2014 was a great year for my little blog, Shaping Up To Be A Mom. I earned just under $9000 in cash, and almost $5000 in gift cards and product value. In this post I will share with you exactly how I made the money that I earned, in the hopes that you can use this information to earn more money with your blog in 2015!
I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to write this post, because I know there are bloggers out there making hefty full-time incomes to whom $14k wouldn’t seem like much at all. But on the other hand, there are newer bloggers who are just beginning to monetize and are looking for information on how to make money off blog posts and projects.
And here’s the thing- my blog is small! Let’s define “small blog” as any blog that gets less than 20,000 pageviews in a month. For bloggers, pageviews are essential, but they are not the whole picture. You may have a robust social media following, or loyal readers who leave comments, or you may be a fantastic storyteller with a great reputation. You can absolutely make money from a small blog, and I’m going to show you how.
Make Money With Your Small Blog
Here is the breakdown of what I made and how:
Total cash earned = $8989
Total value of gift cards and products received as payment = $4942
Breakdown of cash earned:
Sponsored Posts/Social Media Campaigns: total cash earned = $7620
Collective Bias- $4170
Dennys ambassadorship- $1200
Linqia- $868.80
BlogHer- $275
Weave Made- $250
Ignite- $185
Tapinfluence- $150
Clever Girls Collective- $120
SITS girls- $100
Gold PR/Whole Foods- $100
Mom Bloggers Club- $80
Blog Meets Brand- $65
Sverve- $56.24
Affiliate Sales: total cash earned = $747
BlueHost Commission- $320
Linqia Commission- $215.90
Share a Sale Commission- $86.40
Linqia Referrals- $70
Sverve Referrals- $40
Pogo Pass Commission- $15
Product Sales: total cash earned = $504
Blogger Network Spreadsheet– $39
WordPress Transfers– $465
Ad Revenue: total cash earned = $118
Adsense- $108.25
Rivit- $9.30
Continue to the next page to read my analysis…
Great post! It is so helpful to see how other bloggers are making money. I have been trying to keep better track of my earnings from my site. Our blogs are similar in size, and making similar amount of money, but most of my income is from one time gigs from different companies (perhaps I need to change that). One thing that has really helped me is having an updated list of brands I have worked with, and press, on my site.
Thanks Kit! Do you blog full time? I’m looking forward to that day, but it’s a good 6 years in the future! I probably should have also mentioned how much time I spend working on my blog to earn that much. Actually I guess that means I’d have to know that in the first place! I blog as much as possible around my part time job, three kids, and theatre/dance commitments!
I am still working a 9-5 job. I feel like I spend all my spare time blogging and running The Windy City Blogger Collective. One day we will both get to blog full time!
Thank you for sharing! I have always been so focused on growing the page number over finding more sources of income; but seems like you have found an excellent comfort zone financially based on your views.
Love the insight to what others are doing and going to check out the other networks now!
Thanks for reading! I definitely agree that having different sources of income is a good idea, but I do want to focus on increasing my pageviews as well. Ultimately the number one thing we should all be doing is publishing killer content!
I really enjoyed this post. I feel we are both in the same boat. I just recently changed one word in the domain I wanted, but I do want to work a little extra on monetizations. I have made a little on my blog but not a whole lot. I also work a part-time job, blog when I can around cheerleading, swimming, and golf plus raising my two kids who are teenagers. My goal is to do blogging full-time someday. Good Luck to you!
Thanks for this! You’ve pretty much become my advisor on all things monetizing 🙂