How To Know When Your Blog Can Start Earning Money?
I know that excitement when you start making money with your blog. For years, I’ve been offering my resources to teach fellow bloggers how they can earn money online, and one question keeps coming back: “How To Know When Your Blog Can Start Earning Money?”
I’ve been asked this question so many times that my inbox was bursting at the seams. That’s why I created a mini-course that helps bloggers answer that question and gives them the tools they need to monetize their blogs. Learn more by clicking this link: How To Optimize Your Blog To Make Money Challenge.
I know plenty of successful bloggers making a lot of money from their blogs. And if you want the same results as them, you must ensure your blog covers the income basics. It’s like they say, you must walk before you can run.
So, if you want to know if your blog has already covered the income-earning essentials, just continue reading and get ready to learn how to know when your blog can start earning money.
If you can confidently say that you are doing all of these things already, it’s time to monetize your blog!
You Have Google Analytics Installed
You should already have Google Analytics installed even before your blog goes live. It does not matter if you are already using another brand of analytics plugin. The reality is that Google Analytics is the standard language for user data.
Google Analytics makes it simple to accurately track how many people visit your site each month and where they are coming from. The more you familiarize yourself with this free tool, the more its benefits reveal themselves to you.
Why is Google Analytics important when it comes to monetization?
It’s simple. Google Analytics provides the data partners are looking for to ensure that your blog is the right fit for their product and can showcase the value of your blog’s influence.
How do you plan to work with brands who want you to write a sponsored post for them if you cannot tell them how many unique views your site gets monthly?
Or another scenario, let’s say you want to make money with advertising like Google AdSense. While they do not limit how much traffic you must have before joining, many other advertising platforms do. For example, significantly higher-paying platforms like Mediavine and AdThrive require you to have a minimum number of page views or sessions before you can join their platforms.
If you’re not tracking these metrics, you can not set obtainable goals and are not on a path to monetization. If you have not done so, take a few minutes to sign up for Google Analytics here. After you sign up, get it added to your website ASAP.
You Are Blogging Consistently
This one is SUPER important too. Let me tell you why.
Consistency is vital to your blog’s growth, and you should publish at least one blog post per week and at the same time each week. This lets Google know that the blog you have created is the real deal and not just another fly-by-night website that will disappear when the hosting expires.
Google is the internet’s highest authority, so it helps to play by its rules. They want you to publish quality content. When you consistently create content, Google rewards you for this behavior by crawling your site each week. Because of this extra attention from Google, you will appear higher in Google searches.
Pretty cool, right?
But that’s not the only way to stay consistent throughout your blogging journey. You should also be building and interacting with your email list.
Keep your email list subscribers warm by writing 1 email or newsletter each week. Set a schedule, so they know what day and time you will drop in. This will help you work your way to their weekly routine.
Building a relationship with your audience is critical to converting them into loyal followers. So what’s the best way for you to do this? Create that weekly newsletter!
Example: Let’s say your goal is to sell an online course or digital product. Well, you are way more likely to convert your email list subscribers to buyers if they feel they have a relationship with you. For your audience, who they buy from is just as important as what they believe.
They want YOUR method, YOUR teaching style, YOUR charisma.
And if they don’t know you because you don’t take the time to say hello once a week, why would they buy from you or your blog?
Think about the last time you spent more than $100 on something. Have you read the reviews? Did you talk to friends about it first? Did you study the website that was selling it?
You did, right?
Well then, you better believe that when you decide to sell a product, people will do the exact same thing with you. So give them some thoughtful content every week that’s curating a relationship.
You Are Sharing Your Content on Your Social Media Channels
This goes along with my last point, but email is not the only way for someone to know you. You want to show people your personality so they trust you enough to buy your product or service later down the road. Actively sharing your content on your social media channels gives you credibility and is an excellent way to drive more traffic to your blog. It also helped people put a face to your name or brand.
Have An Evergreen Promotional Plan
You need to have an evergreen promotional plan as part of your social media sharing strategy. For example: take your most popular blog posts (these metrics can be found in Google Analytics) and put them on a rotational schedule to be shared automatically.
The tool I love for this is Tailwind SmartLoop. It automatically shared tour best pins indefinitely. You can learn more about Tailwind here.
