How To Make Money Blogging In 2026: A Beginner’s Guide

One of the top questions I get as a blog coach is “How do bloggers make money?” If you want to grow your blog into a successful online business, you will need several income streams. This is a guide about how to make money blogging in 2026, which will give you the insights you need.

Whether you are just starting to monetize a blog, are transforming a blog into an online business, or want to increase your income as a blogger, this guide will show you the top five ways to do so. 

For many, blogging isn’t synonymous with making money. The question on many new bloggers’ minds is “How do blogs make money?” because it seems difficult to envision just how to do it.  Is it even possible to make money with a blog in 2026?

However, when you stop thinking of just being a blogger and switch to an online business-owner mindset, that’s when success happens. When you learn how bloggers get paid to blog, it’s one step closer to making it happen for you and your blog.

In this post, we’re going to review the top ways to make money blogging. I’ve tried these strategies myself. I’ve included the best ways to make money as a beginner blogger. With some of these blog monetization strategies, you’ll need more traffic to your website. Let’s get started!

DISCLOSURE: This post contains affiliate links, meaning if you click on a product or service, and decide to purchase it, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. All recommended products and services are based on my positive experience with them. For more information, please read my Disclaimer.

How Do Blogs Actually Make Money?

The short answer to this is yes. You can make very good money blogging. If you’re blogging part-time, it can be a supplemental income to your full-time job. Some bloggers gain enough momentum and online visibility that they can move into full-time blogging.

Blogging isn’t just focusing on one income stream like ads. Successful bloggers make money from multiple sources. 

For many new bloggers, the key is to discover which monetization strategies work with your niche.

The second element to success is blog traffic. Increasing your blogging income requires time to grow your audience and engage website visitors who trust you. 

The best blog income streams include:

• Affiliate marketing
• Selling products (digital and physical)
• Selling services
• Sponsored content (brand partnerships)
• Advertising 

Full-time bloggers will use more than one of these blog monetization strategies to make money blogging. 

Let’s look at how to make money blogging with the top five strategies.

1. How To Monetize A Blog With Affiliate Links

One of the best ways to make money blogging is to start with affiliate marketing.

What is affiliate marketing, and why should you start implementing it in as many blog posts as possible?

When a brand wants to drive sales, it works with publishers, including bloggers, to provide unique links that are placed on sites. When a site visitor clicks on it, it identifies which website the visitor came from. If they decide to purchase from the brand, the site owner gets a commission on the sale.

To get the full scoop on affiliate marketing, read:

A Beginner’s Guide To Affiliate Marketing For Bloggers

Some brands offer great commissions – especially those in the blogging, home decor and fitness areas. Even better are opportunities where you get a recurring commission. These are usually offered with subscriptions to software. 

You can get affiliate links to MANY different types of brands and services, for almost every niche.

In many cases, you can sign up for affiliate marketing programs fairly quickly, even with a tiny, new blog.

NOTE: With more blog traffic and a larger online following, you can expect greater affiliate sales. 

TIP: You can also make money with my affiliate program for my Confident Blogger Academy & Resource Collection. Sign up for free and earn 30% commission on each sale! Learn More

How To Add Affiliate Links To Your Posts

My key tip to new bloggers: when you start writing blog posts, look at ways to include affiliate links naturally.

For example, I use my NameHero link in any blog post where I reference starting a blog. It makes sense to do so, as the person reading my post on starting a blog is most likely thinking of purchasing a web hosting service.

To provide more context as to WHY they should purchase, I briefly provide two to three reasons why I love using NameHero.

This is the CREDIBILITY factor, which is so important to improving conversion from just being a reader to a potential buyer. I’m indicating to the reader that it’s a good option for them. If they trust me and are enticed by what I’m sharing about it, they will click the link and delve further.

This is the secret to getting affiliate sales, even with a new blog!

Compelling, persuasive writing, with a genuine tone, is key to successful affiliate marketing activities for any blogger.

Get Organized With Pretty Links

Get the Pretty Links plugin (the free version is all you need) when you’re using affiliate links. With it, you can set up the links to look like they come from your domain.

It also makes it easier to make your link a “no follow” link, which follows Google’s guidelines on affiliate links.

Have A Properly Written Disclaimer Page

ALWAYS make sure you have your legal pages in order, especially the DISCLAIMER page, to properly disclose how you use affiliate links.

