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How To Make Money Blogging
How to make money blogging? That’s the question everyone wants to know the answer to. Some people start blogging for fun or for adult interaction. Others, like myself, start blogging to make money.
I knew that there were people making really good money blogging and I wanted to know how! I have always dreamed about being a stay at home mom to my daughter, but that job doesn’t pay very well, and our family needs two incomes.
My husband has worked so hard to be able to provide for us on his own. He even started a small lawn care company on the side plus his full-time job. We were very thankful he did that too because I found out in the spring of 2017 that my place of employment was closing. This gave me the opportunity to stay home and help him run the lawn care company.
Also, now that I am home, I am working very hard to make money with my blog, so he doesn’t have to mow yards on the side anymore!
I did so much research on blogs before I ever had the guts to start one. I had gone down the blogging road years before, but it just didn’t work out. My desire never went away though. But this time it all just worked out perfectly for me to start when I did.
How To Make Money Blogging
During all of my research, I learned that there are several ways to make money blogging.
From what I read it really depends on the blog as to which way works best. Some blogs make the most money from placings ads on their blogs and some say affiliate marketing makes them the most money.
You have to decide what works best for you.
The 5 main ways to make money with your blog are:
- Affiliate Marketing – This essentially is getting compensated for promoting another product or company.
- Ads on your blog – You can place ads on to your blog.
- Services – You can offer different services.
- Create and sell products – This could be an ebook, a course, or even a physical product.
- Sponsored posts – Get paid to write posts for other blogs or companies.
1. Affiliate Marketing
If you are new to blogging, I am sure this is the one way to make money that you have heard the most about. It is a very simple concept yet when I explain it to anyone outside of the blogging world, they look at me like I’m crazy.
Affiliate marketing is essentially getting paid to advertise or sell for others. I recently found out that companies will even pay you for leads you send to them not just purchases made.
There is a lot that goes into affiliate marketing and I go more in depth in this blog post right here if you are interested in learning more!
Here is how you can use affiliate marketing on your blog to make money.
Let’s say that your blog is about puppy training. You love to write about how to care and train your puppy.
While writing a blog post about the best products to use for puppy training you will most likely be suggesting the products you use and trust. Now let’s say that your readers want to purchase that product because they trust your opinion.
If you were an affiliate for that product, your reader could click on a link that would take them to that product for them to purchase it.
This is a win-win for everyone involved.
- Your reader was able to solve their problem and get the product that you recommended to help them train their puppy
- If they used your affiliate link to click through and purchase that product it will tell the company, you sent that customer and the company (depending on their affiliate program) will compensate you for sending them a paying customer.
- Then, of course, the company wins by receiving a new customer with little effort on their part.
How does it work?
When you sign up to be an affiliate for a company, they will give you a special link that attaches a cookie to the reader that clicks through the link. It depends on the affiliate program how long that cookie will last.
For example, I believe Amazon’s cookie only last 24 hours. However, I am apart of affiliate programs where the cookie lasts 365 days!
This cookie tells the company who sent that customer and it is a way to track where the customers are coming from and who to compensate for referring them.
Each program pays out differently, so you have to check those details when you sign up.
All of the affiliate programs I am a part of will pay me even if the customer that linked on my link purchases a different product.
For example, if I have an Amazon link on my blog to a book and a reader clicks through but doesn’t purchase that book but instead purchases something else in the correct time frame then I will receive compensation for that purchase.
Here is an example of what an Amazon affiliate link may look like.
There are three different options to add affiliate links to your blog from Amazon. The one above is the text and image option.
You can choose if you want the link to only be text so you can add it to any phrase on your blog such as this!
Or you can just have it be the image itself with no text like this one below.
Either way that ring light is awesome and I love mine!
Another example of how you can get paid even if the reader doesn’t purchase the product you first recommended is if a reader clicks on one of my links to one of the courses that I recommend such as Michelle course Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing and that cookie lasts 365 days so any other purchases they make during that time I get compensated for as well.
