How Bloggers And Influencers Make Money in 2021
If you are just starting your blogging or influencing journey or you’re considering starting in the first place, I am sure you’ve wondered to yourself “how exactly do bloggers and influencers make money?”. I would love to tell you that it’s easy but I also can’t tell you that it’s hard either! And the truth is girl you can TOTALLY do it if blogging to make money is something you’re interested in!
What I will tell you is that making money blogging is 99.99% guaranteed if you
A. Know what to focus on
B. Have a plan
C. Are willing to do the work!
I’m going to break down exactly what I mean by this so that you have a clear idea of how you can efficiently and effectively monetize your blog and online influence! The goal is to maximize your income while following your passion and helping others! Sounds like a win-win-win, right? Read on to see how!
Monetizing Your Blog and Online Influence Step 1: Know What To Focus On
Before you can start succeeding with this whole blogging and influencing thing you need to become efficient with your time by knowing what is important and worth focusing on versus what is not. Bloggers and influencers are asking these questions every day, and so many of them out there are flying blind just hoping and guessing that what they’re doing will work.
“Should I be learning TikTok dances to promote my personal brand?”, “How about reaching out to other brands for sponsored content, isn’t that how you make money?”, “Or wait, LiketoKnow.it ! Yeah, how do I get on there?”, “Don’t I need an Instagram following of 10,000 people to even start making any money?” … the list goes on!
There are SO MANY different avenues out there for bloggers to promote themselves and SO MANY different ways to monetize your influence! If you try to do it all, you’re definitely going to get burnt out and be spread way too thin to be successful at any one of them! The best thing you can do for yourself is determine your WHERE and your WHAT.
Your WHERE:
Where exactly are you going to focus your time and energy? Where will you be creating content? Creating blog posts on a website, or creating content for Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest, Linkedin, Clubhouse, etc etc… That’s a lot of platforms!
My advice is that you absolutely without a doubt make sure that you create your own website/blog. The rest of the platforms I mentioned are social media apps and at the end of the day YOU DON’T OWN your profile on there! The platform does. Having your own website is a sense of security because you OWN THAT and have full control over it. There are also many benefits beyond that, but we’ll save that for another blog post! Just trust me that one of the places you’re going to want to focus is on creating an actual blog. Besides, how can you REALLY call yourself a blogger if you don’t even have a blog to begin with?
Next, you need to focus on 1-2 social media platforms to start. You could expand beyond this if you feel like you've become successful enough on one that it runs without much effort, but I would definitely say when you’re just starting out to choose 1 or 2.
So how do you choose which platforms to focus on? You have to ask yourself WHO you are trying to speak to/help with your content. For example, my audience is predominantly millennial females. Millennial females tend to hang out a lot on Instagram and Pinterest. So those are the two platforms I spend most of my time.
That’s not to say that other platforms don’t have my audience on them! So that’s not the only factor to consider! The other, probably more important factor to consider is what are your STRENGTHS. Are you a natural on video? A good writer? An amazing photographer or great at photo editing? A good graphic designer? Think about where your strengths lie and which platforms will highlight your strengths best. For me, video just is NOT my strength, so I decided that I’m no good on Youtube or TikTok. Of course there’s video content on Instagram and Pinterest too and I give it my best shot, but at least there are other content forms on there I can rely on to reach my audience. But you might be amazing on video! And if so, I recommend you fully embrace that and use it to your advantage by getting on TikTok or Youtube!
Your WHAT:
Ok so now that you know WHERE you are focusing your time and energy. You need to know WHAT exactly your end goal is! Hint: it’s making money. (Pssst- It’s okay, you clicked on a blog post titled “How Bloggers and Influencers Make Money in 2021”. And you’re a bad-ass hard working woman who should feel zero shame about wanting to monetize her passion and hard work.)
So WHAT exactly do we focus on? We focus on WHAT ways we want to make money. There are quite a few! You can focus on just one, or you can focus on all of them! Whatever feels most natural for you and your personal brand!
Here are the ways you can make money blogging:
Brand Partnerships/ Sponsorships- this is when a brand pays you to post content on any of the previously mentioned platforms featuring their products in a positive light. They want access to your audience (which you’ve successfully grown and who trust you) so they are willing to pay for you to share about their products authentically.
Affiliate Marketing- this is when you share a product or brand utilizing a special tracking link that will allow you to gain a commission on any sale made from clicking that link. You can either ask a brand directly for affiliate links OR you can sign up for an affiliate platform which acts like a middle man between influencers and brands. It’s a lot easier to grab links this way! Some of the most popular platforms are RewardStyle ( AKA LiketoKnow.it), ShopStyle, and ShareASale. (There are a ton more though!)
Advertisements: this is when you place advertisements on your website. This is more of a way to monetize for websites/blogs! It’s pretty straight forward so I won’t dive into too much detail but if your site is new you can sign up for Google AdSense to monetize this way!
