Blogging: Five ways to earn money from blogging

Whilst blogging normally starts as a hobby it can very quickly get time consuming and often costly. You have a lot of outgoings; tech, travel, server / domain charges and it feels like I am constantly buying new clothes and accessories to mix things up. Cameras and computers don’t come cheap and time is something you can’t put a price on. In short, a girl had to earn some cash and there are a few different ways bloggers can do this.

Sponsored Posts 

Often brands will email bloggers to let them know they love their blog and they feel their styles would work well together. Sometimes a brand will offer free product, others they will offer to pay. Brands make a lot of money and if a brand wants a blogger to promote them and increase their sales, then surely it’s only fair that the brand should offer the blogger something in return for their time, effort and blog space. Bloggers generally only work with brands they love and readers can easily see through content which is not heart-felt. Sponsored posts can be one-off projects, a series of posts over a period of time, or if you get lucky, a brand may want to pay you a monthly fee for monthly coverage and exclusivity. Sponsored posts can be on the blog and/ or social media. 

Affiliate Links 

Most bloggers use affiliate links in their posts. This means that the link to a website is trackable. If someone goes to the, for example ASOS website and buys the bag I recommend, I will earn small percentage of that sale. If you want to add affiliate links onto your blog, it’s very quick and easy to build the link, you can use a number of different websites to do this, one of the companies I use is invitation only, so I’m not sure I can post a link but the other one I use is Affiliate Window. It’s really great and I would recommend using it. It links up to many high street stores and it’s quick and easy to use. You can use Instagram to make money in this way using LIKEtoKNOW.it.

Banner / Sidebar Ads 

Many bloggers have banner ads at the side of their blog. Some of these are hosted for ‘free’ by the blogger in the hope their followers will click through and buy. Some ads are ‘rented’ out weekly/monthly by other bloggers or brands to try and drive traffic to their sites. Rates of these ads will vary from site to site depending on how much traffic the blog gets and how much the bloggers feels is fair to charge. If you are going to host banners for a fee, I would suggest doing it on a month-by-month basis as changing the adds and looking for new advertisers every week could be very time consuming.

Freelance work

Often brands / magazines / PR’s etc. will see a blog and be really impressed by the writing, photography, styling or social media content. The brand might get in touch and ask the blogger to do some freelance work for them. I have picked up lots of work this way and it feels really rewarding to know that someone likes your blog so much they want to hire you based on what they have seen.

Blog sales / Depop 

Bloggers go shopping a lot, we also are gifted a lot of items directly from brands, through PR’s or within a goody bag when we go to an event. A lot of girls have a page one their blog named ‘Blog Sale’ where they sell their slightly used and unwanted items to their readers. Some bloggers use the app Depop to sell their items and they promote Depop shop on their other social media platforms. The top tier bloggers will sell amazing designer items on here and these items command big price tags.

I hope this was of help, feel free to comment below or drop me an email with any questions!