How to make money with a blog for beginners

The whole idea of making money blogging can be difficult for some to grasp but the truth is, it’s a total reality.

Once you set up your blog you’ll need to offer something for sale. This could be through affiliate marketing, display ads, or selling your own products or services. Sponsorships is another option. This is where you talk about a product on your platform for a fee.

How to get started blogging

Blogging can bring a ton of benefits to you and your readers. It’s about storytelling and educating your audience about your niche, whether it’s vegan lifestyle or house hacking.

To get started blogging, you’ll follow these steps:

Pick a niche
Get hosting and domain
Build your blog

Step 1: Pick a niche

Your blog niche is your blog topic. It’s what you’ll be talking about on the blog. There are hundreds of different niches and you can pick any topic you want.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

Finance
Travel
Food
Education
Fashion
Sewing or knitting
Lifestyle
Parenting/kids

When making this decision, you can consider your passions, interests, your body of knowledge or expertise, among other factors.

It’s important to identify your niche from the start.

You want to have a clear vision for your blog and write about a specific topic rather than everything. This will help you draw in your target reader interested in your blog niche, which will help you make money when it’s time to monetize your blog.

Once you figure out what niche your blog will be about, move onto step 2.

Step 2: Get hosting and domain

In this step, you’ll get hosting services and a domain.

Hosting is recommended for professional blogging. Whether you want to blog full-time or blog as a side hustle or project, for a professional appearance which can lead to monetization opportunities, more traffic, and other perks, hosting is necessary.

We recommend Bluehost, which includes a free domain.

Step 3: Build your blog

Lastly, you’ll build your blog.

This involves adding content like writing your blog posts, writing your blog pages, sharing your vision for the blog, monetizing the blog and much more.

So, this is the three-step process for creating your blog.

And, if this whole process feels too overwhelming for you, consider checking out our Launch that Blog service.

This free service includes all this:

Install your self-hosted WordPress blog
Install our favorite customizable website theme along with training materials
Install 10 essential plugins
Four training resources (video and PDF guides)
Free domain

Plus, these bonuses:

Creating Blog Posts in WordPress: A Step-By-Step Walkthrough
The Key Ingredients To the Perfect Post (Step-By-Step Video Guide)
The Professional Blogger’s Toolkit
The Blueprint To Building a Profitable Blog
Facebook Ads 101 Training For Bloggers
How to Customize Your Blog – bonus training put together by our web developer for Millennial Money Man and Laptop Empires showing you exactly how to customize your theme to make your blog look great in minutes

You get this service, Launch that Blog, totally free, but you do have to pay for the cost of the hosting services. It’s a hassle-free, no-stress way to get your blog set up by professionals if you don’t have the time or don’t want to do it yourself.

If you’re interested, click here to learn more.

What kinds of blogs make money?

All kinds of blogs make money. The easiest kinds of blogs to monetize are product-based and have a passionate audience behind them, like crafting blogs, sewing blogs or blogs about parenting and kids, to name a few examples.

Other passionate niches can include:

Pets
Health
Lifestyle
Money
Home decor

There are many ways to make money with a blog. Here are 5 ways you can get started.

5 ways to make money with a blog for beginners

There are many ways to make money with blogging. You can explore all these avenues or pick your favorites to pursue.

1. Advertising

Placing ads on your blog is one of the easiest ways to make money blogging. Ads are easy because they are completely passive. When a visitor lands on your blog and clicks an ad, you earn money.

No signup required. No purchase necessary.

All they need to do is click the ad and you earn money. This is a great way to make money in your sleep and the more traffic your blog receives, the more you can potentially make from advertising.

There are blogs that make $1,000/month in ad revenue and blogs that make up to $100,000/month in ad revenue and more!

If this sounds interesting to you, here are some ways you can set up ads on your blog.

Apply to an Ad Network

An ad network is going to give you the ads that you can place on your blog. You can put ads wherever you want, including in the body of your content like in your blog posts, in the header, footer, side bar, and other places.

The ad network that many new bloggers start with is usually Google Adsense.

Adsense does not have a minimum traffic requirement to join and it’s an easy way to quickly place ads on your website.

If you are an experienced blogger and have higher traffic numbers every month, you may consider joining an ad network that has minimum requirements to join like Mediavine or Adthrive.

You’ll find that joining ad networks like these will usually increase your ad income compared to Google AdSense.

To get started, just head to one of these ad networks, review the requirements and feel free to apply at any time.

