So you’re thinking about starting a blog and you want to know how to make money blogging for beginners.
Or maybe you already have a blog as a hobby. You’ve been blogging for fun, getting a bit of traffic. Now you want to know how to earn money by blogging. Is it really possible?
Everyone has to start at the beginning when it comes to making money from blogging. There are no shortcuts unless you have a heap of money for a team of writers and paid ads.
You haven’t? Thought not!
Most of us take the slow route to make money from a blog. Forget the huge blogs earning 6 figure incomes. This 101 guide is here to give you a reality check.
Yes, you can make a lot of money from blogging but it takes time. Most successful bloggers didn’t appear overnight.
If you want to know how to make money from blogging, read on. This post will tell you everything you need to know as a beginner. Buckle up – it’s a big read…
Disclosure: If you purchase products through links on my site (eg Bluehost hosting) I may earn a commission. This is at no extra cost to you but it helps me create more free content.
How To Make Money Blogging
This an in-depth post. It looks at why people blog, what you need to make money blogging, the top myths about making money from blogging, the essentials to get started, and the different ways to make money blogging.
Pin or save this post to read later, or you can use this index to skip ahead.
- Why I Started Blogging
- Getting Started Making Money Blogging
- Why Should I Start A Blog?
- Just blog regularly and the traffic will come.
- My Top Myths About How To Make Money Blogging.
- The Essentials – How To Make Money Blogging For Beginners
- How Do You Start A Profitable Blog?
- Different Ways To Make Money Blogging
- Which Is The Best Way To Make Money Blogging For Beginners?
- Will Most People Find It Too Hard To Make Money Blogging?
- Can You Really Make Money Blogging?
- Conclusion – How To Make Money Blogging For Beginners
Why I Started Blogging
Blogging means freedom. How many people get up in the morning and plan their own day? No deadlines imposed by a demanding boss or restrictions over what you can or cannot do.
Bloggers get to write what they want when they want with full control over the look, layout and feel of their blog. That’s why I love blogging.
Yes, it can be hard work but blogging means I work part-time hours, live in a beautiful part of the World, and earn a full-time income.
Getting Started Making Money Blogging
First up you need a blog! Yes I know that sounds kind of obvious. After all this is a post about how to make money blogging for beginners!
Yet you’re never going to make any money unless you start something. There are a lot of people who I call “search addicts”. I live with one of them!
How many posts like this have you read? I bet it’s not the first one! You can research how to make money blogging as much as you like, but unless you actually start a blog, it’s not going to happen.
Ditch the search paralysis and start a blog now:
Why Should I Start a Blog?
When it comes to designing your lifestyle, blogging is hard to beat. Okay, it does take some hard work replacing a 9-5 income and you’ll need to roll with the ups and downs as you learn your craft.
But with blogging, you really can work from anywhere and if you hate working Mondays – just take the day off. You need discipline to blog away regularly but the hours are down to you.
There’s no boss demanding 8 am breakfast meetings, no sitting in traffic or racing to meet children from school. Just you and a laptop working to your own schedule.
Just Blog Regularly And The Traffic Will Come
Is a myth and it’s never going to work for you. It’s a saying that’s tossed around by established bloggers who got lucky when blogging was in it’s infancy.
My Top Myths About How To Make Money Blogging
- You can blog about any topic
- You can make money from any niche
- All you need to do is blog regularly
- You need a lot of traffic to be successful
- You can make money from a FREE blog
Myth #1. You can blog about any topic.
If you write about lots of unrelated topics, you’re confusing not just your readers but also Google. It won’t be clear what your blog is about. You’ll fail to build trust around a particular topic. Fail to build authority.
Writing about a tightly focused niche, not only sends clear signals to your readers that you’re an authority in this area, it will help you to be seen as an expert by Google. A site with a lower domain authority can outrank a higher domain authority, if it has high relevance in a particular niche.
It was only by narrowing the focus of my Simply Hatch blog, that I started to see a big jump in my page ranking on Google
Myth #2. You can make money from any niche.
Not all blogging topics will make money. Your niche has to have a big enough audience. It has to be a niche where people will spend money and don’t expect to get everything for free.
The best way to find a niche is to look at other successful blogs and think about the things you spend money on. I spend money on yoga. I buy products, clothing and spend money on online courses. It’s a good niche for making money.
