10+ Places to Earn Money Blogging
If you want to earn money from your blog you are in the right place here at Moms Make Money. Here is a summary of some of the schemes we’ve looked at to date, and a few new ones I will cover in more detail later on. Whether you are a new blogger or a huge long-established blogger, anyone and everyone can use one or more of these schemes to earn a little extra.
Earning money from your blog basically falls into just a few basic categories, and below I list my favorite sites and networks. It’s by no means an exhaustive list, there are a lot more suppliers and ways to earn out there, but I’ve done all the research and hard work for you to come up with this shortlist of my top recommendations.
Blog Advertising
Advertising on your blog that is not related directly to making sales, such as display advertising.
* Direct advertising. You can sell advertising space directly on your blog. You will generally see this in a sidebar, sometimes under a ‘sponsors’ section, with a display of small buttons or banners advertising off-site products, websites and services. The more visitors you have, the more your sponsors will pay
If you have more than a couple of adverts, it can be quite a chore to make sure they are all paid for, in the right place at the right time, and renewed, replaced or removed on the appropriate dates. There is a great service called Passionfruit Ads which automates all of this for you and makes selling direct advertising space a breeze. They take a $1 fee from each advert.
You can pop over to my sewing site to see an example of my advertising page. More to come on Passionfruit at a later date.
* Advertising networks. You can choose to display individual adverts from networks such as Escalate. You will have a choice of vendors and ways to be paid such as paid per click on the advert, paid per conversion such as a website sign up, or paid a fee per sale. These tend to be temporary in nature and you can change them according to seasonal offers or the subject of your latest posts. This is the easiest way to start up with blog advertising and if you are new, I recommend signing up with Escalate as your first network.
Featured in Newsletters 9 and 11.
An alternative to Escalate is Integrate. More choice of campaigns, but more difficult to work with and some of the adverts are likely to appeal more to businesses than blog readers. If you’ve been using Escalate for a while, do also give Integrate a try and see how you like it. Depending on your niche and readers, this may give you a good fit.
* Pay Per Click/View Advertising. The biggest supplier of Pay Per Click advertising and the one you will see most often is Google Adsense. It’s easy to set up, and once established you don’t have to do anything to update the adverts unless you want to change the placement on your site. However Adsense and others like it such as Rivit depend on a certain amount of traffic to really earn you any money and small bloggers will struggle to meet the payment threshold.
Adsense is also a fickle partner and can decide to shut you down and keep your earnings for reasons known only to them – read more in a Google Horror Story.
Or try Infolinks. A discreet set up and forget system to add little underlines to your keywords and turn them into clickable adverts. Full customization, turn them on or off for particular posts and pages, change how they look and how many there are. Set up once and enjoy income every day. Read more in my post Earn Money with Infolinks.
You can also use the WordPress plugin nRelate to not only show your related content below your posts, but also include an advert. Earnings are small but every little adds up. Once the plugin is installed, set up advertising within the options. If you don’t yet have a related posts widget to keep your readers engaged longer – get nRelate now even if you don’t want to use it for advertising! Read my Tiny Tip about using nRelate to get more page views.
Affiliate Marketing
Displaying adverts or recommending products or services in return for a direct commission in the event of a sale. Sales commission usually applies to all and any products from that vendor, not just the one being recommended.
* Share A Sale – featured heavily in my newsletters series and for good reason. ShareASale is my biggest earner. Nearly 4000 vendors to chose from with products in all categories. Commissions range typically from 5-80% of sales with tracking cookies up to 6 months and sometimes longer. A post or recommendation now can still be earning you money in a year from now. Easy to work with, huge range of vendors, good commission and reporting – my top recommendation for Affiliate Marketing. See Newsletters 12, 13 and 14.
List of my recommended vendors within the ShareASale network from an earlier post.
* Amazon – a great affiliate program with the biggest household name. You can include sidebar banners, in post widgets that showcase particular products or text links to pages or products. However, the Amazon affiliate program is not as generous as it used to be and now only includes a 24hr tracking cookie. That means you only get the commission if a buyer clicks on your link and completes the purchase within 24hrs. Low rates of commission – starting at 4% but the potential for good earnings if your site is in the right niche and you are able to make high value product recommendations and get resulting sales. Buyers trust Amazon so you can market high-ticket items with confidence.
Get paid to…
Get paid to – Pin, Tweet, Review or write. Usually known as Sponsored Posts, Pins, Tweets etc
* Sponsored Pins – you can get paid to Pin using Viraliti. Read about this new scheme in a previous post about earning money from Pinterest. These are a new player to the market and are starting out small, but the potential is there to earn and grow a team.
