What is Blogging/Content Creation? How to earn Money from Blogging/Content Creation?
(No, it doesn't require cheating anyone or doing anything dishonest - there are plenty of 100% legal and legal ways to get paid for blogging).
For many people, blogging is just a fun side hustle they do in their free time. If that's your case, there's nothing wrong with that!
But if you've been wondering how to get paid for blogging, this guide will explore different ways to turn your blog into a source of income.
How can I get paid for blogging?
There are many ways to monetize your blog and make money as a blogger.
These include making money from advertising on your blog, adding affiliate links to your blog posts, trading with brands for sponsored content and reviews, selling your own original products, and more.
You can also think outside the box and expand with YouTube monetized content, podcasts, paid newsletters, and more.
How to Make Money as a Blogger in 2022
First, let's get this straight: making money as a blogger is a marathon, not a sprint. You're not going to get rich overnight by blogging, so if that's what you're after, you need to start thinking about a different plan.But if you're willing to put in the time and effort, blogging can be a personally, socially, and financially rewarding experience. Having said that, let's take a look at how to position yourself to start making money from your blog.
Choosing the Right Blogging Niche
A pinch of yumA blog niche is a general category or topic that your blog focuses on. Niches can be broad (eg travel) or narrower (eg model aircraft manufacturing).
It probably goes without saying, but some blogging fields are more lucrative than others.
Lifestyle blog? Mainly profit. Food blog? A potential gold mine. Blogging about 18th century Russian literature? ...probably won't replace your day job anytime soon.
If your only goal is to blog about something you love, who cares if it's profitable? Have fun and enjoy the opportunity to connect with like-minded people around the world.
However, if your goal is to ultimately monetize your blog, then you need to pay special attention to the niche you choose. Some of the most profitable niches as of 2022 are:
- Food and cooking
- Travel goods
- Personal Finance and Investing
- Parenting and "Mom Blogs"
- Arts, Crafts and DIY
- Health and Fitness
- Fashion, Beauty and Self-Care
- Games and Technology
- Sustainability and Green Living
If any of these sound like something you're interested in, great! You are already on your way to blogging.
On the other hand, if none of these seem to work for you, don't worry: the blogosphere is a fast-changing place, and choosing the hottest niche for your blog is definitely not the only key to making money as a blogger.
You can think of a niche as an ecosystem: some are bigger than others, but that doesn't mean there's no benefit to being part of a smaller ecosystem.
In fact, niches that are not yet overcrowded offer a unique opportunity: with less noise and competition, your blog is more likely to stand out from the crowd.
The key is to strike a balance: you don't want to write something so specific on your blog that it will never reach a wider audience, but you also don't want your blog to be the same as thousands of other blogs.
For bloggers, especially those with large audiences and/or social media, sponsored content is a huge source of potential income.
If you want to get in on the action, reach out to brands related to your blog content and ask them if they would be interested in sponsoring a post or comment on your blog.
With so many people interacting with products through social media in the first place, brands are eager to get their products into the hands of influencers and bloggers who can "socially prove" them -- that is, they can provide their followers with trust recommendations and recommendations.
In fact, if you build enough followers, brands are likely to start reaching out to you!
Sponsored content is still a legal grey area, so to avoid getting into any trouble, make sure you momentarily disclose in your post when you receive funding from a brand or company for a product you're blogging about.
It's also important to remember that your audience's trust in you is what keeps them coming back to your blog. In order to maintain and respect this trust, you must be honest with the products you review.
If you're a beauty blogger and you've been paid to review a cream that causes hives on your skin, you should mention that in the comments.
In other words, be honest with the good and the bad of the product you pay to review will pay off in the long run in the form of a growing audience.
With affiliate marketing, you can recommend a product to your audience and include a link to where they can buy that product. When someone clicks a link on your website to buy a product, you earn a commission from the sale.
To put affiliate marketing links on your blog, you need to join an affiliate marketing program.
One of the most used affiliate marketing programs is (surprise, surprise) Amazon Associates, Amazon's affiliate marketing arm, which allows you to earn up to 10% commission on products purchased through your custom link.
Considering how many consumers prefer the ease of online shopping from Amazon, signing up for Amazon Associates can be a great way to make money for your blog.
However, it's far from the only affiliate marketing network: Pepperjam, Conversant, ShareASale, and Awin are other good options.
While affiliate marketing programs like Amazon sell an almost unbelievable variety of products, you can also consider affiliate marketing opportunities specific to your blog's niche.
For example, if you're a food or cooking blogger, many grocery retailers, like Safeway, also have affiliate programs that you can sign up for.
If you're a fashion blogger, major fashion retailer Fashion Nova also offers partnership opportunities in the form of affiliate links and sponsorship deals.
