How To Make Money Blogging
These are the 7 steps to follow to make money blogging.
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- Setup your own self-hosted blog
- Start publishing great content
- Build organic traffic to your website
- Build a community around your brand
- Start making money by selling ads
- Make money by selling your own products or services
- Make money through affiliate marketing
1. Setup your own self-hosted blog
This is perhaps the easiest step. It’s so easy these days to register a domain name and set up a blog. All you need is a bit of help and pointers in the right direction.
In summary, to start a blog, you need to follow these steps:
Publish your first blog post!
If you don’t already have a blog, get started with Hostinger. You’ll be presented with a wizard that we’ll take you through the process step-by-step. In 30 minutes or less, you’ll have your own self-hosted blog with WordPress installed and you can then proceed to step 2.
Mistakes to avoid when setting up your own blog
As a beginner in blogging, it’s normal to make mistakes. That’s perfectly OK, provided that you learn from your mistakes and do not repeat them.
When it comes to starting a blog, have these tips in mind.
Keep your focus on your main goal – make money online.
Your goal is to reach a point where you will start making money from your blog, you should not forget that.
I’m mentioning this again because I know from experience that a common mistake beginners make is spending too much time and effort in designing the ‘perfect blog’, forgetting that at the early stages (when there is no traffic coming in), nobody cares about your website’s design, and that includes Google.
I’m mentioning this again because I know from experience that a common mistake beginners make is spending too much time and effort in designing the ‘perfect blog’, forgetting that at the early stages (when there is no traffic coming in), nobody cares about your website’s design, and that includes Google.
I’m not saying that website design is not important, it is, but not at the early stages. Your primary goal at this step is to have a blog running and start creating content that will get you traffic.
There is so much work involved in getting traffic (and potential customers), and you should devote your energy to those tasks from the very beginning.
You need to have your own domain and self-hosted blog
As you will read in the how to start a website guide, there is a big difference between hosting your website on a free platform like medium.com and having your own domain and your own self-hosted website.
Starting a blog requires choosing the right hosting solution. Hosting ensures your content is secure and reliable when it reaches your ideal readers.
Make the right decision from the beginning and choose the right platform. By far, a self-hosted WordPress website is your best choice.
Keep it simple
If you are starting out now, try to keep everything as simple as possible. Don’t overcomplicate things because you will get lost in the process.
You have a lot to learn and as you go along, you will change your mind about many things, so save your time and energy for the more complicated tasks.
2. Start publishing great content
So, you have a website up and running, that’s great!
Now it’s time to get to one of the most difficult and challenging tasks of blogging, which is no other than creating the actual content for your blog.
Have this in mind
A blog with no content is nothing, a blog with mediocre content is just another blog in the millions of already published blogs, a blog with great content is a money-making business.
Having said that, it is important to understand from the beginning the importance of content for your blog’s success.
Great (good, superb, or fantastic – you choose) content, will get you traffic (we will see below how), credibility, and make you money (in different ways).
So, what is great content?
Great blog content is not necessarily text, it can be images, videos, infographics, or even audio. BUT, for the purpose of achieving high rankings on Google (and other search engines), your content should be primarily text.
As I mentioned above, at the beginning keep it simple. Later on, for the best results, you can combine text with other forms to make your content more interesting.
Great content has the following characteristics:
- It’s unique for your website (it’s not an exact copy of an already published post)
- It’s free of spelling and grammar mistakes
- It’s meaningful
- It’s insightful
- It’s unbiased
- It’s something that helps people do/understand/learn something
- It’s easy to read
Don’t worry if the above list doesn’t make a lot of sense for now, as you become more experienced, you will understand it better.
3. Build organic traffic to your blog
Let’s recap the process so far.
Your first step is to register your own domain and set up your blog.
Your second step is to decide the topics to cover in your blog and master the keyword research process.
The next step is to start building organic traffic to your blog, and this is what I will discuss in this section.
