Want to start a blog that makes money? Want to create a winning portfolio of your work and see it promoted? Well, you can do this. You’re one step away from making money with your writing. You could also earn passive income by selling advertising space on your site or even starting an affiliate business for outside companies who want to advertise their products on your blog, which can be a lucrative trade. You may have heard the popular saying “you get what you give”. Spotifystorm will help you to get your way easy by having more social engagement to grow your business. This saying is certainly true when it comes to blogging in general. The only way you make money blogging is by writing, especially if you want to create a blog that makes money. This article will help you build an engaging blog with the right monetization strategies and tactics to put your work in front of potential customers.
Table of Contents
So what do we mean by the easy way?
1.Choose a niche that has a large audience.
Seven Money-Making Niches
Why I Chose The Lifestyle Niche
What if you have many interests?
- Get hosting… PAID HOSTING
Why Free is NOT an Option
The Two Most Popular Hosting for Beginners
Why I Signed Up with Siteground
- Install WordPress and select a theme.
- Write your first article/blog post.
- Link your blog to Google Analytics.
- Promote your content on Pinterest.
Create a business account.
- Create a free giveaway for your readers.
- Continue writing and pinning like crazy, until you reach 25,000 sessions per month.
Not every content is created equal.
How Pinterest Can Help You
How long does it take?
Never EVER give up.
- Apply to Mediavine.
Earning money from ads is a short-term play.
Blogging Resources for FREE
Act now.
First of all, let’s define what’s easy.
By easy, I don’t mean less or no work.
If you want to make money blogging, you should NEVER think that this is less work.
Maybe ten years from now it will be. But for a startup, this is going to be A LOT of work.
So what do we mean by the easy way?
Many bloggers earn thousands of dollars every month because they are selling their own products or offering their own services. Their blogs work as a marketing arm for their products and services.
There are also those who do not have their own products or services to offer, but they make money online by recommending other people’s products to their audience. When someone buys through their links, they get a commission.
The easy way won’t require you to do any of that.
All you have to do is populate your blog with content and get enough readers every month.
That’s how this blog makes money (after one year of blogging).
If you can post one to two articles every week, your blog will reach a point when it has enough readers already, and you will start making money.
That’s the easy way.
And that is what this post is all about.
1.Choose a niche that has a large audience.
You might have come across several websites already that tells you to pick a niche where your passion lies. In short, they tell you to write about your passion, and the money will come rolling soon.
This is not totally wrong, but not exactly correct either.
Whether you write about your passion, or something else doesn’t matter. What matters is that you should have readers.
No matter how passionate you are writing about a topic, if there are only a few who are interested in what you’re saying, you will not get a lot of readers. And readers (enough of them) are what you need to make money from your blog.
So to make sure that your blog will have the audience that you need, rather than focusing on yourself and on your passions, you should focus on others and what they are looking for.
That’s how you pick a niche.
Seven Money-Making Niches
If you want to increase your chances of making money from your blog within a year, you need to focus on one of these niches.
how to make money
personal finance
health and fitness
food
beauty and fashion
personal development
lifestyle
I learned about this seven niches from Paul Scrivens, the man who is crazy enough to run 13 blogs across different niches just to gain knowledge on how each works.
Read more about it in his post: The Beginner’s Guide to Choosing a Money Making Blog Niche.
I’m so glad I learned about this before I started blogging because that took most of the guesswork out. Finally, I knew the different niches where I had the greatest chance of making money online.
Why I Chose The Lifestyle Niche
Simple… because the topic that I was really interested in belongs to the lifestyle niche.
And that is… how to live a simple life.
I have lived a simple life for years so I knew I could write about it. But where to start, that was the question.
One way to simplify life is to have less things so I thought decluttering would be perfect. I looked around my bedroom and I thought hmmm… it needed some decluttering too!
So that was like hitting two birds with one stone. I started decluttering my bedroom, then I made a blog post out of it.
You can read about it here: How to Declutter Your Bedroom in an Easy, Energizing and Fun Way for Just 15 Minutes a Day!
I launched Simple Life of a Lady with that post only.
After that I found myself pretty interested with the organization ideas that I saw on Pinterest. And that’s how I figured out that I was going to write about organization topics next.
I can’t say that my interest in it was enough to call it a passion. I am not an organization pro. It’s just that, somehow I was interested because I was not a very organized person and I wanted to learn to be one.
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Okay, enough about me.
Let’s talk about you.
Among those seven niches, which one interests you?
You don’t have to be passionate about it. Just be interested.
Start with that.
What if you have many interests?