Affiliate marketing is a rapidly growing field, and just like sponsored content, it’s important to be transparent with your audience.
If you are writing a blog post that includes affiliate links, be sure to disclose this information directly, at the beginning or end of the post.
Like affiliate links, ad placements are another way you can get paid for brands to sell their products on your blog. There are two ways to place ads on your blog, both with their pros and cons.
This is the most common way most bloggers make money by advertising on their site. Here's how it works: You sign up with an ad network, and they're responsible for selling the empty space on your blog to companies eager to show their products to your audience.
Google Adsense is the most widely used ad serving program and one of the reasons for its popularity is because it is easy to get accepted and start earning money from ad serving.
The best alternative to Google Adsense is Ezoic, another one that offers AI-driven SEO ad placements that can actually help drive new traffic to your website.
Other ad serving programs, such as Mediavine, Adthrive, and Media.net, are more insightful: they only work for blogs and websites that already have a certain amount of traffic and/or unique visits per month.
However, if your blog qualifies, signing up for one of these ad serving services can yield significant financial rewards: Not only do they typically offer bloggers a higher percentage of their ad revenue, but many of these services also curate their ads to suit your specific needs Niche, so that ads blend seamlessly with the beauty of your blog.
If you're interested in making money by placing ads on your blog, you can find a full list of the best ad serving services here.
This requires a lot of industry knowledge, not to mention that in order for companies to find your offer attractive, your blog needs to attract a lot of traffic each month.
It's definitely more difficult to strike an ad deal directly with a company, but it's worth it financially. Since you're cutting out the middleman (the ad placement program), you end up making more money in your pocket.
No matter what you do, selling ad space on your blog is one of the best ways to earn passive income without much extra effort – all you need to do is generate traffic, which may already be your goal!
When you blog about a specific topic, your audience sees you as an authority in your field. In this way, your blog becomes a place to showcase your knowledge and abilities, and you can sell your services to an interested audience.
I gave an example of selling services as a professional photographer, but it's not the only service you can offer. Popular services you can sell include:
Consulting services in your area of expertise (finance, fashion, marketing, education, etc.)
Website Design and/or Graphic Design
web development
Freelance writing/copywriting
Private lessons and/or online courses and seminars
On the other hand, if none of these seem to work for you, don't worry: the blogosphere is a fast-changing place, and choosing the hottest niche for your blog is definitely not the only key to making money as a blogger.
You can think of a niche as an ecosystem: some are bigger than others, but that doesn't mean there's no benefit to being part of a smaller ecosystem.
In fact, niches that are not yet overcrowded offer a unique opportunity: with less noise and competition, your blog is more likely to stand out from the crowd.
The key is to strike a balance: you don't want to write something so specific on your blog that it will never reach a wider audience, but you also don't want your blog to be the same as thousands of other blogs.
Write Sponsored Content
Mars Lawrence
One of the easiest ways to get paid as a blogger is to write sponsored content. Sponsored content is when brands or companies pay you to write or review their products.For bloggers, especially those with large audiences and/or social media, sponsored content is a huge source of potential income.
If you want to get in on the action, reach out to brands related to your blog content and ask them if they would be interested in sponsoring a post or comment on your blog.
With so many people interacting with products through social media in the first place, brands are eager to get their products into the hands of influencers and bloggers who can "socially prove" them -- that is, they can provide their followers with trust recommendations and recommendations.
In fact, if you build enough followers, brands are likely to start reaching out to you!
Sponsored content is still a legal grey area, so to avoid getting into any trouble, make sure you momentarily disclose in your post when you receive funding from a brand or company for a product you're blogging about.
It's also important to remember that your audience's trust in you is what keeps them coming back to your blog. In order to maintain and respect this trust, you must be honest with the products you review.
If you're a beauty blogger and you've been paid to review a cream that causes hives on your skin, you should mention that in the comments.
In other words, be honest with the good and the bad of the product you pay to review will pay off in the long run in the form of a growing audience.
Add affiliate marketing links
Amazon employee
Affiliate marketing links are one of the best and easiest ways to make money as a blogger.With affiliate marketing, you can recommend a product to your audience and include a link to where they can buy that product. When someone clicks a link on your website to buy a product, you earn a commission from the sale.
To put affiliate marketing links on your blog, you need to join an affiliate marketing program.
One of the most used affiliate marketing programs is (surprise, surprise) Amazon Associates, Amazon's affiliate marketing arm, which allows you to earn up to 10% commission on products purchased through your custom link.
Considering how many consumers prefer the ease of online shopping from Amazon, signing up for Amazon Associates can be a great way to make money for your blog.