* Sponsored Tweets – get paid to Tweet links to your followers. To sign up they have some basic requirements. If your Twitter account is more than 60 days old, you have 50 followers and at least 100 status updates, you can earn money from sponsored tweets. Obviously the more Twitter followers you have and the more active your followers, the more clicks on your Tweets and the more money you can earn from this.
* Sponsored posts – with Social Spark. The biggest and best known network for Sponsored posts and reviews. I’ve only recently signed up for this one and haven’t received any offers to write a post just yet so I can’t make any personal recommendation. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts and experiences with Social Spark.
But my personal favorite is Sverve – I’ve written about them separately before and highly recommend joining. It’s a great opportunity to find paid work/reviews etc that you won’t see anywhere else, but it’s also an awesome blogging community where you can endorse other bloggers, share content and more. Do go and check them out right away.
I also suggest taking a look at Sponsored Reviews. They have a long list of mostly smaller advertisers looking for articles or reviews with links, most of which are short and simple assignments and can earn you from $5-$500. Pick your price and place a bid.
* * * * *
These are my current Top Recommendations for ways to earn money from your blog. Where else do you recommend? Where have you had your greatest earnings and success?
If you would like to write an article for Moms Make Money about a scheme you are using, not mentioned above, you can email me from the contact page above.
Authored by: Deby at Moms Make Money
May 4, 2013 @ 7:59 am
Thanks so much for sharing these great tips! Have a wonderful weekend!
May 4, 2013 @ 8:05 am
These are so helpful! Pinned! Thanks for sharing! I hope you’ll drop by I DIg Pinterest soon!
May 4, 2013 @ 9:22 am
Really good info. Thanks for sharing.
Popping in from Oh, Mrs. Tucker!
May 4, 2013 @ 10:18 am
This is a great list. Some of them I had heard of others I have not.
Victoria from Young Work AT Home Moms
May 4, 2013 @ 12:30 pm
Seriously awesome info. I was just looking into Social Spark…pinning this now. Thanks for putting this together!
Best,
Jen @ YummyHealthyEasy.com
May 4, 2013 @ 7:54 pm
Thank you so much for this information. I just started blogging in january and only have about 40 followers using gfc & email together when is it appropriate to start persuing advertisers? How many followers or traffic do I need before companies are interested in advertising?
May 4, 2013 @ 10:21 pm
Thanks Deby for all this great information!
May 5, 2013 @ 11:06 am
Such a great post!! Thanks so much for sharing – pinning this!!
xo
amy
http://www.theblissfulbeeblog.com
May 5, 2013 @ 12:28 pm
I’ve been following your blog for a while, for some reason I have no idea why I hadn’t followed your twitter, it would have been easier to keep track on you lol. This post and the “Essential Blog Elements” are excellent! Thank you for this awesome share. It would be so helpful if you could share these on my Link Party today if you like Hops there is a Pin it Hop on Thursdays.
Hope you are having a lovely Sunday!
Hugs
Cami @ TitiCrafty by Camila
May 5, 2013 @ 4:15 pm
Thanks for sharing this valuable info Deby! I really need to learn about all this!
May 5, 2013 @ 4:45 pm
Awesome post!
I would love for you to share this and link up to my TGIF Link Party! Who knows, you just might be featured next week!
http://apeekintomyparadise.blogspot.com/2013/05/a-peek-into-my-paradise-tgif-link-party.html
Hugs, Cathy
May 5, 2013 @ 6:47 pm
Great info. Some of these I already am doing as well at my site! I am stopping by from I Should Be Mopping the Floor Blog Hop! http://www.homemaker-mom.com/the-homemakers-journey-blog.html
May 5, 2013 @ 10:02 pm
Thanks for sharing these tips!
May 6, 2013 @ 9:32 am
Great tips! I had no idea there were sponsored tweets and pins. Interesting.
Thanks for sharing!
May 6, 2013 @ 9:35 am
Awesome advice, thank you so much for sharing!!!
May 6, 2013 @ 10:16 am
Ii’m going to Pin this to use! Thanks!
Sam
http://cooksandcreates.blogspot.com/
(Found you on Skip to my Lou!)
May 6, 2013 @ 11:58 am
Love this article! THANKS:-)
May 6, 2013 @ 12:38 pm
This is great information! Thanks so much for sharing and I pinned it for reference. Julia @ http://www.juliakendrick.com
May 6, 2013 @ 6:37 pm
I wish I had read this when I first began blogging! Awesome! I have pinned to one of my boards (Blogging Tips) on Pinterest. I love Infolinks and unfortunately experienced the horrors of Adsense!
Today I am visiting from Made by you Monday! Would be happy for you to link up at my party sometime! http://www.piggyinpolkadots.com/2013/05/party-in-polka-dots-21-fabulous-features.html
See you there!
