Blogging is definitely a legit way to make money – contrary to what many may think. Granted, it’s not a fast way to earn money since it can take a while to get traffic and readers, but once you’ve established your online presence, there’s a lot of potential to earn an income with your blog.
When people ask me what I do from home and I tell them I’m a blogger, the next question to follow that is almost always, “How does a blogger make money?“. Most people I know fail to realize that profitable blogs exist! I’ve listed out below how to make money blogging for beginners.
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How To Make Money Blogging For Beginners
When people ask me this, I usually just give them the short answer — advertisers. And while that’s certainly a large part of it, it’s not the only way bloggers earn.
So today I’m breaking down for you the primary ways how to make money blogging for beginners.
#1 – Ad Networks
Ad networks are often the main earner for many bloggers and definitely the easiest to maintain because it’s possible to “set it and forget it” once it’s in place. Bloggers sign up with popular ad networks like Google Adsense or Media.net and place code in the sidebar, header, footer, or inside posts that will display third party advertisements. These usually pay bloggers a certain amount per thousand impressions or a certain amount per click.
#2 – Sell Ad Space
As you grow your blog and become established, you can make even more money through blogging with private ads and sponsorships. Whether you provide advertising to other bloggers or large companies, you can use your traffic to make more cash for you.
In order to do this, you likely need to demonstrate that your blog receives a decent amount of traffic and that you’re a good fit with a company’s product or service. You can use a media kit to put together your blogging statistics + necessary info and convince more people to advertise on your site.
#3 – Affiliates
This is another form of advertising, but instead of getting paid a flat rate or a certain amount per click or impression as you do with advertisers, the blogger gets paid a certain amount per lead or per sale of what they are promoting.
Some Examples:
Then, if a reader clicks through the link and buys or signs up for what I recommended, I will earn a small amount of money per lead or per sale!
As a blogger, you have complete control over what products and services you want to promote as an affiliate, so it is possible to only recommend things you approve of.
#4 – Selling Your Own Products & Services
A blog is an excellent platform for selling your own stuff. No matter what your area of expertise is with blogging, you can create your own products to make money. You can offer services like coaching, graphic design, virtual assisting, and writing. Bloggers can also sell products like e-books or courses they’ve written or crafts they’ve made.
#5 – Sponsored Posts
Bloggers earn money by writing posts paid for by advertisers to promote the products and services of different companies. It is a form of permanent advertising for companies.
Some examples of companies that facilitate sponsored posts are:
– Linqia
One of my recent favorites is doing sponsored social media posts. I have worked with Popular Pays (an app) to promote posts on Instagram. You can bid for different companies you would like to work with.
How Do Bloggers Get the Money They Earn?
As it is with anything, different companies pay in different ways — usually direct deposit, Paypal, or mailed check. However, one thing that doesn’t vary much is the frequency of the pay. The vast majority of companies bloggers use to earn an income pay once a month — either at the end of the month, the middle, or the very beginning of the month just depending on their terms.
Should Bloggers Earn Money?
I can tell you that running a blog can easily be a 30 – 40 hour per week undertaking. There is always writing to do, outdated posts to update, comments to moderate, emails to answer, social media accounts to keep updated, graphics to create, and lots of other “behind the scenes” tasks that take up quite a bit of time.
It also costs money to run a blog successfully. I have to pay for my domain, hosting, newsletter, stock photos, writers, occasional advertising on Facebook and Pinterest, and some social media services I use.
So with all that in mind it’s easy to see why yes, bloggers should earn money because they put in a lot of time and effort in addition to investing money. Blogging is real work for professional bloggers.
Want to set up a blog to start earning money from?
Blogging requires very little overhead to start! Go here for step-by-step instructions to set up your own WordPress blog.