Other great niches are interior design, food, fashion, parenting, travel, health & fitness, beauty, relationships and finance. I’m sure I’ve missed a few but anything where you’re helping people improve themselves is usually a good choice.
(In case you’re wondering, blogging about blogging is one of the harder niches to crack because it’s so competitive – I just love a challenge). It’s been much easier starting up my lifestyle blog.
Myth #3. All you need to do is blog regularly.
So many bloggers post regularly and don’t make any money. And the advice they get when it doesn’t work? Post more frequently.
You need to promote your posts. As a rule of thumb, it’s best to spend as much time on promotion as it is on writing posts. Getting hung up on how frequently you post is a mistake. There are extremely successful bloggers who only post once a month (they just make sure their post is worth reading).
When I switched to focusing on promotion as well as writing, my traffic started to grow.
Myth #4. You need a lot of traffic to be successful.
This just isn’t true. Okay, traffic is obviously good and if you have a ton of traffic you can make a lot of money from adverts. Making money from advertising is the most passive way of monetizing your blog.
Write your posts, promote on social media, optimize for search engine traffic (SEO) and watch the money roll in. It’s just that you need a lot of traffic to make a full-time income this way and it’s a tough call when you’re starting out.
Realistically it takes 12 to 18 months to gain enough traffic to make good money from advertising. It’s playing the long game.
Making money from affiliate marketing or your own digital products can be much quicker and doesn’t need as much traffic. With a focused blog, it’s possible to start making money within a few months.
Myth #5. You can make money from a FREE blog.
Yes you can make money with a FREE blog but it’s not the best way to start. Starting out on Blogger can be a good way to test out ideas but sooner or later you’ll want to move to a self-hosted platform.
A free blog affects your credibility and you don’t own your blog. That could become a real problem as your blog starts to grow. You’re spending all your time building a valuable asset you don’t own!
The Essentials – How To Make Money Blogging For Beginners
So we’ve debunked a few myths but what do you actually need to start monetizing your blog? A blog of course, but what else is essential?
What do you need to make money blogging?
#1. A professional looking blog
This doesn’t mean you need to splash out on an expensive theme or a custom design. But you do need to bench mark your site against competitors in your niche.
Not so much the star bloggers, those guys at the top of the money tree with their unlimited resources and custom builds. You need to compare yourself with the bloggers just a little bit ahead.
What are they doing? How do their sites look.
Make sure your blog is just as good. That bad design won’t make your readers click away.
#2. Terrific content
This may seem obvious but if you want people to read your blog, you need to give them something worth reading. What’s in it for your reader?
One of the biggest rookie mistakes I see is the self-indulgent blog. Now it’s possible that a blog about fitness, for example, could reasonably chart progress towards your fitness goals.
But and it’s a big BUT. Only if it’s a way of showing the reader what they can achieve and inspiring them to produce the same results.
In the same way, assuming you’re not a celebrity, no-one’s going to care about your weekend in the Saint-Tropez. Unless of course you can tell them how to snag the same cut-price deal on a out-of-season luxury hotel room.
People want to be better at stuff, get better stuff and learn how to do better stuff. If you can help people on their way to achieving those aspirations, you’re on to a winner.
That’s what counts as terrific content.
#3. An email list
It depends on how you intend to make money from your blog. A completely passive blog making money from advertising and maybe Amazon Associates can make good money without an email list.
It’s just that not having a list means you’re missing out. Forget any ideas you have that emailing is dead. It’s still the best way of creating avid followers. These followers are essential if you’re promoting products that need more detailed buying information.
Just about everyone has an email address, not everyone uses social media. Most people will check their email daily and it’s a very personal medium.
Sending a missive straight to a person’s inbox is the best way to convert a mildly interested follower into someone who really gets your advice. A future customer.
Not someone who just reads a few posts and thinks: “Yeah, that’s quite good advice”, but never takes the next step and buys your recommended product.
✅ I use ConvertKit for my Simply Hatch mailing list. It has a FREE startup plan for your first 1000 subscribers. The guys at ConvertKit really get bloggers. If you’re planning on growing big, ConvertKit’s automation, sequences, and landing pages will help you get there.
#4. Blogging friends
To make a success of blogging, it helps to build connections. Starting out and earning your first $100 will be a lot easier if you’re learning from other bloggers.
