A question that everyone asks, but it can be hard to find a straight answer. How much do blogs really make? And, is blogging still profitable in 2021?
The first thing that comes to most people’s minds is that blogging is dead in 2021, with video content like YouTube taking over.
I’m here to tell you that blogging is not dead, and many people can make well over 6 figures a year simply from blogging.
Some of the perks of being a blogger in 2021:
– Set your own work schedule: Wake up when you want and work for however long you’d like. Once your blog is established and making money, it basically becomes a passive stream of income.
– Have fun writing content: Writing content is actually entertaining. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but you’re able to convey the information however you’d like, and you can add character and personality in the blog posts too. Who said blogging has to be boring?
– Income growth is always possible: The sky’s the limit of making money from blogging. Many bloggers make over 6 figures a month, which’s more than the average CEO in America making $766K a year.
Let’s get into how much money blogs can actually make.
Disclaimer: This article contains affiliate links, where I may receive a small commission on purchases at no cost to you. You can read my full affiliate disclosure here.
How much money do blogs make?
This can be a tricky question to answer because there is no set-in-stone answer.
Many bloggers can make over 6 figures a year, and many bloggers make no money at all. Statistics from this survey show that 81% of bloggers never make $100 from blogging.
A lot of people never make a dime from blogging because they think it’s a get-rich-quick type of scheme. They believe that people will read their posts and that they’ll be trusted automatically. This is not the case (you need to build trust with your audience).
The bloggers that you see making excellent money worked free for 3-12 months. They stuck it out and made money through perseverance (and a lot of hard work).
Blogs that make good money:
– Dollar Sprout (made $180,285 in January 2019)
– 40 Aprons (made $31,225 in August 2019)
– Making Sense of Cents (made $100,324 in June 2018)
– Helene in Between (made $15,755 in October 2017)
– Adam Enfroy (made $812,718 in 2020)
– Abby Lawson (made $41,700 in December 2016)
– Two Wandering Soles (made $14,179 in March 2019)
Step-by-step guide on how to start a blog in 2021
I’ve decided to post my realistic income reports from blogging. These income reports are for the bloggers who think they’re failing because they aren’t making thousands on their 4th month. Read them below:
– Photography Blog Income Report (January 2021)
– Photography Blog Income Report (February 2021) – I Made $2.09
You’re probably reading those numbers from my income reports and thinking to yourself, “that’s pretty crap” honestly, I wish it was more, but it’s genuinely the reality for most bloggers.
Blogging is hard, and if you aren’t willing to put in the hours and dedicate months to a blog without many results, blogging just isn’t for you.
How much does the average blog make?
According to Glassdoor, the average blogger makes $33,200 a year (based on 14 salaries by bloggers). It can be realistic to say that bloggers don’t make much money in their first 6 months of blogging.
In the first 6 months, bloggers are figuring out how to write, keyword research, content ideas, Google SEO, and many more factors. It’s a hard gig, but if you stick it out, it can become highly profitable.
Joseph from myworkfromhomemoney.com did a survey that revealed 130 bloggers’ monthly income. 36.1% of the bloggers made from $3K – 10K+ a month, with 63.9% of the bloggers making from $0 – $3K a month.
Data from Income School’s surveys showed average earnings of $29.08 per 1000 page views (with sites over 10,000 page views).
Average monthly earnings for sites with:
10,000 page views: $290.80
100,000 page views: $2908
500,000 page views: $14,540
This is just an average, and like we’ve seen with financial blogs, a lot can earn over 6 figures a month.
Types of Blogs That Make Money
Here are 5 niches of blogs that can make you money.
- Finance:
Sub niches: Save money, make money, investing, budgeting or side hustles. - Health and Fitness:
Sub niches: Age groups (like 20, 30, 40’s), college, mom’s, dad’s or fad diets (keto, gluten free, no sugar). - Technology:
Sub niches: Laptops, cameras, TV’s or appliances. - Product Reviews:
Sub niches: Physical products, services or any niche categories (like makeup or photography). - Travel:
Sub niches: Location based travel (e.g. travelling around Australia).
All of these niches can be monetized with the methods below 🙂
To clarify, you can make money in thousands of niches. You don’t need to stick to one of these 5 categories; I chose the most popular niches.
How do blogs make money?
