The Thrift Diving Podcast

How Bloggers Make Big Money - #19

June 11, 2021 Serena Appiah Season 1 Episode 19
The Thrift Diving Podcast
How Bloggers Make Big Money - #19
The Thrift Diving Podcast
Become a supporter of the show!
Starting at $3/month
Support
Show Notes Transcript

Most people know that bloggers, YouTubers, Instagrammers, and content creators make  money, but how?? In this podcast, let's talk about the 9 ways that creators use that platforms to earn a living! Follow me on Instagram @ThriftDiving to stay connected!

Links and Products Mentioned (may include affiliate links)

Projects and Blog Posts Mentioned

Podcast Episodes Mentioned


Subscribe to my email list for 5 ebooks, printable, and checklists: https://thriftdiving.com/subscribe

Subscribe to my YouTube channel

Support the show

Click to send me an email to share your thoughts with me on this episode! Connect with me on Instagram @ThriftDiving.

WANT TO LEARN TO USE POWER TOOLS? I'm creating an online power tools 101 course to help you get over the fear and intimidating of using tools to become empowered with power tools! Sign up here for more info! https://thriftdiving.com/tools

Subscribe to my email list for 5 ebooks, printable, and checklists: https://thriftdiving.com/subscribe

Subscribe to my YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/thriftdiving

Let’s Connect!

Hey, Serena Appiah from ThriftDiving.com, which is a podcast, a blog and a YouTube channel that helps you decorate, improve, and maintain your home with paint, power tools and thrift stores. And you know, here at Thrift Diving, we do not sacrifice our budget, the environment, or style. Welcome to Episode 19 of the Thrift Diving Podcast.

I cannot believe that I have consistently put out, well, I guess this is 19, 19 episode of this podcast. Every week I sit down to think about what is it I'm going to talk to you about. And today we're going to talk about how to not really how to start a blog, but how people are making money doing this. Now, I don't make any money with this podcast.

It's completely 100% me doing it because I just actually really love to do it. I had always wanted to do it, but remember from Episode One, the reason why I didn't is because I really don't like the sound of my voice. Most people don't like the sound of their voice, so that prevents them from doing anything in front of the camera, recording. But I'm putting all that aside and I come to you every single week.

And you know, it's really frustrating when I look at my YouTube channel, I look at my blog. I remember when things were popping. I mean, I was making a ton of money and we're going to talk about that. All the ways that bloggers, content creators, are making money, doing this thing called blogging and content creating.

We're going to talk about that, but, when I look at my blog and I look at my YouTube channel, I see how long it's been since I've uploaded a video. When I see how long it's been since I wrote a blog post, like I can't even remember the last time I sat down to just write a blog post. Life has gotten so busy, and I feel that things are kind of changing a little bit.

I feel like people are creating more short content. You know, they're doing Tik Tok videos, which, I guess, I don't think people are really making money with Tik TOK, but they are hopefully bringing them back to their other platforms where they're making money. And we're going to talk about that today, but here with the podcast, I'm not making money with this podcast. I do it every week because I love to do it. It's something new, it's something different. And I think that when you've been in the same field, I don't care what field it is, you always got to change it up a little bit and do something that is coming just from you.

It's not driven by anything else, but just you and the desire to do that thing, that mission that you have. And as I mentioned here, every time I opened the show, I talk about my mission, which is to help you decorate, improve, and maintain your home. And I hope that we've been doing that with these episodes.

And I think what I'm going to do for next week for Episode 20, I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to go back through all the other 19 episodes, I guess, including this one. And I'm going to actually pick out one thing that I've done differently after listening to that show or just something that was like, the aha moment for each show.

That's what I'm going to do. So I'm going to invite you to do that as well, but anyway, don't worry. Next week, we're going to talk about that. 

Today, we're going to talk about how bloggers make money and there's actually, I'm going to say there's nine different ways, but there's probably a lot more ways, but just writing up a quick outline, this is what I was able to come up with. 

Now, if you have been following me and this blog, in this journey, you would know from Episode 1, how I started my blog. I'm not going to go back into all the details, but one or two sentences, I basically bought an old 1970s home. Didn't have any money to decorate.

I started going to the thrift stores, hence the name Thrift Diving, right? Dumpster diving, Thrift Diving. You got it. And because I needed to decorate my home on a budget. I started going to the places that I loved: the thrift store. And finding old things and making them look pretty. And I really was just doing it because I loved the process of documenting what I was doing.

I've always been a journal-- well, have not journaled in a long time. That's another thing I wish I had time for that. I don't make time for, is to journal because even from the age of  15 and all through college, for years, and I still have this big thick pile of journals in my closet. And one day I said, I'm going to type them all into like a, you know, like a PDF.

So I could read all the crazy stuff I was thinking of 18, 19 20, which was, well over 20 years ago, but I've always loved to document things. So when we bought this house, I just started documenting everything that I was doing in this house. Well, that was 2010 when we bought the house. And 2012 is when I realized that people were making money doing this very thing. Doing blog posts, writing projects. 

 People were blogging back then, but I think most people didn't realize that it was actually something you could make money from. It's just something that we all sort of stumbled upon. We found a niche that we liked, and we started reading about furniture, makeovers and decorating.

