7 Best Ways to Make Money Blogging for Beginners
How to Make Money Blogging in 2020: Your Step-By-Step Guide to Monetizing a Blog and Becoming Your Own Boss.
Is it really possible to make money blogging in 2020?
If you are like me, you probably looked at blogs and maybe even started a blog and thought “This is a really cool thing to do with my free time. And I can make so much money. I can be a millionaire ??? and have this blog making all the money for me.”
And you get into it or maybe you didn’t even start yet and you are like, but how exactly do they make money blogging? And could I make money blogging too?
Is It Realistic to Make Money Blogging?
YES.
It seems that everyone wants to earn money by creating a website. It sounds like a dream job, working from the comfort of your living room. Working flexible, ours and be your own boss.
The real secret to making money blogging is promoting your content and using your blog to create a brand for yourself.
Whether you want your blog to be a side hustle or full-time moneymaker, the only way to make it happen is to start a blog and start writing.
How Much Money Does a Beginner Blogger Make?
Chances are you’re thinking that your blog will make thousands of dollars in just a few months or so. So many “income reports” keep on boasting about their thousands of dollars earned every month. It creates a falls illusion that making money blogging is easy.
THE TRUTH: Making money online with a blog will require time and patience. Things will not happen overnight. Just because you find a blogger in your niche making good money, it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to reach the same result. They’re just so many variables involved and different income stream combinations.
It varies widely. Only a few bloggers make millions of dollars a year. On average blogger will earn $1000 – $4000 a month, depending on amount of income strings and work they put in. Blogging business is no different than other industries like restaurant, retail, or acting.
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Why It’s So Hard to Earn Money Blogging?
I totally understand your question because I experience the same thing in my blog. It took me a year to earn my first $100 dollars.
The real problem with blogging is unrealistic expectations. You don’t get results until around 6 to 24 months. So be patient write quality articles consistently. After a year of genuine hard work, you will realize it was not that hard to earn money blogging. ?
You have to keep the consistency. Because a successful blogger never gave up.
Oh, and one more thing, attend the Right Internet Marketing Training or Search Engine Optimization course so you won’t waste your precious time on the Internet. If you want to make money with your blog, you’re going to need traffic, targeted traffic to be exact.
If you are serious about making money blogging, you must commit. Trying it out for one or two months just won’t work, you’ll be just wasting your time.
If you need money right away, building a blog may not be your best option.
How Do Ordinary People Make Money Blogging?
That is what I am telling you today.
We are all different with different goals. There is no right or wrong way of earning money blogging. Figuring out what doesn’t work for you and what you don’t like can be just helpful as figuring out what does work and what you do like. There are endless possibilities.
Some work better then others, and it’s better to have multiple way of earning income. Use as many income streams as you can reasonably manage.
1// Displaying Adds
There couple of ways to do that.
The FIRST way is, you can use Google AdSense, and you apply to their program, and then you place ads on your blog. And it will take some time and traffic in order to see the income from those ads, but that is the first way to try to monetize your blog with advertising. It will take you a while to get a decent amount of money. AdSense doesn’t pay much.
Then when you have a certain number of page views per month, you can migrate to AD NETWORK, for example, Mediavine, you need to have 25,000 page view sessions per month to your blog in order to be accepted. So, it will take a little while to get up to that number, but once you move into an ad network space, then you will monetize your blog with ads much, much faster.
How You Make Money Through Ads?
You make a certain dollar amount per 1,000 pageviews on your website. That dollar amount changes based on your ad network, time of year and contract you negotiate.
PROS:
- Passive income
- No start-up cost
- You don’t need an audience to start
- With a big audience and ad network, you can earn up to $4000 a month
- Works best for lifestyle, food, fashion blogs.
CONS:
- Ads clutter website and create a negative experience for the reader.
- Require a lot of traffic to be successful
- Ad network programs require a WordPress blog
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2// Free Product
Another way you can do to earn money blogging straight off the start is to try to get some free products that you love and use.
