Last Updated 6 months by Emily Standley-Allard

“So how do you make money blogging?” is the #1 question people ask me when they find out I’m a blogger. I always want to say, “I write my a** off!” And this is true. Some bloggers say you can post too much, there’s too much content out there blah blah. I don’t believe this. Here’s how I make money blogging from anywhere.

Let me digress, if you post a lot of mundane uninteresting content your readers don’t give a crap about…then it’s a waste of time and Google will push you down in the ranks. Post worthy relevant, valuable content that your audience wants and can’t get enough of, then the money comes in. This post outlines exactly what I do to make money blogging, how I do it, and how you can make money blogging too!

This post contains affiliate links. If you choose to make a purchase, we get a commission from our partners which helps keep our blog running. Please read our disclosure for more information.

Related: 

6 Proven Ways to Monetize Your Blog

9 Blog Posts That Will Always Make Money

How to Make $900 Per Hour Writing Quotes for Instagram

How to Earn Money with a Blog

My first chunk of money earned was due to affiliate marketing and partnering with the right companies, the remaining big dollar amount was from a combo of social media work, blogging for others and freelance writing.

Let’s go! So, I started this blog in Feb. of 2018. Some income details are below.

When I first started blogging, I immediately signed on for Google AdSense but I wasn’t pleased by how spammy the ads looked. Some of them were not too bad but some made me cringe.

I didn’t feel the couple of cents per week I was making for them was worth compromising the look of my blog.

So I switched over to Monumetric and chose only high paying affiliate products and partnered with well-known brands and businesses that provided outstanding products and services that I actually used and wanted to recommend.

Below are some affiliate marketing companies and software that help you ease into affiliate marketing and hook you up with different brands.

Companies that help you make money blogging

  • Clickbank – Another highly popular Global affiliate network filled with merchants in every niche. Affiliate marketers have made thousands of dollars with Clickbank. I wrote a post containing a tutorial on Clickbank and how to get started.

For more of the best blogging resources (free and paid) you will need to start and run a successful money-making blog go>>> here. 

The Exact Steps I Take to Make Money Blogging

  1. I picked a blog niche and chose a name
  2. I registered for a self hosting blog
  3. I read Jon Morrow’s Smart Blogger, ProBlogger, and Blog Tyrant
  4. I went from 200 to 500K viewers on Pinterest with the help of this amazing strategy book
  5. I read the Copyblogger’s copywriting tips on how to write magnetic headlines 
  6. I started an email list and developed 20 Resources to Grow Your Online Business to share all my resources.
  7. I made my first affiliate sale by recommending software to other bloggers.
  8. I took the FREE Wealthy Affiliate course and Michelle’s popular Affiliate Marketing course: Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing
  9. I sent out broadcast emails whenever I thought of a great solution that would help my readers – I also switched to Constant Contact which boosted my conversion rate immensely!
  10. I wrote consistent blog posts every week. Approximately 3-4. Much easier now with the power of AI and a tool called Writesonic! 
  11. I created 3 new pins with Canva Design for each of my blog posts and kept scheduling them to Pinterest using Tailwind.
  12. I stopped looking at Google Analytics every single day! But I did take note of which posts were the most popular to know what my audience likes to read.
  13. I revised and pushed out these posts more and embedded more affiliate marketing links in the posts so that the article could be monetized as much as possible.
  14. I wrote more content related to my most popular posts.
  15. I obtained lots of Freelance writing jobs due to my blog – people and companies were contacting me online.
  16. I remained patient, stayed positive, did not compare, and did not let self doubt get the better of me! Crucial tips!

Income Made Through Affiliate Marketing, Products, Services & Freelance Writing

Here’s a breakdown of income made blogging:

ShareASale:  $15,223.00

Be Your Own Blog Boss: $245.00

Bluehost: $580

Skimlinks: $132.00

Swagbucks: $117.87

Clickbank: $581.00

Google AdSense: $83.00

Freelance Writing: $31,000.00

Other affiliate programs: $3,369.00

eBook/digital products: $12,495

Course: $1,392

Website Sale – $4500

Social Media: $6,250

Amazon Affiliates – $116.00 (not much I know)

Commissions from Services – $1500

Total – $77,583 

What I Learned About Making Money Blogging

1. Getting rich from ad income takes a ton of traffic

Unless you get a hundred thousand page views per month, like Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, PennyHoarder, or another Viral type blog you can’t make big bucks from a network like Google Adsense.

I’m not saying it’s impossible though. The guy who started Viral Nova did it and then sold it for a huge profit. It just takes a huge amount of content generated on a daily basis. Totally possible now with AI generators!

In my case I only earned a measly amount from my ads when I was on Google Adsense. Plus like I said, I hated the way they looked and it also made my bounce rate go way up!

I think the cleaner you can make your blog look and exchange ads for opt ins the better off your blog will do.

Now there are other higher paying ad networks like MediaNet, Monumetric and Adthrive and others but each one of those require a certain amount of traffic.

Monumetric is the lowest at 10K PV monthly.