And, and I remember there was one blogger. I can't remember. I think her blog is called the House of Smiths. I don't know if she's even blogging anymore. If you are, hello, Shelley, I think her name is. But she had put out this post. On how bloggers make money. And I thought, oh my gosh, wait a minute. So you're telling me for two years, I've been writing on this blog, and I have pretty much, you know, friends and maybe some family reading it.

And I think there was some other people, too, that might've discovered it. I don't even know if we even had Pinterest back then. So it wasn't about promoting it to get as many eyes as possible. It was really just about the love of documenting what you were doing and sharing it with other people who had the same passions as you.

And when I saw that, I thought, wow, wait a minute. So I can make money doing this. Okay. I'm going to try to figure out how to improve this blogging thing so that I can make money with it. And I was working at the time outside of the home. I didn't think that this would be like a career move.

I . Just want to see if I can make money at this. So every night, I would be putting the kids in bed, doing whatever I could to improve my blog, researching watching YouTube videos. And I started going to blogging conferences. I think 2013 was my first blogging conference, which was called the Haven Conference.

Now, if you are in the DIY sphere, this is like the conference for you to go to if you're trying to start this kind of blog, if it's like a crafting blog. Another one is called Snap. That's more of like a, uh, crafting blog, but you'll see some bloggers at both. Right. Snap. And then also Haven, but Haven is really for like DIY, home decorating, and it's held in Atlanta every year, a couple years.

They actually move things around to like South Carolina, which was a lot of fun. And then I think they're back. I think they're actually going to be, is it June, or no? No. Early July is usually when they have the conference and it's always in, for the most part Atlanta. So look that up for those of you who might want to get a ticket and go.

So that's how I started connecting with people in the niche and trying to create these,  mastermind groups and find out what, hey, what are you doing to make money? Well, what are you doing? And it just became this thing that I just wanted to conquer. And it wasn't like I set out with a goal of making X number of dollars. I just thought, oh my gosh, if I could make money doing something that I love, why not. 

So fast forward to 2015 and all the while, remember I'm working on my blog, doing projects, and learning how to improve my blog and my skills. 2015, well, let's put it this way. The end of 2014, I decided that 2015, I wanted to blog full-time.

I didn't know how I was going to make that happen, but I set a date for myself. I said, August of 2015. And the reason I chose August is because my middle son was going to finally be starting kindergarten. Now you know for you parents out there, if you've ever had to pay for childcare, it is so expensive. And having to in daycare, I just knew it . Would be impossible to blog full-time with two in daycare.

 How was I going to do that? So when one of them would go to school, I'd only have one left. I thought financially we'd be able to handle this. 

Well, the plan didn't go as expected, because I ended up getting fired from my job. Yes. Fired. That's a whole other discussion, but me and the supervisor, we just butt heads.

We never really got along, and I got fired. So that day I remember coming home and I said to my husband, I said, just give me three months. Let me see if I can get this blog thing going, make money doing it. But in the meantime, I'll still look for a job.

Cause at this time I was collecting unemployment. I had to pull my kids out of daycare because we couldn't afford it, which was, you know, it's, very scary when you lose your job and you  know that you're going to have some unemployment, so it's going to carry you through, but the change that you have to make, you know what I mean?

Like it totally uproots your entire schedule. You have to pull your kids out because you can't afford to pay the weekly daycare fee. And I do remember it being a very scary time, but it was also kind of exciting too. Because I'd always wanted to be a full-time blogger. So I said to my husband, let me try this.

Let me put my time into this. I'll still look for a job. Cause technically you have to, if you're collecting unemployment, but let me see what I can do with this. I'm not kidding you. That was January. By June when I was partnering with RYOBI, we'll talk about,  sponsorships and partnerships  in just a moment.

But this is just to give you some backstory of how I even started making money doing this. I remember getting a call from RYOBI and they said, hey, we want you to do this  Home Depot Girls Night Out. It's in Philadelphia. You know, we're going to pay you like $8,000. Now, keep in mind.

I was unemployed at this time, right? They wanted me to speak at girl's night out, 

 so I was on stage doing tools demonstrations, and it's like this huge party in the parking lot of, you know, a local Home Depot. And they said, we'll pay you $8,000. Well, when I hung up the phone call, I remember thinking there's no way they're paying me 8,000. Maybe she said a thousand. So I actually had to call her back and say, are you kidding me?

Like, I didn't say that exactly. But I said now, did you say a thousand or 8,000? They said, oh, we said 8,000. We'll pay you, half on this date. And then once the event's done, we'll pay the other half. And I'm like, oh my gosh. And I was doing other things too, other sponsorships, smaller, but it got to the point where every week when I had to report any income to the unemployment office, it was getting to be where I was starting to report income. And I thought, oh my gosh, I don't need unemployment anymore. Like, I am really making money. That was a very exciting time. It took off from there. Whatever money I was making from blogging, it just went up. 

So let's actually talk about how I made money and how most bloggers and content creators are making money doing this thing. I'm going to use a general term blogging, but not everybody blogs. 

There are some people who are just creating content on Instagram. They don't have a blog. They don't even have a website. There's some people who just have a YouTube channel, they don't have a blog. So when I say blogging, I'm sort of using that as a general content creator term  to signify people who are creating stuff and they're putting it on  blogs and social media and Instagram and/or, okay? Just so we have that clear. 

