4 Shares

12 Easy Ways To Make Money As A Beginner Blogger

July 2, 2021

It is the dream of every blogger to be able to blog all the time and make a living off of it. However, when you’re first starting out that can seem like a daunting task once you are in the thick of it. Don’t get discouraged! Just keep putting in the work! Articles don’t just go viral overnight, nor do bloggers. But, you should always blog as if each article would because one day your post will! The key to making money with your blog is to remember that on average, someone needs to see something at least 7 times before they think about making a purchase. Just think about all those annoying commercial’s that get stuck in your head. There’s a reason those tunes are so catchy. So remember, it’s all about exposure and repetition to make these 12 easy ways to make money as a beginner blogger dollarssssss.

***I’ll use my own examples throughout to give you a visual of what I’m talking about. If you click on them it will give you an idea of what your audience will see when they click on your own referral link for brands you use you work with.***

FYI : This page includes affiliate links, which means I might get a commission from your purchase at no extra cost to you. This is what helps me work on the free content and freebies I produce for you guys, so thank you for that! Know that, I ONLY include what I use myself and stand behind 100% (learn more)

You need to start and grow your email list from Day 1! No matter what you do, this is one of the best ways to get people to click on whatever your link is that makes money! The link is right there in the email. Most people who work HAVE to check their email multiple times a day. (Maybe at least 7 times. * wink wink nudge nudge *) If your email shows up as a good procrastination tool/ break from their daily grind, they will be more likely to read your email and click your link.

Versus something like social media, where their attention span is about ten seconds before like next shiny thing catches their attention, it’s harder to get someone off of the app. Just think about how many times you yourself have clicked a person’s “link in bio.” I am guessing it’s not often unless you already wanted to buy that item and it happened to be on sale or something. And after you see it, you probably forgot who it was that posted it if you go to go back and look for that link again.

With emails, you can create a personal connection with people. You have a direct link to them. If for some reason Instagram crashed, a new app pops up that pulls away your audience, or your account gets hacked, you would lose all those connections. With emails, you will always have that list.

There’s a number of ways to do this besides just having a sign up form on your blog. Maybe you have a free download you send to them after they join your email list or exclusive access to content. Get creative with it!

Whatever you do, start collecting emails even if you don’t have your blog up yet. You can even DM followers and ask if they want to be notified once you are up and running. Have an “answer this question” on your Instagram Stories and say I have something to tell you – what’s your email? Check other people’s pages and see what’s working for them and what’s a viral trend at the moment you can put your own spin on!

Make your own merch! Why get a commission off someone else’s product if you can sell your own products and keep the whole profits? There’s multiple ways to create content. You can do digital content, print on demand, or even hire someone from Fiverr or Upstart to make something for you. Check out which way works best for you and start creating!

Keep it simple and start with one idea (with different versions of the same idea) and then expand from there. Ryan Hogue is one of my favorite mentors in all things ecommerce and passive income.

If you aren’t interested in making merch, you can do drop shipping or sell used books on Amazon (where you literally fill up a box of books you find at book sales and send them to Amazon.) There’s all kinds of passive income stuff you can do that can make you long term money.

Here’s some examples of merch I created. I admit, I need to become more dedicated to it, but I didn’t realize I could do it! I doubted myself but I’m here to tell you, it’s worth the grind to make your own passive income! Because once you create that item and put it online, it becomes it’s own passive income machine!

Guided Journal

Password Holder

Lined Journal

There are plenty of ways to make a profit on something you are already doing. For example, if you sell stuff on Amazon, apply for Amazon Affiliates. This way you make your own product’s profit and then also make profit off of whatever else ends up in the clicker’s cart when they use your referral link.

You can also use sites like Skimlinks where you put a generic code into your website and anytime anyone clicks away from your post, to a site they are affiliated with, you get paid. There’s a number of sites like these so see what works best for you.

With an embedded code, you never know who may be offering a kickback for something you are already talking about. Of course, you should do your research and see what specific sites are trending and are also offering lead generator kick backs, but it’s really up to you how much time you want to invest in this particular money maker.

Start with one and then move on from there. It takes a lot of time to build traction and a lot of affiliates have minimums for you to meet before you get paid. It’s better to push one product and make those profits instead of making a little profit on a lot of things and not qualifying for a cash out amount.

To find one right for you, just google a product you’re interested in and add the words “affiliate program.” Then you simply apply. Digital affiliate programs are the easiest. Clickbank is a great tool to find affiliates easily. There’s a number of sites like this too, just see which has the most options for your genre.