Selling Products or Service- this is also pretty self explanatory but you can also sell your own products or services! For example, a service you could sell would be a 1:1 training session if you’re a fitness blogger. Or if you’re a fashion blogger you could look into starting your own line of accessories and selling that on your site. The easiest thing to sell? Digital products! I always encourage bloggers to think of a digital product (a planner, checklist, preset, Ebook, online course, etc etc) that would interest their audience! You don’t have to give up lots of time (like you would with selling a service) or money (like you would having to source, purchase, and ship a physical product!).
If you’re super new to blogging and haven’t really grown an audience yet, I always recommend starting with affiliate marketing as your way to monetize. Brands like to see proof of a dedicated and growing audience before they’ll agree to work with you, so it will be hard to see success with brand partnerships when you’re just starting out! I recommend waiting until you have at least 1,000 followers before monetizing this way.
The nice part about affiliate marketing is that you can start monetizing this way from day 1! There’s platforms out there that will accept you with little to no content built up. Other platforms (like LiketoKnow.it/RewardStyle like to see that you have quality content and an engaged audience before accepting you- I have a blog post on how to get accepted in just one month!)
So if affiliate links are your income stream of choice I have a free guide you can download that has all my BEST tips on affiliate marketing and making the most of your affiliate links!
Monetizing Your Blog and Online Influence Step 2: Have a Plan
So now you what platforms you’ll be focusing on, and how you want to monetize them. So now you need a plan!
Take a moment and write down your goals! Get specific! A good goal is S.M.A.R.T. AKA: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-sensitive! When I first started some of my goals were:
Apply to and get accepted to Amazon Associates, RewardStyle, and ShareASale (affiliate platforms) by April 2019
Gain 1,000 targeted Instagram followers by the end of May 2019 by posting and engaging daily on Instagram
Find contact information for and pitch 3 dream brands per week with content ideas for sponsored content on my blog and Instagram page. (This I started doing once I had amassed those 1,000 followers and had at least 20 blog posts under my belt)
After you have your goals set, you need to figure out a realistic way to achieve your goals! It’s up to you how regimented you want to be with this. Some people prefer a strict schedule, others prefer something more loose. For me, I am not a Type A personality at all, so I preferred to just make sure that I scheduled 3 hours per day to focus on working towards my goals! I would work on my blog from 5PM-7PM, eat dinner, and then continue working on it until I went to bed (usually 10 or 11!) I was working full-time and planning a wedding at the same time, so I tried my best to squeeze it in when I had some free time!
Make sure that your goals and your schedule are a realistic fit. If you’re trying to make your first $1000 by the end of the month but you only have an hour per day to focus on the blog, you’re likely going to be disappointed with your results! Dream big for sure, but make sure your goals are attainable or that you’ll at least come close! This will keep you motivated to keep going!
BONUS- Get Educated!
No don’t worry, I’m not saying you have to go get a Master’s Degree in Online Marketing or something crazy like that, BUT. If you really want to succeed and you really want to master these social media and affiliate platforms and minimize the trial and error / BS time period that we ALL go through as bloggers, then I highly recommend seeking out education on blogging and influencing. Basically if you want quicker results from your efforts, educating yourself is the way to go.
There is no real formal education out there, but the amount of online courses and Ebooks out there on the topic that come close is impressive! And educating yourself doesn’t have to be an expensive endeavor! The amount of free information online these days is almost overwhelming! I have a couple of free resources designed just for new bloggers/influencers that help you get started with monetizing if you’re not QUITE ready to really invest in your education yet!
Check out my downloadable free guides:
And if you’re interested in learning more about what courses can totally change the game for you and your business, I highly recommend checking out my blog post:
The Best Online Courses For Bloggers Who Want To Make Money
Monetizing Your Blog and Online Influence Step 3: Do The Work
The last step is to simply do the work! You know what you’re going to focus on, and you have your plan set, so the next thing is doing the work and letting time pass and seeing where it all gets you! It’s an exciting time and I urge you to keep track of your results! This how you’ll stay positive which will help you stay motivated!
But don’t become too obsessive over checking your analytics. They’re bound to change and go up and down day-to-day so don’t get hung up if you have a few bad days in a row. It happens! I would recommend deep diving into your analytics at the end or beginning of each month. This way you can get the best idea of what is working, what isn’t, what your audience is liking, and you can create more of that instead of wasting time on things that aren’t moving you forward or helping your audience!
I hope this post was helpful! Again, I urge you to continue educating yourself, but don’t forget to take action! The best way to learn is to DO and then analyze what works for you and your brand! Blogging is a very up and down journey, and the best piece of advice I can give you is to KEEP GOING. Even if it feels like nobody is paying attention. You have to stay realistic, but when you see failures or things not working, I urge you to welcome failure as part of the process instead of letting it deflate your confidence and will to push forward. Everything can be turned into a learning experience and way to improve!
For more reading, / other posts you may like:
Happy blogging!