Your blogging friends and connections can really help with promoting your blog.
Connecting through FaceBook groups, shared Pinterest boards, and Reddit forums, blogging is a medium that works better together. Ultimately you’ll be aiming for relationships with influencers.
People who can sky-rocket your traffic simply by sharing a pin or tweeting about your latest post.
These people are reachable. Sometimes it’s just a case of requesting a comment on a topic you’re writing or letting an influencer know you’ve written a stellar post and referenced their blog.
#5. Being knowledgeable
You don’t need to be THE expert in your field but you do need to build some authority.
If you pick a topic you know nothing about it will show. It’s important to do your research and have something to offer.
Own your niche, read everything you can about it and keep up-to-date. You want to become THAT person. The one everyone turns to when they’re french polishing their cabinet or setting up a poodle parlour.
You get my drift… You won’t become the expert overnight but there’s no time like the present to start being knowledgeable.
How do you Start a Profitable Blog?
For most normal people it will take around 12 months to build a good income from a profitable blog.
This is how long it took for my lifestyle blog. It was my side income. Started in 2019, I put in a lot of work over the first few months, then left it to fester. With good SEO, my posts started to gain traffic from Google and by the following year, I was making a good income from adverts with Mediavine.
Income like this:
That’s with 100,000+ monthly pageviews which sounds like a huge amount of traffic when you start your first blog. Yet if you’re willing to write the posts people want to read and target a popular topic, it can be quite easy to get this sort of traffic.
Yet income from ads is tiny when you first start your blog. It’s best to wait until you grow your traffic to at least 50,000 monthly page views.
Fortunately, advertising is just one way to make money from your brand new beginner blog.
Different Ways To Make Money Blogging
These are most of the different ways you can make money blogging (only some of them are suitable for beginners):
Advertising
I still think advertising isn’t the best way to make money blogging if you’re in a hurry but it’s an easy way to make money for beginner bloggers. You concentrate on writing posts and your income is completely passive from a good ad network.
I use Mediavine. They are fantastic with excellent support. Mediavine really want to help you make money but you do need a lot of traffic to apply.
Mediavine recently upped their entry requirements to 50,000 sessions/month (about 60,000 pageviews/month). Plus a big chunk of your traffic must be from Google (mine was about 50% when I applied) and you need high quality, unique content.
For my lifestyle blog, it took 12 months to be accepted. I’ve seen committed bloggers with popular topics qualify for Mediavine in 3 months but that was with a 25,000 session entry requirement. With the new requirements, one to two years seems more realistic.
Mediavine do have plans for a new scaleable service for smaller blogs. Just watch this space. Hopefully, the new service will launch later this year.
In the meantime, concentrate on growing your blog. I stronger suggest you avoid adding AdSense to your blog. You won’t make much money, it’s a bad user experience for your readers, plus it’s easy to fall foul of their rules and end up unable to apply later to Mediavine.
Affiliate Marketing
This is my favorite way of making money blogging for beginners with a brand new blog. When you’re looking to make your first $100 from blogging it’s your fastest option.
I remember getting so excited when I first realised how affiliate marketing works.
You mean I can just earn commission selling products on my website? I don’t have to store them in a warehouse, pick and pack them or deal with customers.
It was such a revelation.
I spent years physically selling products through my eCommerce outdoor clothing store. We had some good times but picking and packing goods in the lead up to Christmas was hard work. Plus we had the risk every year that if the goods didn’t sell January was going to be bleak.
Imagine if all those goods had been sold on a commission basis and we never even set eyes on the stock.
There is a site here in the UK called Menswear Style. It looks like any other young men’s eCommerce fashion store. Except it isn’t. You can even speak via live chat to a personnel shopper.
Menswear style is a very clever blog making money from affiliate marketing. Look closely at the products and they all link to other physical eCommerce stores.
I estimate they make around 5 and 7% commission per sale – no risk, just profit.
What is affiliate marketing?
When shops evolved into online mega-stores, they lost the personnel touch. Humans are social animals and people like to buy from people. We started turning to friends and social media for recommendations. And to bloggers.
Brands finally caught onto this. Originally they thought it was just famous people who had influence and concentrated on giving away freebies to the stars.
Fast forward to today and brands are reaching out to all influencers and yes that includes you – writing your first post on your beginner blog.