Let's just start with the first one. This is the one that most people do, whether you have a blog or YouTube channel, you are pretty much making money with advertisements. And I remember the very first dollar, it was maybe like a dollar and 29 cents that I made on my blog.

So remember back in 2012, when I realized people were making money, one of those things that people were telling other bloggers is, hey, put advertisements on your blog. So I signed up for Google AdSense. Google AdSense is the place where if you are creating a YouTube channel, or if you have a blog, you can sign up for Google AdSense and put advertisements in your videos and on your blog.

Now, things changed recently with YouTube. I think a number of years ago, maybe about three years ago. So it used to be that the minute you started a YouTube channel, you could put advertisements on your, your channel on your videos and instantly make money. Now you may not have had anybody watching those videos and it would take a long time to make any kind of money.

But I remember that moment that I had put advertisements. It could have been on my blog and my channel, but it said $1.29. And I thought, oh my gosh, I was so excited. And I remember that particular day meeting up with my best friend and one of our other friends. And I went to them, and I said, oh my God, guess what? I made $1.29. And I remember them laughing at me. I was so excited about this, but they just sort of laugh like, oh my God, girl, you're so funny.$1.29! I was like, yeah, this is just the beginning.

Like it's okay. And now of course, I make much more than that with, Google AdSense. But advertisements is how most people started. So if you have a blog and I guess, let me back up a little bit and say, this conversation of how to even start a blog. That's a whole other conversation, but let's just assume that you have a blog, or you want to start a blog, but you're still just curious how they actually make money.

That's what we're trying to talk about today because it's a huge conversation. I know this is going to be probably an hour-long conversation and I don't want to make it two hours. 

So with advertisements, every time you go to a blog, and not just a blog. If you go to CNN, if you go to any website nowadays there is advertisements, and you know some of them are so annoying.

They will pop up. Sometimes they will play automatic videos that you didn't ask to play. And here you are trying to be quiet and, you know, it's. 1130 at night and your spouse is sleeping and suddenly there's an ad playing. Like that's so annoying. I don't think I've got any of those on my website.

And if I do, please email me, and let me know if they automatically start. Cause I will turn that sucker off. But any website that you go to nowadays, they all have advertisements. All of them.  And if you don't see it, there's a reason why you don't see it. But for some sites, it may be that they're totally new to blogging or to creating a website and they don't even know about advertisements. And that's why it's not there. Sometimes you may have a .org scientific or a .gov, those sites, you're not going to find advertisements, but if it's like a blog, if it's CNN like a news channel your local NBC 4 channel, they all have advertisements.

And what happens is every time you view that advertisement, you don't even have to click on it. Every time you view that advertisement, for every thousand views that that ad gets shown to people on that site, that company, or that blogger, or that website owner makes a certain amount of money. So it could be for every thousand views, maybe they make about $28.

Okay. So if this is a site that gets millions of views, that's a lot of ad revenue. So that's a very lucrative way that people make money.  Here's the thing, you know, when you go from one site, let's say you go to Nordstrom's dot com, right. To just look up a dress or whatever it is. Next thing you know, you're at CNN or Fox, whatever one you prefer and guess what, there's advertisements for Nordstrom's yes, they are tracking you.

 These websites do track you because they want you to come back to Nordstrom's and Nordstrom's pays for that spot. So while Nordstrom's pay for it,  that person or that website, where that ad is showing up is making some of that money just because you saw that advertisement.

Now there are ad blockers. My kids are all about ad blockers and I tell them, I said, somebody is actually making money off of that. Like don't block the advertisement because with some creators, that's there, that's really, their only source of income is the ad revenue.

So if you put an ad blocker or you do something to prevent that ad from being shown, you're effecting their money.  Every time you skip over that ad, it really is hurting their bottom line. And I think a lot of people don't understand that. Now, CNN, of course, Fox and you know, these new stations, they're making tons of money off of these advertisements.

I don't feel bad, but if there is a smaller blogger or a blogger that you like to read, or content creator, sometimes I tell people, just look at the ad, make sure it loads up so that they at least get some sort of, credit off of that. 

Advertisements in YouTube videos, unless you're doing like the YouTube premium where you can, skip all the advertisements.

You're being shown advertisements on YouTube. Every time you watch one of my YouTube videos, there's advertisements. And even within the video, there's advertisements, you know, sometimes there's like an ad break and I make money off of that. And other YouTubers, they make money off of that. And that's their bread and butter.

Sometimes I know it can be annoying. You're in the middle of a video and next thing you know, you just want to get to the good part, and then there's an advertisement. 

Another way too is like Facebook ads. A lot of times videos that are on Facebook, there's a way to monetize that. And so the person who's created the video or whose channel was showing that video has allowed an advertisement to pop up in that video.

So you watching that video earns them money. So, those are just three ways in terms of advertisements. And that's a huge portion of the money that we bloggers make. I always tell people, I know advertisements can be annoying, but it is a way to provide that content free for you. It doesn't cost you anything, just costs you your attention. That's it. 

So that's the first way advertisement. The second way is sponsorships. And this is something that I would say it took me from 2010. Let's say 2012 is when I really considered my blog like a real blog. I would say 2013 is when I started working with different brands.