Here’s an example of a service I use and LOVE and also get an affiliate for. Elementor just makes it so easy to click and drag to make your posts. No coding required – which I love because as I’ve said before I struggle with the tech side of blogging. (You probably already saw this pic at the top of this article or in previous posts of mine.)

Create your own commercials! To qualify for things like Adsense and other popular platforms, you need to average a set number of views on your website per month. This is a hard challenge for newbies and it takes a while to build up a consistent audience.

For example maybe you get the set amount one month but not the next – now you don’t qualify. Instead of getting annoyed and disappointed and obsessed with following statistics, (which trust me we do this constantly especially as new bloggers) just make your own commercials for your posts with your own products or your own affiliates.

The idea is that you’re giving away advice for free, so if they appreciate your advice, they have a way to pay you back.

There’s been so many times where I just write a thank you email or DM someone for their helpful free information, but I wish they had a donation button or something. Maybe I can’t afford to take their $1,000 course, but I wish I could send them a tip just like how you do in the restaurant. They could use it for coffee to keep their motivation cafenated!

Plus, you never know how much someone will tip you!

Here’s mine as an example that I put at the bottom of every article.

If you don’t want to be in front of the camera, no problem! You can download free royalty free songs and free stock videos and create your own Youtube video. I like to use IMPERSS Royalty Free Music for videos.

Or, you can make your own with your own footage. You then upload them to Youtube with keywords from your genre. Once you get so many views, (as I’m writing this it’s minimum 10,000 hours of views and 4,000 subscribers before you can start getting ad pay) Youtube will pay you. If you make your own Youtube videos already, these generic videos can help boost your watch time and get you to that minimum hours of views faster! You will be surprised just how fast these videos rack in views like rain sounds for example. They are racking in millions of views per video, which means millions of HOURS of views!

You can also go live on social media if Youtube isn’t your thing. If you didn’t read that article check it out here… 15 Tips To Make Your Blog Better.

Nowadays, you can work your debit cards AND your credit cards! With apps like Cashapp, Paypal, and Venmo, you can get all kinds of bonuses that regular banks do not offer. You can also triple dip and move your money around so that you make perks off all of your cards.

For example, I get free crypto from Cashapp when I use a coffee shop boost. I put money onto Cashapp, then I use it to load up my Starbucks Rewards Loyalty card, so I get free crypto and free coffee as I collect stars all with the same money.

The reality is that it will eventually cost money to run your blog. Make that money work for you and put the cost of your website, phone bill, etc on a credit card and build up points. You can then redeem them for gift cards or even put your cash back towards your bill. Some platforms have their own credit cards or debit cards like Robinhood. It’s an easy way to invest in this new asset without putting much thought into it. You can do this in Venmo and Cashapp as well with their cards.

Social media basically pays you to keep people on their app.

Platforms like Instagram will pay you in time chunks while Tiktok and Twitch have tip jars when you “go live” where people can send you tokens etc that you can cash out to cash or gift cards. You get to gain cash while also gaining more of an audience!

You can take this one step further and offer subscriptions to exclusive content and you can have those people enter a private Facebook group or have Zoom streams etc. There’s also opportunities like Patreon and Teachable where audiences are already looking for genre specific content to learn from.

You can talk about your latest blog post, tips of the week, things you learned this week, Q&A, etc.

You can make more than one account easily. The idea is to have an account that leads traffic to your main account.

You can do as many personal ads here as you want and make use of hashtags and other engagement tricks instead of doing it on your main account and annoying your regular audience! Your post may be exactly what someone who isn’t already part of your audience is looking for.

They may click just for that product and not follow you, or they may follow you and not click on the product, either way it’s a win win. You are getting new eyes on you or new eyes on the products you’re working with and not annoying your audience who followed you for your genre expertise (to get something out of you, not to help you make an income.)

Honestly, you could just promote whatever you want on your second account. It doesn’t even have to be in your genre. But, why not use it as a funnel tool to bring in more committed audience members to your blog?

I’m not saying pay for ads. I’m saying make your own! You can write specific blog posts targeted towards products and get paid for it. (I suggest sticking to products in your genre because this is an easy rabbit hole to fall down and just start chasing money instead of sticking to growing your blog!)

You can do sponsored posts where magazines or fellow bloggers trying to grow will pay you to write an article for them. If you have a good Instagram following you can get paid per post or paid for reposting someone’s content as well. You can also rent out space on your blog just like any other advertiser would!

Set up your pay rate before you do this so you have a media kit to send to anyone interested in your service. Start low and then as you grow you can change your pay rate. They may want to just buy a social media post promotion from your account, but if they see you also do blog posts they may go for the larger package too.

