If you’re wondering if you can make money blogging as a new blogger, the answer is you most definitely can!
There seems to be the misconception that blogging is dead or you need to have been blogging for many years in order to start making money from it. Although it’s very unlikely to make a full time income from a new blog, you can still make money your first month of blogging!
I started this blog as a hobby about two years ago. I was on maternity leave and wanted something to do while baby was sleeping (that didn’t involve house chores). Blogging was my outlet, and I found it therapeutic even though I never shared it with anyone.
A year into blogging, I started reading about bloggers making $10,000+ a month from their blog and of course that sparked an interest in turning my hobby into an income.
I didn’t start taking my blog seriously until this year, but I wanted to share EXACTLY how I started making money on my blog from just my first month of taking it seriously. Before getting into this post, I want to clarify that it takes A LOT of work to make money blogging, but it’s possible. Here is how you can make money blogging as a new blogger!
Disclosure: The links are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. This helps me continue to run my blog and allows me to continue to do what I do. Thank you for your love and support!
How To Make Money Blogging As A New Blogger
Self Hosting
The first thing I did to make money blogging is to get self hosted. When creating my blog I made a site with wordpress.com. It worked well because it was free and I was only blogging as a hobby. I knew I wanted to monetize my blog with ads, but wordpress.com doesn’t allow you to monetize your blog with the free account- you had to upgrade your account to business and that was around $300/year!
I didn’t know any better, so I spent that $300 and got Google Ads on my site. When my first year was close to being up, I started searching for other hosting platforms that were cheaper and came across BlueHost. I am still kicking myself in the ass for not finding BlueHost sooner.
While I paid $300/year for WordPress’ business account, BlueHost was only charging $100/year for their 1 year membership. Side note- it makes more sense to purchase the 3 year membership. While the 1 year came down to $6/month, the 3 year membership comes down to $4/month. The membership renews at the original price of $10/month.
Besides BlueHost being cheaper than WordPress, their customer service is AMAZING. I am the least tech savvy person you will ever meet- I’ve reached out to their customer service for just about everything. Wether I needed help setting up my ads on my blog or needed help setting up a theme I purchased on Etsy, they were patient and extremely helpful. I even accidentally set up a whole site on the wrong domain and they went into my account and transferred the site to the correct domain, saving me HOURS of work.
I have multiple websites and they’re all with BlueHost. Both my blog email and my marketing business email is from BlueHost and every client that I work with has loved BlueHost. The $100 upfront may seem like a lot, but it’s like that saying- in order to make money, you gotta spend money. That $100 I spent for my first year of hosting with BlueHost was made back from just my Google Ads alone after month 1. If there’s anything you need to invest in while blogging, this is it. You can read more about BlueHost HERE.
Advertisements
Now let’s get into the Ads. There are many companies you can sign up with that’ll place ads on your site for you to make money from. Every time someone sees the ad you’ll make some money from it, and every time someone clicks on it you’ll make even more money from it.
The end goal to blogging is to get into Adthrive, but in order to get accepted you need to have at least 100,000 monthly page views which is A LOT. To put it into perspective- bloggers that are with Adthrive are making $5,000 to $8,000 a month JUST FROM ADS.
Then there is MediaVine which accepts you into their program with at least 50,000 monthly page views. Bloggers with MediaVine make anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000 a month from ads.
Ezoic is easier to get into- only requiring 10,000 page views a month. After 3 months of taking my blog seriously I got into Ezoic and make $200-$400 a month which isn’t anywhere near what you can make from the other companies, but is still great income for a beginner blogger.
Now for how to get ads on your site today– Google Ads! You can literally sign up with them the day you launch your blog! When setting up Google Ads, you can choose to have them place the ads or you can manually place the ads. The first few months I’ve been manually placing ads and making an average of $30/month from them. A few months ago I tried out their ads placement and made a little over $100/month!
A lot of bloggers choose not to use Google Ads on their site because it’s said to slow down your site and it’s not “worth it” to them. I haven’t noticed a decrease in site speed since adding Google Ads onto this blog and I’m happy with making just $10/month from Google Ads. $10 is a step closer to making $100/month.
Affiliate Marketing
Besides advertisements, another way to make money blogging as a new blogger is with affiliate marketing- getting commission from products/ services you recommend!
The first affiliate program I’ve ever joined is Amazon Associates. Amazon has two affiliate programs- one called associates and the other called influencers. To get into their influencer program is a little more complex, but you can easily get into their associates program just by having a website.
The day I launched my blog I signed up and started promoting some of my favorite Amazon products. The good thing about Amazon Associates is that viewers don’t necessarily need to buy the product you’re advertising in order for you to make commission from them. After clicking onto one of your Amazon links, their cookies are tracked for 24 hours and ANYTHING they purchase from Amazon in that time frame will give you commission.
Some other affiliate marketing programs I’ve had luck with are:
ShareASale
Raukteun
CJ Affiliates
ClinkBank
Awin
There are other ways you can make money with your blog like sponsored posts and selling a product, but it’s a bit more difficult when you don’t have much traffic going to your blog. I personally don’t sell any digital products so I can’t share too much about that but I’ve read about bloggers making a couple thousand a month just from their digital products.
I got my first sponsored post where the company not only gifted me an item but also paid me to post about it at around 10,000 views! Although it’s harder to get paid sponsorships when you don’t have a lot of views, it’s easier (and I think worth it) to do gifted sponsorships. I know a lot of bloggers are against “free work” but the way I look at it is experience. When other brands see that you share “gifted” products, they’re more likely to send you some of theirs and even pay you to post about it.
BUT, I wouldn’t stress too much about sponsorships when you are just starting out as a blogger. If you are looking to make money blogging, focus on GROWTH at first rather than money. Add the advertisements to your blog, link your favorite amazon products, collect your few hundred bucks and learn how to grow your views and learn what to write about that will attract more views.
I started my blog while working full time so any extra money I made from it was put right back into blogging. I purchased many themes, many different courses and focused on getting views to my blog. You won’t make a crazy amount of money in the beginning, but the little you can make Is very motivating. Once you’ve figured out the best strategy for growing your blog, money will fall right into your account.
Blogging has been a passion of mine but the one thing I hate about this industry is that everything is “hush hush”. No one wants to talk about HOW to make money, who to reach out to for sponsorships, or how to get views to your blog without paying for a $200 course. There’s room for everyone to grow and strongly believe we can all help each other along the way.
I’m adding a “Blogging” section to this blog where I’m going to share everything I know about blogging. From creating a beautiful website, to growing your monthly views on Pinterest, from finding content that will engage your readers to ranking high on Google. I’ve helped many bloggers this past year getting started FOR FREE because I genuinely love what I do.
If you have any questions on getting started, feel free to message me on Instagram. I tend to post a lot of “behind the scenes” when it comes to marketing and blogging and have had a lot of girls asking questions about where to start. Although I share quite a lot of mommy related content and skincare/self care, I will be sharing a lot more blogging/marketing related content. Make sure to subscribe to my newsletter to get updated when these posts go live!
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