If you don’t have them, check out Amira A Self Guru’s Legal Bundle. It’s affordable and a must-do investment to blog legally.

Include A Disclosure Statement Before Your Affiliate Links

In each post where you are adding affiliate links, you MUST have a short disclosure statement.

It needs to appear before the first affiliate link – ideally close to it.

There’s a plugin that can do it for you, but why add another plugin to slow your site down?

I add mine manually (see above) as close as possible to where my affiliate links start.

You can easily have a standard one saved and ready to go in a “pattern block” if you’re using blocks in WordPress.

| READ MORE: Affiliate Programs For New Bloggers That Help You Make Money

| RELATED: Top Ways To Promote Your Affiliate Links For Maximum Success

2. Create And Sell Products On Your Blog

Creating and selling products — whether they are digital products or physical products — is a great way to generate a blog income. 

With good SEO and sales funnels, this blog monetization method becomes a semi-passive monetization strategy. 

Selling Digital Products

Some of the popular digital products you can sell as a blogger:

• courses
• e-books
• templates
• printables
• worksheets
• video clips
• audio clips
• photography
• digital art
• video series
• GPTs, Claude Skills

It’s important to note that many who offer services also offer digital products. They take their expertise and create downloadable products for sale. For example, aside from blog coaching, I’ve created a repository of blogging tools in my Confident Blogger Academy. 

What Are The Best Platforms For Selling Digital Products?

You can sell your digital products directly from your website, with a WooCommerce plugin for your own shop. With some third-party digital selling platforms, you can get checkout page links to add to your own shop page entries.

Here’s my “Shop” with links pointing to my Confident Blogger Academy website, powered by Podia.

The best platforms for digital products (including courses, memberships and templates) include: 

• Podia: Excellent platform for digital products, memberships & private communities, coaching. Very good support and thorough help guides to make your shop professional. My shop is with Podia – you can read my full Podia review.
• Thrivecart: One-time purchase, sell digital products, courses (with upgrade), and coaching: 
• Payhip: A simple way to start selling digital products such as ebooks, courses and more.

There are others, like Skool (communities), that are limited in their specialization.

Need inspiration? I’ve got you covered with over 100+ digital product ideas:

PRO TIP: Promote your digital products and courses in a number of ways: within your blog posts, through your email newsletters, on your social media channels, and on Pinterest. The possibilities are endless. Even your email signature can have a link to a digital product!

Selling Physical Products

Selling digital products through your blog is the easiest. However, you can also sell physical products. 

Bloggers with a strong following and branding that resonates with their community can easily sell physical products such as branded: 

• Notebooks and journals
• Planners
• Apparel (t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, baseball hats, sweatpants)
• Stickers & patches
• Stationery: printed habit trackers, journal prompts, weekly/daily planners, etc. 
• Home decor items: deskpads/mousepads, mugs, wall art, throw pillow covers, candles

Depending on your niche, you can sell additional products that are unique solutions for your audience. For example, if you are a food blogger, selling a branded measurement conversion chart that’s laminatedI can make money blogging with a semi-passive approach.

What Are The Best Platforms For Selling Physical Products?

The top platforms for selling physical products as well as digital products that bloggers use are: 

• Sellfy – Sell digital products and physical products with Sellfy.
• Shopify – One of the top online selling stores that many print-on-demand shops like Printify and Art of Where integrate with nicely.
• WooCommerce – A free WordPress plugin that helps you set up your shop on your website.
• Etsy – A separate marketplace, which you can link to on your website.
• Fourthwall – print on demand shop that you can integrate with your website

With some of these platforms, you can integrate them into your WordPress website. With others, you will need to have a standalone shop with a link on your site pointing to it. 

3. Monetize Your Blog By Selling Your Services

A highly profitable way to make money blogging is to sell your services. 

There are three top ways to sell your services:

• Coaching
• Consulting
• Freelance services

Each includes offering your time and expertise at an hourly rate or package pricing. With several clients per month, this can bring in hundreds, if not thousands, on a regular basis.

Can new bloggers make money selling services? Yes. It’s often a smart way to begin, even if your monthly income may be low at the start. As you build up your reputation, referrals and recurring clients, your service-based income stream grows. 

I know this from personal experience. As a blog coach, I’m selling my services and expertise to help others grow their blogs. It was a choice I made based on all of the knowledge and skills I’ve learned over the years. It made sense to monetize my blog by offering coaching sessions.

