You will see that regardless of the size or age of your blog, making money with a mom blog is very possible! All six of these blogs publish their income reports and they have been extremely kind to allow me to share their numbers with you! I want to motivate and teach you how to start a successful blog and show you that you can make money doing something you love while working from home.
*This post contains affiliate links.
How to Make Money With a Blog for Beginners
Blogging is one of the cheapest hobbies to start that can generate a huge income! Make money, have a creative outlet, and interact with other amazing people…. and be your own boss!
- For less than $5 a month you can start a profitable blog and make money.
- You may ask yourself, can you really make money blogging? Yes! It really is possible. Here is how bloggers make their first $100.
- The hosting service I use offers me free technical support on any of my silly questions. They even set up my blog for me!
- Need a step by step guide to help you? Check out my course iCandy Website for Bloggers
Want to Make Money Blogging?
Embracing Simple Blog (Started 2014)
- Lifestyle Blog
- December 2015 Monthly Page views: 100K
- Income: ~$2K for December 2015
- Followers: Facebook 700 & Pinterest 4K
- How she makes her money: Affiliates and Sponsored Posts
Christina is now a blogging mom of two little ones and runs her successful blog while spending time at home with her babes. What amazes me about her is that she’s a mom and started her blog a year ago, and she is already making over $2,000/month from it. What an inspiration ladies!
*Update: Christina just had her second baby! Congratulations! So even though she has been a bit quiet on her blog, it is still bringing in a passive income for her!
Sandy A La (Started 2010)
- Fashion Blog
- Average Monthly Page views: 30K
- Income: ~$3K for July 2015
- Followers: Facebook 3K & Pinterest 15K
- How she makes her money: Sponsored Posts
Sandy is a part-time blogger with two little ones. Her blog is her creative outlet and you can see her awesome talents showcased on her Pinterest boards. I love that as a part-time mom blogger she can make money blogging, over $3,000 a month! That amount easily covers most people’s mortgage bill.
Thriving Home Blog (Started 2011)
- Lifestyle Blog
- Average Monthly Page views: 500K
- Income: ~$4K for October 2014
- Followers: Facebook 7K & Pinterest 11K
- How they make their money: Sponsored Posts & and a bit of Ads/Affiliates
Rachel and Polly, two look-alike friends, started Thriving Home Blog together in 2011. They have 5 children between the two of them and both spend about 10 hours a week on their blog. They make over $3,000 a month, which roughly comes out to $40/hour of blogging!
A sweet income for a flexible, part-time, at home job! Since publishing this post in 2014, they have increased their sales over the past year by 33%. These two mom bloggers can teach us how to make money blogging!
Just a Girl and Her Blog (Started 2013)
- Lifestyle Blog
- November 2015 Monthly Page views: 385K
- Income: ~$23K for November 2015
- Followers: Facebook 15K & Pinterest 30K
- How she makes her money: Mostly by selling her own products & beautiful printables!
Abby started her blog exactly two years ago when she became a stay at home mom as a creative outlet. She has two darling little boys. What I admire about Abby is that most of her income comes from products she has created. She provides wonderful value to her readers and they love her for it!
*Update: Abby and her hubby just bought a beautiful brand new house and here is their latest income report: July 2016 – $34,721!
Making Sense of Cents (Started 2013)
- Finance and Lifestyle Blog
- November 2015 Monthly Page views: 375K
- Income: ~$30K for November 2015
- Followers: Facebook 6K & Pinterest 15K
- How she makes her money: Affiliates
Michelle found herself in thousands of dollars of debt after college and was able to pay it all off in 7 months. She used to work as a financial analyst but now blogs full time and makes over $30,000 a month! And she has only been blogging for a bit over two years. Isn’t that inspirational? If she wanted to she could buy a new car every.single.month.
*Update: she now makes close to $100,000 every month! (And although she’s not a mom, yet, she is a mom to two dogs and lives on a boat with her hubby – how cool is that?!) Want to know how she does it? In her blogging course, she reveals how she makes thousands per month!
Pinch of Yum (Started 2009)
- Food Blog
- December 2015 Monthly Page views: 4 Million
- Income: ~$63K for November 2015
- Followers: Facebook 50K & Pinterest 57K
- How they make their money: Sponsored Posts & Ads – which work great for such a high traffic site!
If you’ve ever searched for blog income reports, you have most likely stumbled upon Pinch of Yum. Lindsay and Bjork’s income reports date back 4 years from August 2011 when they made $21.97 to last month’s income of over $63,000! Imagine growing your blog into something that successful in 4 and a half years.
*Update: In July 2016 they made $65,677 with their blog!
Excited to Make Money Blogging???
Of course, not all of us will be making tens of thousands of dollars a month, but as you can see above, with a bit of effort, your blog can make money, even thousands of dollars a month.
If you want to join others on this exciting journey of blogging and being your own boss, why not learn how to start a money-making blog? I’d love to help you get up and running so you don’t choose the wrong free blog site.
How Do Bloggers Make Money?
Below I’ll go into each method of how bloggers make money. Some of the methods are simple and easy to implement. Others take time and require an audience. Understanding all the ways to make money blogging will help you determine what type of blog you want to create!
Step 1: Find Your Income Streams
From above you can see the multiple ways each blog can make money. From ads to affiliate sales, to sponsored posts or selling your own products.
Step 2: Connect Your Audience to the Right Product
But it boils down to this, the basics of making money with a blog in 33 words:
You can either sell someone else’s products or you can sell your own. Having a blog is having an audience. When you connect your audience to the right product you can make money.
WHY LEARN HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITH A BLOG FOR BEGINNERS?
Because a year from now you will have a huge following and you can’t make up that lost time.
