I’ve always wanted to make money with my own psychology blog. And now that this dream is finally coming true, I want to help others do the same.

Do you dream of blogging about psychology, too? Do you want it to become your full-time or supplemental income? Then move closer. I’ll tell you my three exact monetization strategies for this exciting and unconventional niche: 

1. Ads
2. Digital product (eBook)
3. Service (consultations).

Disclaimer: This blog post contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no cost to you.

Ads

Yes, ads are my bread and butter. They help me “keep the lights on” and pay for all that fancy hosting, domain, blogging tools, etc.

But not just any ads! I’ve partnered up with an ad management company called Mediavine, and I cannot say enough good things about them!

Mediavine has been my golden dream ever since I first read about it in some blogger’s income report. I couldn’t believe the money these bloggers were making with just ads! I’ve had a brief experience with Google Ads, and I think I made about $10 in a whole year. 

So I researched it obsessively, and I found out that Mediavine is an independent ad management company that gives publishers (bloggers) creative control over ad displays, stellar customer support, and unprecedented earning rates. Sign me up!

Initially, I hesitated to put ads on my site for several reasons. First, do I like seeing ads everywhere online? No. It’s not what the Internet was supposed to be.

Second, I was worried that the site would look cluttered and turn people off from my content.

Third, ads can also slow things down quite a bit. So in our world where instant gratification is king, a slow website would be a disaster.

But I was worried for nothing! Mediavine guys don’t just cram your site with ads. The ad placements are extensively tested and optimized to ensure faster websites and better user experiences.

(And they don’t have an affiliate program, so everything I’m saying is 100% my honest review: I have no skin in the game.)

Basically, they keep your site fast and pretty while maximizing your revenue! 

So I worked hard for a few months, growing my site to meet Mediavine’s traffic requirement (at the time it was 25K monthly sessions). I was adding new posts and promoting on Pinterest like crazy.

This is when I also took a plunge and finally signed up for Tailwind – a Pinterest scheduler, and bought an e-course that took my Pinterest game to the next level.

My efforts paid off! Mediavine approved my application, even though I had a little under 24K sessions. Here’s the email that was the biggest morale boost in my blogging career:

Although I’ve joined Mediavine at an auspicious time (March 2020) when advertising rates were historically low, my earnings grew every month, and they still keep growing. Woo-hoo!

OK, so how do you get your beautiful blog into Mediavine? The company only has a few requirements.

Mediavine Requirements

1. Good standing with Google.
2. The majority of site visitors have to be from the U.S.
3. And 50,000 sessions (not pageviews!) in the last 30 days, per Google Analytics.

Sessions is a more accurate metric that shows how many times people visit your site, rather than how many pages they’re viewing. Usually, the default length of the session is 30 minutes. So if a visitor is inactive for half an hour and then comes back to your site, Google views it as a second session.

To find out how many sessions your site had in the last 30 days, go to the Audience tab in the left-hand column of Google Analytics, click on Overview, then Sessions.

Initially, the session requirement was set to 25K. But then Mediavine raised the bar, citing the need to maintain its commitment to service quality.

Mediavine only has about 7,500 publishing partners. Considering that there are millions of blogs out there, it’s a tiny number. So they decided to scale their growth to remain exclusive and high-quality.

It does make it harder to get accepted. But on the plus side, once you’re in, you’re literally getting the best ad company in the business.

A few words about the rates (RPM or CPM): they are not uniform for every blog. It depends on the site’s niche, authority, ranking, as well as other factors.

The psychology niche isn’t as profitable as, say, lifestyle or parenting niches. Still, Mediavine rates are vastly superior to Google Ads and most other ad management companies out there.

Ever since I joined Mediavine, my favorite part of the day is waking up and checking how much I made the day before.

Seeing growth and actual income is an incredible motivation to keep writing and publishing. Here’s what Mediavine dashboard looks like:

Remember: blogging is a tough business. It’s hard work for many months or even years before you see any rewards, or before you can sit back and put it on autopilot. So having some of that work pay off is very gratifying.

Ad revenue comprises a lion share of my blogging income. It’s also my favorite kind of income because it’s completely passive.

Digital product (eBook)

I’ve had over 90,000 monthly views, and I’ve written a good number of blog posts about one specific topic: difficult grandparents. In fact, I became somewhat of an authority on the issue. So the decision to write an eBook was logical.

That was my strategy: pick the most popular blog post, and then expand it into an eBook. Since the toxic grandparent post accounted for nearly half of my traffic, I figured: that’s the horse I’m going to bet on.