And if you are following your favorite bloggers, your favorite Instagrammers, , YouTubers, we all have sponsorships. I mean, even the news companies, even here's something interesting for those of you who have HBO, go to watch, I think it's called Last Week with John Oliver.

He did a really interesting segment where he was talking about the local news channels that are being sponsored by advertisers, but they're not disclosing it in a way that makes you understand, oh, they're just putting it there because it's an advertisement. Um, anyway, I will leave a link down below for those of you who want to watch that there might even be a clip on that, but a lot of times we're not just, showing you an advertisement at the beginning of a video, we're using a product that we were either given for free.

Or we were paid to use that product.  There's several brands that I work with that are long-term sponsors of  Thrift Diving. And I love them. Like one of the newer ones that I've started working with is Ariat clothing. They're not sponsoring this podcast, but they had sent me some clothes and every time I do an Ariat sponsored video, I'm wearing their clothes in the video. And I actually do really love their pants. They have so many pockets on the side. So they will pay me a fee to include their product in the video.

And the way that I do my videos is I like to make sure that it's something that makes sense, because let's say you're a cooking channel and now you're doing a video and you're getting a sponsorship from like, athlete's foot cream or something crazy like that. It just doesn't, it doesn't work.

Right? Like it's not the right audience. So whatever it is that you're promoting, it has to be the right audience. So like Ariat clothing, they make work clothing, it's work gear. So people who are  woodworkers or gardeners or whatever, that's the perfect match. And so you always want to make sure whatever it is that you're promoting makes sense for that channel.

Otherwise. It just doesn't make any sense. Another advertiser that I work with is Arrow Fastener. So if you ever have been doing like upholstery, for example, or you're reupholstering some cushions for your dining room chairs. A lot of times that  big steel heavy stapler that you're using, that's Arrow Fastener.

And I've been working with them for gosh, probably three or four years now. They love, what I do. And they come back to me and they're like, hey, we want to work with you for the year. And you know, we want you to do four videos  using our tools in the videos.

Well, that's a natural collaboration because I use their stuff anyway. But here's the thing, you don't necessarily have to have a blog or a  YouTube channel. There are some people who are just on Instagram or just on Tik Tok who are working with brands. And that's, what's kind of amazing because I mean, there's still a lot of, I'm sure there's still a lot of time and a lot of, effort that goes into whatever it is that person's creating.

It could be a short one-minute video for Instagram using, I don't know, a special fork, you know, if you've got a cooking channel, you love to make dishes. And so maybe you're getting this special kitchen appliance and you're promoting it in there. And of course in your links, you're saying, hey, check out my link and all this stuff.

So, but that's one way that we make money, and it can be very, very lucrative. It depends on the brand. Some brands they don't pay very well. There's other brands that will pay you good money. The thing is, is that there's no concrete way to, to decide what to charge a brand. And that's what I think is partially wrong with this niche.

Not even just the DIY niche. But I think when you're a content creator, nobody likes to share specific information about, well, how much did that brand pay you? Because they paid me this. And I did this for this much money, you know? So you might be accepting, let's say $2,000 for a sponsored video, but somebody else may have gotten 5,000 and you have similar subscribers.

You have similar, reach, your videos equally. Both do well. So there's a lot of variation because there's not a standard. You can't go to Google and just type it and say, oh, how much do you get paid for a YouTube video? It varies so much. So if you are a content creator and you've been wanting to monetize and maybe reach out to sponsorships, a lot of times it's about just deciding how much do you think you're worth?

And a lot of times we undervalue ourselves. And . Sometimes those sponsorships, they may come back to you and say, well, we can just give you like a free can of paint, or maybe we can give you a free hammer, but we don't have any money in the budget to pay you. That's okay, too. Sometimes we do just accept product in exchange for a video.

You know, they like to call it free product, but it's not really free because you're still doing the work. They're still getting the benefit of you using that product. Right. Now there is a whole other discussion that we could have on how do you make connections with these sponsorships anyway?

And I will just say briefly that if you are someone that wants to work with brands, you have to have a social media following. You have to have something that would make it worth them, reaching out to you and paying you to promote that. So let's say you've got 10,000 friends and followers on Instagram.

Okay. That's some clout there. You actually could reach out to a brand, email their marketing people. Sometimes you can just, I mean, it's a whole conversation, but a lot of times what I tell people is if you're just getting into blogging, let's say DIY blogging. Let's be very specific. Then I would say, definitely go to the Haven Conference, go to the Snap conference.

There's another one called, Work Bench that was actually created by the same woman who owns the Haven conference. But it's more for woodworkers because there are companies that come to those conferences, specifically looking for bloggers to promote their stuff, or YouTubers or Instagrammers or whatever to promote their stuff.

That's the best way to make connection because both of you have the same goal, right, is to connect with brands and they want to connect with bloggers, content creators. So definitely go to a conference if you're looking to connect with. Sponsors for me, some of the sponsors I've gotten, they've just emailed me out of the blue and I've started working with them.

But I feel like you have to be pretty established before you start getting those emails, those serious emails. 

Okay. Let's move on to number three. And the third way that content creators can make money is by creating content. And this is content that is not even on your own channel. Let me give you an example.

Last year with the pandemic, Home Depot reached out to me, and they said, and I had been doing some work with Home Depot here and there, but they reached out to me and said, you know, we can't do our Home Depot kids workshops anymore because they're in person, everything's canceled. So we want to move it online.

