Successful Blog Business Model Examples

What is a business model? It’s the way you actually make money. For blogging it’s sometimes tricky. Why?

Blogs usually do not earn revenue by themselves. You have to do something else to get paid for blogging.

Flagship blogs, that is business blogs with really valuable content often have either an obvious or underlying business model.

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

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

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.

Popular blogger Skellie is a good example, after getting extremely popular with her first blog she just added a second one and later got hired as a writer by Envato.

4. Serving niche products to your audience
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.

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

5. Using the blog as resume and becoming a writer 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 who writes for Search Engine Journal is one the best examples.

Skellie whom I have mentioned in #3 already is one as well. She was a writer for Problogger among others.

Did Your Blogging Business Model Work for You?

I’ve seen more than a few good examples for each successful blog business model and 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 which is still more a hobby compared to 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 rear up some new blogs though and sell them after a while, who knows…