You can do what I did with Simple Life of a Lady.
I started with home organization – decluttering, organizing, cleaning, being productive. Then I wrote about bullet journal, living with purpose and meal planning.
And now the post you’re reading is about blogging.
All the posts that you see in this site are topics that I’m interested into.
If you take the time to read all of them, you’ll see that somehow, they are all interrelated.
All of them are pieces and fragments of just one thing – living a simple life, the kind of simplicity that I’ve defined in my mind, the kind of life that I choose to live.
So if you have many interests, that’s okay. What’s important right now is you start with one of them.
- Get hosting… PAID HOSTING
I run this blog on WordPress and this is also what I recommend you do. But for WordPress to run, you will need a host for it.
A website host is someone who allows you to rent a space in the internet. It’s like buying or leasing land so that you can build your own house on it.
There are sites that will host your blog for free. But because you want to make money from your blog soon, you should NEVER settle for a free hosting.
Why Free is NOT an Option
With free hosting, you will NOT be able to fully own and control your blog.
You’ll be limited to the templates available. So you will not be able to design the site as you want it.
Your blog can also be removed for many reasons. And you just have no control over it.
Some would put advertisements on your blog. They will make money from it, but not you.
You also won’t have any say on what type of ads they put in it. They can put pop ads on all the pages of your blog and that can be really annoying to your readers.
And then, when you want to make money on your blog by putting ads, they won’t allow you. That removes your chance of earning passive income from ads.
Why would you settle for a blog over which you have no real control? Worse, it affects your money making potential.
Do yourself a favor… DON’T settle for free hosting.
Get a reliable web host.
Don’t think of it as an expense. See it as an investment.
The Two Most Popular Hosting for Beginners
When I searched for a host for my blog, there were two that always came up in all my research.
Bluehost and Siteground.
These two are the most popular among new bloggers.
A lot of bloggers recommend Bluehost. I was about to sign up for it too, but something made me change my decision.
Why I Signed Up with Siteground
Before I chose my hosting company, I did a lot of research first.
One main difference of the two was in the price.
Siteground’s Startup Plan was at $3.95 per month.
Bluehost’s Basic Plan was also at $3.95. But if you continue with the sign up process, they will offer it to you at a lower price, as much as $2.65 only per month.
Plus they give a free domain when you sign up!
By the way, the $2.65 monthly price only applies if you register for 36 or 60 months. The price changes when you decide to sign up for one or two years only.
Siteground has no offer like Bluehost’s and you don’t get a free domain.
So you can guess why I preferred Bluehost then.
I was about to sign up already, but more research led me to look into something else – outstanding performance and responsive support.
That’s when I found many complaints against Bluehost, complaints that I never found in Siteground.
What was more interesting was that many of the bloggers who shared their bad experiences with Bluehost switched to…
You can guess… Siteground!
I still believe that it can be a case-to-case basis. Just because some bloggers encountered problems with Bluehost doesn’t mean I will too.
But there’s also this chance that what happened to many of their customers might happen to me too, and that’s something I couldn’t afford to risk.
I’m not techy. I was a plain beginner so I didn’t want to leave anything to chance.
I wanted to give my blog the best shot and part of that was getting reliable hosting.
So I signed up with Siteground. And I’ve never regretted anything.
It’s been a year since I started this blog. All this time, I’ve never had any problem with Siteground!
- Install WordPress and select a theme.
When you already have a host, installing WordPress only takes a few clicks.
After installing it, select a theme.
Many bloggers make a big deal out of choosing a theme. I tell you, it’s not a big deal.
You don’t have to buy a theme when you are only starting. The free themes in WordPress will do.
This blog was built on a free theme. Until today, it is still on a free theme.
So don’t worry about having the perfect theme at first because there are more important things you should focus on.
- Write your first article/blog post.
Please please please don’t think that this has to be a perfect post.
When I read my very first article now, after one year of writing it, I can see its flaws.
But that was perfect for me when I launched it.
I did some research on Pinterest and Google before I wrote it to see how other bloggers approach the decluttering topic. Then I applied it to my own situation. And that’s it.
As for the pin, I knew a little about Pinterest back then, not as much as I know now.
I later made some changes on the pin. But as for the article, I decided not to change it anymore, so that I can show you how my very first post looks like.
You see, your idea of perfect changes as you learn something new. So when you’re going to write your first post, write it with what knowledge you have.
It’s not going to be perfect, but for now it’s enough.
- Link your blog to Google Analytics.
You will want to know how your blog is doing.
How many pageviews and sessions does it have for a month?
