How to make money blogging

Here are five popular ways to make money blogging including a step-by-step guide for each way that you can start implementing for your blog starting today.

While most blogs do not earn a full-time income, blogging can be wildly profitable. What a lot of bloggers lack is the knowledge and understanding to take their blog from a passion project to a fully monetized business.

These are the 5 ways you can make money blogging:

Display ads
Affiliate marketing
Sponsored posts
Products
Services

Display ads

Display ads are — wait for it — ads you display on your site. I have no doubt you’ve seen these in your internet travels.

They display automatically and change depending on the user. You know when you visit a specific website, say Best Buy, and then everywhere you go for the next few days you see Best Buy ads? Those are types of ads we are talking about.

How to make money blogging with display ads

You can make money blogging by placing ads on your site. This is the most passive form of income that comes from blogging.

When you have display ads on your blog you get paid simply for having traffic.

Depending on the type of ad, you could get paid either when the ad is shown to a user (per impression) or when they click (per click).

While advertising income is a desirable form of blogging revenue because it’s passive, it’s also one of the most low-paying. In order to make a full-time income from ads alone, your blog should have high traffic (100,000+ monthly views).

Don’t let this discourage you if your blog traffic isn’t there yet. Display ads are an income stream you can have in place for your blog, earning you up to hundreds or thousands of dollars each month.

How to place ads on your blog

First, you’ll join an ad network. Then, you will work with the network to have ads placed on your site. Networks usually pay out once a month and you’ll be able to monitor your ad clicks, CPM (how much you are getting paid per 1,000 impressions), and other metrics on your ad dashboard.

Here are some ad networks you can review:

Google Adsense is the ad network to start with if you’re a beginner or have low blog traffic. You visit Google Adsense, apply to have your site Adsense-approved and then upon approval, you can choose the ad sizes and ad types to appear on your blog.

Next, is Ezoic or Monumetric. They accept publishers that have a minimum of 10,000 monthly sessions. If your blog is at this level, consider joining this network.

Mediavine requires publishers to have 50,000+ monthly sessions on their website. Adthrive requires publishers to have at least 100,000 monthly page views in order to accept them into their network.

How much can you make from ads on your blog?

This depends on your CPM (cost per thousand). Your CPM is your ad rate for your blog, dependent on your industry. Food blog CPMs can vary from personal finance blog CPMs or travel blog CPMs.

Your CPM will determine how much you get paid and you can check this on your ad network’s dashboard after logging in.

How to get started?

First, review your traffic stats. Based on your level of traffic, pick one of the networks above to apply to and upon approval, get ads placed on your blog and start making money blogging from ads.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is about marketing products to consumers as an affiliate. You refer products to your blog readers and if they purchase, you earn a commission.

How to make money blogging with affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is another promising revenue source for your blog.

How much can you make from affiliate marketing?

Michelle makes over $50,000 per month from affiliate marketing

Adam makes more than $60,000 per month from affiliate marketing

While these income levels are not the norm and represent outliers in affiliate income, this is still definitely an opportunity to make a lot of money!

This is how you do it.

How to get started with affiliate marketing

Think about what products or services are a good fit for your audience. Consider products you personally use and love, companies you stand behind, and products and brands that you think your audience will enjoy.

Be authentic and don’t be driven by the money, however tempting it may be.

When you’ve identified some companies, Google [company name] affiliate program to see if they have a program. If they do, it’s likely they will be with an affiliate network that you will need to join first.

Common affiliate networks are:

Once you have an account with the affiliate network you can apply for the specific program you want to join.

If you are having trouble finding companies you like that also have affiliate programs check out who the larger sites in your niche are promoting. That will give you a good idea of what affiliates do well in your space.

Once you have access to your affiliate links, place them naturally throughout your blog where they make sense.

Rinse and repeat with multiple affiliate programs to start making money with affiliate marketing.

For more on affiliate marketing, check out our step-by-step guide to starting an affiliate marketing blog.

Or learn from the master herself. Michelle spills all her secrets in her course, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing.

Sponsored posts

Sponsored posts are a fun way to make money blogging through partnership with brands. You get paid to test out new products while sharing them with your audience.

How to make money blogging with sponsored posts

You will work with a brand, promoting their product to your audience and get paid for it!

For example, if you run a home decor blog, a paint company may contact you requesting a paid partnership or sponsored post. They will pay you a flat amount to write a sponsored blog post, sharing them with your readers.

Sometimes the company may even add you to their affiliate program so you can earn money as an affiliate too, as a bonus.

That’s how it works!

One paid sponsorship can fetch up to four or figures (or more)! If you secure multiple sponsored posts every month, that’s enough for a full-time income!

In fact, this source puts the pay range at up to $300 to $25,000+ per sponsorship.

Some bloggers make the majority of their blogging income from sponsored posts alone.

Here’s how you can get started with them.

How to get started with sponsored posts

There are 3 ways to make money with sponsored posts on your blog:

Join sponsored networks
Contact companies
Companies contact you

How to join a sponsored network?

First, find networks to join. Register and apply to join. Once accepted, you’ll be able to start working with brands vetted by the sponsored network.

