A little over a year ago I left my teaching job due to the stress and demands it was putting on my life and the realisation that I had less and less quality time with my family each week. After handing in my notice without a clue what I was going to do for money I decided to focus on turning my hobby of blogging in to a paid job and after 12 months of hard work, relentlessly researching ‘how to make money blogging’ and thousands of emails, I can now say I do earn money from my blog.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Earlier this week I shared my blog with my facebook friends, explaining that it was no longer just a hobby but I had now turned it into a business, promising them that if they would be so kind as to come across and follow my page I wouldn’t try to sell them anything. This little sentence on the end was the cause of a number of private messages asking me how on earth I make money blogging if I don’t try and sell anything to my readers and so I thought I would write a blog post for anyone interested explaining how to make money blogging.
I hope you find it interesting, maybe even helpful.
There are a number of different ways that you can make money blogging, although I should point out that for most of these to work you must have an established blog, your own domain name and a relatively high DA (more about DA here), it certainly isn’t a get rich quick scheme, trust me!
1.Paid collaborative posts
Being paid to write content about a particular brand, event, or subject, and hosting it on your blog is a good way to start earning money and there are plenty of companies out there who will hire you to do this. The majority of the time your fee will be negotiated directly with you and will depend on a number of factors such as your blog statistics, your writing style and subject knowledge.
In addition to being paid to write collaborative posts some companies will also pay you to host pre written content. This usually pays a lot less as the time and skill involved is significantly lower and therefore some bloggers prefer these paid gigs as opposed to having to write their own fresh material. You can join a number of sponsored post networks to help you secure this type of work.
2. Affiliate links
An affiliate link is usually a link that take you directly through to a page where you can purchase something. These links will not usually look any different to a normal link and the page it opens will open as normal, for example an amazon or argos page. The difference however is that the blogger has agreed with the seller that they will receive a commission on everything that is bought when the buyer enters their site via the bloggers link which will have a personalised code embedded into it for tracking purposes. The money a blogger can make from using affiliate schemes and links is usually minimal, however some companies offer a much bigger commission than others and it is always worth checking before you agree.
The other great thing about affiliate links is that once you have shared them or inserted them into your blog you don’t have to do anything with them, they will just keep generating sales for you as long as people are reading your blog and using your link to make the purchases. There is no limit on the number of affiliate schemes you can have however, some companies may insist that if you work with them you can’t work with their competitors, so again always check.
3.Advertising space
Another way you can make money blogging is by renting out space on your blog to companies for advertising. This can be especially lucrative if your blog is either focused on a niche subject and therefore reaching their ideal customers such as a blog about childhood eczema might work with oilatum, or if you have a very popular blog with a large following and you can get their advert seen by large numbers of potential customers.
Adverts can be inserted on just the home page or on several pages and positioned in varying places. The amount you charge will depend on a number of factors but again once set up you can receive a monthly income from the adverts without any additional work needing to be done by you.
4. Paid reviews
Reviews are where you are asked to write your honest opinions and experiences about a certain product, service or attraction and although the majority of reviews will be done in exchange for the reviewed item only, there are some companies who will also pay for the time it takes to conduct the review and for hosting it on your blog, so it is always worth checking before you agree to carry out any reviews.
5.Hosting competitions
Similar to the reviews the majority of companies will be happy to provide products, tickets, and services to bloggers in exchange for them creating and hosting competitions but there are also a number of companies that will also pay additional hosting fees as when done well competitions can act as huge advertising campaigns and will be seen by large numbers of people who then become potential customers. Again always ask if a budget is available when you agree to host a competition.
So now you know how to make money blogging you are probably wondering where to start. Well some of these opportunities will land n your inbox once your blog in established but in the mean time it is a good idea to join blogger facebook groups where lots of opportunities are shared or you could always pitch direct to the brads you want to work with. To learn more about pitching check out this pitching toolkit ebook by Jenna Farmer.