How Blogs Make Money (Beginner Blog Monetization Explained)

Can you really make money blogging?

Yes — but not the way most beginners expect.

Most bloggers treat their blog like a hobby. The ones who make money treat it like a business.

In this final day of the 7-Day Get Started Blogging Challenge, we’re breaking down exactly how blogs make money — and when you should start monetizing yours.

---

Watch The Video:

Watch the video here and keep on reading to follow along below…

LINKS MENTION:

• GODADDY RESELLER LINK to set up Managed WordPress + Domain Registration and Hosting etc…

🎬 Watch the full 7-Day Start Blogging Challenge + get the checklist here

👍 Like, subscribe @BornToBlogClub on YouTube and tap the bell so you don’t miss the next episode.

---

How Do Blogs Make Money?

Blogs make money by turning attention into income.

Your blog is the platform. Monetization is how you get paid from the audience you build.

Here are the most common ways bloggers earn money:

---

Affiliate Marketing (for bloggers)

“As a blogger, you write posts that recommend tools, products, or resources. Inside those posts, you include special affiliate links. When your readers click and buy, you earn a commission. For example — if you write a ‘Best Budget Travel Gear’ post, you can earn money from every recommendation in that article.”

---

Display Ads (for bloggers)

“Once your blog starts getting traffic, you can place ads on your website. Every time people visit your blog — and sometimes when they click — you earn money. So your content keeps paying you just for being read.”

---

Sponsored Content (for bloggers)

“Brands may reach out and pay you to write a blog post featuring their product. So instead of just recommending something on your own, a company pays you to create a dedicated article about it.”

---

Digital / Physical Products (for bloggers)

“Your blog builds trust — and you can sell your own products to that audience. That could be an ebook, a template, a course, printables, or even physical merchandise related to your niche.”

---

Services or Freelancing (for bloggers)

“Your blog acts like a portfolio. If you’re a writer, designer, marketer, or coach, people can discover you through your blog and hire you. Your content proves you know what you’re talking about.”

---

Memberships (Subscriptions) (for bloggers)

“You can offer premium blog content that’s only available to paying members — like exclusive articles, deep-dive tutorials, a private community, or bonus resources.”

---

Donations & Tips (for bloggers)

“If your blog provides a lot of value, readers may choose to support you voluntarily. This works especially well if you have a loyal audience who appreciates your free content.”

---

Coaching or Consulting (for bloggers)

“As your blog establishes you as an expert, people may pay for personalized help. For example, if you blog about fitness, someone might hire you for one-on-one coaching.”

>> READ: How To Make Money Blogging

---

Here is the video transcript:

“Today we’re talking about how blogs actually make money — and when you should start.”

 I run multiple blogs, and this didn’t happen overnight. So let’s talk about how blogs make money and when you should start. The goal is that you understand blogging as a business and not a hobby. Not that it doesn’t start out as a hobby, but. Eventually, if you want to monetize your blog and make money from it, then you need to treat it like a business.

“This is the video most bloggers wait way too long to watch — and it’s the reason most blogs never make money.”

And this is the video that most bloggers wait too long to watch. It’s also the reason that most people’s blogs never make money.

If you’re new around here, welcome to day seven of my Get Started blogging challenge, where over the past six episodes I have taken you through thinking about blogging to getting a real live blog out into the world, your website and posting your very first blog post, even if you’re starting at zero.

“Welcome to Day 7 of the Start Blogging Challenge.
In the last 6 days, you’ve gone from thinking about blogging to having a real blog live and your first post published — and that alone puts you ahead of most people who quit before they ever start.”

Also, if you missed any of these episodes, I’ve got the full playlist linked in the description below. You should be so proud of yourself. Most people don’t even make it this far. They’ve never even start a blog. They actually quit before they get started. Think about that. Today we’re going to talk about how vlogs actually make money and when you should start if you haven’t started already.

“Blogging is slow at first — and then it compounds.
It’s like planting seeds you don’t see grow for months… and then suddenly you have a forest.”

So blogging, it’s really slow at first, and then it compounds over time. It’s like planting seeds and you don’t see anything happen for months. All of a sudden you have a forest.

“Every post you write is an asset.
Every blog is digital real estate.
And the people who make money blogging aren’t the smartest — they’re the ones who stayed.”