How does affiliate marketing work?
Affiliate marketing works by adding a unique link from your site to the product you’re promoting. If a visitor to your site clicks on the link ad buys the product within set time frame, you earn a commission on the sale.
The amount of commission can vary widely and really depends on the type of product being sold. I’ve seen commissions ranging from 1-2% to 50%. The time frame also varies; the standard Amazon cookie lasts just 24 hours.
How do you start affiliate marketing?
When you’re a beginner blogger writing your first few posts, Amazon Associates is the best programme to sign up to.
As long as you have a blog you should be eligible. Amazon will only check your suitability once you’ve made your first three sales. (It can be best to wait until you’re getting at least 1000 visitors a month as there’s a time limit on hitting your first 3 sales. Otherwise, you can end up reapplying and having to redo all your affiliate links).
The best thing about Amazon is the huge range of products. Everybody knows and trusts Amazon. There’s something to promote for every niche. The downside of Amazon are the low commissions and 24-hour cookie.
Amazon works best for blogs with good traffic. For smaller niche blogs it can be better to find products with higher commissions. Promoting downloadable ebooks and courses from other bloggers often works well.
Promote products you genuinely believe in.
When you’re recommending products your reputation is on the line as a blogger. Get this wrong by recommending products you’ve never actually used and you’ll run into trouble.
The best way to find products to promote is by searching on google. Search for the product you believe in by name and add the word affiliate. This usually works and you can ask to join the programme.
Often brands use affiliate marketing networks. A number of my products are with ShareASale. This network has a vast range of products in several different categories. You need to join the network to search for brands.
Ebooks and Workbooks
Selling digital products is a great way to make money from blogging. Why? Because it’s something you’ve created. You own it and you get to control it.
With affiliate products, links might change, competition might increase and prices go up or down. Your income can change overnight and you have no control over it.
With digital products, you get to make the decisions. You can tweak prices, marketing, positioning – it’s all down to you.
Ebooks and workbooks are some of the easiest digital products you can create as a blogger. They don’t have to be particularly long – you can think of them as an extra long blog post and you already have the tools to hand for production. (Microsoft Word, Google Docs, PowerPoint… any software that will allow you to export your document as a PDF).
How To Write An Ebook
Come Up With A Content Idea
Brainstorm a topic that will resonate with your readers. Better still send an email to your list asking them what they need help with.
Write Your Ebook
Don’t get too carried away producing your ebook. Keep things simple. As long as you’re providing useful information, you don’t need to worry too much about graphics and fancy software for your first ebook.
How To Sell your Ebook
You can sell your ebook on your own blog or self publish and sell on Amazon. Promote it everywhere. to your email list, on social media and put banners in your sidebar.
Online Courses
Creating an online course is the next logical step after you’ve written and promoted your first ebook. It can often make sense to expand your ebook topic into an online course.
You do need a bit more know-how and equipment but it is possible to produce an online course on a budget.
You don’t need an expensive camera. I use the Logitech, C920 HD Pro Webcam for filming my videos and it’s perfectly adequate.
Probably the hardest part about creating your first online course is getting comfortable in front of a camera. Practice certainly makes this easier.
A online course may not be your first means of making $100 but it should be on your radar. Once you’ve gone through the leaning process it’s a terrific way to make an online income.
Printables
The idea that you can make money selling printables just blows me away. Create an inspirational text graphic on Canva and sell it directly from your blog.
The opportunities with printables are only limited by your imagination. Workbooks, planners, how to guides, recipes, digital images. These items can be so quick to produce.
How to sell printables on your blog.
First, work out what will appeal to your readers. Don’t sweat this too much. Printables are quick to make and you can find your best sellers by trial and error.
Secondly set up your printable store. You can sell your printables via a shopify store or add links to Sendowl.
Thirdly, signup for business accounts with Stripe and Paypal, load your products, and start selling. Don’t forget to promote your printables on your blog and social media.
Coaching or Services
If you have the skills, a blog is an excellent way to attract clients for coaching or services. The growth of the internet and the blogging community has added to the opportunities.
These are just some of the possibilities:
- Virtual office manager
- Freelance Writing
- Coach or Mentor
- Bookkeeping or Accountancy
- Legal advice
- Graphic Design
- Social Media Manager
It’s quite possible that some of the skills you acquire along your blogging journey will lead to service opportunities. For example, if you can grow your own Pinterest account successfully, you can do the same for other people.
