How To Make Money From Your Blog in 2024
How do bloggers make money? It’s a question that I get all the time, and it’s a question that I’m sure is on the minds of every person who thinks that it’s crazy that I recently left my full-time job to pursue content creation full-time.
Because your first thought might be, “You have a blog?" That’s cute! My niece made a blog for her study abroad trip in 2014. But isn’t blogging dead? How can you actually earn a living from uploading posts to a blog?”
One thing that I learned in 2020 (well, one blogging-related thing at least!) is that not only is blogging not dead, but that it can be an extremely lucrative income source if you do it right.
I’m going to take you through how to make money from your blog with four areas of monetization that you can focus on. I recommend picking one of these methods to be your primary focus and then work on 1-2 as supporting streams of revenue because I can promise if you try to do all of these things at once, you’ll burn out.
1. Ads
You can run ads on your blog! Ads appear on your blog and you’ll get paid a certain amount based on impressions, click through of ads, and more. Ads can be run from individual companies but most people will join an ad network.
You can start running ads earlier in your blogging career, but many bloggers will wait to qualify for an ad network with a higher CPM (cost per thousand impressions that the advertiser pays) and RPM (revenue per thousand impressions that you take home). So, ads make the most sense at scale.
Some ad networks you can check out are:
AdThrive (also known as CafeMedia)
There are some sites like Google Adsense that you can set up with a lower amount of monthly visitors and page views, and then there are programs like Mediavine that have certain threshold requirements you have to meet to qualify for them. (Mediavine for example currently requires 50K unique monthly visitors on websites that they work with).
2. Affiliates
You can join a program like Amazon Affiliates or rewardStyle and earn money through affiliate links on your site. With affiliate links you make a small commission every time someone makes a purchase through your link and those commission percentages vary based on the retailers.
Affiliates are great if you already have a large existing audience on your blog or if you have a high commission rate for certain affiliate partners or networks since affiliates often show the best return at scale or with a high percentage of the commission.
A typical affiliate commission for a fashion or beauty brand might be between 10-20 percent so if you are a beauty influencer and you become an affiliate partner with a beauty brand you might only get $2 commission for every product that you sell. So you’d have to sell a lot of products to pay your rent, but affiliates might account for a solid chunk of your yearly income.
Choose 1 main blogging income stream to focus on with 1-2 supporting ones
3. Sponsored Posts
A brand can pay you to create a sponsored post on your blog or website. I’ve done sponsored blog posts with brands like Walmart Beauty, The New York Times, CVS Beauty and more. You can create a blog post featuring their products or services and include photos, links, and more.
Great blog posts take a long time to craft when you factor in brainstorming a topic, keyword research, shooting photos for them, writing, editing and any coding elements required of them, but the best part about a blog post for brands is that it lives forever and it’s searchable! The lifespan of an Instagram post may only be 24-48 hours but if you write a great blog post for a brand they’re getting a lot more for their money because it can be found over and over again.
If you want to pitch brands, you know my e-book Right on Pitch has you covered with everything you need to know about writing a great email to stand out.
4. Digital and Physical Products
I truly believe it’s important for creators to have an income stream that is very much in their control and that doesn’t depend on a third party or an algorithm so creating and selling your own products on your blog is a great way to do this.
My e-book is a great example of this. I have created blog posts and YouTube videos where I mention it as a resource (like I did in the previous section!) and I make passive income from people who find it and want to improve their pitch game.
You can also create physical products but the upfront cost of creating digital products is much lower and so it’s easier if you’re just getting started. But if you have a bunch of loyal blog readers you could consider creating merch for them to buy like hats, mouse pads, sweatshirts and more.
yours,
Austen