And we're looking for somebody to do like seven videos for us. Here's how much we'll pay you. Well, I'm not going to share that amount because it's a pretty big amount, but it was, it was huge. We'll send you the wooden kits. We just want you to put them together. And we want you to do a cardboard version because not everybody's going to be able to get their hands on a kit and then we'll post it on our YouTube channel. It doesn't have to go on yours.

We do want you to just kind of promote it a little bit on your Facebook and things like that. But for the most part, you're just creating this content for us to use. Here's how much we'll pay you. And are you interested? Well, yes. Yes, we are definitely interested. The projects were fun. I will leave links down below in the show notes, so you can actually see some of those videos, but, you know, they're, they weren't anything that I created for Thrift Diving.

I created them for the Home Depot, and I've done other content in that way, too. There's a company called Gen Video. Gen.video. I'm not even sure how they found me, but they, they are sort of the middleman between brands and bloggers. And so a lot of times brands will go to them and say, hey, we want to get some content creators to create some content that we're going to use on our Instagram page, or we're going to use it on our Amazon page.

It's not for Thrift Diving. We just want them to create it using our products. 

One time, Home Depot actually hired Jen video to hire me to do some videos for their product pages. And I will leave links down below. You can see those videos as well, but they would send me for example, A work bench and they would tell me, here's the key points we want included.

It's just a two-minute video and we want it to be professional. So it's not like, Hey, I'm Serena from Thrift Diving. And I got this bench here. No, it was like, so when you're working on projects, you know, this bench by the Home Depot with 10 drawers, you know, it's a very commercialized looking video. They paid me X number of dollars to produce that, to create it and edit it and then send it off to them. And then they added their Home Depot, music, and graphics and all that. So by me just knowing how to create content, that's a valuable skill that somebody wants to hire me to do for them.

So I feel like in 2020, and I feel like it's not been so much of a problem in 2021, a lot of my time was taken up by creating content for brands, for other people. And when I got into this, I never even thought, hey, that's a way that I can make money is by creating stuff for other brands. I never thought of it that way, but that's how it's evolved.

And it's actually been very lucrative because if you think about it, if a company like I'm going to use Home Depot goes and hires a production company, right. It's usually way way, way expensive. I mean, super expensive. So whatever they paid me is a drop in the bucket compared to what they would pay, like a real live production company that probably has staff, that has, you know, studio fees and all kinds of things.

So it's cheaper for a company to hire a content creator like myself in order to create content that is organic that will look and feel organic to the people who are watching. And it won't be like a commercialized, video that, you know was produced in someone's studio.

You know what I mean? Cause a lot of times people will just turn that off. They don't want to see that fake stuff, but if they say see me doing it and I think anything that I produce, even if it's a little bit more commercialized, it's still, feels very organic, right? I'm just, I'm going to be me and whatever it is that I produce and brands love that.

So if you are someone who loves being in front of the camera, you don't necessarily have to start a blog, but start a YouTube channel. Let companies actually see how you are on camera and see some of the things that you can create in order for them to look at you and consider you to be somebody to be a content creator for them.

So those are three ways so far: advertisements, sponsorships, and content creations. The fourth way that we can make money as a blogger, a YouTuber is affiliate income. So if you have been on Instagram, any of these social sites, I can guarantee somebody has said, oh, and I'm just holding up my cup of tea here.

Wow. This cup of tea is so great. This cup keeps it so warm. It's, you know, it's still hot eight hours later. I don't even know where I got this from. I think I got it from like Ross for 10 bucks. And just looking at this cup, you might say, oh my gosh, I've been wanting a cup that keeps my tea warm for eight hours.

Excuse me. What's the link for that Serena. And then I send you over to this link, whether it's Amazon. Whether it's some other site and if you buy that cup or maybe you don't want that particular cup, but then you see this makeup case that you like, and you're like, okay, I'll get the cup later. I like this makeup case.

Let me buy this. I make a commission off of that purchase. Whether you bought the cup, whether you bought the makeup bag, the makeup case, whatever it is that you bought, because I sent you there, I get a commission off of that. So, for example, if you see a DIY blogger who did a project, let's say they built a vanity and they use this particular tool to build it.

Just by linking to that tool on Amazon, or maybe to Home Depot or to wherever it is that they're linking to, that will actually earn them a commission.  There's something called cookies, right? Every time you go to a website, you see something that says cookies and you have to accept it or not.

What that does is that cookie allows that website to track you. So if you click on that post and that tool that I use to build that vanity and you go to Amazon, that tracking cookie will last for 24 hours. So if you buy anything on Amazon, in that 24 hours, I will get a commission of that. Now it doesn't cost you anything, but it does help the creator who sent you there.

So whenever you use the affiliate links that your,  favorite creators create, you are financially helping them. And it's not costing you anything, because if you go there, let's say you click on that tool. It takes you to Amazon. You just want to see the tool. You're not interested in buying the tool, but then you realize, oh, you know what?

I wanted to buy those floor mats for my truck. And you buy the floor mat and they're $200. Well, I think right now the advertisement fees might be like around four or 5%. So four or 5% of whatever it is that you buy within that 24 hours from you clicking Amazon will go back to that creator. So think about that sometimes when you're thinking of ways that you could help your creator, because you love all these things a creator is doing, but you never pay them any money. You're getting all this content for free, but this is a way for them to earn from, you know, the value that you've been putting out there. 