Imagine working from the comfort of your own home, with your own schedule. I love it!

For example, let’s say you’re a whiz at organization tips. You have a reader who can’t get their home in order, and they want your help.

By offering a virtual walkthrough service through Zoom or Google Meets, you can provide them with tips and insights on how they can declutter their home and get organized.

RELATED: How To Start An Online Coaching Business

The Best Way To Sell Your Services On Your Blog

Service providers need to promote their business offerings, and the best way to do so is with a dedicated “Services” page.

Your Services page should address:

• Who you work with
• What kind of services you provide (e.g., coaching, consulting, freelance work, etc)
• How to get started (e.g. a discovery call)
• How the process works
• What clients get from you
• The results

The last point is important and should be worked into your services page copy from the start. Your potential client wants to know what kind of support and help you can provide.

Answer what kind of transformation you can create. For example, as a blog coach, I help build blogging skills, support clients as they work through creating blogging strategies that work for them, and provide insights and feedback on what they’re creating.

Selling Services: Purchasing Your Services

You can make money blogging and selling your services, but if you don’t have a system in place, you’re not getting paid.

Anytime you sell your services, you will need a contract signed between you and your client.

• Independent Contractor Agreement (contracting your services, such as design work, copywriting, etc.)
• Coaching Agreement (you’re coaching)

There are several ways you can sell your services once the agreement has been signed. Your service is a virtual one that you can sell on your blog with a WooCommerce shop (free plugin). 

Many of the digital selling platforms also offer the opportunity to sell coaching/consulting services.

Market Your Services With Your Blog

When you monetize your blog with your services, you will definitely need to switch your mindset. Your services are a business. Your blog is now your marketing strategy to attract clients for your business. 

Your blog content should: 

• Engage them and nurture them. Attract readers to sign up for your email newsletter, where you continue to introduce them to you and what you can do for them.
• Showcase your abilities and knowledge, boosting your credibility. 
• Provide helpful insights and examples that showcase your expertise

Provide readers with answers to their key problems. It should be thoughtful, well-written and researched content.

PRO TIP: Add links to your products and services pages in relevant blog posts. This helps boost your key pages when it comes to rankings and how Google understands your site.

4. Make Money Blogging With Brand Collaborations (Sponsored Content)

Many successful bloggers add brand collaborations to their list of blog monetization strategies. For many established bloggers, a full-length blog post reviewing a product or service can generate at a minimum USD $500.

Learning how to monetize a blog through brand collaborations and sponsored content boosts your income generation greatly. However, this kind of activity can be time-intensive, especially if you are creating an original video or full-length blog post review.

Instead of waiting to be pitched by a brand, begin pitching brands and PR reps for product samples and brand collaborations.

To be successful with sponsored collaborations, you will need to have blog traffic and an active follower base on social media. Brands want to reach as many people as possible through your platform.

Traffic, content and engagement are important indicators to a brand that you are drawing in an audience.

Create A Media Kit & Rate Card

To pitch brand collaborations, you will need to create a media kit for your new blog, as well as craft a rate card to go along with it.

Use the media kit to showcase your work, potential collaboration opportunities and your blog brand.

You send the media kit and rate card with your email pitch. It gives the brand contact an idea of:

• Types of collaborations they can do with you
• The quality of your work
• Potential budget required to work with you

Once you get interest from a brand, you will need to negotiate the collaboration. If the brand doesn’t provide you with a contract, then send them a sponsored post agreement, outlining the scope of work for the collaboration and payment.

Produce A Report Along With Your Invoice

You will need to report on your collaboration campaign results to get paid.

My recommendation is to give yourself a few weeks’ time to successfully promote your blog content or social media posts. This gives the brand a good idea of the effectiveness of your campaign.

In many cases, a brand will provide you with special UTM links so they can track progress on their end.

However, a report is a professional way to conclude the campaign when you send your invoice for payment.

This is why I say that brand collaborations require more time and effort. However, they are one of the best ways to make money blogging.

5. Make Money Blogging Through Display Advertising

Advertising is often one of the first ways bloggers look to earn money blogging. This involves the placement of ads throughout your website, with income generated from impressions and clicks on ads.