One growing area at present is group coaching – instead of coaching one-to-one, mentors are coaching small groups at a time. It’s a way of increasing revenue and lowering costs for participants.
Freelance or coaching is the best way to make some money when you first start your blog.
Product Reviews And Giveaways.
As your blog grows you may be approached by companies asking you to write product reviews. These companies will offer money and may let you keep the product.
Sounds terrific doesn’t it?
There is a catch. It’s unlikely that companies will pay you for a bad review so the issue here is your integrity.
I suggest you make it clear that your review will be your honest opinion and you stick to reviewing products you truly believe in. It’s a similar situation to affiliate marketing.
Just remember your reputation is important.
Sponsored Posts
These are a variation of the same idea except here the company will collaborate with you to write the post.
It’s basically an advert and it’s very important to label the sponsored post clearly.
If you do accept sponsored posts I suggest you’re selective about which products you accept and keep these posts to a minimum.
Membership Sites
This can be a very successful way of making money. Charge a modest monthly fee for access to useful material and a support community.
Membership sites can work for a wide variety of niches from help starting a business to diet and exercise.
Think of it as a form of group coaching.
Webinars
Most people promoting webinars are providing them for free but there’s no reason these couldn’t be used as a means of making money.
It can be a variation on group coaching, another way of engaging and tutoring a larger audience.
Which Is The Best Way To Make Money Blogging For Beginners?
It depends. Yeah I know that’s not what you want to hear. It really does depend on so many factors.
What works for one person or one niche might not work for another.
It’s important to figure out your blogging strengths… are you creative, do you want to provide a service, do you want a high volume traffic blog or a small niche blog and how important is it that you’re not tied to office hours.
There are so many different factors that will impact on how you make money.
Check Out The Competition
Note I didn’t say copy. Taking a look at how other people make money blogging in your niche will give you ideas.
If a money-making method works for them, it will probably work for you too. There’s no need to be a trailblazer. Following a well-trodden path to make money blogging is perfectly fine.
Will Most People Find It Too Hard To Make Money Blogging?
No way! It’s just that you can’t expect miracles! With blogging, the amount of effort you put in equates to how much money you can make. To be successful, you have to go about blogging the right way.
What do I mean by the right way? Keep your blog focused on your chosen niche, realizing it’s going to take time and effort to build your blog, promoting your blog effectively, and making sure it has a means of making money.
Many bloggers see blogging as a hobby. And that’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with blogging for fun. But blogging for fun won’t make any money – unless you’re a celebrity, nobody cares about what you did last weekend or the name of your cat!
If you want to be a full-time blogger you have to write the type of posts that attract visitors to your blog. Your blogging is driven by the needs of your readers. You’re answering the questions your audience is typing into Google.
Can You Really Make Money Blogging?
It’s important to be realistic. In many ways how much money you can make from blogging will depend on your skillset. Forget the “I made $103,000 last month” headlines. A good target for new bloggers is earning around $500 – $1000 per month within their first year.
(After 18 months I’m making $3000+ per month from my lifestyle blog. It’s a blog I work on part-time when I’m not teaching people how to blog on Simply Hatch. This isn’t exceptional. There are bloggers with the Mediavine ad network who are earning far more than this, but most have been blogging for a lot longer. Blogging isn’t a quick way to make money but the results can be impressive).
Achieving this type of income takes hard work and the right approach. Find a niche where you can write with authority, (something you’re knowledgeable or passionate about). Promoting your blog through social media and setting up a way of converting traffic into income.
I’m not here to put you off blogging. It’s a terrific way of making extra money from home. I just want to be clear that the big headline money takes a lot of hard work…
Conclusion – How To Make Money Blogging For Beginners
If you haven’t started a blog yet, follow my ultimate guide to start your blog quickly and easily.
✅ How To Start A Blog In 2021 (The Ultimate Step-By-Step Guide)
When it comes to making money from your blog, writing content and growing your blog are the first steps you need to focus on.
Even small niche blogs need traffic to make money.
Because that’s what it’s all about. Maybe you enjoy blogging just for fun but I suspect that if you made money from the process it would be even better.
Choosing to make money from blogging… My lifestyle blog went from earning maybe less than $100 in the whole of the first 12 months to earning $3000+ per month just 4 months later.