Now here's the thing. There's a lot of different places where people could sign up to become an affiliate. There's as I mentioned, Home Depot, uh, sorry, I didn't mention Home Depot yet, but I will mention them in just a moment.

Amazon, you can sign up at Amazon, even if you are not a content creator, for the most part, if you are just on Amazon, let's say you're just on Instagram and you've got 2000 followers on Instagram, but they're pretty involved. Like when you post something, you get a lot of likes. You get a lot of comments.

People love what you post. You can become an Amazon affiliate, so you can start sharing Amazon affiliate links in your description or take them back to your profile. Put a link there to your store, your Amazon store and by clicking on your link, you will earn money. And every month it's just like passive income that just automatically arrives into your bank account.

So think about that. You don't necessarily have to be somebody who's got all these different platforms. You might just have one platform that's working for you, and you might want to try this. So think about that. Also Impact Radius is another site that, is used by a lot of companies, Home Depot uses home Impact Radius.

And I want to say their cookie might last for 30 days. I'm not sure. Amazon's, like I said, only lasts for 24 hours. So after a day, you know, that cookie is gone, that person's on to another place. And some they've clicked somebody else's link, but with impact, there's a lot of different companies. And I think their cookie lasts for 30 days. I may or may not be wrong on that. 

CJ, which used to be called commission junction. I believe they're at just cj.com. Now I will have links down below to all these things we're talking about. There's companies that are listed there, ShareaSale is another one.

And sometimes you might have a favorite clothing company, for example, and you don't know exactly who is managing their affiliate sales. So you could just go, let's say you like anthropology, clothing, for example, you know, just do a Google search anthropology affiliate, and sometimes it will take you to a page on their website and it says, oh, do you love anthropology clothing? Here, sign up to be an affiliate. So as you're on Facebook and Instagram showing off your beautiful clothing, you can go ahead and start putting links into your profile. And there's a whole bunch of tools that allow you once you click that link, it'll take you to  another screen where all your little favorite outfits are there and you can put some affiliate links on all those pictures and boom, you could just make an extra a hundred dollars, $200 a month just because you're showing off what you already love. So that's another way that people make money. And there's really no limit to how much money you can make as an affiliate. I personally don't make hardly any money as an affiliate.

I make up a majority of my money from advertisements and from sponsorships and content creation. Affiliate income is a place where I definitely could spend more focus because all the paint, all the tools, all the things that I love, I could be promoting them more. But for some reason, I just have not. I mean, there's only so many hours in the day, right? You got to pick your avenues, but that is a way that, that a lot of content creators make money. 

Number five is selling your own stuff, selling your own merch. This is another thing that I don't do too well. But if you are somebody who is creating content and you do amazing tutorials, maybe you could put them together into an eBook and sell an e-book.

There's a lot of content creators who are creating eBooks with woodworking plans. Some of them might be like, sign up for my email list and you get five free woodworking plans. While you sign up and you get your free little e-book, but then an email comes out to you,

hey, did you know that I've got a book with 20 woodworking plans, and it can be yours for only  $9.97. I'm sure we all get those emails. It's about what you feel comfortable selling. I've never really felt comfortable selling my own stuff.

There is one thing that I do sell and I'm trying to rear up to, to start selling again is t-shirts. I love my Fred Sanford t-shirts that I created a number of years ago, but they've just been kind of sitting on my blog. I've never really promoted them, but they're so cool, that I really want to start promoting them again.

So I'm trying to work out with a couple of companies, who's going to be the better, company to print these t-shirts. Cause I don't want to print no crappy t-shirts.  I had a company set . Up a website for me actually just last month with selling some Thrift Diving t-shirts and when I got the t-shirts, I was not really that happy with them.

The quality of them were okay. But the fit was not good. I don't like t-shirts that are boxy. I like things that are a little bit more form-fitting. So I wanted to have the option for people who like form-fitting to get form-fitting, people who like boxy to get boxy more, you know, more relaxed and comfort fit.

But anyway, you could sell t-shirts. You could sell eBooks; you could also sell printables. There's a whole bunch of things that you could create yourself and sell. Oh, you know what? Several years ago, I actually met a guy who does private label with safety glasses. And so I had created a Thrift Diving safety glasses, and I have like a whole box of them in my garage and I never sold them.

If you have a YouTube channel, they have merch. Most channels, if you look at the bottom and right underneath the video, it'll have merch that you can purchase. I haven't even set that up yet. And it's been like years since I've had t-shirts and it's just not set up. I will set that up. 

Anyway, I think this is number five, no six is Etsy. You could actually create an Etsy page in order to sell whatever it is that you're creating.

I had done this long time ago, I was making these, fun wooden notebooks, and it's so easy to make. It's just quarter-inch plywood, drill some holes, put some  book rings, and take some notebook paper and put it in there.

And it's so cool. I actually sold a couple of them. One woman was getting married and she wanted to use that as her sign in book. And then the other woman wanted to create something for like a hiking club or something. So I had a couple of orders that I fulfilled, but making your own thing to me,  it took a lot of time in the amount of money I charge,

it's like, okay, I'm working for peanuts here. But depending on what you're making and how many of them you can sell, if you've got people helping you, definitely consider Etsy to be a place to make money. And if you are somebody that's got an audience,  you may not even have a big audience.

