Hello!
I run a blog called
Wild Homesteading that gets around 5 to 6k users per month. For revenue I don't use ads at all--never liked them and I feel they distract from the site.
I use Patreon where people sign up to support the site as patrons. This brings in $88 a month at the moment which is likely more than I could get from ads. I also use
affiliate links both from Amazon and Permies. This tends to bring in $20 to $60 per month. And I'm in the process of creating my first
online course which will be an evergreen product and will likely bring in a fair bit more than affiliates or
Patreon. Though I'm also getting ready to launch a
podcast which I think will help grow the number of Patrons I have. I also recently started doing paid public speaking and that looks like it will also result in me being hired to provide consultation services to people though that is all new for me. But I've got 2 people that are interested. Potentially this could be a good revenue source though it needs more development.
As far as hosting services for the site. I use Site Ground to host my site which is a wordpress site. I like it and the cost isn't bad--though eventually I will upgrade to a better host service to improve my site's load time. But that isn't needed now.
I would also recommend looking at building an email list if you haven't yet. I use a site called Convertkit which I think is really good--there is a free option to get you started with them. Once you get an email list you can use that to market your products and services and start getting sells. As long as you don't spam them and provide good free content people
should be happy to consider buying any paid services/products you end up offering.
I'm also exploring writing some
books and marketing those in the future. I've got one that is in progress but it had to be put on the back burner for the moment.
To me this overall approach is much better than trying to deal with ads and generally results in more revenue than ads would--plus the user
experience tends to be better.