How to Make Money Blogging – Tips for Beginners

Want to make money with your blog? You’ve come to the right place!

So you landed on this post because you’re trying to figure out the heck people make money blogging.

If you are new to blogging you may have heard about different ways to make money, but you have no idea where to start.

This is where I come in. I am going to walk you through exactly what you can set up to start making an income from your blog.

Before we jump into how to make money with your blog, the most important strategy to have before you monetize is…

Create quality content written specifically for your target audience.

Make sure you are putting full effort into your content so when people arrive on your blog they will want to stay and hopefully read more content.

Remember quality – not quantity.

👉 Related: 8 Blogging Mistakes New Bloggers Make

How to Make Money From Your Blog as a Beginner

1. Advertising

There are a variety of advertising networks you can apply to as a blogger, but in the last couple of years, the options have gotten better, especially for new bloggers and small blogs!

Journey By Mediavine

Journey is the offering by Mediavine that caters to small blogs. They offer a self-service ad monetization experience that allows you to start making money with your blog much sooner than in past years.

Eligibility requirements:

• 1000+ sessions within a 30-day period – when Journey first launched, the criteria was 10,000 sessions, so it’s amazing to see this drop to allow smaller bloggers to monetize earlier on
• Make sure you have Google Analytics set up, as you’ll need to download their ‘Grow’ plugin for 30 days so it can track your traffic

You get a 70% revenue share.

Once you make $5000 in your first year, you will automatically be moved into their ‘Official’ program, where your revenue share is 75%.

How much money can you make?

What you make per month really depends on a variety of factors…

RPMs (Revenue Per Thousand Impressions):

• Your niche – for example, food blogs tend to have the RPMs
• Where your readers are located – US traffic has the highest RPM
• What devices your readers are using – smartphones have the highest RPMs
• Where your traffic is coming from – as you can see below, traffic from Pinterest has the highest RPM (the perfect reason to make Pinterest a priority 👉 access my free Pinterest Starter Guide!)

Other factors impacting ad revenue:

• Monthly sessions
• User engagement – Time spent on site and average pages per user (this means you can make more money by improving user experience, even if your monthly sessions aren’t increasing)
• Impressions per page (the longer a post and the more time someone is reading a post, the more ads can be served = increase $)
• Time of year – Q4 (October – December), advertisers have the largest ad spend, so publishers will get higher RPMs during these months than at any other time of year.

👉 To get started with Journey, APPLY HERE.

Google AdSense

When I started blogging in 2017, I signed up for Google AdSense.One of the main ways new bloggers start making money is by signing up to Google AdSense. Once set up this is an easy way to start making money immediately.

How much money will Google AdSense make you?

Very Little. If you’re new, you may be getting a whopping $0.70 a day, depending on how many page views you have.

If you have decent traffic, you can make about $75 to $100 a month – but if this is the case you can most likely apply to Journey (mentioned above) if you have 1000+ sessions.

Is it worth including Google AdSense on your blog?

I think this is a personal choice.

You may want to give it a try and see if you can make an extra $50 a month – hey, that’s grocery money, right?!

Or you might decide to wait until you qualify for Journey and monetize your blog in other ways.

2. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a great place to start making money as a new blogger. If you are new to blogging, you may be wondering what affiliate marketing is and how it works.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the process of receiving a commission for sending a user to a business website. A commission is typically paid to you when the user purchases something within a specific time frame. You will receive a percentage of the total sale.

To get started with affiliate marketing, I recommend the following companies:

Amazon Associates

There are different affiliate programs for each country. I recommend signing up for the country where most of your audience lives. You can find this data in Google Analytics.

**For example – I live in Canada, but I have my main Amazon Associates account set up as US.

Once you are approved, you can then apply to Amazon’s One Link program. This basically means that you provide one affiliate link (in your blog post), but if someone outside of the country clicks it will redirect to their local Amazon site.

This just means you will still get commission outside of your primary ‘Amazon country’.

Shareasale

When you sign up to this affiliate company, you have access to promote thousands of different products and companies.

Shareasale is ideal when you want to write a post about gift ideas (Teabox.com, Mixbook) or share some key blogging resources like Tailwind scheduler, graphic design software and WordPress premium themes.

Awin

If you want to promote products on Etsy, you must sign up to Awin. Awin is the exclusive partner to Etsy for affiliate marketing.

SendOwl

If you are interested in sharing other blogger’s ebooks or digital products SendOwl is a great place to start.

This is a perfect strategy if you have taken a course or bought a digital product you love and you want to tell others about it (and get paid a commission to do so)!

Even if you don’t write about the content in your blog you can share these products in blogging Facebook groups.

Ultimate Bundles

No matter what your blog content is about, Ultimate Bundles will have amazing content for you to promote and make 40% commission on every sale.

These bundles are essentially huge bundles of eBooks and other resources for a heavily discounted price.

For example, a productivity bundle worth over $1500 (if you were to purchase each eBook separately) is sold for just $37 for a limited time.

