The First $100: How to Monetize a Small Blog Fast

Day 31  the first commission notification. $58 from a single Shopify trial signup. That moment changes everything.

The question I get asked most often even more than "how do I start?" is: "When will I actually make money?" So this post is dedicated to answering it with real numbers. I'm going to show you exactly how to make your first $100 from a blog with under 1,000 monthly visitors in 2026, using the same four income streams I activated in Month 1 and Month 2 on this site.

Here's the mindset shift that makes everything easier: your first $100 doesn't require scale. It requires the right monetisation mix. A blog earning $100/month with 800 visitors is using smarter tools than a blog earning $12/month with the same traffic. The traffic isn't the bottleneck the strategy is.

I hit the $100 milestone at Month 2, Day 47. Here's exactly how it broke down and more importantly, how to replicate it.

Why Your First $100 Has Nothing to Do With Ad Revenue

The biggest mistake new bloggers make with monetisation is installing Google AdSense on Day 1 and waiting for the money to roll in. Let me be blunt: AdSense with under 10,000 monthly sessions earns roughly $2–$8 per month. That's not a living. That's barely a coffee.

Display ad income is a volume game. Affiliate income is a precision game. At 800 monthly visitors, one well-placed affiliate link for a high-converting product can earn more in a single day than AdSense would earn in an entire month.

Here are the four income streams that got me to $100, ranked by how much each contributed at low traffic:

Income Stream #1: High-Ticket CPA Offers (The $58 Shopify Commission)

My single biggest early earner was a Shopify CPA offer through Impact $58 per free trial signup. The reader doesn't pay anything. They just start a free trial. The commission hits my account the moment they activate it.

Why does this work at low traffic? Because the conversion action is low-friction. Clicking "start a free trial" is a yes someone gives without spending money. Compared to asking someone to buy a $200 product, the conversion rate is 3–5x higher. At 800 monthly visitors, even a 0.5% conversion rate on a targeted post generates 4 signups = $232/month from a single article.

I wrote one post specifically designed to capture this: a "best tools for new bloggers" roundup where Shopify is recommended alongside other tools in context. The link sits naturally in the Tools section of that post not in a banner, not in a popup. Just a sentence explaining why I use it and a link.

Income Stream #2: ShareASale Merchant Commissions

ShareASale contributed $22.40 of my first $100 across two merchants: Bluehost ($15 flat fee for a hosting referral) and Empower Personal Capital ($7.40 from a partial commission on a lead). Both of these links were embedded naturally in posts not in dedicated "review" articles, just mentioned in context while discussing tools.

The key insight with ShareASale at low traffic: target the highest EPC merchants in your category first. EPC (Earnings Per Click) tells you how much other affiliates are earning per click in that merchant's program. A merchant with $90 EPC means that on average, every 100 clicks to that merchant generates $90. That's your signal place those links first.

Income Stream #3: ConvertKit Recurring Referral Commission

This is the one most bloggers completely miss. ConvertKit's affiliate program pays 30% recurring monthly commission for every person you refer to a paid plan for as long as they stay subscribed. I referred one person in Month 1. They pay $29/month. I earn $8.70/month from that one referral, every month, indefinitely.

That doesn't sound huge. But it compounds. Two referrals = $17.40/month. Five = $43.50/month. Ten = $87/month. All recurring. All from referrals made weeks or months ago. This is the definition of passive income and it's available to any ConvertKit user with a free account from Day 1.

Income Stream #4: Amazon Associates + The AdSense Reality Check

Amazon Associates contributed $5.10 to my first $100 the smallest slice by far. That came from 3 book sales and 1 kitchen item that a reader bought after clicking through from a product mention. The 24-hour cookie meant most of the clicks that didn't convert on the same day were lost.

Amazon is valuable for building the habit of linking and for the trust signal it provides (readers trust Amazon links), but at under 1,000 monthly visitors, it will rarely be your biggest earner. That's fine it requires zero effort once the links are placed.

On AdSense: I applied and got approved in Month 3. Here's what the dashboard looked like in the first full month of running ads and why I almost immediately turned them down:

My Full Income Breakdown: Days 1–47

Here's every dollar earned in the first 47 days of this blog unedited, including the zeros:

Your First $100 Checklist: What to Do This Week

If you've followed Posts #001–004 in this series, your blog is set up, your affiliate accounts are live, your traffic is building, and your SEO is working. Here's the final piece the monetisation checklist to get to $100:

The first $100 is a proof-of-concept milestone. Once you've crossed it, you know the model works. From there, every new post adds more links, more entry points, and more compounding commissions. The second $100 typically arrives faster than the first. The third faster still.