Let's say you have 200 people a day reading your blog. Well, that's 200 people. That's 200 people out of those. You could get five or six people who might want to buy whatever it is that you're creating. So I think it's good to have a page, to set it up and at least claim your name so that if you want to sell something there, just list it.

I think the listing fees are not very expensive every month and have it be an option to make money.

 So the next one, I think we're on seven is speaking engagements. This is something that I think takes years to get to, and you have to actively be pursuing this. Now I have actually done some speaking engagements.

There was one person. I don't remember how she found me, but it was in Virginia and she's like, hey, we want you to come and speak about something. I don't even remember what it was. No, I know what it was. It was a furniture painting class. That's what it was. She wanted to do something for her library.

And so I said, okay, I'll come down there. We'll do a, I know this isn't necessarily a speaking engagement, but it's a class. It's something where I'm speaking in front of a live group. So let's make it speaking arrangements / teaching. I think he was maybe like $500. You know, to do a class.

And I came down and just did a little, demonstration thing with some people, but that is an option because once you have started  creating  this world where people know you to be an expert in X, Y, Z, you may not even be an expert, but you've got some knowledge in this field, right? Like maybe you're, maybe you're an amazing decorator.

Why not go to some local libraries? I mean, I don't know how much they would pay, but even just set up your own speaking engagement where you could do like a two-hour seminar on, how to decorate your house on a budget, for example, right.   Have people, pay you a small fee and maybe you team up with a brand to do a giveaway.

So it's not costing you anything. And the brand gets, some, free advertisements, maybe some local companies. This is a way to make some money with what you love to do, which is to  teach people how to decorate your home on a budget. Or maybe you're just like an excellent cook, and you want to do some cooking demonstrations or set up cooking classes.

Or maybe someone wants to hire you to come and do a presentation about something. Now I know there are people who make a ton of money doing speaking engagements. And I think those are people who, they might be in like the financial space. maybe they'll make $10,000, just go into do a speech at some event.

So it's possible. And I know it for me, it's not something that I have actively pursued to make money, but I feel like I could. I feel like I speak well enough when I'm on stage in front of people. And I could speak about a number of issues, related to power tools or how to be a content creator, like there's things that I have learned along the way that I could charge people, whether charging participants or maybe charging an organizer to bring me in, to speak. That is a way that people do make money. 

Okay. Number eight. Memberships. Now this is something that I definitely considered, , but I'm not anywhere close to doing anything like this. But what a membership site is, is a content creator will charge you a monthly fee to be a part of their community and an exchange,

there's certain things that you might get. Maybe you get, like free printables or maybe they give you one-on-one coaching. There's something that they provide in exchange for the fee that you pay every single month. I don't think a lot of DIY creators are doing this. I wouldn't be surprised if I see them doing it more in the future, but it could be that maybe your part of like a woodworking membership where you get one or two free plans every month, so you can print these plans out and make whatever the project is for the month.

 Let me tell you, there's a woman that I met at the Haven Conference, and I won't say who she is, but she's got a membership site and this woman, whatever she was charging her membership people, let me tell you she was making tons of money.

And the only thing it was, well, I say the only thing, I'm not going to discredit what, her craft was, but she made wreaths like beautiful wreaths, and she would every month she would do a video and say, this is the wreath for the month. Here's the list for you to go and buy it. And she, that's what people pay for.

They pay to get an exclusive access to that video for the month of making that wreath. And she's not even providing the material. She is just saying, Hey, here's the materials list. If you use my, you know, my retailers. My kids are upstairs making a ton of noise. What are they doing? But if you use my retailers, you could get a discount, but here's the wreath of the month.

She was making a lot of money. I can't remember the number off hand, but, when I did the number, because she said, oh, I've got this many people in my membership group. And I charge them this much. I was doing the numbers. I'm like what in the world?

So that is something that, you know, once you've been in the business for a while of creating, then that's where a lot of people, mostly in other niches take it to, like a membership. But I don't see very many people in the, in the crafty space doing it, but it's not, impossible. You can do it, but it also takes a lot of time too.

So, you know, if you're somebody that has a membership site, most likely you're not doing a lot of sponsorship stuff. You're not doing a lot of content creation stuff for brands, because if you're just a single person of one, you got to have a team in order to do a lot of this stuff. So that's why most of us like myself who only work by themselves for the most part, we only do maybe a few of these, but the bigger team you have, you could do all these monetization’s and make a killing.

So let's talk about the last one. The last one is Patreon or donations. So Patreon is a website where people could. Donate money to you. So let's say that you want to support your favorite artist. I know there's all kinds of people on Patreon. There's musicians, there's YouTubers, I mean, there's everybody. And it could be that,

okay. You love Serena enough that every month you're going to donate $10 to me. And in exchange for your $10, I will give you, first look access to any video that I post.  You get it first before it goes on YouTube. So those are some of the,  benefits that people will give to you when you give them money every month. You're donating, you're supporting them.

And I think Patreon is good for people like musicians or people who don't make money in other ways. I'm not saying you can't, layer these, you can layer Patreon and still be doing sponsorships and things like that. And I think that's probably a smart idea, but there are some people who might not want to put advertisements on their blog. They might not want to do sponsorships. 