You can read the requirements for traffic for each ad network in this post:

6 Proven Methods to Monetize a Blog

2. Affiliate marketing takes longer but is far more lucrative

I knew right away I wasn’t going to get the traffic from Google Adsense so I switched gears to affiliate marketing. Thank goodness I did.

It takes a little longer to implement the links into your site but if you use a nifty plugin called ThirstyAffiliates  – once it’s set up it’s totally automatic. You just add your keywords, and your link is embedded in your posts or pages or wherever you want it.

I partner with several top-notch companies and bloggers who create elite material, and most importantly I know they will help my audience grow their traffic and improve their businesses, and for this I get a commission from them.

The company makes a sale, my reader gets a great product for no extra cost from clicking my link. It’s a win/win situation all around.

Now I don’t worry about traffic as much, I focus more on attracting more readers in my target audience and solving problems they have.

If I can recommend products or services that will help them along the way and help me as well, now that’s a good thing!

Master Guide to Blogging for Profit

3. It’s tough to get sponsored posts as a newbie blogger

Sponsored posts are a wonderful way to earn income as a blogger. As a newbie it can be tough since you don’t know what you’re doing yet.

Just so you know, most of the companies that handle them like Izea and others require that bloggers have a certain number of followers or traffic.

But! If you have <10,000 followers you can sign up with certain companies as a micro-influencer.

This can take some time but provide you with a lot of inspiration because this is where the big moola is!

If you’re in a popular niche such as Mommy blogging, beauty, fashion or DIY Household Hacks, Health, Relationships, Personal Finance and have a huge following I definitely recommend you sign up right away.

This is where you can earn some mega dollars with sponsored posts.

A list of some of the top 17 influencer networks you want to be signed up with are in this post:

How to Be a Top Social Media Influencer

4. Selling digital products and services is the way to go

The real way to earn steady, passive income on your blog is to sell digital products. Why? Because you own the contents and get the bulk of the sale price.

They are cheap to create, you can access them from anywhere and you can promote them for a long time.

Hopefully your product is on an ‘evergreen’ topic that won’t get old and outdated and you can make significant residual income from it months and maybe years after!

12 Most Profitable Digital Products to Sell Online

Another profitable idea is developing a course or offer your own consultation services that you can list on your blog.

This is a perfect way to bring in consistent income as well.

wealthy affiliate

5. It’s never too late to start a blog

I started this blog in Feb 2018 as a hobby with 0 followers and now have a community reach of over 4 million!

Every day someone is starting a new blog and there are millions of them out there! Some people say blogging is dead but it’s simply not the case! 

Digital advertising is going nowhere. In fact according to Forrester Research Affiliate Marketing is set to grow to 6.8 billion dollars moving ahead.

You don’t even need a website to do affiliate marketing!

Bloggers are the new influencers of today’s society. More companies are reaching out to bloggers rather than celebrities to market their products for them.

The fact that I was able to monetize this blog quickly proves that. And continue to earn an excellent income by blogging for others speaks volumes.

The key is to differentiate, be consistent and offer multiple means of earning an income through your blog.

Blog Expenses

Now with all that being said you may wonder what I spent to run my blog. Great question!

There are indeed several types of blogging expenses and they all vary from blogger to blogger depending upon the type of blog, the blogger’s ambition and how big they wish to grow it and how much money they want to put into it and make from it.

Here’s the breakdown of blogging expenses: 

$29 mos. for email marketing, opt-in forms, newsletters, auto responders.

$40 mos. for Tailwind – I have reduced this since Pinterest has changed their algorithms and reduced the number of pins everyone can post due to accounts overpinning and becoming spammy. I no longer use Smart Loops. I use Tailwind mostly for Tribes now.

$7 bucks per month for Crowdfire which curates AND automates content for you across all your platforms. You can’t beat that price!

crowdfire

$6 mos for Siteground and $3.95 for Bluehost for my other websites.

$9.99 mos for Domain with GoDaddy.

$12.00 mos for Canva Pro Plan for Pinterest Design.

$15.00 mos for Adobe Creative Cloud (not necessary for bloggers but I like it)

$25-$100 Outsourcing tasks with Fiverr freelancers for various website tweaks

$80 mos for Pinterest promoted pins (not a must but it’s helped with traffic)

$69 mos Directory Maximizer for help with directory submissions and building links for SEO (you can do this yourself but I like to save myself the time to work on content & other things)

So that’s less than $400 per month. That’s a pretty great ROI! Not many businesses can be run for that measly amount!

You can certainly run your blog for less or for more all depending. Some bloggers spend thousands of dollars per month on their blogs. But are reimbursed handsomely by advertising companies. Something to keep in mind.

This year I will be putting more into SEO and paid ad spending as well as updated software platforms to improve functionality.

And who knows what else? They’re always coming up with new software!

Ready to grow your online business and make more money from home? Get started being your own boss now!

Related Posts

Get the master guide to blogging for profit to learn everything you need to know to make money blogging now!

Master Guide to Blogging for Profit

how i make money blogging