There’s a number of ways to do this so just do your research for which way works best for you. You can offer this service on Fiverr or Upwork etc. You’d be surprised how many people go there to get ads for cheaper than they would paying to go through the platforms. Also, they know with niche genres they are definitely hitting their target audiences.

I’m going to keep saying this over and over – just make sure you stay consistent with your genre. If you don’t, I guarantee you will start to lose your core audience. If you have a blog about dogs and you advertise for cats, no one is going to click any links no matter how creative they look! They will also probably unfollow you because they came to you for dog content.

I’ll use the example of apps I already use. As you know, for me personally, I like to make my money work for me. With a lot of apps for Stocks and Crypto or other money saving services like Venmo (which I always use on group trips to make it easy to split different bills), you get a “friend referral” – so use that for your audience. Your audience gets an amount for using your referral code to sign up with and then you also get a kickback for referring a friend.

Also, when you invest the money you are making from all these easy ways to make money as a beginner blogger, it will grow naturally with the help of interest and dividends. Read the full article here how to make money for travel while you sleep.

I always use Tailwind so I made a commercial for it that links to my referral link. Even though I’m not an “affiliate,” I still get a kickback for something I’m already referring to people. If it’s something you use all the time, why not refer it as a useful tool to others and use that referral money towards your bill.

There are a lot of scams and spam out there! Just like those robo callers, there are also bots on social media and in your emails box. Now that your email and social media handle is out there, people are going to be dropping in to see if they can snag you in a scam. Especially when you are first starting out, they will go in on you hard because they know you are new to the scams going around and are looking to make money so you will probably take their bait! They won’t be obvious and ask for your social security, but they will def ask for your bank info or credit card info!

Do not use Cashapp etc for business payments! Use secure payments like Paypal where you can keep invoice receipts for taxes. These kinds of scammers will send or request money via an app and then hack your banking info all in a matter of seconds.
Always take half the payment upon request when doing a shout out or sponsored post, then accept the other half upon completion of going live with the posts. You don’t want to get caught stuck with these posts and never getting payment for them!
Be wary when people offer you free merch. What happens is, they offer you the free product and you “just have to pay for shipping.” Or, they give you a “heavily discounted item” with their code for you to become an affiliate with them. Most of them just want your bank or credit card information or they make a profit off of you for buying their product even though it’s discounted. For this reason, after doing your research and feeling a brand is something you want to be affiliated with and they are not a scam, use a credit card – never your debit card. If it’s a scam, you credit card handles it instead of your account getting frozen for 3 days while the bank investigates.

Most affiliate programs work through a third party app like Impact. If someone is contacting you about a product and want you to send them your info directly without applying, this is red flag scam alert!
To be safe, never work with overseas brands! First off, if one of your audience members orders, right now the mailing system is such a mess in USA imagine how it is trying to import stuff? They are going to come at you like why would you recommend this? I’ve been waiting a month! Trust me on this one. Keep it to your local country where you can research the company and make sure it’s legit very easily. In fact, start with local brands when you are first starting out. Places you can walk into the business if there is any payment issue. It will look great on your portfolio too when a big brand approaches you and asks who you have worked with before and they see your passion!
There’s also an email networking scam floating around that will sound something like, “hey fellow blogger, with all the bots floating around, I am looking to connect organically. Click this link to check out my latest blog.” DO NOT CLICK EMAIL LINKS! Oldest trick in the book. Virus alert!
Also, who needs free stuff? I get offered at least 75 “collabs” a day (with 1600 followers on Instagram) and half the time it’s just someone commenting on a post like “hey girl, collab?” We are about rent and paying-bills money remember? The goal is to blog full time! We can’t do that if all we are getting is “free junk.” Ok, junk is a bit harsh but you know what I’m saying.

If you want even more tips to make your blog better, check out my latest article here.

(These all have great free versions!)

Tailwind – Great For Autoposting. Auto-generate posts. Get in groups with similar interests and repost eachother’s content. Great way to get more eyes on you!
Canva – Great for resizing, animating videos, and diverse stock photo library. I use this for all the graphics you see me do including Pinterest and Instagram posts! You can do everything this, it’s basically a cheaper social media focused version of Adobe. You can make books, digital downloads, charts, social media content, just about anything you can think of!
Clickbank or Impact – Great for connecting with brands for affiliate marketing opportunities.
Mailerlite and Mailchimp – These are great automated email services!
Videvo – Stock Videos and Royalty Free Music for Youtube Videos.
IMPERSS – Great Background Royalty Free Music for videos.