Another neat perk of joining an ad network other than Google Adsense is that these networks will usually manage all your ads for you!

You don’t have to worry about getting the ad code, where to place the ads or other management-related tasks associated with advertising income.

2. Affiliate Marketing

You make money blogging with affiliate marketing by referring products to your readers. When they buy, you earn a small commission at no additional cost to them.

For example, you could refer your readers to a subscription box ($10 commission) at a rate of 50 readers per month, earning you $500 per month ($10 x 50 readers).

The more places you have affiliate links in your blog, the more opportunities you have to make money.

Here are some best practices to help you make the most with affiliate marketing:

Be authentic: Only refer products you believe in, trust, and truly recommend your readers try out.
Don’t only stick with the high-paying offers: It may be tempting to only refer high-paying offers, but this goes back to our first pro tip: being authentic. Remember this above all.
Be consistent: Share your links often, where appropriate and consistently when you blog.
Track your work: This holds you accountable, keeps you on top of your income for tracking purposes and it can drive you, to help you increase your earnings over time.

For more on affiliate marketing, check out our free guide.

3. Sponsorships

Sponsorships are a way to monetize your blog through brand deals. Companies work with you and compensate you in exchange for sharing them with your readers.

For example, if you run a restaurant food blog, a local restaurant may contact you, pay you a flat fee and offer you a gift certificate for dining, in exchange for an Instagram post, YouTube video and blog post.

Sponsorships are a desirable way to make money blogging because they can be very lucrative and often come with a bunch of perks aside from the initial compensation, which can include:

Free product
Lifetime access to products or services
Free travel
And, more!

Where to find sponsorships?

Brands can contact you. You can contact brands. Or, you can work with a sponsored network.

The first option is the most hands off for you. Just make sure you have your contact details visible on your blog and wait for offers to come into your inbox.

Next, contacting brands is the proactive approach to making money with sponsorships. Identify your favorite brands then contact their media or PR team and pitch a paid sponsorship.

Then, you can join sponsored networks. A network is like the middleman between you and the brand. They will help you to find brands to work with and will negotiate your compensation and details of the sponsorship. In exchange for this service, they earn a cut of the brand deal.

Examples of sponsored networks include:

4. Products

The opportunity to sell your own products exists if you’re a blogger. Your audience can convert to paying customers and if you sell products within your niche, fitting that target market, the potential to make a lot of money is huge.

Here are some examples of physical and digital products you can sell:

Coffee mugs
Sweatshirts
T-shirts
Candles
Journals
Notebooks
Digital courses
Ebooks
Calendars
Printables

How to get started?

It depends on the path you take. Will you sell physical or digital goods?

For physical goods, consider print-on-demand (POD) companies where you can design your merchandise and have the POD company do your printing and fulfillment.

They can print and ship goods like:

T-shirts
Coffee mugs
Sweatpants
Leggings
Pillow cases
Wall art
Towels
And, more!

These companies are relatively easy to get started with. You just come to them with your design, pick your products, connect to your blog or store and start selling!

Examples of POD companies include Printify and Printful.

For digital goods, you’ll have a lot of resources at your disposal to help you design printables, courses, ebooks, etc.

For courses, look to:

For ebooks, try:

For printables design check out:

After you create your products, consider having a product launch, which can help you set up a big event celebrating the release of your products.

Wondering where to get started?

Read our 7 steps to a successful product launch.

5. Services

If you have a service you can offer, why not share it with your audience from your blog?

This can include anything from accounting to SEO services, and more.

Create a sales page on your blog to showcase your services.

Look at creating a sales funnel, starting with giving away a freebie at the top of the funnel, adding people to your email list and eventually upselling them to your service.

Services are a great way to make more money from blogging while offering valuable services that can help your audience.

And, even if you’re blogging as a beginner, that doesn’t necessarily mean that your services are beginner-level. Many seasoned freelancers and service professionals are new to blogging but, making money from their audience as an experienced service professional.

Here’s our beginner’s guide to creating a sales funnel to get you started.

How realistic is it to make money blogging?

Making money blogging is within reach. If you set up your site and then offer something for sale, whether that is through affiliate marketing or selling your own goods or services, it’s very realistic to think that you can create income from your blog.

These are proven ways to make money blogging and I encourage you to look into them further if you’re serious about making money blogging. There’s no one right way to make money with a blog.

Be curious, educate yourself, experiment with new things, and take action!

What else do you want to learn about making money blogging?