If you’ve worked hard to build up a large, engaged audience online through blogging, vlogging or podcasting, now is the time to think about how you can monetise your audience.

Aside from selling ads on your site, one of the best ways to make money from your following is by running events. Here we take a look at the three most common types of events run by bloggers, from the low key to the ambitious!

Related: 5 Reasons all bloggers should run events for their readers

Meet-ups

In addition to an enjoyment of your work, your readers/viewers/listeners all have something in common – an interest in the topic or topics you blog or broadcast about.

Because of that shared interest there’s every chance they’d relish the opportunity to meet one another and make some new likeminded friends. And whether you consider yourself a ‘personality’ or not, they’d probably also jump at the chance to hang out with you too. After all, they’ve been tuning in regularly to hear your views, thoughts and opinions.

Organising meet-ups not only gives you an opportunity to generate some cash, it also enables you to start building a real, live community around your blog. This is something that will help ensure its growth and sustainability, and could well lead to other money-making opportunities.

Starting with informal networking is a great way to test the water before progressing to larger, more complex events like conferences or festivals.

There are a number of ways to make money from meet-ups, the first and most obvious being to charge people to attend. A ticket price of £10 doesn’t seem too steep if you chuck in a coffee and a cake or a glass of wine.

Alternatively, if you want to keep it free, try looking for a sponsor. Don’t forget, your audience is valuable – you’ve spent a long time cultivating it and allowing others to target your audience with marketing messages is a privilege they should be prepared to pay for.

Make sure you choose a brand or product that chimes well with your demographic and you can add value for your audience as well as your sponsor. If you’re an avid beauty vlog viewer, why wouldn’t you want to receive free samples of the latest skin cream?

Other ways to generate cash from your get-togethers is by selling merchandise, or use a venue where you can run the bar/kitchen and keep the revenue from food and drink sales.

And if you’re really savvy, you can do all of the above and make your social events into nice littler earners!

Related: How to start a pop-up restaurant that brings home the bacon

Workshops and Training

Whether you realise it or not, you have a skill that you can teach others – and they’ll pay to learn.

The fact you have amassed a loyal following shows you have something of interest to share. Whether that’s recipes or crafting tips, fashion advice or training techniques, you can turn that knowledge into a physical workshop, class or training course.

You might not have any qualifications in your chosen subject, but through your commitment to blogging you’ve made yourself an expert – who knew reading all those copies of Grazia magazine could make you a leading authority on celebrity style!

Even if the topic on which you blog or vlog is less tangible, you can still make money by sharing the secrets of your success. Example workshops could be ‘How to improve your writing and keep readers glued’, ‘How to build a thriving online audience’ or ‘How to produce engaging YouTube videos’.

Organising workshops can be lucrative, with attendees happy to pay £30-50 for just a couple of hours, but even more money can be made from up-selling attendees to extended coaching, private one-on-one sessions or high level masterclasses.

In addition to this, when you are perceived as an expert on a topic you will find that people naturally come to you for advice, possibly leading to consultancy work and professional speaking gigs.

You can also use your enhanced profile to sell books. It’s worth considering self-publishing – with Amazon’s CreateSpace tools it’s easy to create professional looking e-books and printed books with no upfront costs.

Related: 5 creative trends in classes

Conferences

 Once you’re comfortable with conducting workshops and have a decent mailing list of people interested in your events, you can move on to a full-scale conference.

 As well as giving you the necessary practical organisational and presentational skills, hosting workshops will have strengthened your relationship with your readers/viewers/listeners.

You will have a better understanding of your audience and what’s of interest to them, helping you to shape your conference content.

There are many very successful conferences that have grown out blogs, such as An Event Apart, a two-day event for web developers that takes place in seven locations across America and attracts thousands of delegates.

The event was spawned from the blog List Apart, which started as nothing more than a simple mailing list – now the conference is celebrating its tenth year. If you have an engaged readership, there no reason why this couldn’t be you in the future!

Conferences offer many opportunities for moneymaking, from substantial delegate fees (full registration for An Event Apart is $1,290/£850), through to sponsorship packages and exhibitor sales.

Of course, organising a conference is a massive undertaking, but the rewards on offer mean that your blog (which you may well have started simply as a hobby) could become a viable full time job, turning your passion into a career.

Related: 9 Add-ons to increase event revenue

Conclusion

It might seem a daunting idea to take your blog from online to offline – and meet your audience in person – but it needn’t be a big, formal affair – start small and see where it takes you!

Don’t forget to use all of Eventbrite’s resources that can help you promote, manage and sell your events. And don’t miss our comprehensive ‘Launch your event in a month‘ series – there are 22 short lessons in total, covering everything from venue finding to AV and catering, helping you successfully pull off your first live event, whatever its scope.