If you’re looking for a business to start that can let you be your own boss, open the doors to financial abundance, own your time, publish content on topics you’re passionate about and help people at the same time, becoming a blogger might be for you.
Of course, you have to love writing and to be willing to play the long game if you want to get paid for blogging. It will take time until you see any traffic, search engines rank your articles, form relationships with readers and build a name for yourself in your niche.
Once you’re there though that can mean passive income streams for the rest of your life with minimum working hours.
Maybe you’ve started your blog or are about to and are now wondering how to get paid for blogging, especially if you know nothing about it.
No worries, I also didn’t know what was possible or how to do it when I first started out. It took me a long time to learn about and implement the different blog monetization methods and grow my income. But truth is I could have done it in half the time.
I could have given myself permission to monetize from day 1 (yes, that’s totally possible) instead of waiting for big traffic numbers. I didn’t have the confidence, I wasn’t willing to risk it and I was questioning my skills and self-worth.
These are mental barriers you too might be facing and that’s totally normal. Mindset work plays a big role in any business. So make sure to work on that while growing your blog traffic and income. You also want to be developing the mindset of a full-time blogger before you actually become one.
With that being said, it’s time to get clear on how to make money blogging if you’re just starting out. Below, you’ll find 2 main ways to do that after which I’ll share with you a few more income streams you can add to your blogging business when you have more experience.
How to Get Paid for Blogging
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is when you earn a commission anytime someone purchases a product or service through your unique affiliate link. You join partner networks or the affiliate programs of products you love, have used and recommend (or anything else you think might be valuable to your audience) and can start using your dedicated link when mentioning it on your blog, on socials, in your newsletter or anywhere else.
That’s a win-win situation because the reader learns about a new resource, you can earn a commission and the company of the product makes a sale.
As a blogger, that’s something you can start doing literally from day 1. Mention relevant products in your very first blog posts, create a Resources page and list the products you recommend, or write a review of something that goes into detail about the pros and cons and can be helpful to readers interested in it. Reviews can also rank well and do well on Pinterest, so you can get extra traffic from it.
When monetizing your blog through affiliate marketing, don’t forget to always provide value, be genuine and disclose your partnerships and never push too hard when it comes to sales.
Your job is to provide the reader with information and a link to the product, not to convince them to do anything. They can make an informed decision once they’re ready.
Affiliate marketing can be passive income for bloggers as the unique links you include in your articles can stay there, the posts can rank well and you can get clicks and commissions for years to come without doing anything else.
Check out this guide to learn more about affiliate marketing.
Paid Partnerships
The next thing you can do from the early days of your blogging business (but once you have some traffic and an actual audience, no matter how small) is to work with sponsors.
Sponsored blogging is when brands pay you to promote their product/service and create content about it. They get introduced to a new audience this way and you get paid.
There are different ways this can work. Maybe you join marketplaces for bloggers and list your website so you can get found. Maybe you personally reach out to your favorite brands and offer them to work together.
The more your blog grows, the more companies will reach out to you for collaborations. But for now, you might need to do the work yourself.
Grow your traffic, have an email list, engage your audience, publish content consistently, and have a media kit and a page for sponsors on your blog. All these are elements sponsors are looking for when deciding whether to work with a blogger or not.
If you’re a social media influencer, present all your stats from that channel to potential sponsors as this can be the main reason why they want to work with you.
If you have a small audience, don’t worry. They need engagement. If you’re in the same niche as the brand, if your audience trusts you, if you still provide value with the new content and not just link to products, then everyone will be happy.
As you grow, your rates will increase too. This can become your main income stream (I’ve earned over six figures from blog sponsorships alone over the years) so make sure you do it well.
Don’t say Yes to every offer that comes your way. Choose the brands you work with wisely.
Sometimes it can be for a paid article, other times for a whole campaign (a few articles with photos, social media and newsletter promo, etc.) Or it can just be a link placement in existing content.
There are many ways to do this so make sure to find the one that works well for you and your blog.
More Ways to Earn as a Blogger
Now that you know how to get paid for blogging if you’re just starting out, it’s time to see what else is possible for you down the road.
When you have a bit more traffic and your audience grows, consider the following income streams:
Digital Products
I remember the time when I was afraid to even consider creating and selling my own product. I was pretty comfortable freelancing and blogging, promoting other people’s products, but also dreaming about having mine. I had so much to teach and I wanted to package it all in a self-paced course.
It took me a lot of time till I took action, and a lot more to actually complete that project.
Now, a few years later, I have a whole product suite, am officially a course creator and even teach others how to build this business so they can scale.
Nothing is stopping you from creating your own product. And it doesn’t need to be as big as a course. It can be an Ebook or printables. These do well.
Having a product to sell changes the way you do blogging. You now have another offer for your readers, you’re taken more seriously in your field, you learn to launch and promote that product and earn passive income from it.
Usually, people create more products after their first one, and with that, there’s no limit to how many sales you can make per year or per month or per week as long as you create systems in your business that do the selling for you. That usually means having sales funnel and growing your email list.
Ads on Your Blog
Something simpler and easier that allows you to get paid for blogging is advertising. Having ads on your blog is passive income at its finest, but it also depends on traffic.
You usually need a lot of it to earn any significant amount. And it’s best to sign up with an ad network for bloggers but their requirements are big. Some only work with publishers in the US, most want you to have 25K-50K monthly page views, approval might take a long time, or else.
Ads also affect the reader experience on your blog negatively so be careful with that. It can slow down the website, annoy readers, and affect your domain authority.
If the income from it doesn’t change your financial situation much, then it’s probably not worth it.
Done-for-You Services
Another way to get paid as a blogger is to provide done-for-you services to your readers. If what you teach can be offered as a service, set up a page on your website about it and start charging.
If you teach people how to design websites, then you’re experienced in this and have done it plenty of times. Why not offer it as a service for those who don’t want to learn everything about it and are ready to outsource it?
If you’re teaching people how to organize their homes, you can walk them through everything on a video call. That will save them time and effort.
Coaching
Finally, you can offer coaching to your readers. That’s for those who are ready to dive deeper into the topic you specialize in, who want to work 1:1 with you, who are ready for massive shifts in their life, and who need accountability and support.
There’s only so many clients you can serve per month so make sure you don’t underprice yourself. Only work with clients who seem like the right fit and teach them what you know so they can apply it to their life.
Blogging can be more than a hobby. Unfortunately, most people give up before becoming a full-time blogger and getting paid to blog.
However, most bloggers have been around for years before they get to a 5- or 6-figure income. There’s a lot to figure out and while doing research and taking courses definitely speeds up your progress, most of the learning happens through action. Through making mistakes, seeing what doesn’t work and trying something else. This makes you resilient and disciplined. But at the end of the day, all you need is consistency.
I’ve interviewed 7-figure bloggers who started from nothing. Stories like that are out there to show you it’s possible and that as long as you keep adding value to the online world and showing up frequently, there will be traffic and that traffic can later turn into regular income.
Are you ready to get paid for blogging? What income stream will you start with and why?
