What is a business model? No, it’s not a good looking man in a suit.

It’s the way you actually make money as a company.

For blogging it’s sometimes tricky. Why?

Blogs usually do not earn revenue by themselves.

Ads or affiliate links are also not enough usually.

You have to do something else to get paid for blogging.

So what can you do to successfully make money as a blogger?

How business blogs work

Let’s talk about flagship blogs here.

They’re business blogs with really valuable content.

They often have either an obvious or underlying business model.

After witnessing the blogging business over decades I have noticed some patterns with professional bloggers.

I’ve also tried numerous blog business models myself. Some of them succeeded for a few years.

Others were a failure right from the start – especially Google Adsense and affiliate marketing fell completely flat more than once.

Some blog business models are really successful financially!

Aside all that “make money online” (please click my affiliate ads) crap there is real business value in blogs I want to outline.

Blogging business model examples

OK. What are the successful blog business models?

Here are some working examples I have found in the wild:

1. Selling your blog

There was a spectacular blog sale in the early blogging era.

A blog run by one single blogger was sold for 15 million Dollars.

Million Dollar sales are of course an exception but many bloggers sold their blogs.

Some of them started at the same time as I did. Others later.

Yet I never really wanted to sell my blogs. I got quite fond of them over the years.

Brain Dean of Backlinko also succeed with this when he sold it to Semrush and even got hired by them on top of it.

Take note that it can take years until your blog is valuable enough.

2. Offering consulting or other services

This is what many popular bloggers do it seems.

There are also many less popular ones of course who do that.

Company blogs often also fulfill that purpose.

Especially my colleagues in the SEO niche continue to follow that path.

In fact, I do offer consulting and other services due to my blog as well.

Before blogging most clients found me through my static website.

3. Becoming a full time blogger

A blogging business model that amazed me was becoming a full time blogger.

Some bloggers started offering services and ended up as the head of a publishing empire.

Other popular bloggers from the early days simply built a large enough audience and sell sponsorships.

Daring Fireball is my favorite example. His weekly sponsors finance the blog since 2007!

Yet over the years many companies also hired part or full-time bloggers.

I worked as a blogger or “content marketer” for a year for Namecheap e.g.

4. Serving niche products to your audience

For years niche products were popular all over the place.

Many bloggers offered those already early on.

People were offering products for their audiences once they accumulated enough readers and subscribers.

Things like ebooks or courses made financial sense it seems.

Once they gained enough trust to be regarded as an authority they could pull this off.

5. Using the blog as resume and blogging elsewhere

This is a business model I’ve seen with many of the brightest lights among last years blogging upstarters

Ann Smarty of SEO Smarty is one the best examples.

She has written for numerous blogs over the years

She still has a very good reputation all over the Web when in comes to search industry topics.

Lately she even leads groups on Reddit in cooperation with clients.

I’ve been also blogging for clients for almost 20 years by now!

Did your blogging business model work for you?

I’ve seen more than a few good examples for each successful blog business model.

It seems it worked for all of them more or less.

Here are my questions to my fellow bloggers:

• Did you choose one of these or another business model?
• Did you succeed or fail with it?
• What worked, and what didn’t work?

Why do I ask? One reason is that I’m still very fond of blogging or rather more than ever.

I considered many ways of expanding my blog business.

The blog is still sometimes more an “ad” for my actual SEO work.

Please inspire me! You already do, but make me feel it!

In case you suspect I want to sell this blog: Hell no!

I might grow some new blogs though and sell them after a while, who knows…

Just write me by mail or on social media. I’m onreact everywhere.

I might include your take or experience in this blog post here.