that Stripe and PayPal both take care of the sensitive financial data.

Your WordPress site never actually “touches” credit card details directly. That firewall provides an easy path to security.

Once payments have been accepted to the point where it all happens in the twinkling of an eye or by hand because that’s what’s needed, it then drops down into the background like a well-disciplined child and plays quietly along.

Naturally, this is how things should be.

You should be focused on creating content, evolving offers, and establishing trust. You shouldn’t have to waste time on things like collecting payments, rebuilding broken checkouts or confronting with dissatisfied customers.

Once your payment system is operating smoothly, you will find that everything else within the WordPress world becomes easier to expand.

How I Speed Up My Site With Cloudflare to Boost Earnings

With all your basics set up and your content creation rolling on a daily basis. The next step is to speed up your website’s loading time.

I feel that this is not something you should stress yourself out over. However, it’s still an important step to retain more of your audience on your site rather than have them leave due to slow loading times.

In the early days, I heard many experts recommend purchasing the WordPress plugin WP Rocket. They were raving over it, saying it’s a must-have.

It’s not a free plugin and costs about $59 per year. It’s very affordable and I must say it will help you a lot in the techie side of things, so it’s very much worth your while to purchase it to set and forget.

But I enjoy dabbling in the nerdy stuff. Even after trying WP Rocket, I decided to explore another way, that is to run my website through Cloudflare. 

Cloudflare is completely free for basic use, and honestly, it does most of what WP Rocket promises without the yearly fee. I’ve been using it for more than a year now, and the difference in site speed is night and day.

How does Cloudflare work?

Here’s what happens when you connect your WordPress site to Cloudflare.

Your content gets cached on servers around the world. So if your server happens to be in Canada and someone from Australia visits your blog, the server isn’t going to handle the data from Canada.

That’s like round the world to get across which will take more resources to complete. Instead, they will use the resources nearer to Australia. In this case, your website load times drop significantly.

With this, my site appears in less than a second, and this serves my visitors right away. If it’s slower, they won’t be willing to stay, they would rather go somewhere else than waste time waiting.

Having them stay to browse my blogs leads to more impressions and possible display ad clicks, plus some of them buy my products and affiliated products. These help generate more earnings.

Do You Really Own Your Online Business? Why WordPress Gives You Full Control

Besides WordPress, I also run Substack and have accounts on Beehiiv, Ghost, and Medium. I’m not giving up on other platforms, but when it comes to owning your online business, WordPress is by far the most versatile.

Here’s why:

As someone who would like to earn a long-term living through your writing and digital products, it is essential to own your stuff. And this is where self-hosted WordPress, the .org version, prevails entirely.

Your content? Yours. Your email subscriber list? Yours. Your entire site and everything on it? All yours. No one can wake up one day and change the rules on you.

Skim off your profits, you’ve worked hard for them. Or unplug the whole thing on a whim because that’s what we do now.

You lose so much by using other platforms: Substack takes 10% of every subscription you sell, and on top of that you still have to pay Stripe fees as well.

Beehiiv has a number of strong points, but in essence, you’re renting space in their home. More than most, it provides you with power, but you’re left to deal with whatever they have created. There is no library of plugins to help keep things going on your own site

I’ve seen lots of creators get started with these newsletter systems, build up their audience, and then find they’ve maxed out, so they end up moving everything over to WordPress.

Why go through all that hassle? So if you’re a WordPress person from day one, not only are you not trapped in anybody’s ecosystem, but rather building something that’s real, a digital asset with actual value, should you ever decide to sell it later on.

Conclusion: Monetize Your WordPress Blog Today

My final words here for you is that, WordPress has all you need to help you make money. How much income you get from it depends on the mindset you have and how you make use of it.

The more you think like a creator, less of a consumer and the more you treat it as a real business than a hobby, the better your results will be.

Most importantly, taking action fast everyday is key, because money loves speed and consistency.

Meantime, I will keep this guide updated as and when I have. If you have any questions and need help on this, feel free to comment below.