Every blog post that you write is an asset. Every blog is digital real estate, and the ones that make money are not necessarily the smartest in the room. They’re just the ones that stayed around and stuck with it. Kinda like this video series. So now you’re ready for the next step. Monetization.

“Kind of like this video series I made where… This week, you learned:

1. what blogging really is
2. what type of blog to start
3. how to build your website
4. how to write and publish your first post
5. how people find your blog
6. and how to share it

So now you’re ready for the next step — monetization.”

In case you missed it, I’m Blogging Brandi. I’m a blogger and I have multiple blogs, I blog about my life, my RV life, travel, money, religion, sobriety, my dogs, my cat reselling entrepreneurship and business, blogging, and so much more.

“This didn’t happen overnight.
It happened because I kept publishing when nobody was watching.”

I have over a dozen blogs. This didn’t happen overnight. It happened because I kept publishing when no one else was watching or reading my content.

There are a lot of ways that blogs can make money, but you only need one of these ways to get started. From affiliate marketing to display ads, sponsored content selling digital and physical products, offering services and freelancing their skills, memberships and clubs.

Donations and tips as well as consulting and coaching. But you don’t need all these. You just need to pick one and build from there. Your blog is the platform. So these are just different ways that you get paid from the audience that you build.

>> If you want a full breakdown of every method, read my post on 11 Ways To Make Money Blogging.

“Your blog is the platform. These are just different ways you get paid from the audience you build.”

“You don’t need all of these.
You pick one — and you build from there.”

---

1. Affiliate Marketing

• Recommend products
• Use affiliate links
• Earn commission when readers buy
• Can even start before major traffic

One way that your blog can make money is through affiliate marketing for bloggers.

So as a blogger you write blog posts and you talk about all of your favorite tools, tips. Resources, favorite things, and all of these recommendations, you’re going to include a little affiliate link. And when your readers click that little link and buy what you’ve recommended in your blog post, then you earn a commission.

So for instance, if I go over to my travel blog Maps and Miles and decide to share all my favorite travel gear, these. Recommendations when I include those little affiliate links and also put them in my shop on my blog, which I showed you in a prior video, I get a commission from that. So I say, Hey, these are all my favorite things that I love to travel with.

And then when people say, oh, that seems cool, and they click it and buy it, I get a little money every time they click the link. Click money, click money, click money. That’s what you need to be thinking every time that you recommend a product online. It doesn’t even have to be on your blog. This is when I talked about micro blogging.

You could go over to social media and recommend a little product, not the whole blog, but one product out of the blog and get paid just for sharing things that you’re already buying and liking and using online. You can get paid for affiliate marketing as a blogger and not even have a blog yet.

---

2. Display Ads

• Ad networks
• Paid per view/click
• Traffic matters more here
• Passive once set up

Another way that you can make money from your blog and monetize your blog is through display ads.

You set up these ads on your website and when you get traffic to your website and people start reading your blog, and sometimes when they actually click the little ads on your blog that are getting displayed you make money. You just get paid for people reading your content. So the more that you blog and write and put out there, the more money that you’re going to make just for people reading what you have to say.

Think of it like when you’re watching tv, so when you’re watching television or watching this YouTube video, an ad might pop up. I would get paid for you watching that ad, or people would pay me to put ads on the video or on the content that you would be watching in hopes that you would go visit their websites and call their phone numbers, buy their products and services.

---

3. Sponsored Blog Posts

• Brands pay for exposure
• Requires audience
• Best after niche clarity + traffic

Another way that you can monetize your blog and make money blogging is through sponsored content. Companies and brands will reach out to you and ask you to feature their products in your blog post in exchange for a little bit of money. It’s not a product that you necessarily recommended. Hopefully you’ll only write blog posts and sponsorship content about things that you would recommend.

These aren’t products that you necessarily would recommend on your own. These are companies saying, Hey, would you write about my product and I’ll give you a little bit of money about it for feature on your blog and letting your readers see it, and they’re hoping that your readers will go buy their product.

For example, I have this happen a lot over on my RV content, especially when it comes to people finding my videos and my YouTube channel, and then they stumble across my website, my RV blog, RVersity. They see all the products that I recommend, but I can’t tell you how many emails I get. They say, Hey, I saw your YouTube video, or, Hey, I stumbled across your website and I was just curious if you would be interested in me sending you a free product in exchange for you creating a video or a blog post or some type of content about this product and recommending it to your readers. They want me to put their product in front of my audience.

