A lifestyle blog highlights person's interests, hobbies, and activities. The blog evolves as you change, your life and activities change. Yes, it is very personalized; at the same time, a lifestyle blog provides a wide range of topics for posts and opportunities to monetize it. It takes time to build up a blog and you should be patient enough in the path of monetizing it. In the end, your persistence will be paid off. Many bloggers do not reveal their income reports, but below you will find the best ideas for monetizing your lifestyle blog and a case study from Alison, a lifestyle blogger.
Affiliate Marketing
Most likely you’ve heard about affiliate marketing: you promote someone’s products and/or services and get your commissions from sales or any other required actions. The good thing is that you may select a variety of products you use and promote them with no need to focus on a specific vertical (like in the case of industry-specific blogs).
You decide whether to work with a brand directly or join an affiliate network. While direct cooperation with a brand doesn’t need any further explanation (select a product/brand, check for affiliate program, and apply for the program.) Affiliate networks are mediators between a marketer and the advertiser. A single platform provides numerous affiliate offers from hundreds or thousands of businesses, kind of a one-stop-shop. Amazon Associates, ShareASale, and Rakuten are affiliate networks with plenty of offers to promote. There are other reliable networks too. Promotional materials are usually provided by advertisers and include affiliate links, banners, widgets, etc. Commission rates vary significantly based on the offer type (CPA, CPC, or CPL), but this is the subject for a separate article.
Important: Do not forget to post a disclaimer about affiliate marketing not to face any legal issues.
Ad Networks
Google AdSense, Mediavine, AdThrive, etc. These are simple solutions for earning money from your blog “by displaying ads next to your content.” You get paid based on the number of clicks or impressions (depends on the ad type). Many debates are held on this subject. However, the overwhelming majority of new bloggers agree that it’s absolutely worth it. AdSense pays $2 CPM, while Mediavine and AdThrive pay around $30. The important question is whether ads influence your blog’s performance. The answer is ‘No’. Moreover, displayed ads might help beginners to cover hosting expenses and costs of additional digital tools they use.
Have you used Ad Networks for a blog monetization?
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Sponsored Content
This is a kind of native advertisement that appears on your blog. The ads are paid by companies. However, you get paid for posting content regardless of the results. Still, you’d better put a disclaimer if you make a sponsored post. As a lifestyle blogger you are probably active on Instagram, so potential advertisers and sponsors might contact you via Instagram. There are blogger platforms, like Pollinate Media Group, Influence Central, and Acorn Influence, to help you find sponsred posts. Just for your reference: Sponsored Instagram posts start at $50 (the rate depends on your audience), while sponsored blog posts are from $200- $250 and higher (the rate depends on traffic though).
Selling Your Own Products
It doesn’t mean to actually manufacture products (hand-made accessories, natural hand-made cosmetics, and so on), you can produce digital products, such as e-books, tutorials, and e-courses. Invest some time into creating an authentic product and you will be rewarded with additional income. Some bloggers sell t-shirts, mugs, and scarfs with special prints (logo) or add these products as a bonus to purchased products.
Offering Services (Coaching and Consulting)
Become an expert in your field and provide consulting services. Information is a valuable asset at any time. If you succeed to build trust with your audience and prove your expertise, you can charge for individual consulting (something that you probably do free of charge). Additionally, if you are a skilled writer, you may offer freelance writing services to newer bloggers or bloggers who don’t have time for writing the content themselves.
Case Study
Alison Wright shared the results of her one-year-old lifestyle blog LoveLifeBeFit. She started her blog in June 2019. In the beginning, most of the traffic was generated via Pinterest (particularly, Tailwind Tribes), after 3-4 months Alison noticed a significant improvement in results from Google.
In August 2020 she “managed 70 000 sessions and 80 000 pageviews”. She revealed her traffic stats for July 2019 and August 2020.
And below you see her stats for August 2020.
Blog income breakdown for August 2020:
Gross income: $1 432.16
Mediavine advertising income: $1 283.01
Affiliate income: $149.20 (Amazon)
Total expenses: $130 (including hosting WP Engine $85, Get Response $15, and Stock Images $30)
Net profit: $1 302
Alison mentioned that for continuous growth she applied the method of evergreen posts (and reviews) because they were steadily growing her organic traffic from Google. But the majority of the income was from Mediavine (To cooperate with Mediavine you should have at least 50 000 sessions (around 60 000 page views). Till June 2020 the required threshold was 25 000 sessions, but Medavine doubled the required minimum. So, Alison was quite lucky to join Mediavine in the early days of her blog.)
Alison commented:
You can’t just write about anything and get results. It’s a business. You need to stay on topic, learn SEO, and blog with a purpose.
Conclusion
Undoubtedly, monetizing a lifestyle blog takes time. Listed above are several well-proven methods to earn money on your blog. As long as you are inspired and feel at home with some activities or hobbies, step forward and earn your living by blogging. Pat Flynn makes more than $2 million through his blog Smart Passive Income, Matthew in his early twenties makes $500 000 from his blog TrueValhalla, and BloggersPassion brings $70 000 to its owner Anil Agarwal (source: Forbes). Affiliate marketing and ad networks work very well, particularly for beginners. Eventually, you might come up with an idea of your own products and services. Keep it up and your income reports will please the eye.