These are five of the main ways that bloggers make money. You can monetize your blog from month one with these methods.
1. Advertising
Displaying ads on your blog is an easy way to earn passive income. Advertising rates change drastically from niche to niche, but you can look anywhere from $0.5 to $50+ per 1000 page views.
Advertiser Networks:
– Google Adsense ($100 minimum payout, if you don’t have much traffic, you won’t be paid for months)
– Ezoic (10,000 monthly page views minimum)
– Mediavine (50,000 monthly sessions minimum)
– AdThrive (100,000 monthly traffic minimum)
Keep in mind that there are plenty of other advertising networks. I’ve just chosen four of the popular ones widely used by bloggers.
2. Affiliates
Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to earn income on products and services you recommend. Simply get a tracking link from an affiliate network and insert the link onto your post. If a person clicks through that link and purchases the product you recommended, you will earn a commission.
Commission rates can be anywhere from 0.5% to 40%, and sometimes even 100%. For example, if a product is bought through your link for $90 and the commission rate is 25%, you’ll earn $22.50, pretty sweet, right!
Affiliate networks to join:
– Amazon Associates
– ShareASale
– ClickBank
Tip: Search in Google: [Product/Service] Affiliate Program
When including affiliate links in your blog posts, please adequately disclose them at the start of your posts. In other words, do not make the disclosure hard to find. You can be fined up to $11,000 for not including a proper affiliate disclosure.
Also, when including an affiliate link, tick the box ‘Search engines should ignore this link (mark as nofollow).’
3. Freelancing
You can use your blog as a way to funnel potential clients to pay you for your freelancing services.
A great example is a wedding photography blogger. They could write about their experience photographing weddings and include a contact option for people to hire them.
The great thing about freelancing as a source of income is that you can make money from day one, and you won’t need tonnes of traffic to make good money.
5 examples of freelancing services:
– Content writing
– Video editing
– Proofreading
– Teaching
– Social media manager
4. Write Sponsored Posts
A great way to make money is to write sponsored posts. It’s simply writing about a brand or a product and being paid by the company to do so.
Doing this allows you to keep on writing content and maintain a consistent stream of income.
5. Selling Digital Products
Selling digital products is an excellent way to add another source of income to your blog.
A few examples of what you can sell:
– Ebooks
– Courses
– Photos (e.g., stock photos)
– Printables (e.g., savings challenges, like the one below 😉 )
There are so many other ways to make money with blogging, I’ve only listed 5 tracks, but there are dozens of opportunities to make money.
Making Money With Blogging Tips
I’ve included three tips on making money with your blog. I recommend following them to increase your income 🙂
1. Have proper punctuation and spelling
Make sure to have proper spelling in your blog and a nice flow of sentences. If you want to look like a professional blogger initially, I recommend focusing a lot on spelling and grammar.
A free grammar/punctuation tool I highly recommend using is Grammarly. I use the free version to help write all my blog posts, and it’s the biggest lifesaver.
Another great way to check how your post sounds are to read it out loud. Reading aloud allows you to catch mistakes and word errors that you might overlook when reading in silence.
2. Only recommend products you use and love
Your audience is intelligent and will quickly tell when you’re promoting a product purely for the money. Please don’t be that person. I recommend that you only use affiliate links for products that you actually use.
Just like in my ‘Resources I Love‘ page, I’ve used all of these resources and products for months and can highly recommend them. I would hate to recommend a crappy product or service to my audience just for the money.
3. Don’t sacrifice user experience to make money
I honestly do not recommend putting ads on your blog until you get thousands of page views a month.
Why?
Because you’re sacrificing your page speed for pennies. You have to face that you won’t be making money blogging for a little while, so don’t bombard your site with ads to make a few cents a month.
Also, as a new blogger, absolutely no one trusts you. You need to gain the trust and support of your audience. Having 30 ads on a post will throw away that trust quite quickly.
Conclusion
So there we have it, the amount of money that blogs can make.
For the first 3 months of blogging, try to post a lot of high-quality blog posts, you won’t make much money initially, but with perseverance and hard work, you can make a lot of money.
If you’d like to start your own blog today, make sure to read this step-by-step guide.
How long did it take you to make your first dollar with blogging?
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– 15 Blogging Tips for Beginners