---

4. Selling Digital & Physical Products

• Ebooks
• Templates
• Online courses
• Printables
• Merchandise
• Books

Another way that you can make money blogging is through selling your own digital and physical products. You can make money from your own audience by selling them products that you’ve created. This could be digital products like an ebook, templates and online course, some type of printables. Or you could even create, physical merchandise like a actual book, and get paid for when people buy your book. Same thing with cups and mugs. You can get these printed online and sell your cups. Sell your books and make money from your blog. Now, of course, it has to be something related to your niche. For instance, I wrote a book called Brand Like a Boss, all about branding and business and entrepreneurship.

And then I created a website to go along with it called, BLABoss, and when you go there, it has all the links to everything that I mentioned in the book. This is kind of twofold. You can go online and get the digital side of it and the digital products. And then I also have this as a physical product that people can buy.

So it keeps making money in all types of ways. And then when they go to the website, read a blog post and I get paid from an affiliate link, or I’ll have a business reach out to me or a brand and ask if I could feature something that I talk about, like their service that I use for my social media marketing.

All of these ways keep getting me paid from my blog so I don’t get paid just one way. I monetize my blog in multiple ways, but it all starts with one.

---

5. Services & Freelancing

• Blog as portfolio
• Writing
• Web design
• Email marketing
• Consulting

Another way that you can make money blogging is by selling your services or freelancing your skills online. So your blog serves as your resume, your portfolio, and if you’re a writer, creator, some type of artist, a coach. When you put your information out there online, people know that they can hire you and they discover you and then you can get paid and your blog shows that you know what you’re talking about. If you’re a designer, sometimes people will hire me to build their blogs and set them up a website, some type of pre-done theme or template, or they’ll hire me for their email marketing or social media. There’s all kinds of ways and reasons that people will hire you if they see you blogging about it and talking about it, and know that they can actually pay you for that type of service and freelancing your skills.

Kind of like this video, people discover my YouTube videos through search results and SEO, which I’ve talked about in a prior video, and then I’ll say something like, Hey, did you know that you can hire me and pay me some money and I can help you with your blog? I’ll put a link to that in the description below this video so that you can learn more about that.

But if that was on my blog, I would just have a link where they could click that and a page set up, which I do, and you can too. They don’t know if you don’t tell them about it, that they can pay you from watching this video, reading your blog posts, gotta tell them about it.

---

6. Memberships & Subscriptions

• Premium content
• Locked content
• Community access
• Masterminds

Another way that you can get paid from your blog is through subscriptions and memberships.

So people pay you to access your content or some part of your content so you can lock your content and people will give you money to unlock the content and get access to it. So this could be deep dive tutorials, some of your tools and resources that you use. It could also be an online course that you do, or just access to some of your deeper, more pathetic blog posts that go in depth.

If you’ve ever landed on something like The Washington Post, you’ll start to read it and then you’ll get this little notice that’ll come up. If you want to continue reading, you’ll click continue reading, and then it’ll say, Hey, pay for a subscription if you want to read the rest of this article, you can get paid to have people subscribe to your blog.

So this is like premium content that’s only available to paying members. I’ve done this over on RVersity with my RV content where people pay to join my membership and they get access to all of my tips, tricks, tools and resources, things that I don’t share on YouTube or things that are really in depth tutorials or even discounts and codes and things that I get. It could also be paying for access to some type of private community or mastermind group. Partnerships that come from the other content that I’ve created from my blogs. It’s a big cycle of how the money keeps coming in from my blog. So it’s not just one way that you can make money blogging, but you should start with one and then it will start to compound over time. As you build these little relationships and build more content online. The more quality content that you create, the more that you can get paid.

---

7. Donations & Tips

• “Buy me a coffee” model
• Audience-supported content

Another way that you can make money blogging and monetize your blog is through donations and tips. If you create valuable content and you start to get readers and build an audience that benefits from your content. They will choose to support you voluntarily. And there’s different ways that you can do that. You could say something at the end of your blog post like, Hey, if you really enjoyed this blog post and this content, here’s where you can buy me a coffee so that I can keep creating it or say, thanks here. It’s as easy as that. And then you give them a little link that they click and they can go and donate a little bit of money or put a little money in your tip jar and say thanks for creating it.