Shelley
http://www.piggyinpolkadots.com
May 6, 2013 @ 5:07 pm
Great tips here; thanks for compiling them and including your personal experience. I’m visiting from Craft-O-Maniac.
May 6, 2013 @ 9:55 pm
Thanks for the tips!!!!!
May 7, 2013 @ 6:22 pm
Thanks for sharing such helpful information and tips!! Pinned this to go back and do some work! 🙂 Visiting from DIY Dreamer.
May 7, 2013 @ 7:18 pm
Great tips! I always look forward to your posts every week! http://moms-make-money.com/how-to-earn-money-blogging/
May 7, 2013 @ 9:36 pm
Hi Deby,
I always love these posts. You always give great information. Thanks so much for sharing with Wednesday’s Adorned From Above Blog Hop.
Debi and Charly
May 8, 2013 @ 12:26 am
Really awesome tips! Thanks so much fro sharing your expertise!
May 8, 2013 @ 8:32 am
Great info! I use ShareASale and I’m affiliated with Amazon. I aslo use PassionFruit. So far I’ve had success with all three.
May 8, 2013 @ 9:39 am
I stumbled across your site in a link up. I’m so glad I did. I’m not able to read all of the information you have given, since my kiddos come first at the moment, but I have bookmarked your site so I can sit down and read everything. What a great resource. Thank you!
May 8, 2013 @ 12:25 pm
WOW thank you for sharing your knowledge. I am now following you and looking forward to taking my blog to the next step!
stopping by to visit from Fluster’s Creative Muster Wednesday Linky Party
Carolyn @ iamthecraftylady.com
May 8, 2013 @ 7:21 pm
Thanks for sharing, I will be saving this to review over and over. I’m just starting to monetize my blog so I appreciate knowing all the ways to do it. Coming over from Yesterday on Tuesday – Crafty Soiree
May 8, 2013 @ 10:18 pm
I am a new blogger and I am so glad you have done all this stuff first. Its a jungle in blog land.
May 8, 2013 @ 10:20 pm
I am a brand new blogger so your posts are very eye opening for me. Thanks for helping navigate the blog land jungle.
May 9, 2013 @ 7:10 am
Great tips! Thanks so much!
May 10, 2013 @ 7:01 am
Excellent tips! Thanks for sharing!
May 10, 2013 @ 8:54 am
Great list! Jenna @ Rain on a Tin Roof
May 10, 2013 @ 10:00 am
This is GREAT! Thank you so much for all of the help!
May 12, 2013 @ 3:43 pm
Here from Paula’s hop and am now your follower. This is great info, placed it into my Blog $ file and will be studying it closer later this week. Hope to see you at my dance, BB2U.
May 13, 2013 @ 8:09 am
Thanks so much for linking up to Thriving on Thursdays. I love your blog posts. This is really interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing. I’ve featured this one this week as the most viewed link.
Anne xx
May 14, 2013 @ 3:02 pm
Wow – thank you so much Anne – dropping over now to take a look.
May 13, 2013 @ 7:44 pm
Pinned…awesome thanks! 🙂
May 14, 2013 @ 2:19 pm
Thank you for the great tips and thank you for sharing on Blog Stalking Thursday! I have featured your project on Blog Stalking Thursday Features YOU! The post is going live later tonight. I would love for you to stop by and grab a feature button. Thanks again for sharing!
May 16, 2013 @ 6:56 am
I signed up with Socialspark and was approved. I had several leads come in recently and accepted a few, then an advertiser made an offer. Most of these offers are small. Twenty dollars or so. I wrote up my post and submitted it. A small change was asked for and then I was approved. The next day I received my post back in HTML form and was told to copy and paste it exactly as is and publish. There was no instruction about editing it . Then you submit the url and are done. Well I suppose that I thought as soon as it was published that THEY came through with some of HTML converting robot. About 15 minutes later I took the post off my site. I sent about three urgent messages on their support “thing” but I don’t even see that those are posted. No real human beings that I could find anywhere. I researched and found several articles on the Net about writing HTML but I have not yet found how to take this garbled document and convert it back to the post that I wrote and that was approved, along with the visuals that are required. The other alternative is to let them come in and post but you must give them your blog info and password. Well should I get hacked or have troubles due to that I already can see that there is no human tech support that I can easily find. I did finally email the lady that I was to send my social posts too ( Facebook, Pinterest etc ) and let her know that I would not be doing that until this was resolved and that I probably wouldn’t be posting by the deadline after all. She cc’d someone else at the end of the day and I saw nothing by the following morning Point is, should I sign up with or try anything with another company I will ask up front if there are human beings around to answer questions, and how the final post is approved etc. I am on WordPress.org and I just wonder if others have the same sort of experience with either SS or other similar companies. OR if anyone knows how to take a html doc and turn it back to normal 🙂
May 16, 2013 @ 7:08 am
When you write a post in WordPress, or in Blogger too, there are two tabs where you can write and edit your post. One is the plain text version and the other will show you the HTML version of what you have just typed. Instead of posting the html into the plain text tab, you should have posted it into the html tab and then it would have shown you the plain version and posted that automatically. It really is very very easy.