There are some stipulations such as they would have to be on the same device they used to click the original link but that is still pretty cool! If that reader that clicked through decided later to purchase another product from Michelle, I get compensated!
How do you sign up?
There are literally thousands if not millions of affiliate programs out there. The most popular one is probably Amazon.
It covers such a wide range of products that you can pretty much find any product you want on there to add to your blog.
Amazon doesn’t pay out a large amount per sale and as I said the cookie doesn’t last long either. They also have strict rules on disclosure and making sure you aren’t hiding or concealing anything from your readers.
Make sure to read through all of the terms and conditions before signing up.
Amazon, like other affiliate programs, only gives you a certain amount of time to make a sale before the kick you out of the program. Don’t worry though you are able to try again to rejoin and make a sale.
How do I find affiliate programs?
If there is a certain company that you know you want to work with then you can go to their website and scroll to the very bottom and look for a link that says Affiliate or Affiliate Program.
If they don’t have a link, then you can try to contact them and ask if they offer an affiliate program. Some of the bigger companies use affiliate networks.
These networks host affiliate programs for multiple companies. This just saves that company from having to deal with it themselves. They just have that affiliate network take care of it for them. Some of these networks include Commission Junction, ShareASale, and Rakuten(Link Share).
You can go to those websites and join the network and have access to join hundreds of name brand companies.
If you don’t know a company but you just are interested in a product, then you can google that product + affiliate and it will list all the companies that have that product and offer an affiliate program.
Check out how I made my first affiliate sale with zero followers!
If affiliate marketing sounds like the way for you then the best course to take to learn all the in’s and out’s is Making Sense with Affiliate Marketing by Michelle Gardner. She makes over $50,000 a month with affiliate marketing!
Here is my review of her course after I took it if you are interested in learning more!
2. Ads on Your Blog
I personally don’t use ads on my blog as a major source of income. I did add Google Adsense to my blog to test it out. However, to make money with ads on your blog you need to have a good amount of traffic coming to your blog each month.
It isn’t the fastest way to make money with your blog, but it can be done.
There are two main ways you can get paid for ad placement on your blog. The first is RPM/CPM and the second is CPC.
RPM/CPM stands for Revenue Per Mille/Cost Per Mille and what that means is basically per 1,000.
This is the rate that you are paid per 1,000 impressions. So for example, if you have 20,000 page views per month and your RPM is $5.00, then you would earn $100 a month from ads on your blog.
CPC stands for Cost Per Click and that means that you get paid per click not just by how many people see the ad.
There are pros and cons to using ads on your blog.
Pros
- Residual income
- Steadily grow
- Extra money on the side
- Not much effort
- Easy to maintain
Cons
- They can make your blog look spammy
- Ads can turn readers away
- They can distract readers
- Ads can slow down your blog
- They can take a while to see any money made with them
A great resource to learn more about ads is Victoria Pruett’s ebook Make Money Blogging at Any Level. She breaks down ads and how she uses them to help her earn over $8,000 a month blogging about Homestead life!
3. Services
There are so many different services you could offer to make money on your blog!
- Virtual Assistant
- Graphic Designer
- Freelance writer
- Social Media Manager
- Coaching/Training
Those are just a few of the main ones but if there is a need then you can charge for it!
A great way to advertise your services is by having a blog.
This is where you can show your experience and knowledge in that particular area.
So many major companies have a blog to draw in new customers. Let’s say you provide a service of grooming dogs (I must have dogs on my brain today) then you can blog about dogs and grooming dogs to draw the attention of new customers.
Blogging itself is a great way to bring in an extra income on the side of providing that service as well. But if your main goal is to showcase your abilities of the service you provide then blogging about it shows your expertise on the subject.
By starting a blog about the service, you provide it is the perfect way to advertise yourself. If you are a Graphic Designer, then you can use your blog to show your potential customers why you are the right person for their need.