And I LOVED this article on why you should start a blog today. It is so true! If you need any convincing on why you should start a blog and grow a following – this is it! Read it and come back to this site to sign up and get started today!
Step 3: Ads, Affiliates, Sponsored Posts or Products
Decide which avenue would help your readers the most. Try to incorporate 2-3 different income streams into your plan. You want to build your blog on multiple strong pillars and not just one method of making money.
Money Making methods are sorted from least time consuming to most time-consuming.
Bloggers Make Money With Ads
Ads are probably the method of making money from a blog that you are most familiar with. It is also the most intrusive and distracting way to your readers. That is why most bloggers would recommend you do not start putting ads on your blog until you have built up a strong following.
If you do it correctly, and the ads are not intrusive to your reader, you are welcome to add them to your site when you launch. But the money will be small if your page views are low. Ads are most profitable with high page views.
You can either manage the ads yourself, or have a company do it for you, but most of the time they have a minimum page view requirement.
- Easy to apply with no requirements
- Google Adsense – no minimum page view requirement, a good place to start!
- Sovrn – no minimum page view requirement
- Companies that manage your ads for you (100K page view minimum)
- The Blogher Network – manage your ads for you, increases income, but they have a 100K page view minimum
- AdThrive – manage your ads for you, increases income, but they have a 100K page view minimum
Chelsea’s ebook on how she made $40,000 in her first year of blogging has an extensive chapter on installing ads in WordPress and all the things you need to know about ad terminology like ad code, backfill, CPC, CPM, fill rate etc.
Make Money Blogging With Affiliates – Great For Beginners
The definition of an affiliate is “to bring or receive into the close connection as a member.” You can ‘be a member’ of any company that offers an affiliate. Just Google the company or product you like ‘+ affiliate’ to see if they offer an affiliate program.
If you’re an affiliate for a company or product, you get a special affiliate link that you can use on your blog. And every time somebody purchases the product by going through your link, you receive a commission. The percentage commission has wide ranges, from a few percent to over 50%. Many affiliate companies offer links that stay active days after the reader clicks through your blog.
Being an affiliate for a product does not increase the cost to your reader. The affiliate company or person is sharing their profits with you as a reward for you bringing them another sale.
Example of an Affiliate
For example, I am an affiliate for Chelsea’s Messy Apron’s ebook. She wrote an almost 200-page ebook explaining every technique she used to make $40K her first year of blogging. And I loved reading from another mom blogger about her candid and open recommendations on blogging. She has some fantastic tips!
Affiliate Resources
One of the first companies most bloggers sign up to be an affiliate with is Amazon. It’s quick, easy, and free to become part of their affiliate program. I love it because Amazon has a million products and I can recommend those that I truly love. The negative part is the cookie only last 24 hours.
Other companies that offer affiliates are:
- ShareASale.com – Companies like Shutterfly and Tailwind (best tool to schedule your Pinterest pins!)
- FlexOffers.com – Companies like Bloomingdales, Macy’s and Priceline
- Amazon.com – Millions of products
How to Make Money Blogging With Sponsored Posts
This is a blog post that you write for your sponsor and publish on your own blog. Your sponsor pays you to share it with your readers on your blog. Basically, you’re part of their marketing department.
Popular Blog Networks that provide sponsored posts
- Blogher
- The Blogger Network
- IZEA
- Sandy from the above list of bloggers uses Mode Media, Collectively, Social Fabric, Acorn Influence, Socialstars, and The SITS Girls
Just a bit of advice, don’t write back to back sponsored posts unless you understand your readers well and know they will love it too. Always keep your reader’s needs first and provide them with valuable content. And sometimes it may be in a form of a sponsored post. Bonus!
Bloggers Make Money by Offering Products or Services
This is definitely one of my favorite methods of making money with a blog. Providing your readers with something you created that provides real value to them! The benefits of providing a product or service include:
- You have complete control of the price
- You get 100% of the profits
- You have the option of setting your product up to be an affiliate
- You are not dependent on another company for your revenue
Products you could offer:
- Sell an ebook.
- Printables
- Make and sell handmade crafts
- Photos – great additional use for the DSLR you got when baby was born!
- Offer an online course, training or coaching services
- Audio you created
- Video’s you made
- Premium member services – open up a part of your blog only to those that subscribe. This is a great option after you have a strong following and exclusive content to share. Example: Bjork from Pinch of Yum above started Food Blogger Pro a member-only site.
Step 4: Provide Real Value
Once you know how you want to monetize your blog, make sure the products you are recommending are truly valuable to your reader. Make sure they solve a problem or help with a pain point.
Step 5: Promote Your Content
Lastly, promote your blog posts, your landing pages and your products to get traffic back to your site. If no one ever sees your hard work, it won’t matter how wonderful it is. Here is how you can get more followers to your blog.
Step 6: Grow Your Email List
Along with promoting your content, you also need to grow your email list and build up loyal readers. This allows you to reach people inside their inbox and not just on social media or the web. It makes your messages much more powerful.
Step 7: Keep Experimenting
Blogging is always changing, so keep testing and trying new techniques to improve your online business. If you’re not growing, you’ll fade away.
You Can Learn How to Make Money Blogging!!
I hope this post has inspired you that you really can make money blogging, from $2,000 a month to over $63,000 a month. The featured mom bloggers above have done it, I’ve done it, my students have done it, and I know you can too!
Ready to make money online?
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What if you could make your first $100 online this weekend without millions of page views, tons of followers, or even a website?
Or let me rephrase that…
What if, in a weekend, you could create a digital asset that not only generates your first $100 online the weekend, but continues to make you money long after you’ve created it?
Do you know what happens once you make your first sale? Your confidence soars!
There is one thing that every blogger comes to realize…if you can make your first sale…you can do it again and again! Your first sale turns into your first $100 then $1,000, then $10,000!
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