From what country are most of your readers?
Which posts are getting lots of reads?
What keywords are you ranking for?
You will want to know the answers to that.
And there’s no better way of knowing than linking your blog to Google Analytics.
- Promote your content on Pinterest.
When you’re done publishing your post, it’s time to let people know about it.
That’s where Pinterest comes into play. It’s the fastest way to bring readers (also known as traffic) to your site.
It’s because of Pinterest that I’m getting a lot of readers every month, enough to make money online. And without it, this blog would still be in the underworld.
Create a business account.
You can always create a personal account on Pinterest. But for the purpose of promoting your blog, you should sign up for a business account.
This way, you can link your website to your Pinterest account and your pins can be converted to Rich Pins.
- Create a free giveaway for your readers.
The purpose of this is for you to collect your readers’ email addresses.
If Pinterest is what you use to attract new readers to your site, sending them emails is your way to keep them coming back.
You can’t rely on Pinterest alone, no matter how great it is, to give you traffic forever. There should be other means. And one of that is sending your subscribers emails leading to your new posts.
Another reason that you may be even more interested is: in the future, you can send them products to buy where you can get a commission. This is called affiliate marketing.
But be very careful with this tactic. Only send them products that you think are awesome and will benefit them a lot!
Do not send them products just so you can rake in commissions.
Always give value to your subscribers.
- Continue writing and pinning like crazy, until you reach 25,000 sessions per month.
After the launch, the next steps are repetitive: writing more content and pinning them to Pinterest.
Your goal is to reach at least 25,000 sessions every month.
But what type of content should you be writing to make you reach this number fast?
Not every content is created equal.
You will have to write about topics that people are interested into, things that your audience wants.
Thankfully, you don’t have to guess what those are!
Many bloggers that came before you already did the research.
How Pinterest Can Help You
Since Pinterest is the main social media platform that you will be using, you might as well find out what topics stand out in it.
Every time I create an article, I conduct research on Pinterest first.
For example, I want to write about command centers.
If I see that pins related to command centers have a high number of repins, that’s a sign that I have a good topic.
I’ll write about it too.
I usually do a list post so I’m going to find at least 10 awesome command centers on Pinterest and write about them in just one article.
If you have been following Simple Life of a Lady for a while, you would have noticed by now that lots of content here is list posts.
How long does it take?
I reached the 25,000 threshold in 11 months, with 36 posts.
I don’t know how long it will take for you to reach it. It depends on the articles that you publish on your site.
But if you continue writing about popular topics in your niche, you’ll probably hit it in a year too.
Never EVER give up.
The only enemy you have here is yourself.
Writing content and getting traffic are a lot of work.
What’s difficult is when you have poured your everything into a post and still people are not visiting.
Don’t give up.
Instead, continue to search for popular topics. Always make your articles better than the rest. And never stop pinning like crazy.
- Apply to Mediavine.
The moment you reach 25,000 sessions for the last 30 days, apply to Mediavine immediately.
But what is Mediavine?
Mediavine is a company that works directly with advertisers on your behalf, so that you can earn money by having ads on your blog.
Earning money from ads is a short-term play.
I didn’t write this just so you can rely on ad income forever. I wrote this to show you the easy way to earn money from blogging.
And that is through ads.
As long as you are posting content every month; as long as people continue to visit your site, you will earn ad income.
But making money through ads is just a short-term play.
Eventually, you will have to learn about affiliate marketing and product creation to maximize the potential of your blog.
And that is the long way to go. But that becomes a lot easier when you are already earning.
Blogging Resources for FREE
I wish I could give you the best blogging advice but I know that there is someone who is absolutely better than me.
And he’s none other than my mentor, Paul Scrivens. We call him Scrivs.
If you want to learn more about making money from blogging, I will point you to Scrivs’ blogging articles at Dare to Conquer.
They are very informative, no sugar-coating, and packed with real experience, so you will definitely get a lot of insights from those posts.
And if you want an in-depth discussion, you can sign up to his 12-Day Blogging Bootcamp. It’s totally FREE.
I will be forever grateful to that Blogging Bootcamp because I was able to launch Simple Life of a Lady with only that as a guide.
Act now.
If there’s one thing about a money-making blog, it’s that the earlier you start, the better.
It took me one year before I made money from blogging. But come to think of it. If I did not take a leap of faith last year, I would still not be where I am right now.
So if you want to make money blogging, better start now.
By the way, if you like income reports, here’s my very first blog income report.
I hope it inspires you and convinces you that making money blogging from home is a real thing, and you too, can start your own money-making blog!
