9 Different Ways To Make Money Blogging • Brand Glow Up (2024)

You’ve invested many dollars into your blog to make it all happen, whether it is through design, hosting, templates, social media or advertising and that doesn’t even touch on the amount of time you’ve also given to make it a success.

Yes, we do it because we love it, but we are also here to make some money!

These methods may often require you some amount of time, and sometimes, even money.

Blogging itself is an investment.

And if you’re serious with making business out of your blog, then you must be willing to invest to secure more profitable income in the future.

Let’s jump right in and see how you can start making money today.

PS: If you want to start your own blog, click here for a step-by-step guide.

Different Ways To Earn Money From Your Blog

1. Affiliate Marketing

Your readers trust you and by recommending products or services you genuinely love to your readers, you can make a commission.

For example, you wrote a post about your favorite project management software and added an affiliate link into that post. When a reader purchases that product through your affiliate link, you make some money. Yup.

To get more specific, let’s say you’re part of an affiliate program for an online course where you make 10% off each sale that is purchased through your link. If that course is $200, you could make $20 off each sale purchased through your link. If 100 people bought that course, just for putting a link on your site, you could make $2000.

You get it.

Here are some affiliate networks you can join:

• Share a sale
• Ebates
• Amazon

You can join their affiliate program and find brands you want to promote. Some of the most effective ways to promote your affiliate are: product reviews, product introduction or tutorials.

2. Sponsored Content & Working with Brands

Another popular and effective way to make money via blogging is to do sponsored posts. The great thing about sponsorships over affiliate marketing is that you receive a flat fee instead of income based upon clicks or views.

Often, a business will send you their product and have you write content about it giving your honest feedback or experience. Another arrangement involves businesses sponsoring with you to include a link in your content.

How You Can Work With Brands

• Write a blog post about brands. You receive a certain amount of money to make a review, usually upwards of $100 (depends on your blog traffic + engagement rate).
• Advertise products for brands on your social media. This is when you will use projects and then mention them on your social media channel. For example, if you used a certain beauty product or accessory in your outfit.

The great thing about working with brands is that you really do remain in control. You get to be completely honest about what your experience, your opinion, and your feedback. You get to decide what brands you work with and you also get to set your pricing which is usually dependent upon traffic, followers, shares and your audience.

If you’re having trouble finding a brand to work with, here are some that can help you out:

• Izea: Depending on the numbers of your social media channels, you can get opportunities to be paid to write about products from big brands.
• Reach out to brands you love: Maybe you can think of someone that you’d really love to work with. Ask them directly! You can pitch them and you’ll be amazed at the opportunities that will come your way.

Convince brands to work with you by putting your blogging statistics and services together using a beautiful media kit.

3. Display Ads on Your Site

Out of all the ways to make money, this is one of the easiest, fastest and most convenient ways to make more money blogging. When you host advertisem*nts on your blog or website, if your viewers click on these ads, you’ll receive money for every click or for every view. Though some may have different requirements such as demographics, traffic, and social media statistics, it simply takes an application to see if you’re a good fit!

Ad Networks You Can Join

• Google AdSense: This is a great network featuring display, mobile, and video ads, that is open to anyone and it is completely free to sign up. Your earnings depend entirely on your traffic.
• Sovrn: For websites that receive plenty of impressions, this network is fun and awesome to use. It also gives you audience analytics that will benefit you in the way you blog!
• BuySellAds: Through this network, you are a publisher where you list your ad sizes and CPM for each ad zone. As you do, you’ll receive inquiries to host their ads on your website. The bonus of this network is the level of control you have.
• BlogHer Ads: Are you a woman who runs a food blog with a highly engaged audience? This is for you! You’ll join in with a fantastic community of female content creators.
• Chitika: Similar to Google Adsense, this network offers display, in-line and text ads and boasts as one of the largest networks in the world.
• Newor Media: Newor Media offers a wide range of ad types and formats while using AI technology to achieve revenue maximization for your website. Newor Media is non-exclusive, meaning you don’t have to leave AdSense to benefit from their services, and you’re assigned your own account manager to ensure earnings are as strong as possible!

4. 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. Click here to buy beautiful media kits.

To sell ads on your website, you will need:

• To create a page on your website for advertising. On there, you can let people or companies know what their options are, what your terms are and why you’re a great blog to work with!
• To create a media kit. These are an awesome resource that you can provide to give all the details on your advertising options while staying on brand.
• Pitch to bloggers or companies you’d love to work with. Use your numbers and brand to pitch yourself to them and outline the benefit you can really give.

Helpful Websites:

• To recruit advertisers, you can use Buysellads.com which is an incredible resource for established blogs.
• Passionfruit Ads work well as an ad management system. They are affordable, convenient and seamless.

The bigger your traffic and the greater the impressions you have, the more you can charge. So, make it happen.

5. Do Paid Memberships

People love resources! If you have a considerable amount of resources that are super helpful to people such as downloads, worksheets, templates or advice, you can offer them as a membership for a small fee. This will give you recurring income which brings stability and ultimately gives you more freedom.

6. Sell Your Own Products

Your audience has problems that you can solve. When you can create products for people that truly answer the things they are facing, you’ll set yourself up not only as an expert but also to make money!

Most successful bloggers know what they’re an expert at and sell some type of product in that same vein. You want to do the same.

So, what are you good at? What do you have lots of experience with? What do you know that could help others? Maybe you can package that into an ebook, course, printables, media or physical products.

Examples of Products You Can Sell:

• Digital Products: You can create products or services to sell to your readers in electronic form! These things could include e-book, e-course, downloads, printables, pre-made designs, software, etc.
• Physical Products: These are products that you ship out in the mail. These things could include t-shirts, posters, mugs, either with your brand or your messaging.

There are many platforms out there to help you launch and sell such as:

• Gumroad
• Selz
• Etsy
• WooCommerce (a plugin that can be installed on WordPress)

7. Sell Your Services

The other option is to provide services. You can think about if there is a service that you could provide to your audience that would genuinely help them. Do you know how to write compelling copy or design beautiful graphics? Do you have expertise on something where you could provide coaching, advice or strategy? To do what you love, help people and make money at the same time? Perfect.

Services You Could Offer:

• Coaching + Consulting: This is a super popular way to make money through your blog. You could consult on everything from social media, life, marketing, sales, etc.
• Classes + Webinars: You can create opportunities for people to learn from you and charge for the information and expertise you share.
• Marketing Services: These services include things like copywriting, branding or design. These skills are so needed for so many people.

You can advertise your services everywhere on your blog, sidebar, social media, footers, headers – wherever you can, put it there! Depending on your audience, you can also get super specific to any industry such as weddings, food or branding.

8. Personal Appearances and Speaking Fees

The bigger your platform gets, the bigger the opportunities get to step outside of the online world into the real world. The more you become known and respected, you’ll likely make money for speaking, giving readings or making appearances.

9. Donations

There are some blogs who run zero ads and yet are self-sufficient through donations. If you’re touching people’s hearts and you’re a non-profit blog, this is the perfect way to go!

Now, your turn…

How have you made money blogging? Which one of these are you most excited to dig into?