Look on the top right of the edit area – Visual is the post as it will be displayed and Text is the HTML equivalent.
Funny that you have not had a good response from their support – I’ve had some excellent support recently on a post that I wrote, and one lady emailed me backwards and forwards all day when I had questions about advertising.
Do give them another go – once you get the hang of where to post the html, it will be easy-peasy.
Drop me an email if you need help.
May 16, 2013 @ 9:23 am
Someone answered this morning ( about 1/2 hour ago ) and just said to contact wordpress.org. ( She was the person on the cc that the first person asked to solve the problem : )
I have a Visual Tab and a Text Tab. There is no HTML tab. What they gave me ( their HTML rendition basically looks the same in both, aside from the font looking a little different ) What happens is, you write your post on their site. Similar to working in WordPress. You can save to draft and come back and forth as you edit it. Their visuals that you can use ( some required ) are on a sidebar.
When the final is approved, it is handed back to you as HTML. You paste that into WordPress and then …….( in my case ) Lose Your Mind 🙂
May 16, 2013 @ 9:56 am
Give this a go. 1 – Open up a brand new blank post. 2 – Give it the correct title. 3 – Click on the TEXT tab. 4 – Paste in the html they gave you. 4 – Click back on the visual tab to see what it looks like. 5 – Preview the post in a new window – does it look OK?
That should be all you need to do.
If you still have problems – drop me an email and I’ll see if I can help you out with a little video tutorial and some screen shots.
May 16, 2013 @ 11:25 am
Well for pete’s sake, lol…after researching about 20 websites and forums trying to figure out what to do this worked!
http://www.thehomespun.com/another-great-design-collection-and-the-cb2novogratzbrasilsweepstakes-3/
I can’t thank you enough!
I will answer those ladies and let them know the problem is solved and WHO solved it…they should probably ask you to post a little tech article about this. All of these stupid plug ins I was trying, etc!
Thank you thank you thank you 🙂
May 16, 2013 @ 11:54 am
YAY – I popped over to your site and everything looks good. Easy when you know how – right? Well done for persevering. Next time you’ll be able to do one of these sponsored posts in no time – it’s good money.
I also allow them to post directly for me – saves me even more time and I just compose straight into their editor, use the links etc they provide and submit. I don’t worry too much about giving them my password, as I know lots of bloggers do and I’ve never heard of any complaint. I was so glad to be able to help you.
May 16, 2013 @ 12:20 pm
And I am glad that you did! 🙂 it was driving me crazy since doing my FIRST post was important and it was a FUN one..CB2 and Novogratz seemed like such a nice way to start. Thanks again!
May 28, 2013 @ 11:08 pm
Great job! These tips are really useful & very informative. I will be back to read more of your posts. Please keep us posted. Thank you for sharing.
June 10, 2013 @ 11:29 am
Wow such a thorough post! Thanks for all the great info!
June 25, 2013 @ 5:31 pm
Very helpful tips! Tahnks!
June 27, 2013 @ 3:50 pm
Pinning! Great tips!http://www.sewsweetvintage.com/2013/06/beachy-pillows.html
September 11, 2013 @ 8:52 am
sharing the link to this article in my blog as a part of consolidated series on blogging basics. thanks in advance
September 25, 2013 @ 4:55 pm
Such helpful tips! Thank you!
October 6, 2013 @ 10:00 pm
Another great post! I wish I hadn’t lost my google ranking when I forwarded my blogspot.com URL to my new dot.com URL last year. My blog was at PR-3 now it’s back down to PR-1 because indexing had to start all over again with the new URL. Even BlogHer won’t touch me, but as always my Google is my biggest earner thanks to my Youtube channel.
October 7, 2013 @ 6:39 am
That’s strange you lost page rank. If done properly, the redirect from Blogger to your own domain should transfer over your page rank with what’s called a 301 redirect. What a shame. How I think page rank is less important than it used to be. There used to be 4 updates a year, but this year – only 1 so far! Glad to hear YouTube is doing so well for you.
March 6, 2014 @ 1:11 am
Bookmarked, it’s very valuable, thank Deby!