How to Make Money From a Blog Quickly: Blog Income Reports Study in 7 Niches

This Blog Income Reports Study on how to make money from a blog quickly has no affiliate links on it. It was made with the sole purpose of helping new bloggers go from 0 to 4 figures a month quickly by using the proven path already laid out for you.

You probably already know that it’s possible to make money blogging.

But for most people, it is hard to know how to monetise your blog at the start. Every “guru” you turn to tells you something different… you should do more freelancing, or use adverts, or affiliate marketing or write an ebook.

Here’s the truth…

Every niche has a slightly different trend in making money within the first year or so.

I’d like to tell you that hard work and dedication will make you money online in the end. But the fact is if you don’t see results quickly, you’re more likely to give up.

This blog income reports study will show you how to make money from a blog quickly in 7 different niches. It is a proven road map for you to take a blog from zero to 4 figures a month… and beyond!

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How is This Blog Income Report Study Different?

Brandon Gaille produced a lot of amazing facts in his 2018 blog income report study.

However, one important thing was missing…

How does each niche make money?

More importantly, how does each blog niche make money in the early days?

The generic advice doesn’t work for every niche, as you are about to find out.

For example, if you have a food blog is there any point in looking for affiliate programs to promote? Or if you have a marketing blog, should you bother using adverts?

The more you read this study, the more you will see the proven path that is laid out for how to make money from a blog in your niche.

The 7 Niches in This Blog Income Reports Study

There are 7 niches researched in this blog income reports study:

1. Food
2. Health and Fitness
3. Lifestyle
4. Mommy
5. Marketing
6. Personal Finance
7. Travel

And if you look into the majority of successful blog niches they will normally fit under one of these categories.

The lifestyle niche includes blogs that write about a variety of interests but could have an emphasis on DIY crafts, home decor, journaling etc.

The health & fitness or Mommy niches are closely linked to lifestyle but there was a clear focus on these blogs.

The Blog Income Reports Study Criteria

This study had a few criteria that had to be met:

• At least 5 blog income reports in each niche
• All income reports also need to be over $1,700 per month (most reports below this amount are just “a bit of this and that”)
• All income reports are below 6 figures a month (51 out of 57 were under 5 figures per month with the highest at $19,889)
• Income reports must also have a break down of where the income was from

Why use these criteria?

We wanted to find blogs that are making money from their own niche. Not just making money “blogging about blogging”.

Just think about it… have you seen those headlines on how to make money blogging like this?…

How I Made $1.5 Million Blogging Last Year... With my Eyes Closed on a Beach

Disclaimer- the “eyes closed and beach” part is totally made up!

These are great for motivation but when you see a Mommy blog with these numbers it’s almost always because of one thing…

It has expanded into blogging about blogging.

Therefore, it’s not an accurate representation of how that niche makes money anymore…

It’s really just another marketing blog.

For this reason, many of the income reports used were not the blogger’s most recent income report.

The farther back you look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

Winston Churchill

By finding the income reports towards the start of the blogger’s journey we are able to see how to blog for money in the early stages.

Key Terms for the Study

So here are some key terms that you will need to be aware of for this study to make sense:

• Ads: The amount of income from ad networks.
• Affiliate: Affiliate marketing income (being paid a commission if someone buys something through a link on your website for someone else’s product).
• Own Products: Any products that the owner creates and sells. This includes ebooks, courses, physical products and apps.
• Other: Any other income. This includes freelance work, sponsored posts, sponsorship for their website or podcast, coaching or other services they provide.
• Start Year: The year the website was created.

Important Disclaimers

There are also some things to take into consideration with this study.

1. Some blogs overlap 2 or more different niches i.e. Fit Mom Journey is part Mommy and part Fitness.

However, the main niche that is written about is the one recorded in this study (hence, Fit Mom Journey is more about health and fitness).

2. Mommy bloggers often fall under the lifestyle niche but there were enough blogs that clearly had a focus on Moms and parenting.

3. It’s hard to find blog income reports from websites that are not blogging about blogging!!

And there is a big reason why people make income reports…

Most income reports promote more affiliate links.

Yes, they can be educational, motivating and helpful. I’m grateful for them just doing this- research! But, 99 times out of 100, they are used to recommend more affiliate products.

Part 1- How to Make Money From a Blog: The Income Distribution of 7 Niches

You can find all of the blog income reports used in this study towards the bottom of this page.

But if you’re like me, you’ll be pretty excited to see the difference between each niche.

How to Make Money From a Food Blog- Income Distribution

There is a clear monetisation method for food bloggers.

Ads for food blogs are crucial.