More Social Media Tips
If your goal is to make money with affiliate marketing on your blog, driving relevant traffic to the affiliate links in your blog posts is essential.
Therefore, for every new blog post you publish, you should share them on all your social media channels. This method is a specific form of content marketing.
Create some valuable freebies and promote them on your social media channels. This is a great way to build your email list. Remember, growing your email list is very important if you plan on selling a product one day. So make sure you are sharing freebies in exchange for emails and promoting these campaigns on social media!
A freebie should not be a product you have spent a lot of time on. Instead, it should take you a day or less to create and solve a problem for your audience. Check out our Blog Goal Worksheet as a perfect example of what one of these freebies can look like.
You Have a Media Kit
If you ever want to work with brands—meaning they pay you to mention them in an article, video, or social media—then you will need a media kit.
A media kit is a document that lists the essential details about your blog.
Some items a media kit may include are:
- Your blog stats, such as traffic, social media followers, email subscribers
- A summary of your blog
- Information about you
- Brands you’ve worked with before
- The type of content you like to write
- Links to some of your previous work
This is a short list of things you can include in your media kit, but the items you decide to have are up to you.
You should always have an updated media kit ready to hand over to a brand that wants to work with you. If this task intimidates you because you don’t know where to start, forget about it. I got you covered!
Canva has a ton of FREE media kit templates. All you have to do is create a free account with them and start designing. Type “blogging media kit” in the canvas search bar, select a template, customize the colors, and fill in the blanks.
Click here for the media kit templates in Canva.
You Have a Monetization Plan
Lastly, you must have the plan to make money on your blog. You’ve obviously thought about it, or else you wouldn’t be reading this blog post. So the question is, what is your strategy for monetizing your blog?
Are you going to start selling physical products?
Are you going to sign up for some affiliate programs to make money with various affiliate links on your blog?
Or do you plan on pumping out more blog content with the hopes of getting enough traffic to make money with advertising?
There are so many ways to make money blogging. How long you’ve been blogging, how much experience you have with selling, and how many email subscribers you have all play a role in how much money you can earn with the methods I detailed above.
My Blog Income
One of my favorite ways to make money with my blog is one of the first ways I brought in cash as a blogger. I love this strategy, and it is one of my top earners today.
Want to know what it is?
It’s sponsored posts—AKA working with brands.
I earn anywhere from $2,000–$6,000 a month with my blog Miss Millennia Magazine.
Look at how I make most of my money with my blog.
- Sponsored Posts- 56% of total income
- Products – 34% of total income
- Affiliates – 5% of total income
- Advertising – 5% of total income
Check out our Monthly Blogging Income Report for our new blog here.
As I said, there are many ways to make money with your blog. But sponsored posts make up more than 50% of my total income on my blog right now, AND I work a full-time job. So I won’t tell you all this to brag, but rather to show you what you can do too! If I can do it, then you can do it too.
I was not generating much traffic on my blog when I started working with brands. However, I got my first sponsored post when my blog reached 2k followers per month. Sponsored posts are a great way to start making money if you are new and have just created a blog.
And I actually teach bloggers exactly how to do this in my Blogging Money Formula course.
Blogging Money Formula
Blogging Money Formula is an online course that shows motivated bloggers how to go from making a few (or no) dollars to earning consistent monthly income from their blogs. I show you how to set up the foundation you need to make REAL income with your blog to make a difference for you and your family in the long run.
The program will teach you how to:
- Establish yourself as a professional blogger: I’ll show you everything your blog needs to be recognized as a professional blogger.
- Properly apply for sponsored posts so you get selected for more opportunities: I will show you how to use them so that brands choose you more often!
- Get brands to reach out to you: I’ll show you what you need to set up on your blog so that brands reach out to you and where to go to put yourself on their radar.
- Build long-term relationships with brands: This way, you can get recurring business with brands instead of always pitching new ones.
- Write content that appeals to your audience and the brand: Great content does not need to be either-or!
- Drive traffic to your blog posts: Great results produce repeat customers, and I will show you how to make that happen.
Join Here
There you have it! Are you ready to start making money with your blog?
Make sure you have a way to record your income as it comes in. Download our FREE Monetization Tracker here. This sheet helps keep monthly/yearly payments and expenses organized so that you can clearly interpret your finances in a single place.
Let me know in the comments which monetization strategy you are starting with first and why!
