Three ways to make money from your blog as a new blogger

I’ve been blogging for over two years and during this time I have seen that there are many ways that you can make money from your blog. It could be in the form of guest posts, sponsored posts, product reviews and competitions, or by other brands and companies seeing your writing skills, and wanting you to write for them. Making money from your blog is exciting, especially when brands and companies want to work with you and you see your inbox pinging with their emails. However fame doesn’t come instantly and it takes time to build up your reputation. Perseverance is key, alongside continuing to write great content that your audience and followers want to read. So, here are three ways you can make money from your blog as a new blogger.

By accepting guest posts

There are many brands, PRs and SEOs who are looking for bloggers to host their content. The reasons for this are simple; it gets their brand out to your audience, helps boost their domain authority (if yours is higher than theirs), plus they retain editorial control over the content. Many companies may try to avoid paying a fee for guest content. However remember that you should always charge for these posts, even though they are supplying the content, it’s still your time to publish it, source imagery, promote on social media, and most likely include a do-follow link. So, always charge a fee that you are comfortable with or negotiate your hardest. There are many companies out there who are always on the look out for bloggers, and one is a tool created by Ginger Marketing, where you can sign up to be selected by brands to host their guest posts.

One other thing to remember is that you may not always feel comfortable accepting guest content, and you should at least agree in advance that the content is written to work with your blog niche, tone of voice and audience. Then if you’re not 100% happy with it, or have a bad feeling about it you don’t have to publish it.

By writing sponsored posts

Another way of making money from your blog is to write sponsored posts for brands and companies. Unlike guest posts these posts are written by you, so they are guaranteed to be in your tone of voice, and will work with your blog niche and target audience.

A sponsored post is not a review of a product, it is in fact a blog post that is relevant for your audience and includes a mention and link to a particular product or brand. For example I recently wrote about how to enjoy spending time outside with your children which was a sponsored post for patio and garden furniture. The post was related to parenting (my blog niche) and therefore relevant to my audience, and was not a review of patio or garden furniture. Instead it just mentioned the brand and included a link to their website. This is what a sponsored post is, and lastly always remember to disclose that the post is sponsored at the start or end of the blog post.

Deciding how much to charge for a sponsored post can be tricky especially as a new blogger. There are three ways you can do this.

• Firstly think about how much time you will spend writing and researching the post, and whether the brand would like any social media shares. Then base your fee on your hourly rate.
• Secondly think about your fee in line with your domain authority. I have heard that you should charge four times your DA for sponsored posts.
• Thirdly if it’s a slightly more controversial brand such as gambling or smoking, you have every right to charge a much higher fee.

By writing reviews and hosting competitions for brands

I know many bloggers who do not charge brands or PRs for product reviews especially when you are a new blogger to the blogging world. This is perfectly acceptable as you are building up your blog, and you are excited about getting items to review. I did exactly the same when I first started blogging.

However now that I have been blogging for some time, and have built up credibility with my audience and followers, I now set a minimum fee for all my product reviews and competitions. If I am offered an item to review of a particular high value or it is something that I really want, I will consider whether to provide the brand with my fees for this.

You could provide the brand with two options plus your fee when you receive an email requesting a product review:

• Option 1 – Product review only and social shares, plus getting to keep the product.
• Option 2 – Product review, competition and social shares, plus getting to keep the product.

When running a competition alongside a product review, I tend to offer a slightly cheaper fee as running a competition provides benefits to both yourself and the brand, including increased traffic and followers. You can use this as a hook to get the brand interested, and hopefully agree to pay you for your time to review the product and run the competition. I always where possible try to include the competition as an add-on as the brand may see that you are trying to add value here as well.

So those are three ways in which you can start to make money from your blog. As I mentioned at the start of the post; perseverance is key. Don’t be disheartened if brands do not have budget, move on, or think about whether you want to work with them. I find that having my media kit ready to share really helps to improve my chances of getting payment for guest and sponsored posts, and being accepted to write product reviews for a fee. Guest Bloggers Wanted is also another really useful site to join for any guest or sponsored content too!

I hope you found this post useful. I would love to hear how you make money from your blog and how do you negotiate with brands and PRs?

Claire x

This is a sponsored post.