Bloggers typically make money through a combination of one or more income sources. These include but are not limited to the following: advertising revenue, affiliate marketing programs, sponsorships and brand collaboration. A blogger’s own products and services along with merchandise are also key revenue generators.
Introduction
“How do Bloggers Make Money?”. This is a pretty popular question, and I plan on answering this question to the best of my ability.
However, I think the more important question is how can you make money as a blogger?
You see, I think this is what most people really want to know.
It is not so much about what do other bloggers do to make money but rather what blogging monetization ideas on this list do you feel you could use to make money.
Right, so let’s get started…
Here is the short answer to how do bloggers make money?
Bloggers typically make money through a combination of one or more income sources. These include but are not limited to the following:
- Advertising Revenue
- Affiliate Marketing Programs
- Sponsorships and Brand Collaboration
- Own Products and Services along with Merchandise
Deconstructing How to Make Money Blogging
1. Can You Really Make Money Blogging?
The short answer to this is YES! There are plenty of bloggers out there who make enough money blogging to earn a full-time income.
With the current economic crisis just getting started, blogging is going to become more important than ever, if not one of the most important ways to generate an income. This is not something I can cover in this article though. I will add a link to explain in more detail as soon as I can.
As with most things in life, you will get out of blogging what you put in. Work hard and work smart and you will prosper.
Sadly, not every blogger makes money. In fact, according to a recent survey, nearly 70% of bloggers make no money at all! source
That is a pretty scary blogging statistic! Even scarier is the reality that most blogs will fail in their first year.
You see unless you are blogging purely for the enjoyment of sharing a hobby or your thoughts, your blog is actually a small business in the Startup phase.
Thinking about your blog as a business is the key to answering the question of how do bloggers make money. I will be going into this idea in more detail later on in this article.
Personally, I think most people who have started blogs and then fail to grow them, start with a false reality about blogging.
What they fail to realize is the amount of effort it takes to actually build a profitable blog.
This is why it is important to realize that when we answer the question of how do bloggers make money, one of the answers lies in the amount of work, effort, and know-how they put in.
This leads us back to the question of can you really make money blogging?
Yes, it is possible to make money blogging. If you are willing to put in the right amount of hard work and effort. If you are willing to commit to continuous learning and the application of what you learn.
Do you want to know how much some bloggers make each month?
Keep reading to find out!
2. How Much Do Bloggers Make Each Month?
As part of learning how bloggers make money, it is work finding out how much bloggers make each month.
To answer the question of how much do bloggers make each month it is important to remember that blogger income varies wildly!
Some bloggers make nothing while other bloggers can earn over a $ 100 000 (R 1.8 million) per month or even more.
I am going to share blogger income from ten international Blogger Income Reports*. The examples I am going to give, cover a wide range of blogging incomes but they will give you some idea of how much bloggers can make each month.
* I have not found any South African bloggers publishing income reports. If you know of any please let me know in the comments.
So, here now are ten random examples to answer the question of, “How much do bloggers make each month?”.
- Mostly Morgan – $1,998.20. source
- Making Sense of Cents – $125,000 (Average over 12 months). source
- Pickled Plum – $4,330.08. source
- Blog Ambitious – $1,564.68. source
- Recipe This – $9810.71. source
- Fit Mom Journey – $10,124.75. source
- Sarah Titus – $433,188. source
- One Hour Professor – $17,203.03. source
- Lucky Mojito – $1,127.34. source
- Fudge My Life – $0.69. source
As you can see there is a very large range of monthly blogging incomes.
The highest blog income earner on this list is Sarah Titus with a whopping $433,188 income in a month.
While not every blogger earns such a high income, most of the bloggers on this list, earn income exceeding $1,000.
It should be noted that there is no typical or magical blogging income number. The bloggers above have been blogging for different lengths of time and in different blogging niches.
Naturally, some niches will be more profitable than others. Just as some niches will be more competitive than others.
There is also a large difference in how each blogger goes about making money in their blogging business.
I hope the above at least gives you some idea of how much bloggers can make each month.
3. What Do Bloggers Do to Make Money?
So how do bloggers make money each month? To really answer this we need to ask what do bloggers do to make money?
You see no one makes money without taking action of some sort. Even a lottery winner has to take action to buy a ticket.
What I am going to outline here are not the exact actions bloggers take to make money but rather the categories of income or sources of income for bloggers.
Naturally, every blogger will implement the specific actions necessary to generate income from each income source.
Let me not keep you waiting, let’s find out how do bloggers make money…
Here are the Most Common Income Sources for Bloggers!
Advertising revenue. – Making money from advertising is probably the most common method for a blogger to earn income.
It is also quite popular as it is relatively easy to set up and get started. However, the potential to earn high income from advertising is limited as you need to generate a lot of traffic.
Bloggers earn money on the basis of the number of times and advert is viewed or clicked. The model can vary depending on the Ad Network.
Examples of Ad Networks include Google AdSense and Mediavine. The latter being quite popular with bloggers.
Affiliate marketing programs. – Affiliate marketing is a very popular method used by bloggers the make money.
The number of affiliate programs available in each niche varies greatly. Typically the bigger the niche the more affiliate programs and products you will find.
As an affiliate marketer or blogger, you are basically a salesperson for the company whose program you have enrolled in.
You recommend their products or services and in return, you get paid a commission when someone purchases through the link you provided.
Affiliate links are special links that have tracking codes attached in order to determine who referred the customer.
