Over the past few years, Ive taken a crash course in making money blogging.

Ive experimented with freelancing, self-publishing ebooks, creating online courses, offering coaching and selling digital products.

Everyone and their cousin seems to want to know the best way to make money blogging.

Dana Sitar blogs on her laptop in her apartment

Carmen Mandato/ The Penny Hoarder

And you want to know how to make moneyright away.

Can you get started if…

you might!

Heres a simple blueprint to make it happen.

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Our team has compiled alist of creative waysyou can fatten your bank account this week.

This is a long list, so dont get overwhelmed.

Well keep it updated as offers changes or expire.

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And I like introducing my readers to new resources and helpful experts they might not have heard about before.

In its simplest terms, online affiliate marketing for bloggers means:

Did you know?

If your review convinces a reader to buy, youll get a piece of that sale!

So, how can you, as anew blogger, make money from affiliate marketing?

Self-promotion is challenging for the person doing it and its not too palatable for the person watching it.

And Im much more comfortable touting someone else!

Theyre good enough for you to promote.

Affiliate Marketing in 2019

Why talk about affiliate marketing in 2019?

Isnt that a thing of the past?

It was fairly easy: People were looking for things on the Internet, and there wasnt much there.

Now, we live in more of a Starbucks-on-every-corner era of blogging.

Youre down the block, in the little artisan coffee shop.

You dont do nearly the volume of business as the nearest Starbucks.

And this is the key to affiliate marketing.

How do you do that?

Heres a simple step-by-step guide I recommend to anyone just getting started blogging.

Build an Email List

There are endless ways to grow a blog and make money online.

An email list cuts through that noise.

My favorite is through a combination of guest blogging and offering an enticing freebie.

Or anything you’re free to imagine get creative.

Use a line of that bio to promote your freebie and link to your email sign-up page.

Do this for a while before evenstarting your blog.

I like the number, because its feasible for new bloggers, even though it may seem daunting.

One of the simplest ways to start is by becoming an Amazon Associate.

Because Amazon sells just about anything, this will fit regardless of your field of interest.

Similarly, you could join an affiliate marketplace likeClickBank,ShareASaleore-junkieand find a plethora of products to promote.

A commission of around 50% for higher-priced products or packages is not uncommon.

But you probably dont want to just pick random products.

Ive found the best affiliate opportunities to be the products Im already using.

Can you make a commission for recommending these to others trying to learn the same things?

Often, the person selling these products will make it easy for you to sign up as an affiliate.

Who better to promote their offer than someone who already uses (and, hopefully, enjoys) it?

This helps ensure higher payouts for each affiliate.

For bloggers with larger email lists, these launches mean thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

All of this without ever selling anything of your own!

Creating products and courses takes time upfront that you cant always be sure will pay off, Lizard explains.

The same goes for coaching and other income you have trade your time to earn.

Affiliate marketing is less stable than otherways to make money blogging, though, Lizard cautions.

So, affiliate marketing is a smart addition to your other blogging efforts.

Even as Iveshifted my focus away from running my blog, the website still sees traffic daily.

Thats a pretty cool way to make some extra money to save for future projects!

Dana Sitar (@danasitar) is the branded content editor at The Penny Hoarder.

Shes written for Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Writers Digest and more.

(Can you sense my millennial sarcasm there?)

You know which ones were talking about: rent, utilities, cell phone bill, insurance, groceries…