How to Start a Wedding Blog
Are you a wedding blogger or an inspiring wedding blogger to be? Wondering how to start a wedding blog? They are so many wonderful wedding blogs out there its no wonder everyone wants to start one.
A lot of wedding bloggers are constantly emailing us asking how is it that we make money online using our wedding blog and if we enjoy running a successful online business.
Is it possible to make money as a wedding blogger? How much can you earn as a wedding blogger? We tend to also get a lot of questions from new wedding bloggers, trying to figure a way to monetize their current wedding blog.
So the big question today is how I make money as a successful wedding blogger.
We will be sharing a few quick ideas on how you can monetize your wedding blog and start making some money. Take what works from this blog and implement it on your own blog.
Remember this is not an overnight success.
You will need to work hard and find a way to market and promote your very own wedding blog. We are not giving you an overnight solution but ideas of what has worked for us, and we have been able to make money with our own wedding blog.
So who are some of the wedding bloggers that make money off their sites? Think: Style me Pretty, AppleBrides.com, The Broke Ass Bride, Bridal Musings and so many others.
Decide How You Want to Make Money
Starting a wedding blog that is successful will require some planning on your end. Decide on how you want to monetize the wedding blog. This will make it really easy for you.
For example, I personally make money with my wedding blog using Sponsored Blog post opportunities.
Please understand you need multiple streams of income in order to see real results. Making money from blogging can be so up and down and diversifying your income is the most ideal scenario.
If you are considering starting a wedding blog to make money and only relying on one main source of income, you are setting yourself up to fail.
Most Bloggers that start to monetize their blogs typically start with advertising. But what happens if your advertiser suddenly pulls off their contract or are no longer interested.
Or maybe their brand and direction have changed and they prefer to go elsewhere?
What will you do? That’s why having multiple sources of income available, will help you along the way.
Definitely, do not overdo it.
The more ads you have the more others may not want to work with you. Keep a great balance.
Before we get started on starting a wedding blog that makes money, we wanted to invite you to join our Wedding Pro group. And if you are serious about your Wedding business, then you should be on Pinterest. Join our Pinterest group and let the pinning party begin.
We also did want to mention that we use affiliate links on our posts, and if you purchase anything, we might make a commission.
Related:
How to Start a Successful Wedding Blog
How to Make your Wedding Website Stand out to Potential Clients
How I Make Money With My Wedding Blog
Here is how to start a wedding blog that actually makes money. They are a few ways to make money from a blog but here is how I do it.
Make Money Using Ads
This blog uses an Ad network to make money. I personally use Mediavine, but you do need a lot of traffic in order to get accepted into the network.
So if you are thinking of starting a wedding blog and you would like to make money using ads, create great content to attract clients.
The more page views you get on your wedding blog, the more you get paid with your ad company.
This is amazing for blogs that get thousands of views per day or per month. And if your blog is not getting the traffic
How much can you expect to make from Mediavine?
This will all depend on a few things. It will depend on your wedding blog traffic, the Ad size placed on your blog and how close the Ad is related to your niche.
They pay a couple of dollars per click so it’s really great if you have lots of traffic.
Mediavine will analyze your content and place Ads related to your posts. Keep in mind that if you do a post that is not related to what you typically write about, you may get a weird Ad for that post.
As your traffic grows, the more you make.
Here are a few ways to get more blog traffic to your wedding blog:
Advertising Directly On Your Website
A majority of wedding bloggers offer advertising opportunities for vendors on their site.
This is the best way to make money with a blog if you are thinking of starting a wedding blog. Not only is this the best way of making money but you also have control of who you work with.
If you get a lot of traffic from visitors such as brides, you can have vendors advertise on your site. You can either create a vendor’s section or you can have vendors listed on your sidebars.
You can also blog about them for publicity but the choice is yours.
I would typically charge more for vendors located on my sidebar. Right now I mainly offer sponsored posts. These posts are rotated when I do social media and I give a shout on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.
Charge what you wish. Create a media kit to send out to potential clients that you wish to work with.
See how Apple Brides does a great job at this!
Affiliate Marketing And Promotions
This is my personal favorite way of making money with my wedding blog. When I was first considering starting a wedding blog, I knew affiliate marketing would be the way to go.
Affiliate marketing is a way for you or your wedding blog to earn income from promoting other people’s products and you earn a commission from it.
Remember that for any affiliate link you post, you need to let people know beforehand.
I typically disclose any affiliate at the beginning of the post simply stating that this post could include affiliate links and I could earn a commission.
There are so many places you can apply for affiliate marketing programs. And the good thing about it, there is no limit to how many you can sign up for.
I have heard of bloggers making upwards of $50, 000 in Affiliate sales.
This is because they do it right.
Those that do affiliate marketing correctly are those that create a post to go with the link instead of just promoting the link. So a few examples would be either full blog post of a tutorial on how to use something, a product review and just adding the link to a blog post that it can be related to instead of just a link.
