How to Make Money Blogging: A Realistic Guide
How do you make money blogging? This is something writers often want to know. They want to learn how to turn that skill or passion into an income. Generally, the blog itself may not make money but there are ways of bringing in extra income through other methods. This means you can still write what you love and earn at the same time. We have put together some ideas on how to be a blogger and make money. It is important to note that we can’t pin down specific incomes because it ranges depending on the topic, brands you use and how many visitors you have. However, you can still make money blogging in a variety of ways.
Ways to Make Money Blogging:
- Monetise your blog
- Affiliate links
- Advertisements
- External offers/links to products
- Collaborative posts/sponsored posts
- Blog for others
Affiliate Links
Affiliate marketing is one of the most common ways to make money from blogging. In simple terms, it involves promoting a company’s products and earning a commission on any sales made through your referral. For example, if you regularly use products from a company, you can join their affiliate programme and include special tracking links to those products in your blog posts. When a reader clicks on your link and makes a purchase, you receive a percentage of the sale.
It is important to note that this only applies if you are officially enrolled in a company’s affiliate scheme, simply linking to products will not generate income. Many companies offer affiliate programmes that require you to apply and, once accepted, provide you with unique links to use in your content.
Advertisements
When you scroll through other blogs you will often notice ads. If a company recognises your site they could reach out to offer payment in return for running an ad on your blog.
Don’t just wait for a brand to reach out to you, contact companies that relate to your blog or that you mention. For example, if you’re running a cooking blog and frequently use products from a particular brand, you could reach out to them about them displaying an advert on your website for a fee.
Google Ads is a common method people opt for to get ads on their website as a simple way to make money blogging. However, sometimes these ads can impact the user experience and you don’t want people clicking off your site for it being ‘too bombarded’ with adverts. Just keep this in mind, try not to have too many adverts as you want readers to stay on your website.
External Offers
This is perfect if you are already wanting to sell products or have scope to do so. Many people now are profiting off of digital products. Creating an online store is a great way to make some extra money from your blog and is generally cheap to start up.
You have probably already heard a lot about digital products in 2026. Going back to the cooking blog example, you could offer digital downloads of recipes or weekly shopping lists to make the suggested meals etc. Get creative with this because this is a great way to make money from your blog that is easy to do with channels such as Etsy, Shopify and using free design tools such as Canva. There are so many digital products you could sell to make money blogging. Consider selling digital planners, bucket list templates, to-do list templates and similar downloadables if you’re writing a lifestyle blog. These sorts of templates are highly popular at the moment with everyone focused on self improvement and productivity due to trends.
Collaborative Posts/Sponsored Posts
Collaborative and sponsored posts are used when you feature a product in your blog and a brand pays you to do so. This is quite common for YouTubers to make money by having brands sponsor their video. You can use the same concept for your blog in order to make some extra money from it. This could be achieved from companies reaching out to you and asking you to promote their products on your blog. Equally, you could reach out to brands you use and would fit your blog, to ask them to sponsor you.
Hopefully this guide has helped you understand some ways that you can start to earn money blogging, whether you’re already an experienced blogger or want to start. You can definitely make a good side income from blog writing in 2026.