3 Ways to Monetize Your Blog with Kelly Radcliff

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This week, it’s my pleasure to introduce to you all Kelly Radcliff of the blog The Tattered Pew, where she’s been blogging for about five years out of her home in Colorado that she shares with four kiddos and her hubby. And this is not her first rodeo. She has been a kindergarten teacher for over 20 years and most recently took the leap from teaching over to full-time blogger with the help of 3 unique ways she’s monetized her blog.

3 Unique Ways to Monetize Your Blog

Kelly has some great ideas to share with us on how she puts her blog to work. She has turned a blogging dream into her full-time income in five short years with the help of some unique ideas and 1 you’ve probably never heard of.

Listen in as she shares with us all about her:

Weekly collab roundup
Affiliate income with the Amazon Home Program
Guest posting for a bigger blog
Renting her space out for the big bucks

In this episode, we cover:

How Kelly came up with the name for her blog
How she used her blogging connections to start a weekly roundup that drives traffic
Tips on how to start your own weekly round up
How to rent your space out for income
Tips for getting started as a guest blogger
The importance of connections with other bloggers

Links and resources mentioned during this episode:

Visit Kelly’s website, The Tattered Pew
Become a Host on Home Studio List
Check out Kelly’s listing on Home Studio List
Connect with Kelly on Facebook and Instagram or TikTok
More info on the Haven Conference
Connect with Melanie on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest
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Complete Transcript of this Episode

So, Kelly, welcome to the podcast. I’m so glad you’re here.

Kelly: Oh, thank you, Melanie. I am so happy to be here too.

So tell us a little bit about this transition. Like, what led up to you making this change in your life?

Kelly: Well, it was a total God thing for me, honestly. After blogging for five years, that had been a huge passion. I’ve always loved teaching, but these past couple of years with COVID, I’ll be honest, teaching really hasn’t been the same. And I kind of felt my passion was shifting more to my blogging, and so I started praying about that, and then the Lord started opening some more doors for me, and it was very clear that this was the direction I was meant to go. And so after 20 years, I thought, hey, if this is where you want to go, Lord, I’m ready.

How exciting. So tell us about The Tattered Pew. How did you come up with that name? What is the story behind that?

Kelly: People ask me this all the time because it’s unusual, but so it’s really kind of a simple little story. My mom has a pew in her home, and my sister has a pew in her home, and I’ve always loved the symbolism of the church pew and people that sit there and think about them talking to the Lord and all that they’ve been through. And so when we were out shopping one day at a flea market, my husband found me my very own Tattered Pew. It was beautiful at a flea market, and I brought it home, and I decided that I wanted to take on that name. I started on Instagram first, and so I thought, oh, this will be a cute name, The Tattered Pew. It’s unusual. So that’s a little bit of the background. And it’s stuck. Yep. I love it. I know.

Take us back to the beginning steps. When you started on Instagram, how did you start the blog? What did you think you wanted to write about? Did you know what you were doing?

Kelly: Great question. So I kind of stumbled onto Instagram. I’ve always grown up decorating with my mom from day one. We did my whole college house and redone flea market flips and finds of all furniture kinds. It was great. And so I’ve always watched my mom do this, and I have always done it on the side. So I thought, hey, I could share a little bit of this on Instagram. And then when I was on Instagram, it kind of led me to noticing that other people had blogs, and I’d always followed blogs like Miss Mustard Seed and some of the bigger bloggers. And I thought, oh, goodness, this looks a lot of fun. I would love to showcase and show people how I’ve been able to do fun DIY. And so I thought, okay, I’ll give the blog world a shot. I knew nothing, and I taught myself everything. I watched videos. It was pretty much like I just went for it. And so it’s been five years of a lot of work, and I figured out a lot of stuff, and I’ve met a lot of wonderful people that have helped me along the way, and now I’m ready to go full time.

I love that. And so when I know that we met through a little lab that you do on a weekly basis called welcome Home Saturday, tell us a little bit about how you started that and how that has helped or changed anything in your blogging business.