All you have to do send to the companies an email saying. “Hey, I’ve got this blog, here’s a link. Please send me a product and I will talk about it on my blog,” and you will get all kinds of stuff in the mail. And that is a great way to begin monetizing your blog.
It’s not really money, but it’s the stuff that you probably already were going to purchase. So. It’s like getting money in your pocket
3// Use Affiliates
Affiliates great for blogging because you already write about products that you love. Now you can link back to where people can buy them for themselves, and when they do you get a commission.
This can be done with clothing, software, and programs. This is how fashion and beauty bloggers make money. When you buy from their affiliate links, they make money and that’s how they continue to do what they are doing and what they love.
How Affiliate Programs Actually Work?
You promote products using a special link and any sale made through that link is attributed to you and you make a percentage/commission on the total sale. It’s not a big moneymaker but also very easy to start.
PROS:
- Passive income
- You can start with a small audience
- You can earn good money by promoting high ticket online courses
CONS:
- Amazon Associate and similar network give you a very small commission
- Require traffic to be successful
- Require trust from your audience
- Purchase of the course, program, or product you are planning to recommend
4// Sponsored Content
Being paid by companies and brands to represent their product and promote it to your audience.
There compony out there that want to get in front of your audience. There lots of companies now that creating add budget for influencer contracts. Reach out to businesses which products you love and use and see if they want to do a sponsored post.
A lot of times company will give you a guideline:
- you have to mention them so many times
- you must share it on Instagram, on Pinterest, and Facebook
- you can’t promote competitors product (sometimes)
Even with small following it can be done buy approaching small businesses. It doesn’t have to be payed it can be in exchange for free product.
As your blog grow and your numbers grow you will be able to charge more for your services. You can offer different packages and charge accordingly.
I happened to watch this video a few days ago about earning money blogging. I thought Jesse Coulter had some great points.
PROS:
- Income right away
- No start-up cost
- You can earn good money
- You can start with a smallish audience
CONS:
- Find the company
- Need a contract and a Media Kit
- Require traffic and audience engagement to be successful
- Company may ask you to be the exclusive seller of there product(forever)
- You need to have skills (copywriting, photography, social media, etc.)
- You need to gain audience trust and respect to be successful
5// Sell You Own Physical Products
- Print-on-demand (POD) merchandise, including t-shirts and mugs
- Books
- Handmade products
- Dropshipping
- In-person conferences, classes or special events
Selling your own product and services is a great way to monetize your blog but, it does require a fair number of followers who like, trust and respect you in order to get them to purchase your product.
It can be profitable but can get complicated with manufacturing, keeping an inventory, shipping, returns, etc.
6// Digital Product Sales
- Courses
- Membership site
- Coaching group
- Premium Content
- 101 coaching
- eBook
- Digital Print Outs and PDFs
- Photo bundles
- Canva or Photoshop templates
- Apps, plugins or themes
My suggestion to start small. First, develop free opt-in or/and minicourse and see if your audience responds to it (like it). Then you can move to bigger ticket items.
READ ??? BELOW: “How Many Followers Do You Need to Make A Living on Social Media?” for more info.
PROS:
- Low start-up cost
- Low overhead and low rick
CONS:
- Takes time to develop a product
- Courses need to be updated all the time
- You must provide ongoing support to your customers (time-consuming)
- Continuously looking for new customers (product lunch)
7// Services
- Virtual assistant
- Web designer
- Blog coach
- Conference speaker
- Writer for another site
- Organizing, decorating, cooking
Freelancer, for example, is when you are creating content on behalf of someone else – whether that’s a brand, media outlet, another blogger, etc. – that belongs to them and doesn’t live on any of your platforms.
Great place to start to earn money blogging. If you already writing great engaging content, and taking stunning photos on your blog, but don’t have an audience. It’s more beneficial to a company to pay you to post your article on their site with a big audience than to pay you for sponsored posts.
