Are you looking for a fun and flexible Holiday Side hustle?
It sounds crazy to be planning Holiday Income already, but it will be here before you know it, so lets get prepared…
What about blogging? Yes, bloggers do make money. Michelle made over $100K in one month (yes, I said Month!), and Jenn, who started this blog, earns five figures monthly regularly with her blog.
Blogging is a flexible way to share your expertise and experience, create an audience, and get paid. It’s a hobby that can become a full-time gig, replacing your 9 to 5 income quickly. Keep reading to learn how you can make extra money blogging just in time for the holidays.
Making Money for the Holidays
The holidays are approaching. In just a couple of months, they’ll be here! So, to prep for the biggest shopping season of the year, you’ve got to start now. Thinking about what kind of side hustle you can do to pay for holiday gifts, end-of-year parties, hosting events at your home, winter activities, and more?
Blogging is an excellent fit because it’s affordable (under $100) to start and you can begin making money starting on day 1!
To get started, check out this free quick guide, which will walk you through the process of setting up your blog. You can be all set up, start to finish, in about 20 minutes.
Then, it’s time to start making money!
Starting a Money Making Blog
I know you’ve heard this before, but unless you are doing it, you need to hear this again….
This is how it works:
Step 1.) You create your money-making blog
Step 2.) You write interesting content, share stories, give tutorials, and write cool stuff to attract an audience
Step 3.) You get traffic to your blog and grow your readership
Step 4.) Get paid!
Creating a Money-Making Blog
First, you set up your blog. While creating your blog and producing content, you should consider how you can monetize it! It’s great to share content to help people, teach, and more, but the goal is to have a holiday side hustle, right?
You want to make your blog income-producing. And you do that through these income streams:
- Ads
- Affiliate marketing
- Your own products/services
- Sponsorships
Advertisements can be placed on your website with ease.
They can go in your sidebar, blog posts, blog header/footer, etc. When a reader clicks on an ad, you earn money. Easy!
You make the most money with advertisements on your blog with more traffic. A blog with 100,000 monthly views will make more money with ads than one with 1,000 monthly views. Makes sense?
While heading in that direction traffic-wise, apply for an ad network like Google Adsense. Then, get your ad code and place it on your site. You’re done.
Next is affiliate marketing.
This is where you refer products and services to your readers and earn a commission if they buy.
For example, you refer an awesome eyeglasses company to your readers. You earn a 20% commission on sales. This month, your effort resulted in $200 sales for the eyeglasses company. You just earned $40 (20% commission)!
Now, imagine you had 10 merchants from which you got results like that. That’d be $400!
Affiliate marketing is great because it can be unlimited income. You can refer as many products as you’d like and continue to earn income passively!
You find products to promote in affiliate networks, like Shareasale. Join the affiliate network and get access to the hundreds of merchants they support. Pick and choose the products you want to promote, grab those affiliate links, and share with your readers! And don’t forget Amazon, we make significant income this way as Amazon Affiliates, and let me tell you, come the holiday season, it goes off! We make upwards of 50K in November and even more in December from that one affiliate account, we are also Affiliates with many other companies and we just love the Holiday season!
For a deeper dive on making A LOT of money with affiliate marketing, check out this training from another affiliate marketer who earns over $50,000 per month from affiliate marketing alone!
Up next, your own products and services income. This means you create your own products, sell them, and get paid. Yes, bloggers do this! Some examples?
- Authoring ebooks
- Creating printables
- Writing e-guides and teaching online courses
- Offering coaching and consulting
- Selling t-shirts
- Selling handmade items
- Selling coffee mugs or desk accessories
Most bloggers I see get the most bang for their buck with digital products, such as teaching courses and writing ebooks, guides, and printables.
You can easily create digital products using tools like MS Word or Canva. Then, you can distribute your products with companies like Sendowl or Gumroad and get paid.
Out of the 4 income streams mentioned, your own products/services will make you the most money. Femtrepreneur regularly has $400K launches when her products are released. It’s insane! If you have a solution to your audience’s problem, create a product for it. See how far you can take it! Last year I sold a blog I had built, that had made me a profit of over $200K in 12 months that sold courses and ebooks.
The last income source is sponsorships. With sponsorships, you get paid to blog by brands!
Companies will contact you, and you’ll contact them to form a brand partnership, where you get paid to share their products with your readers.
It’s like of affiliate marketing in a way, except you get paid a flat fee for working with a company. Your income is not determined by referrals. Make sense?
You can earn hundreds or thousands of dollars working with brands in sponsorships.
How to get started? Join sponsorship networks like Linqia. You can also contact brands and ask if they’d like to do a paid partnership. Brand sponsorships can be a very lucrative opportunity.
Wrap Up
How excited are you? Blogging is a great opportunity to create something awesome and get paid to do it! Get started on this holiday side hustle now. You have plenty of time to build up momentum for the approaching holiday season.
Have you tried blogging as a side hustle? Share your experience with it, down below in comments. We’d love to hear your thoughts!
