How To Monetise Your Blog

Something that hell of a lot of people in my life cannot fathom is that I make money from my blog. I have said it before and I will say it again, I never set up my blog with the intention to make money. This little space on the internet was purely set up because I had a passion that I wanted to share. To this day, I still feel like that is the case. The money is just a lovely added bonus, but certainly not why I chose to blog. However, I get that for some people it is part of the reason why they start up. I am all for people trying to better themselves with a side hustle and I want to share how you guys can monetise your blog.

 

Use Google AdSense.

Google AdSense is the small ads that you see down the right-hand side of my blog. It did take some time for me to get these finally set up on my site because you do have to be approved into the programme. These work on the number of impressions that your site gets. Per 1000 impressions, you get something like 1p. However, if you are getting hundreds of thousands of visitors, those numbers quickly begin to add up. Then, if you are to optimise your content for SEO, it just rolls in organically without you having to do any further work.

 

Reach out to companies.

Back when my blog was brand new, I thought that within a couple of months brands would be emailing me. Needless to say, that did not happen. I saw somebody post online that they got where they were by reaching out directly to brands. The next day, I began doing it and it all came up roses. I had a list of brands that I wanted to work with. For these companies, I would review a few of their items and upload them to my blog, then I would share them with the brands. It worked out well and this is how I managed to wiggle my way onto their PR lists and get some sponsored posts from them.

 

Accept PR from brands.

Back in the day when I first started my blog, I was overwhelmed with the amount of PR that I was receiving. I was just so excited that brands knew who I was, so I kept every single thing that I was sent, even if I didn’t like it and was not planning on using it. I should have wised up and sold the items. To be honest, I would only do this with items that I was sent without notice. If a brand asks me if I wanted to try something and I wasn’t keen, I would have said no, rather than accept it and sell it. These days I would probably donate it, but back when I started out, I was an office junior on £14k a year. I needed that extra coin!

 

Use affiliate programmes and links.

If I ever leave a clickable image underneath the text on one of my blog posts, that will always be an affiliate link. There are many affiliate programmes out there these days, but the one that I work in collaboration with is Shop Rewards. In a nutshell, if you were to click on of the image links at the bottom of the post and purchased that item, I would get a commission. This is what you will see all of the Instagram stars using on their stories all of the time in swipe up links. It is a very clever thing to do. They work via cookies and it provides a window of opportunity for the end user to purchase and you will still receive commission.

 

Use social media to your advantage.

This is something that I don’t do, but I certainly should and that is use social media. The truth is that most brands discover people these days on social media. I used to get so many companies messaging me asking me if they could send me items to feature. Most of the time I was happy for the PR that I would say yes. Now, I have a canned response about my involvement with them and what they should expect from me. Such as a post on IG costs this much, etc. Also, adding links to Instastories which are affiliate are essential, especially if you are linking to products and items!

 

Understand your worth.

Something that you need to understand is your worth. For the longest time, I charged minimal amounts of money because I didn’t think that I deserved big sums of money. I think part of this happens because we don’t openly talk about money in this day and age. At one point, I was getting millions of views to my blog on a weekly basis, however I was featuring products and doing sponsored posts for a couple hundred pound. I now have a rate card that I am comfortable with and if a brand doesn’t want to pay it, they will simply go elsewhere. I will not fight or justify what I believe my skills and my time are worth.

 

Anyway, I hope that you guys liked this blog post and it helped you out. I think that the main thing to remember when you are looking to earn money. Your posts have to come from a place of passion. If you are simply writing to try and earn money, there won’t be the same flow. Somebody else who truly loves the subject would have. Just make sure that you are clued up about what you are doing and do your research. For affiliate links there is so much that you have to do in order to legally declare your actions clearly. I want to hear from you guys about this. What do you do to monetise your blog or is this just for the passion?