This is why getting onto the best ad networks and understanding what the requirements are to do this is so important for them. You can learn more about this on The Best 5 Ad Networks for Blogs.

Food Blogs Focus on Ads

Well duh!

But let’s think about why and what this means…

The obvious reason for this is that food blogs tend to get a lot of traffic because everyone needs to cook.

When the typical “house chef” (AKA Mom… please don’t shoot me for the stereotype!) struggles for ideas they do one of two things, in 2019:

• Google recipe ideas
• Search Pinterest for recipes

This means that new blogs can get hundreds of thousands of page views from Pinterest alone if they use it right.

Pinterest still has a high majority of active users that are aged between 25-45 and female. Hootsuite shows there has been an increase in male sign-ups since 2018, but they are still not as active on the platform.

Therefore, Pinterest is crucial for how to make money blogging about food. If you have a new food blog, all of your efforts should be spent on Pinterest promotion at the start.

Check out “5 Pinterest Hacks to Explode Your Traffic” if you want to get more pinning traffic tips.

How to Make Money From a Health & Fitness Blog- Income Distribution

There is again a clear method that health and fitness blogs use…

Advertising networks.

However, it’s important to note this doesn’t have to be the case.

For example, Avocadu didn’t use any ads on the website at the start and focused much more on affiliate marketing and selling their own products quickly.

Health & Fitness Bloggers Get the Least Income from “Other” Means

Out of the 5 blogs in this study, Only Root and Revel started making any money from sponsored content.

None of these websites reported income from freelance or coaching work.

So how did health & fitness blogs make money from a blog?

Common Affiliate Opportunities for Health and Fitness Blogs

In a moment you’ll notice there are a range of products promoted on each website without any real common trends.

Here are the main money earners for health and fitness websites (excluding ads):

• Xukkhini- Weight loss products on Clickbank
• Avocadu- Yoga products on Amazon Associates (note they even admit you won’t be able to make much from here) plus Clickbank and their own products.
• Root and Revel- Affiliate for Butcher box (organic meat products)
• Fit Mom Journey- Affiliate for Perfect Keto
• Organize Yourself Skinny- Own products i.e. ebook and meal plans

Using Pinterest is again where the majority of your time should be spent if you have a new Health and Fitness blog.

Once you see what articles your readers are interested in, then you can look for appropriate affiliate products to promote.

How to Make Money From a Lifestyle Blog- Income Distribution

So how do lifestyle websites make money from a blog?

As you can see below, ads are also super important to lifestyle blogs when they first start to make money blogging.

However, due to the large range of topics lifestyle blogs cover there really is no right or wrong way to monetise these types of websites.

Lifestyle Blogs Use Different Income Streams

You can see from Chasing Foxes that it’s possible to get an insane amount of traffic quickly to your blog. Silas and Grace pumped out 50 posts before they even launched their website and had over 2 million page views in a single month… within their first year!

This is obviously going to bring in some great income from ads. They relied heavily on Pinterest for this again.

Whereas Let’s Reach Success focused on freelance work and sponsored posts in the early days.

Lifestyle Blog Formula

Despite there being many ways lifestyle blogs can earn money there is a general theme across the blogs in this study.

The main focus was on making money from a blog with ads and affiliate marketing:

1. Typically the websites built up traffic to monetise with some ads.
2. They used Amazon Associates to place links for products they were writing about. See this example from Sharpshaft on best crossbows;  they link to many different crossbows on Amazon and other affiliate programs in the same article.
3. This way they could test out what their audience was interested in.
4. Eventually, they could create their own product tailored to their readers wants.

To be honest this is not just a lifestyle blog formula.

It’s also really the trend across the majority of these successful blogs as you are about to find out.

How to Make Money From a Mommy Blog- Income Distribution

Mommy’s make money blogging in a very similar way to lifestyle blogs.

But again ads stand out as the main way to make money from a Mommy blog at the start.

There was an interesting finding from this study…

Mommy Blogs Quickly Blog About Blogging

Maybe this isn’t always the case.

But…

Every one of the Mommy blogs (with Easy Baby Life less so) in this study started “blogging about blogging” or promoting some of their favourite blogging tools.

This kind of makes sense as a lot of Mom’s will be interested in making some money from home so they can spend more time with their kids.

However, these income reports prove it is possible to make money without doing that as none of them had really monetised in this way… yet!

Common Mommy Blog Affiliate Ideas

There was one platform which dominated in all of these reports:

Amazon Associates.

That’s a bit vague, so here are some common ideas they promoted:

• Baby gifts
• Baby gear- buggies/ prams/ car seat etc.
• Breastfeeding stuff
• Nursery ideas- cribs/ lamps etc.