Kelly: Yes. So as a new blogger, I was looking for ways to connect with other bloggers as well as to drive traffic and up my page views. And so I came up with this idea of reaching out to other bloggers who were maybe just a little bit further ahead in their blogging game than myself and asking them to join me weekly for what I like to call Welcome Home Saturday. It started as Welcome Home Sunday, and we’ve transitioned to Welcome Home Saturday. I rotated in a couple of different bloggers. Throughout. I mean, it’s been like three years I think, that I’ve been doing this. And these other bloggers are just a little bit further ahead in their blogging game as I mentioned.

And so how it works is we ask guest bloggers to join us. So there are six of us ladies who consistently share in a roundup form every Saturday, and then we invite one new guest blogger. So what happens is we put a roundup at the end of our blog post and link to each blogger’s different posts from that week. So that means we’re getting traffic from six or seven different bloggers and their community and their email list. And it actually helped explode some of my traffic. It’s been great. And I know the girls who join us as a guest or the girls who host with me on Saturdays have seen great results as well. And my subscribers and readers really enjoy it because then they get to see a little bit of more than just my blog post, but my friend’s blog post, love that.

How did you know to do that?

Kelly: I wish that I had come up with it on my own, but I met Yvonne from Stone Gable, who I have followed her blog for years, and I met her at Haven and she kind of does something very similar and I adapted that from her and kind of put my own little spin on it, and that’s where I found out how to do it. And it’s working.

I love that. So tell us a little bit about your journey. Like, how have you grown your readership over the years to the point where you’re actually breaking from your full-time income?

Kelly: Yes. So this has been a huge part of why I am able to leave teaching and go blogging full time. I have built my email list which has been really fun, done a few like freebies on the blog but mostly I’ve done it through blog hops or just Pinterest or Facebook or Instagram. But I’m almost to about 4000 subscribers now which means those are the people who are getting my emails and they’re getting them weekly. It used to be weekly but now I’m changing it to Go whenever I put a blog post out. But I don’t know, it’s been nice to see the growth because people have become more and more interested and so then that has enabled me to either get different opportunities to bring income in different ways to my blog. And my husband has been so supportive because when I told him well I think I’m ready to go, you know, like full-time blogging and I think it’s time for me too. Closed the door and teaching for a little while. He was like, well, okay, I think you’re ready, too. He’s been able to see the transition and, like, the switch got you.

So tell us a little bit about all of those ways that you’re you’re monetizing right now.

Kelly: Yeah. So this is fascinating. I was telling one of my friends because they were like, how are you doing this? I don’t understand how you’re going to leave teaching. You can make money on a blog. It’s like, yes. Crazy. One of the ways I make it is affiliate marketing. So I use Reward Style and Like to Know it. But I also use Amazon and I am in the Amazon Home program, which has been incredible. And I just did my first Amazon Prime Day, which was really fun. And my subscribers really responded well. They loved that. It was fun. And it was fun for me to shop with and for them. So affiliate marketing is huge.

I do a guest blog post over on the Miss Mustard Seed blog. I do a monthly blog post, so I get paid for that. And I also have ads on my blog that bring in some passive income for me as well.

This is new. This is cool. I just signed our home up for Home Studio List .com, which was pretty cool, where basically you put your home up for hourly rent. Basically, these companies can come in and shoot commercials. They can come in and rent it for video, anything. And we just recently had our first listing. It was a two-day listing. And they came in and shot a mini-documentary series and a Chevy commercial. Like with Chevy. It was crazy. Yeah. So that’s another way I’m trying to think of. I think that’s most of my streams of income.

Tell us more about this Home Studio gig. So does your home have to be something spectacular or weird or different or awesome or what has to be the situation?