What’s cool is there are all sorts of bundles you can promote such as: productivity, blogging, meal planning, healthy living, home projects, photography and so much more – all launched at different times throughout the year.

👉 Read more about affiliate marketing: Best Affiliate Programs for Beginners

3. Brand Collaborations on Your Blog and/or Social Accounts

Even if you are a new blogger, it’s never too early to get yourself ready to work with brands.

So, what exactly does a brand collaboration entail?

This is when you work with a brand to develop opportunities to showcase their product or service on your blog.

Brands will pay you for this exposure and the price will depend on the size of your traffic and social media following.

I recommend doing the following to get yourself ready for collaborations:

1. Develop your brand collaboration opportunities in advance so you aren’t scrambling if a brand reaches out to you.
2. Set up a ‘Work with me’ page on your website. Include high-level details of what you can offer brands. Here’s an example from my lifestyle blog.
3. Create a media kit so you have it available when brands start to approach you.
4. Create a brand collaboration document that goes into more detail on what you can offer brands. This would include examples such as product reviews, sponsorships, etc + pricing.
5. Grow your social media following. If you are really serious about working with brands as a main income source, I would recommend you focus on Instagram first, as this is a platform that is of most interest to brands.

There are 2 ways you can get started working with brands:

1. Join some influencer networks

Influencer networks and 3rd party companies that connect bloggers, influencers, and brands.

Once you sign up and fill out all of your information, you’ll be able to see the types of collaboration opportunities that are available. Typicall,y you would then apply to that opportunity.

Some great influencer networks for beginners to join are:

• Linqia
• Dealspotr
• IZEA
• Activate

Start by signing up to these networks so you can see how they operate and then you can look further afield if you wish.

2. Contact a brand directly

Go to their website and simply find the contact us page, or you might have luck messaging the brand on Instagram.

When you contact the brand, you must be prepared (with the above materials and info I mentioned) if you are reaching out directly.

4. Products to sell on your Blog

Creating digital or tangible products is a great way to make some money with your blog.

Many bloggers use this as one of their main strategies to make money.

What kind of blog products can you create?

Digital Products:

• eBooks
• Worksheets and printables
• Organization tools
• Journals
• Templates (Check out how you can sell Canva templates here)

Physical Products:

• Books
• Mugs, clothing, artwork
• Anything craft-related – sell on Etsy or your own site
• Get creative – you can sell anything as an extension of your blog.

5. Services

Many seasoned bloggers will offer services to other bloggers, such as social media management, coaching, or even blog audits, but what can you offer as a new blogger?

Do you specialize in a certain skill? Then offer your services on your blog!

Some ideas that might work for you:

• Health and wellness coach
• Marketing services
• Freelance writing
• Photography
• Proofreading/editing
• Website design
• Virtual assistant
• Organizing

6. Courses

Courses are a little like services. If you are an expert in a specific area or know a lot about a certain topic, think about creating a course. Share your knowledge and help others!

If you’d like to consider creating a course of your own, a great place to start is with Teachable.

To get an idea of how some courses work, take advantage of signing up to these free courses to help you with your blogging skills!…

FREE Graphic Design Mini Course – By Applecart Lane Design:

What you’ll learn…

• Know 10 of the most common design mistakes to avoid when creating your own graphics for your blog or online biz.
• Learn actionable solutions to the 10 most common design mistakes and be able to improve the appearance of your graphics immediately.
• Feel more confident about your blog graphics!

FREE 5 Day Traffic & Monetization Mini Challenge – By Lena Gott:

5 days of simple tasks to increase your traffic and income.

• DAY 1: An overly complicated traffic strategy confuses your readers. Learn how to SIMPLIFY and get more traffic as a result.
• DAY 2: Find out how to easily implement INCOME PATHWAYS on your blog to increase income from the traffic you already have.
• DAY 3: Your CALLS TO ACTION can make or break you in the online world. Learn what to say and what NOT to say to encourage your visitors to take action. You’ll really love this one!
• DAY 4: You can use keyword research to find HIDDEN NICHES that no one else is targeting. Low competition = more traffic for you! This is a super simple SEO concept that we will walk through step-by-step.
• DAY 5: Today’s lesson is all about the ONE METRIC you can track to increase your income. Knowing this number makes a world of difference to your income!

👉 Check out some of my favourite Free Blogging Courses HERE.

Now that we’ve walked through the Top 6 ways to make money blogging  – what are you going to try first?

Or are you currently making money with your blog?

If yes, tell us what monetization strategy works best for you?!

 

Let’s connect on social media!

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Related blogging and social media resources:

• How to Sell Canva Templates & Make Money
• Best Free Blogging Courses To Sign Up For This Year
• How to Blog Legally – Tips from a Lawyer who Blogs
• Best Facebook Groups for Bloggers – Your Key to Traffic Growth
• Improve Your Website or Blog with these Free Feedback Tools
• Why Your Blog Posts Aren’t Being Shared & What To Do About It

 

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