If you’re starting a blog and you want it to make money, you need to set things up the right way from the beginning. That means picking monetization methods that actually fit your blog, not just throwing random affiliate products onto your pages because someone told you to.

If you haven’t started your blog yet, get that sorted first, then come back to this.

In this post, I’ll walk you through the main ways bloggers make money online. There are quite a few options out there, so I’ll focus on the ones that actually work well for most bloggers.

How Bloggers Make Money Online

5 Ways Bloggers Make Money Online

1. Ad Networks

Ad networks pay you to show advertisements on your blog. Some of the well known ones right now are Google AdSense, Ezoic, Mediavine, Raptive, and Monumetric. You might also come across Media.net, which focuses mostly on contextual ads.

Worth knowing: AdThrive rebranded to Raptive back in 2023, after AdThrive and CafeMedia merged into one company. If you see “AdThrive” mentioned anywhere online, that’s now Raptive.

Each network has its own requirements before they’ll accept your blog. These usually depend on things like:

• How much content you’ve published
• Your monthly traffic
• Where most of your traffic comes from
• Whether your content fits their niche focus
• How your site is built (some networks want a self-hosted WordPress site)

Traffic requirements change fairly often, so treat any specific number you read as a rough guide rather than a fixed rule. That said, here’s roughly where things stand right now:

• Google AdSense has no set traffic minimum. It’s usually the easiest network to get into first, though the payouts are on the lower end.
• Ezoic used to accept sites with very little traffic. That changed in February 2026, when Ezoic raised its minimum to around 250,000 monthly users for new applicants. Existing publishers who were already using Ezoic before that date were grandfathered in. If you’re a smaller blog, Ezoic now runs an Incubator program as an alternative entry point.
• Mediavine used to require a flat 50,000 sessions a month. That model changed too. Mediavine now looks mainly at ad revenue, generally around $5,000 in annual ad revenue for their main program. If you’re not there yet, they run a separate on-ramp called Journey by Mediavine, which you can join with as little as 1,000 monthly sessions.
• Raptive has also lowered its bar over time and now generally looks for around 25,000 monthly pageviews.
• Monumetric tends to work with smaller sites too, often starting somewhere in the tens of thousands of pageviews, though this can vary.

Because these numbers shift, it’s worth checking each network’s own site before you apply. Don’t build your whole plan around a number you read in a blog post (including this one) without double checking it first.

Display ads are a solid way to earn from your blog because the network does most of the heavy lifting. You place the code once, and they handle the ad buying, placement, and optimization.

2. Affiliate Marketing

With affiliate marketing, you promote products or services from other companies, and you earn a commission when someone buys through your link.

It’s a great way to earn because most affiliate programs are free to join, and unlike ad networks, they don’t usually require huge traffic numbers to get started.

All you really need is to put helpful content in front of the right audience and write in a way that genuinely helps people decide whether a product is right for them.

One thing to keep in mind: many affiliate program applications are reviewed automatically or semi-automatically.

If your site is missing key things, like an About page, a Privacy Policy, or a decent amount of published content, the application can get rejected without much explanation.

A good rule of thumb is to have at least 20 to 25 solid blog posts published before you start applying to affiliate programs.

This gives reviewers something to look at, and it also gives you a chance to spot gaps in your own site, things you might want to fix or add before applying anywhere else.

A few practical tips for affiliate marketing:

• Only recommend products you’d suggest to a friend. Readers can usually tell when a recommendation feels forced.
• Disclose your affiliate links clearly. This is both good practice and, in many countries, a legal requirement.
• Focus on a handful of high quality affiliate partnerships rather than scattering dozens of random links across your site.

Learn more on affiliate marketing here…

3. Sponsorships

With sponsorships, a company pays you directly to feature them on your blog. Say you write about insurance, and an insurance company reaches out asking you to write about their product in exchange for payment. That’s a sponsorship.

