How to Make Money Blogging: Ads, Sponsors and Products

To make money blogging, you build a site around a focused topic, grow steady traffic or an email list, and then earn from display ads, sponsorships, affiliate links and your own products or services. How to make money blogging in practice comes down to matching each revenue stream to the audience size it needs, because ad networks only accept sites past set traffic thresholds while a product or service can earn with a few hundred loyal readers.

This guide covers the revenue streams beyond affiliate links, the 2026 entry requirements of the main ad networks, how sponsorships work, and why most blogs earn little for a long time.

How do blogs make money?

Blogs make money by selling attention (ads and sponsorships), recommending products (affiliate links) or selling something of their own (products, services and paid newsletters). Most earning blogs combine two or three of these rather than relying on one.

If you're still deciding whether blogging is the right side hustle at all, our side hustles guide for beginners helps you compare it with faster paths on effort, startup costs and skills.

Affiliate income has its own playbook. Setting up the site, choosing your first posts and disclosing links are covered in our guide on how to start an affiliate marketing blog, so this article focuses on the other streams.

How much traffic do you need for display ads?

It depends on the network: Google AdSense lists no minimum, while premium networks require from 1,000 sessions to 250,000 monthly active users as of 2026. Premium networks typically pay more per visitor, but they also check content quality and where your visitors come from.

These thresholds change often. Ezoic's 250,000-user requirement for new sites only took effect on February 19, 2026, for example, so check each network's own help page before planning around a number.

What do ads actually earn?

Ad income is usually described as RPM, the revenue per 1,000 pageviews or sessions. It varies with your niche, your readers' countries, the season and your page layout, and networks don't publish a standard rate, so be skeptical of any single "average RPM" you see quoted.

Example (hypothetical): a blog with 20,000 monthly pageviews and an RPM of $15 would earn about $300 a month from ads. With an RPM of $5, the same traffic earns $100. Getting to 20,000 monthly pageviews can take a new blog a long time, and some never get there.

How do bloggers get sponsorships?

Mostly by pitching brands that fit their niche, or by being found once the blog has a clear audience. A sponsor pays for a dedicated post, a mention in an existing article, a newsletter placement or a social post, and the fee is negotiated directly.

To make sponsorships work:

• Build a one-page media kit: your topic, who reads you, monthly traffic, email subscribers and the formats you offer.
• Pitch brands you'd recommend anyway. Readers notice when a sponsor doesn't fit, and it costs you trust.
• Put terms in writing: deliverables, deadlines, revisions, usage rights and payment date.
• Disclose clearly. The FTC says a single disclosure on your homepage isn't enough, because readers may land on one post without seeing it. Put the disclosure close to, or inside, the sponsored content.
• Mark paid links. Google asks publishers to mark advertisements and paid placements with the sponsored link attribute, with nofollow still acceptable. Selling links that pass ranking credit breaks Google's spam policies and can hurt your whole site.

Small blogs can land sponsorships in narrow niches where the audience is valuable to a brand, even without huge traffic.

Should you sell your own products on a blog?

Often yes, once readers trust you, because a product can earn more from each reader than ads or commissions. The blog brings people in; an email list lets you tell them when something is ready.

Products that suit blogs:

• Digital downloads: templates, checklists, printables, spreadsheets, ebooks and guides that solve a problem your posts already discuss. Our guide to digital products for passive income compares formats, platforms and pricing.
• Paid newsletters: extra posts or analysis for paying subscribers. As of 2026, Substack is free to publish on, but if you turn on paid subscriptions it keeps 10% of subscription revenue, and Stripe charges its own processing fees on top.
• Workshops or paid guides on a skill you've demonstrated in your posts.

Services are the fastest blog income

A blog is also a portfolio. Freelance writing, editing, consulting, design or virtual assistance for readers or for businesses in your niche can pay with very little traffic, because one client can be worth more than months of ad revenue. Many of the online side hustles that actually pay can be sold through a simple blog.

In what order should you add revenue streams?

Start with the streams that work at low traffic, and add ads and sponsorships as the audience grows. Turning everything on at once slows your pages and distracts readers.

1. Before traffic arrives: offer a service related to your topic and start an email list from your first post.
2. Early traffic: add affiliate links where they genuinely help, and disclose them.
3. Steady traffic: apply to an ad network once you meet its threshold, and test layouts so ads don't bury your content.
4. An engaged list: launch a small digital product or paid newsletter based on the questions readers ask most.
5. A clear niche audience: pitch sponsors with a media kit.

At each stage, track what each stream earns per hour of your time, not just in total.

Why do most blogs never make much money?

Because building search traffic is slow and competitive, and most bloggers stop before it compounds. There are no reliable public statistics on blog earnings, but the common reasons for failure are clear:

• A topic that's too broad, competing with large established sites on every post.
• Thin or unoriginal content. Raptive asks for original content with meaningful human involvement, Ezoic rules out automatically generated or copied content, and Google's guidance favors people-first content.
• Inconsistency: a burst of posts, then months of silence.
• Relying on one stream, so a search ranking drop or network rejection wipes out income.
• Readers in low-paying ad markets while depending only on ads.

Results depend on your effort, topic and execution, and most beginners earn little at first.

Is blogging a good side hustle for you?

Blogging suits patient people who enjoy writing about one topic, can publish consistently for a year or more, and don't need the money soon. It's a weaker fit if you need income in weeks; a service or local gig will pay faster.

If you're torn, our scorecard on how to choose a side hustle helps you compare blogging with other options using your real hours, skills and budget. And if your blog does take off, our guide on turning a side hustle into full-time income covers the safety net to build before you quit.

Next steps

Learning how to make money blogging is less about tricks and more about sequence: pick a focused topic, offer a service early, build an email list, then add ads, products and sponsors as the audience earns them. Check each ad network's current requirements before you plan around them.

To see blogging next to other realistic ways to earn on the side, with costs, skills and common mistakes, read our step-by-step side hustles guide, and for the bigger picture, see our guide to making money online.