Pinterest VA services are something that I tried and didn’t like. I prefer doing my own things in my own time. Having to be available for someone else on their schedule just didn’t work for me.
PROS:
- An excellent way to make money quickly
- Startup costs are low
- Little to no inventory
- Get paid for skills you already have
CONS:
- Not scalable
- You can only earn as much as your time allows
- Finding clients
How Many Followers Do You Need to Make A Living on Social Media?
You may wonder how big your audience should be before you lunch SUCCESSFUL product, course, sponsorship deal or support yourself full time.
Don’t get me wrong, you can launch a product or a course from day one, but will it be successful? Will you have an audience to buy it?
LEVEL 1: When you first starting to put content on your blog or social media you will hear crickets. Absolutely no one will comment, no one will DM you. You will ask people questions and they will not answer, and it can be a little bit disappointing.
And that is the stage that so many of first-time bloggers quit.
LEVEL 2: What comes next, people start to respond a little bit sporadically. Sometimes you will get some comments, people will answer your questions. It’s not consistent yet, but you know that you have an audience now.
LEVEL 3: And then as you continue consistently put out content and as a quality of your content gets better and better, you find that your audience not only growth but also becomes much more responsive. They start to consistently engage with the content that you are putting out there, start to answer your questions and reply to your e-mails.
And at THIS point, when you start to hear consistently from your audience when you able to consistently engage them in a dialog, that is when you know that you are ready to have your first successful product lunch or get your first successful sponsorship.
LEVEL 4: You are ready to go FULL TIME into BLOGGING business when your audience reaching out to you without you asking them questions. When they start to you that contact form on your site to reach out to you. Or they start emailing you out of the blue.
Resource: gillinaperkins.com
Interaction and Engagement is the metric that you should reach for when creating your blog content.
Goal: make your blog the go-to resource for your topic. As people visit and seek your advice, you will make money through your various income streams.
3 Things You Need to Do to Make Money Blogging
If you’re still wondering exactly how making money online works, the concept is quite simple.
- Once you start your blog, focus on building a solid library of at least 10-20 blog posts. Make sure they are helpful to your reader. Make your content on the topic better than anyone else’s.
- Build relationships on social media and your audience, in Facebook Groups and wherever your ideal reader hangs out. An audience that is interested in your content. Use social media (resource: How To do Market Research) to find them!
- Your “product” doesn’t have to be a thing. As you can see from the list above, you can make money in a variety of ways: affiliate marketing, selling digital or physical products, providing a service, ads or whatever works. Better yet, use a combination! Implement them one at a time until you find the ones that work best for you.
Don’t overthink it. Keep it simple. Get a blog, start writing articles. Experiment with income streams as you go. But start! You’ll never make any money if you don’t get some content out there first.
Don’t get stuck on questions “What’s your why?” And “Who’s your avatar?” and “How can I make my site look nicer?”. These are good questions but don’t spend more than two days on answers.
No one is looking at your site at the beginning.
And, if you’re like most of us, you’ll change your mind about your topic or settle into something as you go.
Just START! Get your content working for you. Dive deep into those questions later.
If you’re curious about what niches are most profitable, check out “10 profitable blog niches ideas.”
Also, take a look at the infographic below for the ways in which bloggers monetize in different niches:
From Visually.
MY FINAL TIP: don’t give up easily, build your followers and never forget why you started in the first place.
Blogging needs to be something that you really enjoy doing and you really want to continue doing regardless of getting paid or not. Because for the first few years, you’re probably not going to make that much money.
But if you continue to put in the work, you continue to improve your skills, your writing, your photography, whatever it is, you can absolutely turn it into a full-time business.
I think that it’s possible for anyone.
GOT A QUESTION?
I truly hope this post was helpful to you. Leave your question in the comments below! As always, I’d love to hear from you!
Have a fabulous week and take care!
Irina Nikitina – Founder of Modern Fifty TV
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