You can also be proactive and reach out to potential sponsors yourself, rather than waiting to be approached. Building a simple media kit, a one page document showing your traffic, audience, and past collaborations, makes this a lot easier.

Sponsors are paying for exposure, so traffic matters more here than with some other methods.

If your blog doesn’t have much of an audience yet, sponsors won’t get the results they’re paying for, and that can hurt your chances of landing future deals or getting repeat business from the same company.

Once you have decent, consistent traffic, sponsorships can become one of the more lucrative ways to monetize a blog, since you’re negotiating directly rather than splitting revenue with a network.

Learn more on sponsorships here…

4. Your Own Digital Products

Creating your own digital product, like an ebook, an online course, a template, or a printable, and selling it on your blog is one of the most profitable long term strategies.

Digital products are appealing because there’s no physical inventory, no shipping, and no storage costs.

Most bloggers create something around a topic they already know well and believe will help their readers.

The big advantage over affiliate marketing is that you keep all the profit and you keep your traffic on your own site, instead of sending readers off to someone else’s checkout page.

The tradeoff is that digital products take more upfront work to create, and you’ll need some kind of audience already in place before people will trust you enough to buy.

If you’re considering this route, start small. A short guide or a simple template is a good way to test whether your audience is willing to pay before you invest time into something bigger, like a full course.

Learn more on digital products here…

5. Freelancing

Some bloggers combine freelancing with blogging, offering services related to their blog’s topic that don’t fit neatly into blog content itself. Think of a food blogger who also does recipe development for brands, or a design blogger who takes on client work.

Your blog becomes a kind of portfolio and lead generator. If you design it to complement your freelance services, with a clear services page and examples of your work, it can bring in clients without you having to do much extra outreach.

There’s no single “best” way to make money from a blog. It really comes down to how well the monetization method fits your content and your audience.

Learn more on freelancing here…

How Often Should I Blog to Make Money?

Honestly, it depends. The common answer is 2 to 4 times a week, but you don’t need to lock yourself into that.

You’ll also hear advice telling you to post daily, which can feel overwhelming if you’re just starting out and still learning the basics of writing and blogging. If you’re newer to this, forcing yourself into a punishing schedule is more likely to make you quit than to make you successful.

My honest take: everyone starts somewhere, and it takes time to figure out a posting rhythm that works for your own life. If posting once a week is realistic for you, that’s completely fine.

How Often Should a Blog Be Updated?

If you’re able to post more often, that’s great, but the real key is consistency, not frequency. If you commit to posting once a week, stick to it. Give your blog that one post every week, and over time it becomes a habit rather than a chore.

As a newer blogger, you’re building a writing habit. Once that habit is in place, writing gets easier, and your writing itself tends to improve naturally the more you do it.

A few things that help with consistency:

• Batch your content. Writing two or three posts in one sitting can be easier than trying to write fresh every single week.
• Keep a running list of post ideas so you’re never starting from a blank page.
• Don’t aim for perfect. Aim for published.

Find a rhythm that fits your life, not someone else’s advice on the internet, including this one.

A Quick Word on Mistakes to Avoid

Since we’re talking about monetization, it’s worth mentioning a few common mistakes bloggers make early on:

• Monetizing too early with the wrong method. Applying to premium ad networks before you have the traffic to qualify wastes time. Start with AdSense or affiliate links while you build up your audience.
• Adding too many ads too soon. A cluttered page full of ads before you even have Real traffic can hurt user experience and your search rankings.
• Promoting irrelevant affiliate products. If your affiliate links don’t match what your readers actually came for, they won’t click, and it can make your content feel less trustworthy.
• Ignoring your analytics. Knowing where your traffic comes from and which posts perform best helps you decide what to double down on.

Conclusion

There isn’t one single “right way” to make money blogging. Most successful bloggers end up combining a few of these methods, maybe display ads alongside a couple of affiliate partnerships, or a digital product paired with occasional sponsorships.

What matters most is choosing methods that fit your content and your audience, rather than chasing whatever seems to be working for someone else.