Last Updated 2 months by Emily Standley-Allard
Sponsored blog posts are a great way to turn your blog into a regular passive source of income. Let’s go over how you can make money with sponsored blog posts. I always say your blog should have multiple sources of revenue and having sponsored blog posts is just one of them. Thanks to superior digital technology businesses have changed in how they market themselves and their products. You don’t have to have an ecommerce shop to make money online. You can make money on your blog with sponsored blog posts from top brands and businesses. Read on to learn how.
What Are Sponsored Blog Posts?
Sponsored blog posts include any content that a blogger is paid to share on their blog or website.
It could be a blog product review, a video, a webinar, or any other type of promotional material such as giveaways or discount coupons.
Additional profit can also be made if you have a large presence on social media because some companies will pay more to also have the content shared on top social networks like Facebook (Meta), YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.
It behooves you to be wise about who you decide to partner up with on your blog. It’s very important to maintain your blog’s integrity by providing a proper balance between offering valuable information for your audience along with benefits to you.
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How Do I Start Getting Sponsored Blog Posts?
In order to attract companies to your blog, a few important things need to be established:
- Ramp Up Your Traffic: prove that your blog has high enough traffic that it will reach audiences. The larger your blog traffic, the greater you can charge for a sponsored blog post and the greater the potential reach for the brand or company.
- Search Engine Optimization: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is always vital in order to ensure your blog shows up high enough in the Google search engine. You can measure your domain authority on sites such as Ahrefs.com or Semrush.com which is a complete social media/SEO tool you can use to spy on your competitors, get keywords, backlinks, content analysis and more. Scores range from 1 to 100. The higher the score the more authority a blog is deemed to have.
- Blog Fitness Test: companies seek blogs that are a match for the products/services they wish to promote. Does your content speak to their niche audience? Is the content on your blog in line with their brand? Companies will more readily work with blogs that align with them as this will give them a new way to widen their reach.
You may start to get emails from companies seeking to partner with you. Or you may wish to target certain companies that you feel are in alignment with your blog for blog sponsored posts.
Be sure that when connecting with companies, that you have very clear terms before proceeding. You can view an example on our page here.
These should be posted beforehand on a separate page of your blog as well as in your email communications. Terms with regards to how you’ll be posting content about or from their competitors, payment terms and the post approval process.
Will they be providing the main points of the content? Or will you be creating an entirely original post for them to approve?
Will they be okay with you archiving content if it’s linked to a time-bound promotion? These are a few questions to bear in mind before entering into a contract for a blog sponsored post.
How To Set Your Sponsored Blog Post Rates
In addition to the vital traffic, you achieve on your blog, take into consideration your experience and general influence on setting your rates. Are you an authority on a particular subject?
How long have you been a content creator on your own blog as well as a contributor to others?
Remember to factor in the time it’ll take for you to create your content as well, such as any additional promotions to garner engagement such as social media posts, email marketing, forums etc.
I have over 15 years of experience writing copy for the web. I charge $125-$200 per hour for web copy writing and my rates for sponsored blog posts reflect this.
Think of other ways that you can generate more income such as offering exclusivity for a specific period of time.
During this period, you could offer a set number of sponsored posts for only that brand or business.
You can also create packages that will allow you to earn more for promoting the post on several platforms. These are some ideas that can help set your rates for blog sponsored posts.
Here’s an example of packages I offer to businesses on my advertising page.
There are several factors to consider when it comes to charging for a sponsored blog post, such as:
- Traffic or monthly page views
- Newsletter open rate (if promoting to your email list)
- Engagement
- Social media following and your profile’s engagement levels
Calculating Your Sponsored Post Rate
When it comes to negotiating a brand deal and post pricing keep this in mind.
First, you start by calculating your average monthly page views from the last 3 months in your Google Analytics account.
Add all those numbers together and divide it by 3 to get your average monthly page view.
Say you get 100,000 monthly page views. Divide that number by 1,000 and you’ll find out your CPM (cost per marketer) is 100. If your rate per 1,000 impressions is then $3.00, you should charge $300 for a single blog post.
Keep in mind, this is just a guideline for how to calculate how much to charge based on your page views alone.
Once you factor in any additional promotion on social media, or additions to your email list, you can definitely charge more.
How Much to Charge if You’re an Amateur Blogger
If you don’t have that many page views, there are other ways you can charge for a sponsored blog post that you might consider. You can always charge…
- Per word – Anywhere from 10 cents or more per word.
- An hourly rate – You can use a free time tracker like Toggl.
- A flat fee – Be sure to set a word count limit if you’re charging a flat fee. For instance, you could charge $250 for a blog post with 800 words.
Other Things to Consider
Get your payment in advance.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard of bloggers not getting paid after they’ve done all the work and submitted it!
First of all, protect yourself with the legal templates, you’ll be covered with a complete binding contract, and second of all get your payment in advance!
For heavens sakes! For example, I get paid in advance on Influencer Active and freelancers on Fiverr get paid in advance for everything!
Also remember:
Establish if you are going to provide revisions (if you write the post) and that you have rights to final copy, headlines and archiving rights.
Be careful with the rate of your competition and also how often you choose to publish sponsored material on your own website. Only one time, several times?
Sponsored blog posts should only be added as helpful supplemental material in line with the vision and objectives of your blog.
Sponsored blog posts should NEVER take up the majority of your blog space.
If the companies are fully responsible for providing you with your blog sponsored posts, ensure that it’s relative and beneficial for your audience and you maintain authority to edit and alter the material as necessary.
The Importance of Links in Sponsored Blog Posts
Do-follow outbound links on sponsored blog posts = POTENTIAL DANGER!
You may receive a complimentary email about your blog from a company stating how your blog could benefit both you and the noted company.
This is likely a request for ‘link juice’ or a ‘back link’.
Read this post below about how best to acquire healthy backlinks to get your webpages ranking higher on the web.
How to Get More Backlinks to Rank Higher on Google
Backlinks are highly desirable to your domain authority as well as companies so much so that many brands are willing to pay for them.
Both the blogger and the reviewed product could be at potential risk. If you are wooed to do a sponsored post for a client, you are wise to make your links ‘nofollow’ and let the company be aware of this.
I understand some advertisers won’t accept this (and I have rejected a couple of them because they insist on dofollow links).
According to SEO master Neil Patel Dofollow links can be beneficial for SEO as well and some people just don’t realize this.
Maybe not as much as ‘do follow’ links but, nonetheless.
We as bloggers have the obligation to educate our clients and not just go after a monetary reward they are offering.
Don’t accept to publish just any sponsored posts that requires a ‘dofollow’ link because YOU could get penalized by Google for it and that could set you back big time!
Such advertisers are just out to raise their page ranking with your blog! Don’t be naive.
Google will find you and you could get slapped with a penalty.
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Takeaway
Sponsored blog posts are one of the ways you can make money from your blog if done ethically and once you’ve achieved a decent amount of website traffic.
You must make it clear in your post whenever you do a blog sponsored article. This will further lend to your credibility as a blogger.
Simply disclose a note that states that you may make a profit or commission from any sales or simply state that the content is sponsored by the company.
To further maintain your credibility, be truthful about the product or service being promoted. Don’t give a raving review simply because you’re making some money from it.
Your readers will see through this right away. Be honest. If there’s something you don’t like or would like to change, make note of it.
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Conclusion
It’s that simple to turn your passion for content creation into a true source of income starting with blog sponsored posts.
If you’re eager to take your blog to the next level and see its earning potential, then you should learn all you can about making money blogging.
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Great post. I especially like the “link” part of your post. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for taking the time to comment, much appreciated!