How To Make Money Blogging – 5 Easy Ways
So you’ve started your blog and you’re writing content. Are you wondering how to make money blogging?
In this post I will go through some of the main ways that people make money blogging and help you encorporate some of the same tactics onto your blog.
I don’t know about you but whenever I’ve said to people in the past that I want to blog as a career.. they’ve always been quite sceptical.
I used to get a lot of questions like can blogging earn you money? And how do people earn money when they’ve just started blogging?
I’ll help you answer these questions and make your blog profitable from the start.
Can Blogging Earn You Money
The simple answer is yes, blogging can earn you money. How much you earn will depend on your niche, the quality of your content and what you have implemented to help earn you money.
There are a lot of successful bloggers who have earned a decent side income with very little traffic. What I’ve noticed is that when this happens they have realised early on what it is that their readers need and they have marketed themselves to be right in front of their ideal reader early on.
Sometimes bloggers also have a decent amount of traffic but haven’t yet monetised their blog, this means they could be missing out on the opportunity to make money from their blog passively.
When you first start blogging it does take several months to see any real traffic on your blog, whether you’re writing content with the intention of getting traffic from Google or Social Media.
I will warn you that it can take a lot of work to get to the point that your blog is making a steady income, however it is so worth it when you get that first payment!
I bet you’re also wondering how much can you make blogging? That’s a difficult question to answer..
How much money you make blogging is going to depend on the traffic to your website, what niche your blog is in, if you’re selling a product or service and how much content you’ve got on your website.
You could be making very little on your blog or 0 right they way up to $100k a month.
Jim Harmer formally of Income School states that most bloggers will be able to make $4,000 a month from a website with 75,000 visitors per month. Don’t be disheartened though because he goes on to state that he has a blog that makes $3,500 from only 32,000 visitors each month.
You can read the full post here how bloggers make money.
Side note, Income School have a great YouTube channel with plenty of free content that you can watch to learn about improving your blog.
It depends how much money you are looking to make from your blog as well. If you have a job that you enjoy and it’s a side hustle for you, then you might be happy making up to $1000 a month and just using that to supplement your regular income.
If you are a stay at home parent or you want blogging to be your full time income then you will want to be much more strategic in how you monetise your blog.
How To Make Money Blogging
I hope you’re feeling inspired! I’m very passionate about blogging and I wanted to share with you some relatively simple ways that you can monetise your blog and start earning money.
I know that there are so many different niches that your blog might be in and there might be some of the below monetisation methods that don’t necessarily work well for your niche.
Just choose which ones you think would work well for you and your readers. It’s definitely possible to make money from your blog regardless of your niche, so I hope this helps you.
1. Make Money With Ads
One of the main ways that bloggers make money is with advertising on their site. You may notice that this blog doesn’t currently have any advertising. I didn’t want it to get in the way of my message.
However, placing ad blocks on your website is a great way of making a passive income.
Ezoic, Media.Net and Google Adsense will let you display ads on your site with very little traffic, as long as you have enough content on your blog. This is because they want to make sure you are a genuine site with your own content.
With other ad providers such as Mediavine, Adthrive and Monumetric you will need to receive a certain number of page views each month before being accepted.
- Mediavine – 50,000
- Adthrive – 75,000
- Monumetric – you can be accepted at 10,000 page views but you’d need to pay an admin fee $99, free for over 80,000 page views.
One thing to bear in mind is that you still want to give your readers a good experience when they visit your website. You don’t want them to leave because you have ads everywhere and it’s difficult for them to read your blog posts.
Ad providers do vary in how much they pay per 1000 views (CPM), this depends on your niche and traffic to the site etc.
I use Ezoic for my other website and it integrates well with Google Adsense, they used to require 10,000 page views per month but they’ve recently changed it to allow any amount of views. Minimum payout for Ezoic is $20 and they’ve got Analytics and a lot of other recommendations within their program.
2. Make Money With Affiliate Links
Affiliate marketing is another great way of making money from your blog. This is because you leave affiliate links within your blog posts. This works particularly well with Food bloggers, Beauty bloggers and DIY bloggers. This is because every time you mention a food item or you review your favourite product, you can leave a link to where it can be bought.
Basically any website where you will be recommending a product or service to your readers can include affiliate links. So for example a Fitness blogger could link to active wear or fitness equipment. Or a Mum blogger could link to baby products or toys that they would recommend.
If you don’t know very much about affiliate links, you first sign up to the brands affiliate program. Sometimes brands have their own affiliate program, or you can find them on a website like Share A Sale or Awin. They have their own commision rates as well and they’ll assign you a unique tracking code that links to your account. Then you can generate a link to their website or a specific product and include that in your blog post.
The link usually comes with a 30 day tracking cookie as well so even if your reader decides not to buy anything immediately, if they come back to the brand’s website within 30 days and make a purchase, you’ll then make a commision on the order.
Commision is usually anything between 2% – 20%, however some companies do offer a much higher commision to this, depending on what they’re trying to sell.
You will need to include a disclaimer on your posts that include affiliate links, example below:
This post contains affiliate links which means I make a small profit if you buy through my link. I would never recommend something I didn’t believe in or wouldn’t buy myself, thank you for your support.
This disclaimer needs to be near the top of your post, near to where you would include a Table of Contents for the post.
It’s very important to only recommend products that you genuinely love so that your readers learn to trust your opinion.
3. Make Money With Sponsored Posts
Sponsored posts are normally something that brands will come to you about when your blog is well established. However, if you think that you know a brand that you can collaborate on a post, it’s definitely worth sending them an email and seeing if they want to work with you.
