blogging Archives - Cassie Smallwood

I get asked all the time how to make money from a craft blog. My friends and family are often surprised that it's possible to make a full time income from a craft blog. I guess they thought I was working on this blog purely for fun. It is fun, but, a girl has to make a living too! Crafting can get expensive! You know what I'm talking about. It's no surprise that a lot of crafters want to find a way to make money with a craft blog. The good news is that you can! I'll show you 6 ways you can make a full time income with a craft blog. This post contains affiliate links. See my disclosure here. 6 Ways To Make Money With A Craft Blog Display Ads When you are a beginner blogger, most people will tell you to sign up to put ads on your site through Google Adsense, but they don't pay well at all. When you have a low amount of traffic and they're only paying pennies, it makes it difficult to make money with your craft blog. I found an ad company called Ezoic that takes on smaller bloggers and they pay really well. I more than tripled my income without an increase in my traffic to my blog. As you get more traffic to your site, you can switch to higher paying ad companies like Mediavine or Adthrive if you want to, but Ezoic pays so well you may not need to. All you have to do is sign up and place the ads on your blog. It's really easy! And their customer service is amazing so any problems you might run into are taken care of right away. You get paid by the amount of traffic and number of clicks the ads get. Affiliate Marketing Affiliate marketing is basically placing links in your craft blog post that people can click on to buy that product. This is huge for craft bloggers because you can link to each component of your craft project so the reader can purchase the exact same items you used. A little bonus tip: if you find an item you can use that is not readily available at a regular store, more people will click your link to buy it. I use Amazon's affiliate program to link to most of my DIY projects because they have just about everything you could think of. You can also find other affiliate programs like craft classes or craft stores. I started out just placing links in my posts, but I wasn't really getting any sales until I took this affiliate marketing course and learned how to do it the right way. One thing I've learned about blogging is that buying the courses that apply to you is so worth it! You can search for free information for months, but you likely won't find the good stuff. If you want to make money right away, courses will get you there much faster. I made my first affiliate sale within a week of taking the course! And it has grown more from there each month. P.S. The creator of this course makes over $50k per month from affiliate marketing! I mean, seriously, can you imagine making that kind of money each month?! Sponsored Posts Brands will pay you to write a blog post promoting their product. Usually craft bloggers use the product to create some kind of unique DIY project. This is a flat fee payment and you will have to write your post to meet certain specifications that the brand requires. You can expect to make anywhere from $250 to over $1000 per post depending on how much traffic you have and the company you're working with. When you're a new craft blogger you'll have to reach out to companies to get sponsored posts, but as you get more traffic and become more known, companies will begin to reach out to you. When pitching companies for a sponsored post you'll want to have a post idea in mind using their product so you can tell them what you plan to write about and how it can benefit their brand. Write An Ebook Or Make A Printable You can write your own ebook or helpful printable for your craft blog readers and sell it. It can be a recipe book, how-to book, printable crafts, etc. I have created a product planner for handmade sellers. Make sure whatever you create is relevant to your audience or you'll have trouble selling it. Also be sure to do some research to see if it's something that people are searching for online. Check Google and Pinterest to see if anyone is searching for that product and if other people are selling it. Making a product for your craft blog that doesn't sell is extremely frustrating. So you want to make sure there is a demand before you put your time into it. Sell your patterns If your craft blog is about sewing or crochet or anything else that has patterns, you can definitely sell them. You could sell your craft patterns individually or make them into an ebook and sell them as a complete set. The great thing about this is you make the pattern once and it sells as a download. So you don't have to keep making something over and over each time it sells. Make your pattern and put it into a PDF format. It's that simple! Create a course Many bloggers create a course teaching their readers how to do something. This is another top way to make money with a craft blog. If you have a special skill or know how to make something that most others don't, teach people how to do it with a course. Share your knowledge with the world and get paid for it! Creating a course for your craft blog audience is the biggest undertaking of all of the items on this list. You definitely want to do your research and make sure people want a course like this before starting to make it. Craft blogs can make anywhere from $97 to $997 per course. Imagine how that could add up quickly to be a full time income for your craft blog. The thing about a craft blog is that you put in quite a bit of time in the beginning but you can make money from those posts for years to come! Imagine writing a blog post and still making money on it two years later without doing anything else! What if you could teach people how to make your awesome craft ideas and actually have fun doing your work?! How many people can say that they get to do what they love every day? How Much Do Craft Bloggers Make? As a beginner craft blogger you can expect to make between $100 and $500 per month if you place display ads on your craft blog with a company like Ezoic. Once you are a more established craft blogger and have implemented things like affiliate marketing and selling your own products you can make $1,000 up to $50,00 per month and beyond. How To Start A Successful Craft Blog Let me tell you, I didn't have the first clue how to start a blog or what to do with it after it was created, but I knew I could make it successful with a little work. I had no idea how to make money with a blog, but I knew people were doing it. So I set out to discover how to make money from my craft blog. First I have to say, if you love crafting, you can totally do this! If you want to start your own craft blog, I can show you how step-by-step. It's not as scary as it seems! Here are the main things you need to start a successful craft blog: Domain - This is your web address. You get a free one when you sign up for Bluehost. Hosting - This is a company that puts your website on the internet. I recommend Bluehost. Blogging Platform - I recommend Wordpress, but there are lots of other ones like Squarespace and Wix. Theme - This determines what your blog design will look like. Some people say it takes years to start making an income from your blog, but that just wasn't going to work for me. I was determined to start making money from my craft blog as soon as possible and so I set out to figure out how I could do it as fast as I could. I knew I wanted to help people create beautiful things for their homes, gifts for family and friends, and the coolest parties and celebrations ever all while saving money. So I started writing about those things but I didn't know how to make money from them. Now that you know how you can make money from a craft blog, are you ready to get started? One thing that has made my craft blog successful is my complete belief in myself and my ability to be successful. I always think positively about money and success and try to keep negative feelings about those things away. So I just want to tell you that I know you can do it too! I believe in you and your ability to have success and make money with your craft blog. If all these other people can do it, there's no reason that you can't do it too. Believe in yourself and get started now! The sooner you start, the sooner your success will come! XOXO, Cassie Resources From This Post Step-by-step instructions to set up your craft blog Affiliate Marketing Course Bluehost Web Hosting Here's another post you might like. 7 Tips & Resources To Help You Stop Struggling With Your Blog