However, it's far from the only affiliate marketing network: Pepperjam, Conversant, ShareASale, and Awin are other good options.
While affiliate marketing programs like Amazon sell an almost unbelievable variety of products, you can also consider affiliate marketing opportunities specific to your blog's niche.
For example, if you're a food or cooking blogger, many grocery retailers, like Safeway, also have affiliate programs that you can sign up for.
If you're a fashion blogger, major fashion retailer Fashion Nova also offers partnership opportunities in the form of affiliate links and sponsorship deals.
Affiliate marketing is a rapidly growing field, and just like sponsored content, it’s important to be transparent with your audience.
If you are writing a blog post that includes affiliate links, be sure to disclose this information directly, at the beginning or end of the post.
Make money with advertising
Like affiliate links, ad placements are another way you can get paid for brands to sell their products on your blog. There are two ways to place ads on your blog, both with their pros and cons.
Use a similar advertising program as Google Ads
This is the most common way most bloggers make money by advertising on their site. Here's how it works: You sign up with an ad network, and they're responsible for selling the empty space on your blog to companies eager to show their products to your audience.
Google Adsense is the most widely used ad serving program and one of the reasons for its popularity is because it is easy to get accepted and start earning money from ad serving.
The best alternative to Google Adsense is Ezoic, another one that offers AI-driven SEO ad placements that can actually help drive new traffic to your website.
Other ad serving programs, such as Mediavine, Adthrive, and Media.net, are more insightful: they only work for blogs and websites that already have a certain amount of traffic and/or unique visits per month.
However, if your blog qualifies, signing up for one of these ad serving services can yield significant financial rewards: Not only do they typically offer bloggers a higher percentage of their ad revenue, but many of these services also curate their ads to suit your specific needs Niche, so that ads blend seamlessly with the beauty of your blog.
If you're interested in making money by placing ads on your blog, you can find a full list of the best ad serving services here.
Contact the company directly
Another option for placing ads on your blog is to contact companies related to your niche directly, ask them if they are interested in buying ad space on your blog, and negotiate a price with them.This requires a lot of industry knowledge, not to mention that in order for companies to find your offer attractive, your blog needs to attract a lot of traffic each month.
It's definitely more difficult to strike an ad deal directly with a company, but it's worth it financially. Since you're cutting out the middleman (the ad placement program), you end up making more money in your pocket.
No matter what you do, selling ad space on your blog is one of the best ways to earn passive income without much extra effort – all you need to do is generate traffic, which may already be your goal!
Sell your service
You can think of blogging as a way to expand your skills online. For example, if you create a blog to showcase your food photography, chances are you're a pretty good food photographer, right?When you blog about a specific topic, your audience sees you as an authority in your field. In this way, your blog becomes a place to showcase your knowledge and abilities, and you can sell your services to an interested audience.
I gave an example of selling services as a professional photographer, but it's not the only service you can offer. Popular services you can sell include:
Consulting services in your area of expertise (finance, fashion, marketing, education, etc.)
Website Design and/or Graphic Design
web development
Freelance writing/copywriting
Private lessons and/or online courses and seminars
Of course, this is a more time-consuming way to make money from blogging, as it requires you to spend time actually delivering the service you're selling!
However, if you have the time and want to eventually turn your blogging hobby into a full-time career, selling your services on your blog is a great way to make money while growing your audience and your reputation in your field .
You may have noticed by now that all of these different ways of getting paid for blogging have one thing in common: they all require your blog to have a loyal readership who get hooked on your content and keep coming back for more information.
A great way to ensure continued engagement with your audience is to build an email list.
Anyone who signs up will regularly receive from you new posts on your blog, new developments in your field, free (or paid) resources and product recommendations, and new offers on any services you may be selling.
Businesses rely on email marketing as one of the biggest and fastest growing ways to increase sales. With roughly 42% of Americans reporting that they subscribe to email newsletters to receive updates and sales offers, there's no reason your blog shouldn't get involved.
For email newsletters, like life, the key is balance. You want to keep your audience fascinated by interesting, educational, entertaining content delivered to their inboxes on a regular basis, but not also on a regular basis.
If you don't send enough updates, you risk losing your audience's interest. On the other hand, update too many and you might annoy people.
Nobody likes to be spammed with constant, low-quality emails that are obviously just trying to sell them something, so make sure you put thought and effort into all your communications with your audience.
Some web hosting platforms come with built-in email tools, but you should also check out his range of great email marketing software that can help your blog achieve maximum impact.
If selling your services sounds too time-consuming or difficult for you at this point, don't worry: you can also make money by selling digital or physical products on your blog.