Writing “The Toxic Grandparent Handbook” took me about 6 weeks. I could have finished sooner, but the perfectionist in me kept adding new parts, rewriting old parts, and tweaking and tweezing until I was exhausted and hated the damn thing.

Wanting to prove to myself that I could do it all from start to finish, I didn’t outsource anything.

I designed the cover using Canva, edited it with Grammarly (premium plan), turned a Word document into a pdf file, created a sales page with a DIY eBook landing page template, and sent out a few marketing emails to my email list.

My subscribers list was tiny at the time (about 300). So I figured, email marketing isn’t going to be that crucial.

Instead, I just put the link to the eBook sales page after every blog post and redirected my efforts back to writing and publishing new posts. 

Even with this minimal marketing, I see sales coming in every day. This is the kind of income I always dreamed about! You wake up in the morning and go check how much money you made while you were sleeping.

Am I going to write another eBook? You betcha.

Are you considering writing an eBook, too?

If you’re running a psychology blog (or a blog in a similar niche), your monetization options are quite limited. The way most bloggers make money is with affiliate sales.

But what can you promote in the psychology field besides books and courses? So creating a digital product like an eBook makes a lot of sense.

After you create an eBook, there’s one critical decision you have to make: where do I sell it? Do I sell it on Amazon or my website? Both options have pros and cons. 

Amazon vs. your website

The pros of releasing it on Amazon or another online marketplace is the massive exposure you can get. The downside is that most eBooks on those platforms are priced between $0.99 and $2.99.

They also charge a fee for every sale, so you would have to sell a lot to make a profit.

The pros of releasing the book on your website are keeping 100% of the profits, setting your own price, and having your site be a one-stop shop for all your content.

The cons are a smaller number of visitors and potential buyers, and a need to consistently market the book.

I chose to go with my website as a selling platform because I have a good number of visitors, and I like having total control of the book. 

Plus, the process is so simple. I set up a SendOwl account and chose their starter plan ($9/month). Then I uploaded the book, connected PayPal and Stripe, and voila! It takes care of the rest.

The beauty of SendOwl is, I only pay $9 a month, no matter how many copies I sell. Even if I sell just one book that month, it covers the membership.

And if I want to update the book with new info or make a correction, I just upload a new version of the book, and I’m all set.

Services

After writing and publishing posts for a while, I decided to add a service to my website. Initially, it was an email consultation.

If you’re writing a psychology blog (or emotional abuse recovery blog, like me), you’ll get a lot of comments from people telling you their stories or asking your advice about their issues.

Now, that’s a little controversial in itself: should you give advice, or should you just refer people to mental health professionals?

Personally, I try not to give advice. But if it’s a situation I’m intimately familiar with, I can share my experience and what I know about the subject.

Besides, I find that what people need the most in these situations is validation, not advice.

Now, after a while, answering the comments (and I do try to respond to every single one) can feel like a full-time job.

So I decided to keep my responses short(ish) and offer an email consultation service to people who want a more detailed, informative reply.

Overall, an email consultation is a good option for someone who wants information or an answer to a specific question.

But I found that most people find an email to be too impersonal. Besides, not everything can be expressed in the written word. Some people prefer talking. 

So I also added phone and Facetime options, in addition to email. 

It’s odd for me to even talk about my consulting services as a monetization strategy because it’s not that to me.

I am incredibly honored and grateful when someone decides to confide in me, and I don’t look at it as a way to make a quick buck. 

The experience is often spiritual, and I would never reduce it to just another revenue stream. However, I do ask for compensation because I value my time and my emotional investment.

If you feel like you have something to offer as a consultant and you want to add similar services to your website, remember: it’s a big responsibility.

I’d been writing and researching these topics for a decade before I offered consultations. I’m also in the process of earning my doctorate in psychology.

Still, it doesn’t make me a licensed psychologist, and I make it very clear. Also, if someone wants a consultation, and I think they need more help than I can give them, I refer them to another professional.

So be very thoughtful when you offer these services, and never misrepresent yourself.

Final Thoughts

So there you have it…3 ways I make money with a small psychology blog. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: there’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money, or to be compensated for your efforts. 

But the psychology niche isn’t like other blogging niches where making money is the point in and of itself. Psychology or emotional abuse recovery isn’t for making a quick buck. It’s for people who have a genuine desire to help others heal, or to heal themselves (which is actually one and the same).

So if you do want to start your own psychology blog, or narcissistic abuse awareness blog, or relationships blog, I hope you have a passion for it. Because if you do, making money is a piece of cake.