4 Steps of How to Make Money Blogging

How to Make Money Blogging
Photo by my lovely photographer sister Carrie Logan
I’m AMAZED at the number of people who booked the blog consultations I announced last week. If you want to turn your blog into a business or take your small business to the next level, email me quickly!

Raise your hand if you think bloggers are underpaid.

I mentioned this when I spoke at Alt Summit, and I think every hand in the room was up.

Here’s the thing: Most bloggers don’t start a blog to make money. I sure didn’t. And if you did…well then you should probably quit now. For the hours you’ll put in to this thing, you’d be better off working part time at McDonald’s. I don’t make anywhere close to a full-time income on this, but it’s a nice supplement!

The good news is that the answer to how to make money blogging isn’t that difficult. Here’s my biggest recommendation, though:

Fall in love with your blog, and profit will come.

If you didn’t start blogging to make money, don’t get so caught up in how to make money blogging that you forget why you’re blogging. The more you invest into writing good content, taking great photos, and making friends with other bloggers, the more you will benefit.

1. How to Make Money Blogging

There are MANY ways to make money blogging, but the three main ways are:

A. Sponsored Posts

This includes working directly with brands, as well as through blog networks. My current favorites are:

B. Links

There are plenty of affiliate programs you can join, where you make money off referring other customers. In my opinion, the best program to do this through is Share A Sale because they have a lot of popular brands you’d refer anyway. There are also networks, such as Linqia, that work with brands who pay per click on the links within your blog.

C. Ads

You can either sell them on your blog, or go through an ad network (I’m part of both Google Adsense and Mode Media). These don’t bring as much bang for your buck as sponsored posts or links, but they’re a decent supplement.

2. How to Set Your Prices

Most bloggers do well with step one, but stop when it comes to step two. Other bloggers might jump at the chance to write a blog post for $150, thinking that it will only take them two hours to write…totaling $75 / hour.

But what you might NOT have thought about is all the additional time that will go into that post to: communicate with the company, shop for the product, style the product, take photos of the product, do SEO for your post, share about your post on social media, and share success metrics with the company afterwards.

Suddenly, your two hours has turned into eight hours…and you’re looking at $18.75 / hour. Do I think that’s worth it? Yes, absolutely – but for you, it might not be. You need to set the cost per hour that’s right for you,then be selective about opportunities based on that.

Maybe just receiving free product is enough for you, and that’s perfect! It’s about defining that right level for you and sticking to it.

3. How to Track Your Time and Invoices

Great, so you’ve established your price, and now you need to figure out how to track it. Here are some great (and FREE) online software programs that I use and highly recommend:

  • Toggl: Track the hours you spend on those sponsored posts.
  • HelloFax: Sign contracts online instead of having to print, sign, scan, and then email!
  • WaveApps: Easily create invoices and track payments.

4. How to Organize Your Expenses & Profit

I have created my own spreadsheet that shows every dollar I spend and receive on the blog. I separated the columns so that I can quickly see the dollars I’ve made and product I’ve been given through the blog. I can also see the company contact name and email address for each partnership, so if I ever want to work with them again, it’s right there.

You can feel free to download the template, if you’d like! If you use it, let me know what you think!

Well…that was a lot for one post, and that’s just touching the tip of how to make money blogging. Still have questions? Email me, and I’d be happy to answer them. But in the meantime, I would love if you could do two things:

  • Subscribe to our blog via email – because we’ve got lots more posts like this to come!
  • Pin this post – so that you can share it with your blogging friends AND access it in the future!

Want more blogging advice? Read our articles on how to get more followers and how to make friends blogging!

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Hudson and Emily

HI, WE'RE HUDSON + EMILY

We RVed the 50 states and now we’re on a mission to visit every country in the world! In addition to this blog, we share daily travel videos on Tiktok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram. We’d love to have you follow along to see the world with us. More about us here.

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