The 2 Questions I Get Asked The Most About DIY Blogging

If you’re looking for the DIY farmhouse style projects you’ve come to love and expect here and came across this post instead, fear not: I will be back to writing about my latest DIY farmhouse style project in my next post! 🙂

Hey everyone! As a DIY blogger, I get asked a lot of questions about blogging. It made me realize that there are a lot of misconceptions about blogging, so I decided to write this post to answer the two questions I get asked the most about DIY blogging.

I obviously can’t speak for every DIY blog that’s out there in the online universe, but the answers I’ve given here will ring true for most of the DIY and home and garden type blogs.

What made you want to start blogging?

The answer to that is a pretty long story, which you can read on my about me page. But it really boils down to two reasons:

1.       I wanted to work for myself doing something I loved while making decent money; and

2.       Where I could make that money without having to charge people that read my blog.

Let’s talk about the first part of that answer first. I love every aspect of DIY blogging, which includes doing DIY projects, taking pictures of the process as well as the completed project, writing up the blog post, promoting the blog posts, and interacting with my readers on social media.  

The second part of that answer is a little harder for some people to understand, because how can I make any money writing a blog without charging people to read it? That brings us to the second question I get asked the most about DIY blogging:

How do you make money blogging?

The three ways I make money blogging at this writing are:

1.  Advertising. Most of my income comes from running ads on my blog. There are several ad companies that act as a go-between between bloggers and companies that want to advertise their products or services. The ad companies I currently work with now are BlogHer and Google Adsense, but there are several others.

The two most popular ad types are pay per view and pay per click. Pay per view ads are ads that pay a small amount of money (usually a few cents) each time someone visits my blog and stays on the page with the ad for a certain length of time – usually more than a few seconds. A few cents for each blog visit may not sound like much, but it does add up if my blog gets a lot of traffic (visitors) consistently. The more traffic I get to my blog, the more money I will make with the pay per view ads. BlogHer supports pay per view ads.

Pay per click ads are ads that pay a small amount of money each time someone visits my blog and clicks on the ad. Pay per click ads usually pay a lot more than pay per view ads, but pay per click ads do not get clicked on that often – maybe 1-2% of blog visitors will click on a pay per click ad. Like with the pay per view links, the more traffic I get to my blog, the more money I will probably make with the pay per click ads. I say “probably” because pay per click ads can be inconsistent at times, but usually the more blog traffic = more clicks on pay per click ads. Google AdSense supports pay per click ads.

2.  Sponsored Posts. The second largest part of my income comes from sponsored posts. Sponsored posts are when a company that wants to sell a product pays me to use the product and write a blog post about my experience. I get offers from companies selling everything from makeup to food products, but since I narrowed the focus of my blog to DIY farmhouse style projects, I only accept sponsored posts from companies with products that fit into that focus. 5 Tips For Planting A Colorful Garden is an example of a sponsored post.

3.  Affiliate Links. The smallest part of my income comes from affiliate links. Affiliate links are links of products on my blog posts that when clicked takes the blog visitor to an online store where they can buy that product if they choose to. If there is a purchase make through one of my affiliate links, I will get a small percentage of the sale.

A common misconception about affiliate links is that it if someone purchases something through an affiliate link, they will pay more for the purchase then if they didn’t purchase through the affiliate link. This is not true. For example: I am an Amazon affiliate. The percentage Amazon pays for products purchased through affiliate links varies by product category. Most of the purchases made through my affiliate links are for home and garden products, for which Amazon pays 8% of the purchase to me. So, if someone buys a home décor item at Amazon for $20.00 through one of my affiliate links, I will get 8% of that purchase, which is $1.60, and Amazon will get the remaining $18.40. If someone buys the same home décor item at Amazon without going through an affiliate link, Amazon gets the full $20.00. The idea behind this for Amazon and other companies that use affiliate links is that less profit is better than no profit. Even though Amazon loses 8% of the profit if an item is bought through one of my affiliate links, they still make some profit, and it’s better than not selling that item at all.

There are many other ways to make money blogging, which include writing and selling e-books and/or traditional books, selling online courses on blogging or other subjects, accepting sponsored posts written by the sponsor, offering blog-related services, selling merchandise… the list goes on and on. The three I’ve chosen to focus on (at least for now) are the more popular ways to make money blogging, but it does not mean that I will always use them, and it doesn’t mean that I will never use any of other methods either… it’s just what works for me at this point.

I hope this answered some of the questions and cleared up some of the misconceptions you might have had about blogging! If you have any other questions about blogging, or if you need me to elaborate on one of the questions above, please don’t hesitate to ask me in the comments section below!