---

8. Coaching & Consulting

• Authority positioning
• Personalized help
• Higher-ticket income

Another way that bloggers make money from their blog is selling themselves as a coach or a consultant.

Their blog establishes them as the expert to let people know that they know what they’re talking about, and then people will pay them for that personalized help. For instance, if you’re some type of fitness coach or guru and you put out all kinds of content about fitness tips, tricks, tools, resources, people can come across your content.

Find your blog and they will pay you for your knowledge to help them lose weight or come up with some type of training program for them to gain muscle or whatever it is for your strategy. People will pay you to be their coach and consultant, and the reason that they ever found you was from your blog and your blog is telling them, Hey, here’s my resume, here’s my portfolio, here’s what I do.

And so your blog lets them know they know what they’re talking about and I’m going to pay them to help me do what they do. Kind of like this video and the Born to blog club.com, people will pay me to teach them about blogging, to ask me questions and to book calls with me and to audit their blogs or help them build their websites.

They want some type of coaching and consulting service to do with blogging. You can do that. There’s a link below this video that you can find out more about that as well as on my blog born to blog club.com. Yes, you can hire me and pay me money to be your coach and your consultant, and you can ask me all your burning questions about blogging more than I can answer in this video.

---

Again, your blog is the platform, and these are all the ways that you can get paid from your blog, and you don’t need all of them. You just need one. Start with one, and you can build from there.

“You do not need thousands of readers to start monetizing.
You need clarity, consistency, and time.”

“Most people wait until their blog is ‘perfect.’
The people who win start before they feel ready.”

You don’t need thousands of readers to monetize your blog. You just need clarity, consistency, and time. The truth is, most people wait until their blog is perfect to start, but the ones that win start messy, motivated and making money.

Perfection is the enemy of done. Go for, done. You can always come back and perfect on things. That’s the beauty of blogging.

---

✅ TODAY’S ACTION (On-screen + talking head)

“Today’s action is simple:
Decide how you want your blog to make money.
Just decide. No setup required yet.”

Drop a comment below and let me know which one you are going to choose!

Now, today’s action is simple. All I want you to do is decide which one of these ways that you’re going to use for your blog to make money. That’s it. Just the decision. No setup required.

Drop a comment below and let me know which one of these you chose. If this series helped you, the best next steps is to join the Born to Blog Club and take my free blogging course. It’s where I share all my new lessons, tools, and the next steps that you need to take as I release them, it’s completely free.

I’ll drop a link to it below this video so you can keep building along with me. Also make sure that you’re subscribed to this channel by hitting the like button below. Tap in that subscribe button in little bell icon so you’re notified each and every time I publish a new blogging episode. And if you miss any of the videos in this series, don’t you worry.

I’ve got an entire playlist where you can binge watch all the episodes you might have missed.

And in case we haven’t officially met, I’m your new bestie Blogging Brandi.

Watch The Full 7 Day Get Started Challenge:

• Day 1 – What Blogging Really Is (& Why Most Bloggers Quit)
• Day 2 – What To Blog About (How To Choose A Profitable Blog Niche)
• Day 3 – How To Build Your Blog Website (WordPress Beginner Tutorial)
• Day 4 – How To Write Your First Blog Post
• Day 5 – How to SEO Your Blog Post
• Day 6 – How to Get Your First 100 Blog Readers

---

And you just started like that. You’re welcome. I’ll see you in the next episode.

“Blogging doesn’t pay off fast — but it pays off for a long time.
And you just started.”

If you haven’t already:

• Subscribe on YouTube
• Watch the full playlist
• Grab the 7-Day Blogging Checklist

---

Related Reads You Might Also Like…

• How To Make Money Online Blogging (EXACTLY How I Do It…)
• How I Got My Blog Approved for Google AdSense (& How You Can Too)
• The Multiple Blogs I Manage | MY BLOGS

#MakeMoneyBlogging #BlogMonetization #BloggingForBeginners #MakeMoneyOnline #BornToBlogClub

---

👩‍💻 Feeling Called to Start a Blog? Here’s Exactly How I’d Begin… WATCH THIS FIRST

---

---