How to Make Money Blogging
Blogging is a great hobby for a lot of people (myself included), but it’s actually possible to make some money, and in fact, along with those who use blogging as a side hustle, there are a lot of bloggers who manage to make a full-time income from their blog!
It’s definitely not a quick and easy way to make money (in my experience!) but with some time, effort and dedication, there are quite a few ways you can use a blog to make money.
To be transparent – if you do want to start a money making blog, whilst it is possible to start for free, it’s most likely that you’ll need to invest initially in a web domain and hosting.
After I started my blog, I came across lots of bloggers sharing their income reports online, and seeing how lots of people were making money blogging, I started researching and implementing some of the ways in which it’s possible to earn income from a blog.
These aren’t the only ways to make money blogging, but I think these are probably the main income streams for most bloggers who earn money from their blog.
Earn Via Affiliate Marketing On Your Blog
Affiliate marketing is one of the main ways that a lot of bloggers are able to make an income. It simply involves sharing a link to a product or service, and if your reader clicks your link and goes on to make a purchase, you earn a commission.
It’s important to stay true to yourself and be honest with your readers so it’s best to only share links for products or services that you can honestly recommend.
Some companies will require you to sign up to their own individual affiliate schemes, but most can be found and joined by signing up with affiliate agencies. Using an agency means you can sign up for multiple affiliate schemes and get paid easily with one payment via the agency.
The main agencies I use are AWIN and OfferJuice, others you can join include Share a Sale, CJ Affiliate, Tradedoubler, and I’m sure there are plenty more!
You can also sign up to Amazon Associates to earn commissions on Amazon sales, and eBay has its eBay Partner Network which you can sign up to affiliate to eBay products.
Make Money Blogging with Sponsored Posts and Collaborations.
A great way to earn money from your blog is to write sponsored content. This is where a brand will commission you to write a blog post about their product or service. This may be in the form of a review, or a more general article that relates or links to them in some way. You may also be required to share on your social networks. You could also host competitions and giveaways for a brand to help them advertise.
There are a few ways to find opportunities for sponsored work:
Social Networks
There are groups on Facebook you can use to find work – search and join groups using terms such as Blogger Opportunities.
On twitter you can search the hashtags #bloggerswanted and #bloggersrequired. These are used by PR and marketing people to find bloggers to create content for them.
Agencies
You can join networks to find sponsored work. One I’ve worked for before is Get Blogged, they are a network which lists opportunities for paid posts, you can search for jobs and the pay is varied based on your domain authority.
Pitch Directly
If you think your blog would be a great fit for a particular brand, or there’s a company you’d love to work with, you can pitch for work directly to them. Make sure you do your research, then reach out with your pitch to their marketing or PR person.
Help Them Reach Out To You
Sometimes you may find that brands come across your site and reach out directly to you asking to collaborate. To make this easier you can make sure your site has an obvious means to contact you, and you could write that you are open to collaborations within your ‘About’ page.
Make Money From Your Blog With Adverts
One of the easiest and most passive ways to earn money from a blog is through display advertising. You simply add code to your website which allows an advertising company to display adverts on your blog.
Advertising companies have varying requirements for joining and what you get paid can vary too.
For example, MediaVine is widely recommended by bloggers as being a great company to work with, and they have a minimum requirement of 25 000 sessions monthly.
Monumetric is another network, with a requirement of 10k pageviews. If you have over 80k monthly pageviews it’s free to join, however there is a one time joining fee of $99 if you have less.
If you’re not there yet (getting to 25000 sessions is my main blogging goal right now!) you can still use ads on your site if you’d like to. Both Google Adsense and Media.net don’t have a minimum sessions requirement so you can sign up to either of those earlier on. Just be aware that with much less traffic your ad revenue will likely be pretty low so it may be worth waiting, or you may want to get your viewers accustomed to seeing ads on your site from early on, it’s personal preference.
Reviews
Reviewing products or services is another way to make money as a blogger. Some bloggers will charge a fee to write a review, whereas others will be happy to review items in return for the free product. Whether you get paid or are given a freebie, the review should contain your honest and unbiased opinions.
So there you go – four ways you can use make money blogging. There are others – some people create their own products to sell via their blog, eBooks, courses, photography etc, and some offer their services as a freelance blog writer. I’m sure there are plenty of other ways to earn an income blogging, such as developing and selling your own courses and products, but those four above are probably the main ones to get started with.
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