There tend to be lots of different items promoted. But the “comparisons”, “reviews” or “how to use” posts did well.

How to Make Money From a Marketing Blog- Income Distribution

This niche is where you see the biggest difference to every other niche!

This is why you need to take “blogging about blogging” websites with a. pinch of salt.

Have you noticed yet that the things that work for these blogs may not work in your niche?

There are 2 key findings from this blog income reports study….

#1 Marketing Blogs Rely Less on Pinterest- They Do Not Focus on Ads

Readers on marketing websites (i.e. blogging about blogging or podcasting or how to use affiliate marketing etc.) do not want to see a load of pop-ups or ads everywhere.

There are two main reasons for this:

1. They want readers to click on their products and affiliate links, not the ads!
2. It slows the website down.

Simply put:

• Ads are annoying and readers on marketing websites are more aware of them, unlike the typical readers in other niches.

Therefore, the last thing the readers on marketing websites want is to be interrupted every two seconds.

…Or struggle to scroll down without the website glitching.

#2 Marketing Blogs Make Money From Their Own Products Quickly

This was another interesting finding.

Even when I put in Pat Flynn, Melyssa Griffin and JLD’s super high incomes ($150,000 a month+) the income distribution hardly changes…

This just shows that it is possible to make money from your own products even with a new website.

The Best Marketing Blogs Have Less Traffic and a Smaller Audience… But Build Better Relationships

Just take Pete McPherson’s Do You Even Blog as an example.

With a relatively new website, Pete generates 60% of his income from his own courses. You can listen to my chat with Pete on the Make Time Online podcast about what he sees as the “Future of Digital Marketing“.

Also, Ana from The She Approach has already had a lot of success from her own ebooks and courses, with 47% of her income coming from them.

Common Affiliate Networks for Marketing Blogs

There are some common networks for marketing blogs:

• Shareasale (4,000 merchants)
• Awin (6,000 advertisers)
• Amazon Associates (everything you can think of)
• Ultimate Bundles (limited offers on different topics)
• Website themes (Bluehost dominates, but any work just fine)
• Autoresponder (Convertkit dominates)
• Tailwind (Pinterest automation)
• Marketing funnel (i.e. Clickfunnels or Thrive Themes or Leadpages)
• Wealthy Affiliate

Every marketing website promotes individual affiliate programs too.

Ranging from Pinterest ebooks to full-on 6 Figure Blogging courses.

Click here to see my personal favourite blogging tools and courses.

How to Make Money From a Personal Finance Blog- Income Distribution

Another different looking graph!

As you can see personal finance bloggers make a higher percentage of their income from affiliate marketing than any other monetisation method.

So if you’re a personal finance blogger, chances are you should be looking at affiliate programs to make money blogging.

Personal Finance Blogs Focus More on Affiliate Income Than Any Other Niche

Even in the early days, you can see personal finance websites focussing on affiliate marketing.

Affiliate programs such as survey sites (i.e. Survey Junkie) or reward sites (i.e. Ebates, now Rakuten) will make up a large portion of this income.

You can even see what Jeff and Ben from Dollarsprout recommend…

These type of affiliate links are easiest to convert (AKA low cost, free or even provide a sign-up bonus for people to join).

Are you beginning to see how getting someone to pay $10 to join is not as easy as paying someone $10 to join?

This is much easier to sell in the early days compared to $1,000+ courses that marketing websites may be offering, where trust is key.

Common Affiliate Programs for Personal Finance Blogs

Here are some of the common programs that personal finance bloggers use to make money from a blog at the start:

• Swagbucks (Awin- survey)
• Survey Junkie (survey site)
• Inbox Dollars (Svorn- survey)
• Rakuten (cashback)
• Ibotta (cashback)
• $5 Meal Plan
• Credit Sesame (personal credit manager)
• Flex offers (millions of products)
• iGain (market research)
• CJ Affiliate (millions of products)

There are also loads of different affiliates depending on your specific focus i.e. credit card sign-ups or stock trading programs etc.

Plus, here’s a little bonus look inside Jeff’s income-generating platforms (this is super useful if you’ve never seen the backend of affiliate programs before)…

This was from their October 2018 Income report at $61,915, after Dollarsprout was more established.

You can check out our chat on the podcast if you’d like to hear how these guys created a $240k/ month online business in 3 years.

How to Make Money From a Travel Blog- Income Distribution

Again another different looking graph.

This time you can see that travel blogs typically get their income in a variety of ways.

Some sites such as Once in a Lifetime Journey make money blogging mainly from consulting. Others, such as External Expat do quite a bit of freelance work.