Selling digital products is more scalable than selling services because it doesn't require you to regularly provide services on demand or take the time to provide them to customers. You can simply produce one product and sell it an unlimited number of times.
To get you started, here are some examples of common digital products you can create and sell:
E-book
Prints and other downloads
Online (pre-recorded) courses, such as those offered by MasterClass
work log
Educational materials and worksheets (this is especially lucrative for bloggers in education and teaching).
Selling your own digital products is a great way to make money from blogging independently.
By creating and selling your own products, you don't have to rely on the whims of ad serving or affiliate marketing programs, which can change and break at any time.
While it may be easiest to sell digital products (a blog is a digital platform after all), you can also choose to sell physical products on your blog.
Books (especially cookbooks, which can be a major source of income for well-known cooking bloggers)
Clothing and accessories such as hats, t-shirts and handbags.
Novelty items like mugs, stickers, and phone cases
Physical prints of your artwork or photography
Of course, you have to consider production and shipping costs, as well as how payments are processed on your blog (this applies to both physical and digital sales).
But with a little planning and effort, selling products on your blog can be a fun and rewarding way to earn extra cash and strengthen your relationship with your audience.
a pinch of yum youtube
As of 2022, YouTube has more than 200 million users — in other words, roughly a quarter of the planet uses YouTube regularly.
If that's not exciting enough, consider this: YouTube makeup guru Jeffree Star, aka the richest YouTuber, has an estimated net worth of $20 billion.
Now, obviously, this is an extreme example. But even for the average content creator, YouTube is a potentially huge source of income that you can earn by making videos about content that interests you.
However, if you have the time and want to eventually turn your blogging hobby into a full-time career, selling your services on your blog is a great way to make money while growing your audience and your reputation in your field .
Set up an email list
constant contactYou may have noticed by now that all of these different ways of getting paid for blogging have one thing in common: they all require your blog to have a loyal readership who get hooked on your content and keep coming back for more information.
A great way to ensure continued engagement with your audience is to build an email list.
Anyone who signs up will regularly receive from you new posts on your blog, new developments in your field, free (or paid) resources and product recommendations, and new offers on any services you may be selling.
Businesses rely on email marketing as one of the biggest and fastest growing ways to increase sales. With roughly 42% of Americans reporting that they subscribe to email newsletters to receive updates and sales offers, there's no reason your blog shouldn't get involved.
For email newsletters, like life, the key is balance. You want to keep your audience fascinated by interesting, educational, entertaining content delivered to their inboxes on a regular basis, but not also on a regular basis.
If you don't send enough updates, you risk losing your audience's interest. On the other hand, update too many and you might annoy people.
Nobody likes to be spammed with constant, low-quality emails that are obviously just trying to sell them something, so make sure you put thought and effort into all your communications with your audience.
Some web hosting platforms come with built-in email tools, but you should also check out his range of great email marketing software that can help your blog achieve maximum impact.
Sell products (digital and/or physical)
If selling your services sounds too time-consuming or difficult for you at this point, don't worry: you can also make money by selling digital or physical products on your blog.
Selling digital products is more scalable than selling services because it doesn't require you to regularly provide services on demand or take the time to provide them to customers. You can simply produce one product and sell it an unlimited number of times.
To get you started, here are some examples of common digital products you can create and sell:
E-book
Prints and other downloads
Online (pre-recorded) courses, such as those offered by MasterClass
work log
Educational materials and worksheets (this is especially lucrative for bloggers in education and teaching).
Selling your own digital products is a great way to make money from blogging independently.
By creating and selling your own products, you don't have to rely on the whims of ad serving or affiliate marketing programs, which can change and break at any time.
While it may be easiest to sell digital products (a blog is a digital platform after all), you can also choose to sell physical products on your blog.
Some popular brick-and-mortar products include:
Books (especially cookbooks, which can be a major source of income for well-known cooking bloggers)
Clothing and accessories such as hats, t-shirts and handbags.
Novelty items like mugs, stickers, and phone cases
Physical prints of your artwork or photography
Of course, you have to consider production and shipping costs, as well as how payments are processed on your blog (this applies to both physical and digital sales).
But with a little planning and effort, selling products on your blog can be a fun and rewarding way to earn extra cash and strengthen your relationship with your audience.
Get paid to blog on YouTube
a pinch of yum youtube
As of 2022, YouTube has more than 200 million users — in other words, roughly a quarter of the planet uses YouTube regularly.
If that's not exciting enough, consider this: YouTube makeup guru Jeffree Star, aka the richest YouTuber, has an estimated net worth of $20 billion.
Now, obviously, this is an extreme example. But even for the average content creator, YouTube is a potentially huge source of income that you can earn by making videos about content that interests you.
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