How I Made over 26k of $$$ with my Blog in 2016

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If you get serious about blogging, it can become a wonderful additional or main source of income for you. Back in 2012 when I started blogging I had no idea how to monetize it. Now my profit is constantly increasing, I have tried different strategies and still in the process to figure out the best for me, however I already notice great results that are equivalent in thousands of dollars per year.

So in this post I want to share things that have worked for me and I hope these tips will help you to monetize your blog as well. Here is how I did it:

I created my blog on WordPress.com and started to regularly post articles about home improvement and design. I strictly followed the chosen topic making the blog very focused on one subject.
I transfered my blog from free WordPress.com platform to WordPress.org hosted by bluehost – here you can read more about it. This allowed me to start using affiliate links, sponsored links, contextual ads – below I will talk more about it.
I started to get my first inquires from companies who offered me to write about their products or services with the links to their website in return for compensation. My usual rate at this point was 50$ for the article of around 400 words (now I charge 100$ for writing a review). Again I strictly choose the companies to write about and only talk in my articles about design. I also check that sites that I link to will not do any harm to my blog (meaning they are not blacklisted by Google or consist in spam lists).
When I reached significant traffic and good ranking by Google I started to get regular inquires about sponsored posts. Many starting bloggers are wondering how to attract publishers to their site – my main recommendation – you should focus on grow traffic and ranking and those companies will find you themselves.
I composed my Media kit with all possible advertisement opportunities on my blog – this included sponsored posts, banners and paid reviews with my terms and conditions. You should definitely create one too if you get serious about monetizing. It makes it very easy and quick to reply to potential enquires.
I tried several affiliate programs including Amazon, Bluehost and earned a little more than 0 $ with them. In 2015 I approached several companies producing interior design softwares to become affiliates with me. The thing is that I have analyzed that majority of traffic to my blog comes with organic searches for interior design softwares which I regularly review. So it was very natural that people would buy software following my recommendations. Now affiliates bring me over 100$ per month and I aim for more in 2017. My tip: find companies in your niche that you regularly blog about and offer them to become affiliates.
Of course, I have also signed up for Google adsense and Media.net, however these sources of income are still very little – you probably need tons of traffic to earn significant amounts with them.
I set up my online shop where I sell decorative items for home – I used both Woocommerce platform and Etsy. I created banners and links from my blog to drive traffic to them. Now profit from my shops vary from 500$ to 1000$ per month. Of course, apart from my blog I constantly promote my shops using various social media channels.
I set up my e-design page where I offer interior design services online. The sales are still very little but I guess I just need to focus on promoting it more in my posts.
I publish my own e-book and sell it on my blog.
I set up my TOOLS page which also contains some affiliate links.
In 2015 I earned over 16k $$ with my blog
I constantly work on increasing traffic to my blog. Instead of spreading my efforts on various social media now I am only focusing on Pinterest which is now #1 on driving traffic to my blog from all SM channels. I heard for some people it is Instagram or Facebook or even Twitter but personally I found them less effective.
In 2016 I earned over 26k$$. I am writing now from sunny Maldives where I spend my vacation with my mom – the trip that was entirely sponsored by my blog )))