Some affiliate programs can pay out quite good commissions and allow bloggers to earn excellent monthly incomes.
Sponsorships. – Sponsorships are another way some bloggers make money.
So how do bloggers make money from sponsorships?
Sponsorship opportunities generally require bloggers to have large active social followings.
Podcasting and YouTube videos certainly lend themselves to sponsorships when the audience is large.
Large social followings on Instagram can also attract sponsors looking to reach specific audiences built up by bloggers.
Bloggers who land sponsorships have generally been around for a long time. So this is more of a long term income generator.
Own products & services. – Another popular method used by bloggers to make money is by creating their own products or services.
While this is a popular method to monetize blogs, it is not quite as common as the first two monetization methods.
This is because creating your own products or services usually requires a considerable amount of work.
Blog products come in many forms. These include ebooks, templates, courses, virtual assistant services and more.
One of the above is better than the rest, and I will cover this in the next part of this article. But before I do, there is one other action you must take to have a hope of making income.
Regardless of how bloggers choose to make money, there is one thing they simply have to do for any of the above to work.
They have to blog regularly. They have to produce good quality content. They have to build an audience and drive traffic to their blogs.
No traffic! No Income! Simple as that.
For this reason, and especially when you are starting out, forget about social media, fancy blog design and anything that gets in the way of you producing quality content.
You will see me repeat this often in any article covering how do bloggers make money. In fact, you will see me repeat this next piece of advice in every beginner blogging article I can.
When you are learning how to start a blog, the most important thing for you to do is to write at least 30 great pieces of content for your particular niche.
If you fail to do this you are going to take much longer to reach any sort of success.
If you want to make money blogging then do the above before you do anything else.
To get started you can click here to learn how to set up a blog quickly so that you can start writing.
4. What is the Best Way to Make Money Blogging?
Is there such a thing as the best way to make money blogging?
Well actually, there is.
Out of the four most common blogging income sources I just shared with you, one of them is better than the rest.
Care to take a guess?
If you said, “The best way to make money blogging is by selling your own products!”. Well, I couldn’t have said it any better.
I have visited many many blogs over the years, probably thousands, and hands down, the bloggers who make the most money have taken the time to create their own products.
Now you may have noticed I have not included ‘service’. Services are ‘time-for-money’ items. If you have a team to help you deliver services then go right ahead and sell services. But if you are the one who has to deliver it then having products that you can sell in volume is far better.
Your time as a blogger is precious. You have to invest it where you can gain the greatest benefits.
When selling your own products you can often make more money than if you are getting commissions from someone else.
You also get to keep the customer, which means they end up on your mailing list rather than someone else’s. This means you can continue to communicate and sell to them in the future.
There is a lot to discuss when it comes to creating your own products. But I will leave that for another time.
For now, I suggest you get hold of a notebook of some sort and just start thinking of ideas of products you could create for your blogging niche.
Perhaps one day someone will ask you how do bloggers make money and you will show them your notebook.
Let’s move onto the next question…
5. How Long Does it Take to Make Money Blogging?
There is no definitive answer to this question.
Why? Well, every blog is different.
There are many different blogging niches which blogger find themselves in and the opportunities in each niche can vary dramatically.
While there may be more income opportunities in bigger niches there is also more competition which makes it harder to get noticed by people and search engines.
Many smaller niches have less competition but also less opportunity. Of course, this doesn’t mean bloggers cannot make money in small niches, in fact, small niches have the potential to generate income faster because of lower competition.
That said, if you can make it in a big popular niche you will probably make more income from your blog than in a smaller niche.
Ultimately, how quickly your blog makes money is dependant on many things besides the niche. The quality of your content and the frequency of your posting is probably the ultimate determiner of success.
Many blogs take months or even years to make income, and then there are some who take only a few months.
Instead of focusing on the money, however, focus on creating value. This is how you will make money blogging in the long term.
6. How Can I Make More Sales on My Blog?
I am going to keep this section short.
If you want to make more sales you need to do these few basic things:
- Make sure you have lots of products to sell and promote lots of high-quality affiliate products.
- Build your email list! Build Your email list? BUILD YOUR EMAIL LIST!
- Create awesome content that provides value.
- Promote, promote, promote!
7. The Business of Blogging.
If you were starting a business today I am sure you would expect it to take a great deal of hard work to make it successful.
Starting a blog is starting a business. It is going to take a great deal of work and effort to make something of it.
Your blog is really a means of building trust with your audience. It helps you discover what your audience wants and then educate and promote that you provide what it is they want.
A blog is a communication tool and if you want to make money blogging then you need to become an entrepreneur and business person in addition to being a blogger.
8. Resources to Help You Make Money Online.
Here are some of my favorite resources that can help bloggers make money online.
Anyone starting a blog could benefit immensely by using some of these plugins and services.
Useful Free Plugins you should be using on your blog. (I use all of these plugins.)
- RankMath – SEO Plugin
- WordFence – Security Plugin
- Monsterinsights – Google Analytics Integration (Visitor Tracking)
- Mailpoet – Emailing System
- GDPR Cookie Consent – Privacy Control Plugin (Required if you are targeting a European Audience.
Popular Premium Plugins (These plugins have more than paid for themselves.)
- Beaver Builder – My favorite Page Builder Plugins
- Beaver Themer – Where do I begin…
- Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder – Even more design possibilities.
- Astra Pro Addon – Takes the Astra Theme to the next level!
And the list goes on… But let’s not get carried away just yet!