In fact, there is a guy that I know, he's got a really, I mean, he's so successful. In terms of like his skill, but his blog, his blog is, is doing okay. But he refuses to do brand sponsorships.

He just doesn't want to do it. He will do advertisements on his blog. I think he'll do affiliate links, but he does not want to work with brands at all. He doesn't want a brand to dictate what he puts out into the universe. He will sell his woodworking plans. I don't know if he does Patreon or not, but he's someone who maybe would benefit from Patreon because he likes getting the kudos and hey, we're here to support you and just doesn't want to work with brands.

He's like, I couldn't think of anything worse than working with a brand. I don't know why he's so adamant about that. But anyway. 

So those are the nine ways that. Content creators bloggers YouTubers can make money. And I can tell you there's probably even more ways. But those are the ones, just from my knowledge, sitting down thinking about how I've made money or how I've known of other people to make money.

This is how it's being done. And if you are somebody who is in a job that you hate, and you're like, you know what? I don't want to work nine to five for this other company that I've been doing for years, I've always wanted to start a blog. Then I would tell you to do as much research as you can. There are plenty of websites out there that teach you how to blog, how to start a blog.

 I guess that's maybe that's something that we could talk about in an upcoming episode, how to start a blog. I feel like it's changed so much from when I did it, that I don't even know if I could even talk about it anymore because things have changed so much. But I think I'll try to put something together.

We'll talk about that coming up. But if you are somebody who's always wanted to be in this space and you want to be able to make money, then there are ways to do it. I will leave links down below for all of this. But just to let you know that, when I was working outside of the home at that job that I was fired from, I'm probably making three times.

Nope, let's just put it. I'm making more than like three and a half times more than what I made at that job by doing what I'm doing now. And I am so blessed to be in this position and to have learned the skills that I've learned in order to make money doing this. Sometimes it worries me. I'll, I'll be honest with you.

Sometimes it worries me that, you know, something will happen and maybe my channel will explode. Like right now, I told you, I looked at my channel statistics and I mean, gosh, I think I only had like 2000 subscribers in the last month. I remember like at the height when things were really good, it was like eight, nine, 10,000, 15,000 subscribers.

And right now there's just crickets on my channel. And that's the thing with,  this kind of career, you always have to be going. I feel guilty, a lot of times I feel guilty . If I even take time off, because I feel like, if you stop moving, it's going to pass you by, right. There's always going to be some new platform that you have to get a part of.

You got to be a part of it because you missed out. Like I'm not really on Tik TOK. I stopped using Tik TOK when they were talking about there being security issues. Plus it is just a time suck. Raise your hand if you go to Tik Tok and two hours later, you're like, where have I been? , I've been looking at videos for two hours.

I don't want to use my time in that way. I . Want to use it  in other ways, I don't want to spend a lot of my time on Tik Tok and I don't want to spend a lot of time creating stuff on Tik TOK. I much rather would stick to YouTube, the blog and podcast and not necessarily in that order.  So it's been really hard for me to be out in the garage, working on my closet makeover so intently that I haven't really put up any new videos.

So my channels just slowly withering away and my blog is doing okay, but it's at the bottom of a hill from where it was two years ago. So, you know, that needs to be nurtured too. And I'm just a single person of one. I don't have a team. I think I prefer not to work with a team. I like just being Serena, Thrift Diving, you know what I mean?

And my best friend, she tells me all the time a Serena, if you want to grow, you need to get a team. You need to get this. And I'm like, I don't know. I don't think I really want that. I want it to just be me and you. And I'm okay with where I am. If I stay where I am, with it just being me and you.

But I know that I've got to speed it up a little bit, because I've been spending too much time working on this closet makeover. The other stuff just, has been slowly withering away. So it's a commitment to commitment and it's something that if you decide you want to make money at it and you want to replace your full-time career with it,  just know there's a lot of opportunity, but there are no weekends, there are no holidays. You're pretty much on grind all the time to make sure that you don't fall behind. 

All right. So with that, let's talk about next week. So next week, Episode 20, I think what I'm going to do this week, as I mentioned earlier,  I'm going to go back over the last episodes and I'm going to pull out something that was like that aha moment or that gem or that little nugget of information that was just so key. And I'm going to actually use that information. I'm going to report back to you next week to let you know what happened with that. 

Like, for example,  Episode six, we talked about insurance with  Sa El, and he gave some really important information about the fact that we should be looking at our policies more than once every 10 years. So I'm actually going to give my insurance company a call and make sure that, I've got everything in my policy that needs to be there in case something happens to my house. Things have changed in the last 10 years. And I can tell you, we have not changed our insurance policy at all. So I'm going to report back to you next week.

And then I'm going to challenge you to do some of the same things to look at each of the episodes. And what's that one thing that you took from that episode that you can actually apply. So it's going to be like a homework report out next week. I'm going to report out and then you can send me an email and report out to me how you've used all of these episodes to do something different in your life as well.

All right, guys, I am Serena Appiah. I thank you so much for following along these 19 episodes. This has been so much fun and I hope that you've enjoyed learning about how bloggers, content creators, are making money. And hopefully you can do some of this as well and make some extra money on the side. And maybe even quit your day job.

It is possible. All right, guys, I will see you next episode.