The fact is, travel blogs will have to hustle more to find these opportunities.

Travel Blogs Make Money With Sponsors and Freelance Income

If you’re like me you may find this really helpful to know.

If you were starting a travel website the majority of them make money from other monetisation methods, such as sponsors and freelance writing.

In fact, 6 out of 8 of the travel websites in this study has some income from sponsored posts or freelance work.

So if you are trying to make money blogging with a travel blog by creating your own course, you may find it’s an uphill battle.

Remember, don’t reinvent the wheel!

Use the map that others have left you to copy their success.

Some Useful Marketplaces for Travel Blogs

Here are some of the places for how to make money from a travel blog:

• IZEA (lots of brands to partner with)
• Fiverr (freelance work)
• Upwork (freelance work)
• Flex offers (millions of products)
• iGain (market research)
• CJ Affiliate (millions of products)
• MaxBounty (millions of products)

Freelancing and sponsored income comes in such a variety.

However, the best opportunities tend to not actually come from sites like Fiverr and Upwork.

This makes it harder to set out a blueprint for the best ways to do it.

For example, Will from Travel Blog Breakthrough got a big chunk of his income from a Trekking company after they saw his work on the Inca Trail Guide.

He jumped on a skype call to make that happen.

Make sure you check out the income reports below to find other ways of how blogger’s make money from a travel blog.

Part 2- The Blueprint to Make $1,000+

Now, I bet you’re looking at all of these pretty charts thinking…

So what?

Well, let’s summarise the key takeaways and more importantly…

Let’s work out an action plan moving forward.

#1 Every Blog Needs Traffic

First of all, let’s start with the obvious.

If you want to make money from your website you have to get traffic.

Period.

5 out of 7 niches have a large chunk of their initial income from using ad networks.

Yes, Google Adsense is easy enough to get onto and start the ball rolling.

But the majority of these bloggers were getting most joy by using Mediavine or AdThrive.

So it would be wise to aim for this.

Agreed?

Now, I can almost hear your mind saying…

But How do I Get This Traffic?

If you’re like me, this is THE question you want to be answered!

This short video will explain exactly how many of the bloggers in this study have made sure they are writing content that people are actively searching for.

AKA how they get more traffic…

So if you use these techniques rather than just guessing, you will notice your articles will start getting much more attention quickly.

Click these links to try it out right now:

1. Pinterest
2. Ubersuggest

#2 Aim for 25,000 Sessions a Month (Unless You Have a Marketing Blog)

I know what you’re thinking!

That sounds like a lot, right?

But there are 57 blog income reports that show you this is 100% possible for you to do.

Why 25,000 monthly sessions?

Simple because Mediavine requires 25,000 monthly sessions to allow a blog to use their network.

Therefore, aim for that!

AdThrive, which tends to pay a bit better on average requires 100,000 monthly page views.

This means to make some good money from ads on your blog, you need to focus on getting 25,000 monthly sessions…

Quickly!

Check out “The 5 Best Ad Networks for Blogs” to see more details about the ad networks.

Even the bloggers that did not focus on ads still needed the traffic to work out what affiliate programs or products their audience wants.

If you aren’t getting 5,000 monthly sessions yet then check out “How to Use Pinterest for Beginners“. As many of these income reports prove… Pinterest is still the fastest free way to get traffic to your website.

#3 Use Affiliate Products to Match Your Readers Interests

Once you get traffic from Pinterest (at least 5,000 page views a month) you can use Google Analytics to see what posts most of your readers are reading.

This proves exactly what the people reading your blog are most interested in. And are you beginning to notice you don’t need to guess?

Use the data!

Once you know this, you can start to recommend great products that fit with these articles.

Plus, you can write more posts on these topics to get even more traffic!

#4 Create Your Own Product (Optional)

If you really want to start making a big income then this is the next step to take.

As you can see from this study already, it is possible to make well over $1,000 per month blogging without even thinking about this stage. (*Cough cough Chasing Foxes with $15k/ month from ads alone!*)

But if you make a better version of the affiliate product that you are promoting, you will get to keep all the profit instead of a per cent of the sale.

Hence, instead of making $5 commission on a $30 ebook, you can make the full $30 (or whatever you choose to charge for it).

This is the proven path that has already been laid out for how to make money from a blog.

Part 3- The Key Findings

There were some important and some unexpected findings from doing this blog income reports research.

#1 It is Possible to Make Money Blogging… Without Writing About Blogging

This could well be the biggest takeaway from this blog income reports study.

It is possible to make money in other niches than marketing.

All of the income reports below will show you how these blogs made money without talking about blogging.