As I mentioned, when people ask me how I make money as a successful Wedding Blogger, I usually mention that I do this through Affiliate marketing.
In order to really get the benefit from my affiliate links, I decided to sign up for a course to help me out.
Especially after I heard people can make up to $50, 000 per month on this. The course I took was “Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing” created by Michelle from Making Sense of Cents. Starting a wedding blog or any blog for that matter requires you to invest and this was my investment.
Michelle, the teacher of the course, just made over $90,000 last month from her blog.
How crazy is that? Most of her income comes from affiliates and she created a course to teach other bloggers how to increase their affiliate income as well.
Basically, if you’re going to learn about affiliate income, she’s the person you want to learn from!
She goes through the different places to apply for affiliates, how and where to promote these affiliates. And you get access to her private Facebook page where you are able to share your work, get it promoted and as well as ask questions.
I am now making lots of money every month from Affiliates and I offer some of my own products as affiliates too. You can get the course right here “Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing“!
So what things can a wedding professional use for affiliate sales?
BHLDN, Sandals resorts, and Bookings.com all offer affiliates. Just read at the bottom of their web pages to apply for affiliates. Remember if you do not do affiliate marketing properly, you won’t see a return on investment.
You need to know how to market it and that’s where “Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing” came into play for me. I barely made any money before that.
Collaborate with other Wedding Vendors or brands
As we mentioned earlier, as someone that is starting a wedding blog to make money, you need multiple streams of income in order to be successful.
Another way of making money with a wedding blog is by creating content that promotes certain brands or vendors.
If you get a lot of Page views on your blog, then certain brands or vendors may approach you to market for them.
Old is when we had banners plastered all over a site. Just like Affiliate marketing, it’s better to create content to promote a particular brand or product. If a brand/vendor does not approach you, you can create media kits and email them out.
You do have to have great page views and a large following on social media to be considered.
Keep in mind that some brands may offer you free items in exchange for promotion instead of payment.
It’s up to you how you want to approach this. You may choose to go for it for a portfolio’s sake as you build up, but don’t do a lot of free work.
The bigger a brand company, the more marketing dollars they will have to spend. You need to ask to be paid. Tell them how much you appreciate their brand and you would love to work with them and then ask for a budget.
I really enjoy working closely with vendors as I love finding great ways to promote them.
Sell your products
If you are creative and you make awesome things, use your blog to sell them.
For example, if you are a wedding photographer, why not sell stock photos? Do you know how many wedding professionals that are starting out that are constantly looking for stock photos?
If you are into wedding invitations and things like that, consider selling these. Wedding decorators can sell the stock if they go out of season!
Don’t just put it up on Kijiji or tell people about it, write up a blog post and share it on social media.
I sell my own products and you can catch my shop here or on Etsy!
And that’s how I make money as a Successful Wedding Blogger….
… and we don’t promise you millions.
But they are some awesome wedding bloggers out there that make lots of money. Using your blog is definitely a good start. Your blog is the platform that you can use to start making money.
If you are already getting traffic and have a great following then you are on the right track. “Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing” is what changed a lot of my money making techniques.
They show you how to promote, a way to build traffic easily and they offer you the tools to start pushing sales.
Give it a try!
Now go ahead and start monetizing your wedding blog! You can start your wedding, build an audience that loves and trust you and then start coming up with ways to monetize it.
It takes time….
Starting a wedding blog takes work. You won’t start seeing money right away unless you have the audience for it.
And even that needs time as you will need to build trust! Not all the items listed here will work for you. For example, using ads hasn’t really worked for me, whereas affiliate links have done wonders.
Just see what works.
Good luck with everything and tell us below, which of these you will be using. Are you thinking of starting a wedding blog? Tell us in the comments below.
Want to start booking weddings right now? Use this guide to get started: “An Easy Guide to Booking more Weddings with Social Media”! It’s simple and easy! It has actionable tips you can use to start booking brides.
It does involve you making a few changes to your current social media platforms before starting. But that’s really easy! Join our Facebook group of other wedding professionals: “Wedding Professional Lounge” This is an upcoming Facebook group where we share marketing tips on a daily basis!
Happy Planning
these are all great tips, even if your not a wedding blogger. thanks for sharing!
I started my blogging with a wedding blog and I wish I would have kept it going! Weddings are a great niche and even though I haven’t touched it in years, I still get steady traffic through my old pins.
Great tips! The outline format is very easy to follow and you do a great job of summarizing each point. It is clear you know what you are talking about and are great at what you do. Bravo!
Excellent tips! After running a beauty blog for about a year, I just started my wedding blog and I am super excited to learn more. Your blog is awesome and a real inspiration!
Amazing post surely inspires many people.
Such an amazing post,, Thanks for sharing..
Thanks for sharing!
Excellent tips. Thanks for sharing.