To make money from your blog, you need organic traffic and not just traffic in general. Organic traffic is generated from search engines (mostly Google).
What makes organic traffic more valuable than any other source of traffic, is the ‘user intent’.
A user that types a query in Google’s search box, has a clear intent. He or she is either looking for an answer to a question, wants to learn something, to find information, or to buy a product.
Their intent is expressed through the actual search terms they use in the search query.
For example, a user searching for “how to do an SEO audit of my website”, it is clear that he is looking for a step-by-step guide on how to perform an SEO audit.
It is very specific and in order to be eligible to rank for that term (or related), you need to provide Google with a thorough guide on how to perform a manual audit.
When you do this properly, your blog posts will eventually rank high on Google and you will start getting targeted organic traffic to your blog.
How to get organic traffic to your blog?
Targeted organic traffic is the most valuable source of traffic for your blog because it’s traffic that converts.
By ‘convert’, we mean a number of things:
- Users are more likely to stay longer on your page, reading your post
- Are more likely to subscribe to your newsletter
- Are more likely to enquire about your services
- Are more likely to buy your products
We will cover each of these in more detail in the last section of the post, but for now, let’s see how you can get more search engine traffic for your blog.
You need great content
Although I have covered this in step 2 above, I’m mentioning this again because it is extremely important. If your content is not up to Google standards, then whatever you will read below, will not work.
You need to get your technical SEO correct
Technical SEO has to do with your blog set up and how well it is optimized for search engines.
Your blogging platform (especially if it’s WordPress), is by default SEO friendly, but still, there are a number of things to check and change to make it even better.
Things like:
- Blog structure
- URL Structure
- XML Sitemap optimization
- Use of Schema Markups
- Canonical URLs
- Optimizing your category and tag pages
- Website Speed
- Mobile Friendliness and Accelerated Mobile Pages
- Webmaster tools SEO
Are all very important in the process.
You need to get your On-Page SEO correct
On-page SEO goes one step above technical SEO and has to do with how you can make your content and webpages more visible to search engines.
4. Build a community around your brand
Once you have a blog with great content and the traffic starts to flow in, your next step is to build a community around your brand.
A common mistake that beginners make is to skip this step and go directly to the money making part but this is not the most efficient way.
Before making any sales (conversions), you first need to gain the user’s trust and this is achieved through community building.
Notice that I used the term ‘brand’ and not just blog and this is done on purpose.
At this stage, you need to stop thinking about your blog as a hobby but you need to change your mindset and approach it like you would approach a ‘real’ business.
We all know that branding is a very important aspect of the success of any business and your blog is not an exception to this rule.
There are many things you can do related to branding (like having a distinct logo, unique slogan, etc.), and community building is one of them.
What is community building for a blog?
In simple terms, what you are trying to do is to create a community of people that will follow your blog, interact with your content, and buy your products or services.
The most common ways to do this is through:
Email marketing
People that subscribe to your email list (aka newsletter), are a valuable asset to your blog. You can use your email list to inform your community when new content is available on your blog, to ask for their feedback, and to sell them products or services.
This will not happen from day one, you first need to gain their trust by providing value through your emails but at the end of the day, it’s one of the most efficient methods to create a community around your blog.
In my case, 20% of the monthly sales of my SEO courses, are generated through my email list.
Social Media networking
Some people don’t like to receive emails, they prefer to use social networks to read their news, communicate with their friends, and generally spend a lot of their time online.
You need to ensure that you have a social presence on the same channels as your potential followers.
There are many social media networks available that you can use but since you are at the beginning of setting up and establishing your blog’s brand, it’s better to concentrate on those channels that are proven to be more effective than others (when it comes to building followers), and these are Facebook and Twitter.
Start by building your fan base on Facebook and also spend 10-15 minutes per day on Twitter.
Remember that your goal is to connect with people that can become potential followers and customers of your blog and not just with anyone that has a social presence. Do some profiling and choose your target audience wisely.
