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Ready to make money blogging? Blogging is the absolute best way to make money from home.
I am a SAHM to three little girls (I recently quit my full-time job to stay at home with them!) and make $2,500+ each month from my blog. I started my blog in September 2014, made my first $100 within five months, and quit my job after a little more than two years of blogging.
Now, I blog about 1-5 hours per week. That’s it. The rest of my time is spent with my daughters and husband.
If you want to change your life and start making money blogging, here is my guaranteed guide to get you where you need to be.
How to Make Money Blogging: Getting Started
In order to make money blogging, you have to treat your blog as a business. If you do not already have a blog on WordPress.ORG (not WordPress.com), you need to get one. Here is my tutorial for starting a self-hosted WordPress.org blog on Bluehost.
With Bluehost, you’ll pay just $2.95 per month. I’ll also give you a copy of my book – The Beginner’s Guide to Blogging – for free!
You’ll also receive your domain name for free. If you have an idea for a name, you can see if it’s available here:
Bluehost is the best host and I cannot recommend them enough. One of my favorite features is their customer service chat box. Instead of having to call in like with most hosting companies, you can chat with them regarding any questions or concerns. I’ve never had to wait more than 10 minutes and my problem has always been resolved!
Once your blog is set up using my tutorial, it’s time to get starting making money blogging.
Make Money Blogging: Ads
Ads are the easiest way to make money blogging because you simply set them up and then watch the money roll in. I made my first $100 blogging through Google Adsense. I set them up immediately that way my readers expected to see ads on my site. Then, I focused on growing my traffic. The more traffic your blog has, the more money you’ll make in ads.
Here are 10 ways you can increase your blog traffic immediately >>
Once you have 10,000 pageviews per month, I recommend using Monumetric. Unlike Google Adsense, Monumetric installs and runs all the ads for you. For non-techies (like me), this is totally ideal. You simply tell Monumetric how many ads you want and where you want them, and they place them all on your site (or you can have them decide where to put the ads if you’d rather not do anything!). My income went up TENFOLD from switching to Monumetric.
Once you have 100,000 pageviews per month, I recommend AdThrive. Like Monumetric, AdThrive handles all of your ad placements on your blog. AdThrive ads do extremely well, so expect to double your ad income if you had been using Monumetric.
Make Money Blogging: Sponsored Posts
Another way to make money blogging is through sponsored posts. A sponsored post is where a company pays you to mention their business or product. They may offer you the product for free to review, they may pay you to simply mention their product in a post, or they may pay you to insert a link to their company within a post you’ve already published.
Companies can reach out to you with opportunities, you can reach out to companies, or you can join sponsored post companies that will connect you to brands. Here is a list of companies to apply for in order to get connected to brands:
I personally don’t make a ton of money through sponsored posts, but I know a lotof bloggers who do! If you’re a lifestyle blogger, fashion blogger or food blogger, the opportunities are endless!
How much should you charge for a sponsored post?
The higher your traffic, the more you can charge. Don’t sell yourself short with this! Here’s what I personally charge: When I was getting 30,000 pageviews per month, I would charge $300 to companies that wanted me to either write a review of their product or mention their company in one of my posts. Some accepted my rate, some would offer less. Depending on how much work was involved, I would either take the lesser offer or pass on the offer altogether if it didn’t seem worth my time.
I know bloggers with hundreds of thousands of pageviews per month who charge thousands for one sponsored post.
A tip: When negotiating, always state how you’ll promote their post. I always say I’ll promote across all social media platforms, including Pinterest, where I’m a part of many group boards that gets my post seen by more people.
Make Money Blogging: Set Up an Email List
An email list is something I wish I would have done sooner. You can join my list here where you’ll receive my tutorial on starting a blog for free!
If you already have a blog, join my list below and you’ll receive five blog post ideas that will make you money!
Why is an email list important? Basically, those who sign up for your email list like what you have to say and will most likely purchase some of your products in the future. Even if you have no idea what types of products you’ll offer or what you’ll even say to your email list, start one anyways. If you don’t email anyone for the first year, that’s ok!! But when you decide it’s time to start utilizing your list, you’ll have subscribers ready and waiting for you.
How do I start an email list? I highly recommend MailerLite. MailerLite makes it super easy to send emails to your list. You don’t have to know a single bit of coding for it to work for you. And, it’s FREE up to 1,000 subscribers and then just $10/month up to 2,500 subscribers, $20/month for up to 5,000, and so on.
Make Money Blogging: Affiliate Sales
Affiliate sales are my absolute favorite way of making money blogging. An affiliate sale is where if someone purchases a product using a link through your blog, you’ll make a commission.
Amazon has an affiliate program, for example. If you do a blog post on your favorite toys for toddlers and use your Amazon affiliate links for the products, you’ll get a commission whenever somebody makes a purchase! Cool, right?! If you spend the time growing your blog and using affiliate links throughout your posts, you’ll make make a ton of money while you’re sleeping!
My favorite affiliate programs include shareasaleand FlexOffers. Take a look at all the companies you can advertise as an affiliate! Pretty sweet, huh?! As you can see, this money can really start to add up once you have a decent amount of followers on your blog!
Update: I just joined iGain which has a ton of programs for bloggers!! You can join for free here!
Make Money Blogging: Product Sales
And finally, you can make a fantastic living blogging simply by selling your own products. There are plenty of platforms you can sell your products on. The first one I used was Gumroad for my blogging ebook The Beginner’s Guide to Blogging. Gumroad is free to join, but you do pay them a small percentage of every sale. It’s not much, though. For my $12 book, I make $11.15 after Gumroad takes their portion.
And yes, creating an ebook was super easy. I wrote the entire book in Microsoft Word, added all my images and links in Word, and then simply saved as a PDF and uploaded to Gumroad.
If you’re interested in creating courses, I highly recommend Teachable. With Teachable, you can write all of your lesson plans within the platform, or you can write everything in Word and then copy/paste over to the platform. There is both a free version and a paid version. I created my very first course on Teachable titled How to Make Money as a Web Hosting Affiliate. So far, I’ve had nothing but good results with the platform!
Make Money Blogging: Final Thoughts
My favorite thing about blogging for a living is that there are so many ways to make money. You aren’t relying on one source of income, but rather 4-5 different sources. Some months I’ve had low affiliate sales, but have done extra sponsored posts. Other months, I may have no sponsored posts but good product sales and ad revenue. It all seems to even out month over month and my income continues to grow.
You can view my latest income report here >>
If you’re interested in starting a profitable blog, head over to my tutorial to get started. Starting a blog has been one of the best decisions of my life. I didn’t make money immediately, but the fact that I was able to quit my job a month ago to stay at home with my three daughters has been life-changing. If I can do this, I promise you that you can do the same!
What questions do you have for me about making money blogging? Leave a comment or send me an email!
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