You can get started with advertising by joining various ad programs and platforms, including:

• Google’s AdSense: Usually takes on beginner bloggers. However, the income is only effective with high traffic volume.
• Mediavine: Requires $5K in ad income per year. This means your traffic needs to be quite high.
• Mediavine’s Journey: For new and growing bloggers. Starts at 1K sessions/month.
• AdThrive: Required 25,000 pageviews a month, original content.

While it’s a fairly passive way to monetize your blog, it can take a while before you see enough of an income.

NOTE: Ads can slow down a website’s load speeds. You will need to use a caching plugin like WP Rocket. In some cases, ads just don’t look professional, especially if you’re selling your services.

What You’ll Need To Run Your Blog As A Business

Aside from the key online coaching tools and resources, you’ll need to get and set up to be productive and run things smoothly, there’s one legal issue to address.

1. Protect Yourself Legally

When you monetize your blog, you are running a business, and that means legal protections are required.

• If you’re providing a coaching service, you MUST have a coaching agreement in place between yourself and your client. Read more about the ways you can protect yourself legally and financially with a coaching agreement.
• For consulting work, when you produce strategies and other support, you’ll need an agreement as well. Get an Independent Contractor’s Agreement for this and other freelance work.
• For brand collaborations, have a sponsored content agreement in place before you start any work.

Finally, you should have your key legal pages on your website, including a Privacy Policy, Disclaimer and Terms & Conditions page. You can use this lawyer-written legal page template bundle that I use for this.

2. Solid Pricing That’s Competitive: Products & Services

Do your research to see what competitors are doing and their hourly rates.

You don’t want to price yourself out of business, nor do you want to undersell yourself either.

Consider your skills, experience and your capabilities. What value is it to your customer? How expensive would it be for them to do it?

3. Focus On Building Your Email List

Start building your email list as soon as you start your blog by offering your readers valuable free printables, worksheets or other digital downloads that they will find useful.

With an email newsletter, you can build a name for yourself for quality content (we’ll get to that in a second!).

Your email list will become a great source of business when you’re ready to include easy offers, sales and affiliate links.

| READ MORE: How To Build Your Email List With Valuable Freebie Offers

4. Personal Branding And Blog Branding Matter

When you start to focus on your personal brand, it gets easier to make money blogging. People learn how to trust you. Make sure you think of yourself and your business as a brand.

It’s all in how you present yourself in your blog design, to the tone of voice. I like to think mine is professional but friendly and inviting.

Read up on personal branding for bloggers and solopreneurs and how it works to boost your business.

5. Pinterest Is A Blog Traffic Powerhouse

The reality is that to make money blogging, you need traffic. One of the top traffic drivers is Pinterest.

Aside from organic traffic from Google through good on-page SEO practices (which you should be doing no matter what), use Pinterest to promote your posts as much as possible.

Many of my blog coaching clients have found me through my Pinterest pins.

It’s amazing how people can find you through the content you produce.

If your audience isn’t on Pinterest, focus on the platforms they use!

| RELATED: How To Get Started On Pinterest: A Guide For Beginners

6. Workflows, Systems And AI Tools

Building a business around a blog can be time-intensive. This is why you need smart workflows, systems and support from AI chatbots like Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini.

When you monetize your blog, look to create:

• Workflows that speed up content creation and promotion. AI tools can help you develop social media content, blog post outlines, digital products, and schedules. Use them to create drafts that you modify with your human insights and authentic voice.
• Create systems that save you time. Whether it’s batching content and scheduling to social media, or creating a weekly and monthly schedule with dedicated blog writing and updating days, do it with intention and goals in place.
• Use AI smartly. Thoroughly written prompts, GPTs/Skills, and other AI capabilities can greatly improve how fast and effectively it creates quality content for you. If you’re using a paid version of an AI chatbot, train it to understand your blog brand, your writing style, and preferences so it produces content that sounds almost 100% like you.

While I always recommend working smartly, it’s important not to rely 100% on AI-generated content. It can make mistakes and cause long-term issues. For example, scaling your blog content too fast with AI-generated blog content that offers low value can be viewed by search engines like Google as a spammy activity.

PRO TIP: If you’re blogging part-time, you may need to reassess your expectations of how much income you can generate. While AI tools and other systems can alleviate workflows, blogging for money is still running a business. You will need to dedicate time to your blog, monetization, marketing and administrative (think bookkeeping) if you’re doing this solo.

Monetize Your Blog Smartly With This Website Tools Checklist

Before you even consider monetizing your blog, make sure you’re set up to do so! You’ll need to make some essential investments in your blog.