The network will either contact you once they find a sponsored deal that fits your blog or you’ll have access to a dashboard where you can view all the campaigns and apply to the ones you want to.

Either way, it’s an easy way to start working with brands and get paid from sponsorships.

Here are some sponsored networks to check out:

How to contact companies for sponsorships?

Make a list of companies you want to work with, then search for the brand’s media or PR contact, which can be found on their website, on LinkedIn, or other places online.

If you’re having difficulty finding a contact, try the Hunter chrome extension.

It’s a free Chrome extension that you can install on your browser and when you activate it, you’ll find a list of emails from the website. From that list, identify the correct person to contact for sponsorships and then craft your email!

The most common way to reach out is via email. When preparing your email, keep it short and sweet. Introduce yourself, explain your intent to partner in a paid sponsorship and wait for a reply.

Once you hear back from the company, coordinate the details and run the sponsorship!

How to have companies contact you for sponsorship?

In order for brands to contact you, they will need an easy way to reach you. This can be through your email address so make sure you have your email prominently displayed across your website, social media pages, and other places online where brands can find you.

After they reach out, you can start coordinating the details of the sponsorship, get paid and run the sponsored post!

What kind of sponsorship deals can you do?

There are many different kinds of sponsored brands deals you can arrange. Here are some examples:

Sponsored blog post
Social media post (on Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, etc.)
Social media story (on Instagram, etc.)
Video demonstration (on YouTube, etc.)

How much do blog sponsorships pay?

The amount you can earn from blog sponsorships can vary from blog to blog. To price your sponsorship rate, head to Social Bluebook which will help you accurately price your social worth to grow your blog business.

Products

Product income is one of the most lucrative forms of revenue from blogging. You create a product that solves a problem your audience has, sell it with the help of sales funnels and other methods, and produce a recurring income stream for your blog.

You can make a digital product or a physical product.

Digital products include ebooks, digital courses, e-guides, etc.

Physical products can include merchandise like t-shirts, hoodies, hats, or coffee mugs, physical books and journals, annual planners, etc.

Here’s how you get started…

How to get started with selling products

First, uncover a pain point your audience has.

For a craft blogger, it might be that your readers struggle to come up with DIY gift ideas. To solve this problem you can make a DIY gift guide with DIY gift ideas and instructions for your customers to follow to make DIY gifts all year long.

Or, for a finance blogger, your readers may struggle with budgeting for their household so you can create and sell a budget spreadsheet they can load into Excel to manage their budget every month.

Once you identify a problem and come up with a solution, it’s time to create your product.

Here are some resources you check out for digital products:

Teachable: Digital course hosting where your online courses will be housed and available to students for purchase.
Sendowl: Ecommerce platform where you can create a la carte and bundle digital product links to be shared on your website, social platforms, email newsletter, and other places.
Canva: Free graphic design resource to create your digital product graphics like ebook covers, etc.

Here are some resources for creating and selling physical products:

Teespring: Online platform to sell t-shirts and apparel merchandise.
Printify: Print on demand platform to sell your products. They help with billing, design, and fulfillment, printing products like mugs, socks, jackets, posters, and more.
Shopify: Online store platform where you can host your physical or digital goods for selling.
Alibaba: Wholesale marketplace where you can source goods, supplies, and materials for your products.

Services

For service providers, blogging is an opportunity to make money providing your service to your readers.

These services can include anything from copywriting services, graphic design, accounting and bookkeeping, auditing, coaching, consulting, and more.

How to get started selling services

On your site, create a “work with me” page. Here is where you will create the sales page for hiring you. You can list the services or packages you offer.

Include samples of your work as much as you can, for example if you are a freelance writer you could link to articles you’ve written. Also include testimonials from past clients if you have them.

When writing blog posts consider what topics would be interesting to your ideal client. For example, if you sell bookkeeping services you might write a series of Quickbooks tips. That will pull in people who are struggling with Quickbooks and might be interested in hiring it out.

How to take selling services to the next level

Services income can be limiting since there’s only one of you and limited working hours during the day but, this is the perfect opportunity to start a digital agency as your workload grows.

Managing an agency means you’ll have other service professionals you can outsource work to, managing their workflow, and acting as the point of contact between them and your clients.

If you make $3,000 per month from 3 clients and you get 9 more interested prospects who want to work with you, outsource it to 2 or 3 service professionals and keep the difference between their fee and what you’re charging your customer.

For example, if each client pays $3,000 per month and you outsource the work for $2,000 you’ll earn $1,000 a month per outsourced client.

The Bottom Line About How to Make Money Blogging

In the end, making money blogging is totally possible.

These 5 ways to monetize your blog can take you in many directions, giving you tons of ways to earn income from blogging.

From offering coaching to your readers, launching a digital course, optimizing your blog posts with affiliate links and ads, and more, it may take some work but it’s definitely within reach.

Remember, blogging has so many more rewards than just making money. If you love helping people, making a change in the lives of others, and educating your audience, then you already know how rewarding blogging can be.

What avenues are you pursuing to monetize your blog?