How much you get paid to do a sponsored post will vary a lot, brands will pay more if your DA is at least 20, which is going to be difficult when you’ve first started blogging. You can check yours on Moz.com.
Domain Authority was created by MOZ, it ranks websites based on their likelihood of ranking well on search engines. The rating system is 0-100 and websites such as Google, Facebook and YouTube are all late 90’s to 100 on the rating system.
Although brands will consider DA when thinking about working with you over a sponsored post, don’t worry about this too much. What will matter more is whether you have an engaged audience or a social media following where you can share your blog post.
This might not be an option for your niche, or you might just be too early in your blogging journey to consider a sponsored post, that’s ok of course!
As with affiliate links you will need to leave a disclaimer on your post, example below:
This is a sponsored post, all views and opinions are my own. I would never recommend a brand or service that didn’t align with my values, thank you for your support.
Some brands will just want you to include a relevant link to their product or website and some brands will want a full review of their product or service on your blog.
As I mentioned, how much you get paid will depend on other factors but between $100-$300 is average for a sponsored post. When you think about the work that goes into writing a blog post. Keyword research, writing the blog post and taking pictures if necessary, then it’s reasonable to expect at least $100 even with a lower DA.
If you’re wondering how to write the perfect blog post every time, I’ve written a post how to write an engaging blog post which you can check out next.
4. Make Money From Digital Or Physical Products
Another great way of making some money from your blog is by selling digital products. These also could be referred to as paid products or printables. In general making a product to sell to your audience could be a great way of helping your readers and earning a bit of extra money from your blog.
What I like about this idea is that most niches can benefit from providing their readers with something really helpful like a guide or checklist and it will also increase brand awareness.
If you’d like to entice people to sign up to your email list you can use a freebie or printable to encourage them to sign up, you can then have a paid product like the full guide which you can offer once they’re on your email list.
For example, a fitness blogger could offer a weekly workout plan as their freebie and then their paid product could be a year workout calendar with lots of extra tips.
So many people want to get more organised with their fitness, meals, home and even working life. Being able to give them something that’s super helpful and that they don’t need to create themselves is great! Think of how busy people are, if they can just print or download a guide or calendar and it’s all done for them.. they’ll definitely do it.
If you’re a food blogger you can create a week of recipes /meal plan and then your paid product could be an ebook with even more recipes and tips.
You can create pretty much any printable in Canva and save it as a PDF.
For a free download you can upload your PDF once it’s created to the media file on the back end of your website and then include the link on the page or blog post where you want the PDF to be downloaded. Or if you’re using your freebie as an incentive to sign up to your mail list you can set it up to be downloadable after they’ve filled in the form on your website. (See your email provider for information on how to do this)
There are a few ways that you can set up a system to take payments for your paid products, as follows:
- Woocommerce – for physical products and digital products
- SendOwl – for digital products only
- Easy Digital Downloads – for digital products only
If you have something physical you want to sell as well you can usually get this set up alongside your blog quite easily. If you’re on WordPress you can use the Woocommerce plugin. You can also use this plugin for downloadable products too.
I know that a WordPress.org website can be quite confusing with all of the plugins available, that’s why I’ve created a post with the best wordpress plugins for your blog.
If you’re using a web builder such as Squarespace or Wix, you should be able to create specific pages and sections where you can start selling and taking payments from your website. Depending on your provider of course, have a look at the help pages and you should be able to incorporate it easily onto your website.
5. Make Money From Online Courses
Lastly, another great way of making money blogging is by selling a course on your website. This works very well if you are a Coach, Social Media Manager or Pinterest Manager. Basically any blog where your main purpose is to teach people something, will work well if you include a course.
First you need to have a course idea, make sure that this course is a good idea and will actually help your audience. Your course needs to be well structured and helpful for your readers. Have a think about what your readers might be struggling with.. If you’re a Pinterest Manager then a Pinterest strategy course might be just want your readers will want to help them master Pinterest.
Also make sure that your course idea is a good one by doing some keyword research. You can use a tool such as Keywords Everywhere which will tell you the search volume for the keyword you’re looking at. If you already have an email list you can always ask them what they think of your course idea, prior to even making the course.
Online courses have grown in popularity over the last few years. For your readers, it’s such a great way of gaining new skills and they can complete them in their own time from the comfort of their home.
You will need to work quite a bit initially to create a course but then you can keep selling your course over and over. You will then only need to make sure it is updated regularly when there are changes to the process or industry.
You could create a free course where you teach a certain part of your industry and then you can offer the full paid course to your readers at a later stage.
Making a really good online course is key here, make sure that the quality of your video and sound is good. You can create the course for free using Google Slides. Once you’ve decided on your price, you can host your course through Kajabi or Thinkific.
I would also recommend making a introduction video for the sign up page of your course too. People like to see a genuine person before they hand over any money.
Final Thoughts
I hope this has helped you get ideas on how to make money blogging. When you first start blogging, you might find people ask you a lot, “Can blogging earn you money?” Blogging can of course earn you money, you just have to think about how you want to monetise and what you can offer people when they land on your blog.
Diversify your income sources as well, don’t just rely on one source of income for your blog. If for example you rely on ads for your site and a Google Algorithm update means that you lose a lot of the views to a few blog posts, then you might find yourself short of income. It just makes sense to have a few different ways that you make money from your blog.
If you are still a bit overwhelmed you can fill out the form on the About Me page and I’ll get back to you soon.
Damaris
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