They can go to your blog and see your work, your work ethic, your commitment, and your experience. It is just a great way to sell your service!
Here is my post that goes more into detail on providing services on your blog to make money!
4. Sell your own products
This is where the bigger bucks come into play.
You can make pennies with ads and you can make dollars with affiliate marketing but selling your own products puts you in charge of how much you make.
With affiliate marketing, you don’t have to create any products but the highest you will probably make per sale is 40%. Maybe 50% if you are lucky!
However, selling your own products you are able to make 100% of the profit! All you have to do is pay for the hosting of your products but that’s it! And there are probably ways to host it yourself for free with a WordPress plugin or something.
I have products I offer, and they are hosted on Teachable and I have to pay Teachable monthly and per sale, but it is a small amount. I get almost all of the profit per sale. But this way I know that my products are handled with a trusted company that is going to be secure for my readers and myself.
You can sell a physical product such as a t-shirt, an ornament, wall décor, etc. or a digital product such as an eBook, a course, a PDF, a file, a worksheet, a chart, a guide, a booklet, and so on! The possibilities are endless!
Then you get to set the amount you want to sell it for!
Maybe you feel your knowledge is worth $100 per sale on your course, then you can put that as your price! Maybe you think that it’s worth $10 and you hope more people buy it at the lower price. That’s your choice as well!
If you choose to sell a digital product and you go through Teachable, they have an option to offer a discount on your products.
This makes it easy for you to run sales for your products. You can offer a discount as a promotion, a prize, or a holiday special! Plus, you are able to offer your own affiliate program and have other bloggers sign up to promote your products!
Teachable also integrates with most email marketing providers so you can keep everything tracking altogether. This way not only can you make more money selling your own product you can make sales from your affiliates too!
5. Sponsored Posts
A sponsored post is when you get paid to write a post by a company or brand.
A company may ask you to write a review on a product they offer or write a post about their company in general or a service they provide. It really just depends. It also is up to you on how much you want to charge for you to write a sponsored post. Or how much you charge for the post they wrote to go on your blog.
You have to keep in mind a few things when it comes to sponsored posts.
- The time and effort it is going to take you to write the post and promote it.
- If you actually believe in this company and want to share it with your readers.
- If they write it, make sure you proofread it first.
- Make sure they understand it will be a nofollow link.
- Set up standard rules to follow such as how long the post will be, how many links are allowed in the post, what quality pictures will be used, and so on.
- The amount of traffic that will see this post. If you don’t have that much traffic coming in, then you can’t expect to charge them too much.
The best suggestion I have for you if you are serious about doing sponsored posts is to really do your research.
Reach out to other bloggers that have dealt with them before and get their expertise. I love going on to the blogging Facebook Groups and asking all those amazing bloggers for their advice.
They are more than willing to help you out and give you their opinion and steer you in the right direction!
Here is a list of blogging Facebook Groups to check out!
You also want to do your research on the company that you are working with too. I have had many emails come through asking to work together and after a little research, I can tell it is not a good idea.
There are too many scams out there so please be careful!
On the other hand, there are actual legit companies and bloggers out there wanting to work together!
If you are looking to working with other bloggers than take a look at all of the featured bloggers I have right here on Mom Blog From Home!
Features
I love to feature mom bloggers on my blog and help them connect and grow! I offer this service for free, but I also offer paid feature spots that come with more benefits!
This gives bloggers the opportunity to get their blogs in front of other like-minded driven mom bloggers! This gets their blogs not only more exposure but it is a perfect way to showcase many mom blogs at once so you can find the perfect match to work with! Learn more here!
Conclusion
As you can see there are many options to make money with your blog. These are just the main ones but if you can dream it and there is a need for it you can make it happen!
I would say the first two I would start with as a new blogger is to add affiliate links to your blog posts and sign up for Google Adsense to get some ad revenue coming in. It won’t be much at first but over time it could really pay off!
Do you make money with your blog using a different method? I would love to here!
Vanessa