You can tell that some of them (i.e. The Busy Budgeter) have clearly started to blog about blogging. But there was very little money made from “blogging about blogging” in these income reports.

#2 Some Niches Tend to Reach an Upper Limit

For example, Mommy & lifestyle blogs only have so many affiliates they can promote and only so many pageviews they can get in a month.

At this stage, it’s hard for them to create a specific “Mommy product” so many of these blogs tend to start “blogging about blogging”.

This opens up many more affiliate programs and provides an opportunity to create their own courses.

Just as I eluded (ooo posh word from me!) to earlier, most blog income reports will exist to provide motivation for others. But they also promote more affiliate links i.e. Bluehost hosting or an autoresponder or favourite theme to use etc.

Therefore, it is hard to find income reports that are based solely on a “non-blogging” niche. Many of the websites featured in this blog income reports study will eventually have affiliate links to blogging tools or courses.

#3 Income Distribution Changes Over Time

The graph below shows the average income distribution of 7 blogs, one from each niche.

The second graph is from the same 7 blogs. But they have since kicked on and made at least $40,000 a month.

As you can see there is a much heavier reliance from their own products and affiliate marketing.

All 7 of these websites now have a focus on blogging about blogging (Show Me The Yummy has a course on how to make videos for food bloggers, which is sort of related).

Simply put…

Once you start making good money from your blog, focus on automating with affiliate marketing and funnels selling your own products.

The most successful blogs tend to have affiliate opportunities for their own products meaning it becomes even more passive.

The 7 Blogs Used For This

The Most Important Finding of All

Every single blogger that has started making $2,000 per month or more has done this one thing.

There are ZERO exceptions.

I bet you want to know what it is, don’t you?

But you won’t like it…

Seriously though you won’t…

Hustle.

I told you, you weren’t going to like it.

There’s no magic sauce that made these blogs earn money.

They all hustled at the start.

They all found “other” ways to make money or put in an incredible amount of effort to make money through the more “passive” ads, affiliate marketing and own products.

As you can see… content creation is key!

But you don’t need to reinvent the wheel (in fact, it’s better that you don’t because if it hasn’t been written about before, there is probably a reason!)

Find what works for others and make better versions of them.

57 Blog Income Reports in 7 Different Niches

So here are the blog income reports that were used in this study.

Feel free to click on the blog name and look into any of the reports in more detail.

Food Blog Income Reports

Health & Fitness Blog Income Reports

*Income report was taken from Alex and Lauren’s book “How to Make Money Blogging”. Their income on Create & Go is updated every month.

Lifestyle Blog Income Reports

Mommy Blog Income Reports

Marketing Blog Income Reports

**This is Ana’s first $50,000 income report. The total has been divided by 12 even though it took 2 and a half years to get there because the income has sped up more recently.

***Only the income from Inspired BU was used for this study (not the income from Meet Penny)

Personal Finance Blog Income Reports

Travel Blog Income Reports

***** Only travel related income was reported in this study- not the “blogging about blogging” income.

**** This income report gets updated every month but was used with the figures from August 2019

One Final Note on How to Make Money From a Blog

Remember this…

It is possible to make money in any way in any niche.

Of course, it is possible for food bloggers to create their own course or “monthly meal plans” and sell them in the early days.

Of course, you can make money from ads in any niche.

But what you have above is a proven path that successful blogs have taken to start making good money in different niches.

Use what they have left behind to your advantage.

Once you get that regular income, it then becomes possible to put more time into automating things and generating passive income from affiliate marketing funnels and sales of your own products.

How to Make Money From a Blog Quickly Summary

You can see a clear roadmap that successful blogs have taken to make money blogging in 7 different niches:

• Food, Lifestyle & Mommy blogs should focus on Pinterest. Ideally creating list posts that people want to read & aim to get on Mediavine or AdThrive ad networks.
• Health & Fitness blogs should do the same but quickly find affiliate products for their most popular articles.
• Personal finance should also use Pinterest, noting that budgeting does better on Pinterest closely followed by ways to make money (use low cost or free affiliate products such as survey or cashback sites).
• Marketing blogs should have an idea of a product they can create i.e. an eBook or Teachable course. The focus is on creating high-quality articles and really connect with the readers.
• Travel blogs should still use Pinterest to drive traffic. Hustle to find sponsorships and freelance work to make up the income initially.

It doesn’t mean that you have to stick to this, but it does give you an idea of the quickest and proven ways for your niche to start making money.

Keep changing for the better,

Mike

P.S. Check out “The Most Profitable Niche” and “The 5 Best Ad Networks for Bloggers“.