Kelly: No, not really. I think you just have to be willing to open up your home to strangers. Like, they had 20 people come in for this crew, this video crew. I don’t know. I know a lot of home decor bloggers who have done it. One of my other friends, Deb from Seeking Lavender Lane, I saw her do it. And then I also had the opportunity to have our home photographed for Country Sampler, farmhouse Style. And they sent a stylist who lives here in Colorado, and she has her home listed, and she said, Kelly, you have got to do this. This is the easiest way to bring in income. You can say yes or no, and it is hit or miss because you never know who’s going to sign up. But this first one was pretty big for us. And I thought, well if I can get one of these every month or every other month, it’ll be good.

But. What are we talking? Like, what kind of income is that on average?

Kelly: Yeah, good question. So my house rents for $195 an hour, and there’s a two hour minimum. And home studio list does take a cut, so they do get a percentage. I think it’s like 30%. But 1s they ended up being here for 10 hours. And even with the cut, I still made quite a bit. It was a very nice chunk for 10 hours. And we could still sleep at our home at night even though they were here two days. It was fabulous.

We had what did you do?

Kelly: Well, luckily, my family lives in town, so we went over to my sisters, and my mom, and we took the dogs out to the dog park. That was a little tricky. The dogs are tricky, but one of my daughters was at camp, and so I figured mostly during the day, it’s easy to get out. It got a little tougher in the evening.

Well, that’s so exciting and inspiring to think that you can add that. So we’ll definitely put all the links to that application process and the show notes and everything for people who are interested in checking that out. I’d like to dive a little deeper into your guest posting. So how did you get your gig with guest posting?

Kelly: Yes. So I have this green dresser that I was kind of known for over on Instagram, and I painted it in the color boxwood by Miss Mustard Seeds using their milk paint. And it was what I was known for, like, right off the bat on Instagram for probably the first couple of years. I don’t share it as much anymore, but I love their paint. So I was constantly tagging, doing articles already on my own blog and posts about how much I love their paint, and how easy it is to use. And then when I was at Haven again, the blogging conference, which is going on right now, which I’m sad to be missing, but I was at you. I know. Like, my first year not going.

And just for you guys that are listening, I do have a blog about blog posts. I do have a podcast episode with Kristen Stockdale, with Haven. I’ll link that here below too, so you can hear all about that conference we’re talking about. Okay.

Kelly: It’s a great blogging conference, and you make so many connections. So the biggest connection I made was I met the gal, Jen Baker, who does their creative, like, runs through Instagram. She also runs a lot of their blog, and she was at Haven, and we made a connection, and we became friends. And then they ended up selling Miss Mustard Seed milk paint. Marion, she sold her paint. As part of the business and some new ownership took over and they were looking to add guest bloggers. And so my connection with Jen developed and she asked if I would be willing to blog for them over there wasn’t a month, and so after talking to them for a little while, I thought, yes, this would be a great opportunity and it has been so much fun and so incredible and I love working for them.

So you just create a piece of content each month in exchange for not only exposure because I’m assuming that you’re able to put your own links into it as well as your blog and stuff like that and then consistent like income as well.

Kelly: Yes, it’s a win-win, for sure.

Definitely. Have you thought about expanding that and doing it for other brands?

Kelly: I have thought about that. They’ve actually asked if any of us would have quite a few bloggers for them and if any of us would be willing to do more than one blog post. But I’ve thought about other brands too because I think that would be fun. I think it would be fun, but I think for now I’m trying to focus a little bit more on my blog as well. Now that I have more time, well, I will be having more time and so I don’t know if that’s something to think about for the future, for sure.

Yes, there are so many ways to monetize your blog and you are definitely capitalizing on some amazing ones. In fact, a couple of new ones that we don’t know, we didn’t know about. So I’m so glad. Kelly, thank you so much for being on the podcast and taking time out of your busy schedule. The summer talk to us. I want to make sure that you tell us where we can find you online.

Kelly: Over on Instagram. You can find me at The Tattered Pew and then the same for the blog, The Tattered Pew.com. I’m also on Pinterest and TikTok and all the fun places. All the fun places.

So I’ll be sure to link all of that below so you guys can reach out to Kelly directly if you want to. And I just appreciate you being here.

Kelly: Yeah, thank you.

Thank you. Bye bye.

Kelly: Alright, see you later.