Here’s what you’ll need in place first:

• A website ready to scale and monetize. A self-hosted blog with WordPress (Start with quality, cost-effective NameHero), the most customizable platform for blogging. You will need to get your own domain as well.
• Essential legal pages. Your website should have your Privacy Policy, Disclaimer, Terms & Conditions – get them via the fully customizable Legal Bundle.
• Website theme for business. Upgrade to a theme that you can scale up into a business. Kadence is a good, fast theme platform (with feminine business child themes you can purchase). Elementor is another page builder that you may look into. You can get Elementor-based themes as well. Check out my list of the best feminine WordPress themes for business blogs and online businesses.
• A payment system/digital selling platform. Whether you choose Thrivecart or Podia, or go the route of WooCommerce, you will need to have a system to accept payments and deliver products and services.

Make money blogging by investing wisely in the key blogging and business tools. Once you get profitable, you will cover these initial start-up costs!

Now that you’re all set, let’s get started making money blogging!

| RELATED: How To Generate An Extra $100 A Month To Support Your Blog’s Key Investment

Be Successful Working From Bed!

What Should You Do To Make Money Blogging More Consistently?

One of the key issues you may face when you monetize your blog is that you place time and effort into creating a digital product or setting up a service. But you may fail to promote it strategically.

To make money blogging, you need to:

PROMOTE!

To generate more income through blogging, you will need to focus on one or more of these promotional channels:

• SEO: This is non-negotiable, as it’s not only for search engines, but also the foundation for AI visibility.
• Pinterest: The visual search engine that’s used for information, inspiration and online discovery.
• Social media: Promote your products and services to your followers on your Facebook page or group and Instagram
• Ads: Via Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok or LinkedIn
• LinkedIn: If your business is business-to-business (B2B), this should be your primary focus.
• Your email newsletter: Use it to promote sales, email sales funnels, promote affiliate links, announce new services, etc.

Although you may not have a huge audience at first, if you’re focusing on promotion diligently, over time you’ll see results.

In the beginning, you don’t need to have a large audience to generate sales. At the beginning of my blog coaching business, I had only a few clients who wanted to learn to blog as I was blogging. If you are recognized as an expert, others will want your support.

Don’t forget to focus on your personal branding. People love to follow other people with great ideas and solutions. Success comes when you’ve got a strong personal brand and people start to recognize you as an expert in your field!

Set realistic expectations for yourself. Do the work. The results will come!

| RELATED: The Top Facebook Groups To Join If You’re A Blogger

Track And Analyze Monetization Strategies To Determine What’s Working

Not all monetization strategies will work for you from the start. The key is not to give up! You’re just starting out, so give yourself some time to figure out the kinks.

For example, you may find that people aren’t interested in your coaching services.

The problem may lie in your sales page, your brand messaging or your blog itself.

If what people are reading isn’t generating interest and trust in working with you, they will move on.

So you will need to address these issues to overcome this challenge.

For digital products, create a sales tracker to see which ones are working. Remember to leverage key sales periods to offer your readers a chance for a great deal.

Once again, check your sales pages, product descriptions and perhaps your sales funnels. Sometimes a small tweak is all that’s required to start seeing ongoing sales.

Over time, you will need to update products, email sales funnels and strategies to continue to monetize your blog successfully.

| RELATED: Can You Still Make Money Blogging? The Real Truth

When Should You Start Monetizing Your Blog?

You now know how to make money from your blog. The best time to start is as soon as possible, understanding that you will make mistakes in the beginning. You also may not generate much income from your blog in your first year.

However, over time, as you build your blog foundation, create great content and build an audience, you’ll find monetizing your blog successfully much easier. Your mindset will change from blogger to business owner.

I started monetizing my Suburban Tourist blog a few years into blogging. I had to change my mindset as to what blogging could be (i.e. a business).

Of these ways to make money with a new blog, the easiest to implement immediately is affiliate marketing.

Offering services and creating and selling digital products may take a little bit of time to develop and begin promoting.

There are customers out there who want what you can offer and sell. So don’t hesitate! Think it through and do it.

Read about 50+ monetization strategies for your blog, and get started today!

| Read More: 10 Legitimate Ways To Make More Money With Work From Home Jobs

QUESTION: What are the ways to make money with a new blog that you think are the best? Are there any other ways you’re monetizing your blog?

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