Web push notifications
This is another way to connect with your community. People who register for push notifications are notified every time a new post is published and whenever you want to send them a new message.
5. Start making money by selling ads
Did you notice how many things you need to do to get to the money-making part?
Although this blog post is about making money from your blog, almost ¾ of the content is related to activities that come before that and this is how blogging for money works in real life.
As a reminder, it is necessary to understand that you will not make money from your blog if:
- You don’t have enough organic traffic
- You don’t have a decent email list
- You don’t have a community of loyal followers.
- You don’t have content that converts
Assuming that you have successfully completed the above tasks, let’s see how you can make money online and reward yourself for the hard work.
Selling Ad Space: Google AdSense
I’m a great AdSense fan, I admit it! I’ve been an AdSense publisher for more than 15 years now and although there are alternatives, Google Adsense it’s still one of the best ways to make money online.
I’m using Adsense on my blogs and so far, I’ve earned a nice 6 figure amount.
I’m not using Adsense on this blog because as you will read below, there are cases where AdSense is not the best way to monetize your blog.
6. Make money by selling your own products or services
I mentioned above that I don’t use AdSense on this blog. The reason is simple. The purpose of this blog is not to make money from advertising, but it’s the channel I use to promote my Digital Marketing Courses and services.
Think about it this way: When you sell ad space on your blog what happens? You only get a portion of the money since 30% goes to the middleman (advertising company) and the advertiser is making a profit from your content and hard work.
To minimize the money loss, you should consider creating and selling your own products or services.
Of course, this is not as easy as it sounds. It requires a lot of effort and hard work to create products that other people will be willing to pay money for it BUT it’s the best way to build a long-lasting online business.
Having your own products will maximize your profit and you know that every effort you make to get more traffic will make you more sales.
The easiest type of products to create and sell online through your blog are ebooks and online courses.
Before spending any time and possibly money to create your own product, you should do some homework.
7. Make money through affiliate marketing
Last but not least, another way to make money from your blog is by selling other people’s products (digital or physical) for a commission.
This is generally known as affiliate marketing. Here is an overview of the process.
- You find which products you want to promote
- You enroll in their affiliate marketing program, and you get a unique link and banners to use
- You add the links/banners to your blog
- When someone clicks on the links, they are redirected to the website of the provider
- When they make a purchase, you get the agreed commission
It sounds good, right?
Well, is not as easy as it sounds. You still need to find the right products to promote, and you still need to test if your readers and community are willing to pay money to buy the products you will suggest.
Some things to know before getting into affiliate marketing:
- Don’t promote products or services you don’t personally use. You don’t want to lose your user’s trust. Only promote products you know from personal experience that will help your readers.
- Google does not like websites or web pages whose sole purpose is to make money from affiliate marketing. Your website should provide real value to the user, without being too promotional.
- Don’t overdo it. It’s ok to suggest products in your blog’s content but not all the time. Good affiliate marketers don’t promote products all the time. They first provide value to their readers and then suggest products.
- If you are on WordPress, read this guide on how to handle your affiliate links (the white hat way).
If you want to find out more about affiliate marketing, read Pat Flynn’s blog, he is one of the most successful affiliate marketers on the Internet today.
Conclusion
Blogging for money is not a theoretical concept. Thousands of bloggers are making money through their blogs either by selling ad space, their own products/services, or through affiliate marketing.
All these successful bloggers have some things in common:
- They have blogs with great content.
- They have managed to build communities around their blogs.
- They use more than one way to make money. They have their own products but they also make money from affiliate marketing and selling ad space.
- They have been blogging for years and it took them a number of years to get to the point of making a living from their blogs.
If you have made it to this point, I will let you go with this:
Everyone can learn how to make money blogging. The amount of money you will make depends on how much work you are willing to allocate to make it happen.
It’s not an easy job and it’s not something that will generate results in a few months or even years, it will take time and it needs a LOT of patience. BUT, as I mentioned above, once it happens it’s one of the best jobs in the World!