Once your blog starts to make money, the rapid growth may surprise you. It certainly surprised me!
Hey Alison – I think a lot of people read popular bloggers income reports that are making 5 digits a month and think “Oh! I can do this!” and don’t consider the difficulty in building a blog, providing high-quality content, doing your homework to drive income, and so on.
There’s definitely a process involved that we each have to learn for our niche and our style. As a personal finance blogger, my biggest challenge is finding a corner in personal finance that isn’t inundated by other bloggers, but still popular enough to get some traffic.
It’s been interesting, for sure!
-Bo
Hi Bo – thanks for your comment. You’re in a tough but potentially very rewarding niche so your best option is to look for keywords where a new blog can rank on Google. I can see on Ubersuggest that you’re starting to make headway. At this stage any ranked keyword with some relevance to your site is a win. Google is wary about money related sites so it will take a little time to build credibility – but it looks like you’ll get there!
Hi Alison,
This blog was a good read, as I have just started to write m first blog. In need of an expert advise; my Topics will be about how to improve productivity and lifestyle in 2020. I know there are a million people writing about this, but I have ample knowledge through books and experiments that I have read and experienced – which I wish to help people with.
Question: As per your blog, Will that mean confusion my readers? If i write about ‘ how to be productive’ in one blog and about sleep in another one?
Thanks in advance, looking forward to hearing form you.
Samra
Hi Samra, if you have a lot of experience about productivity, I would stick to blogging about productivity. Sleep of course does affect your productivity so you could also blog about getting a good night’s sleep to improve productivity in the same blog. If you intent to go into insomnia in depth I would start a separate blog. You could also include other healthy lifestyle topics. Make sure if you’re using medical advice to quote and link to references and if you have qualifications stress them in your about page and author bio. Google is hot on credibility for health topics. Someone looking for productivity advice isn’t looking for insomnia advice which is why it makes sense to have separate blogs.
Hi Alison,
I’m just starting out on my blogging journey and stumbled upon your site and free 7 days course and it’s amazing! Its so detailed and really helpful. The ones I have been reading previously recommend so many different sites and strategies that I feel like I’ve got so many fingers in all the pies.
Your e-book is straight forward so far so am getting excited. I am an HR Advisor by day but want to move to putting relevant interesting HR articles on my blog that cover everything from employment law (which tends to be behind a paywall) to coaching and mentoring, the latter being my eventual aim – I really want to help coach people in whatever they want to do in life. I guess I want to pitch myself as an eventual expert or go to person but first I need to start the journey.
Question for you – I saw on another blog post by someone recommending blogging, that Bluehost was a good hosting site but was quite slow and they recommended SiteGround – have you heard about this one? And if so what do you think?
Hi Farzana, thank you for your kind words! I always think it’s a great idea to leverage your experience with a blog, particularly when there’s an obvious audience. Also there’s a lot of scope for blogging income with a B2B site.
The Bluehost vs SiteGround debate has been raging for a while and fortunately I have experience of both of them! Both providers are good for beginner blogs. Their start up packages use shared hosting. This means several sites are on the same server. For small blogs and websites this works well and it’s a way of providing hosting at an affordable price.
The issue is blogs grow as they become successful and need more resources. SiteGround manages this by forcing you to upgrade your hosting, often with little warning. My Love Life Be Fit site is with SiteGround and I’ve had to upgrade twice so far and I’m now on the costly Go Geek plan. This has a limit of 100,000 visits a month so I’ll be looking at yet another upgrade soon or moving my hosting.
The Bluehost Basic plan has unmetered bandwidth which isn’t exactly the same as unlimited but it’s less restrictive when growing a new blog. The downside is if you have a viral post with tons of traffic with Bluehost your site will start to be slow as Bluehost protects the other sites on your shared server.
Cost wise and because of their beginner friendly dashboard, my view is Bluehost have the edge. With SiteGround you can end up having to find money to upgrade your hosting plan before you’ve started to make a decent income. You can find my special deals for Simply Hatch customers here.
Appreciate the post Alison, Webinar is something that I’d be missing out on as being camera shy, but will definitely get that sort out.
Thanks Louis – it’s a case of finding what works best for you. Getting in front of a camera can seem daunting but you do get used to it!
Wow great …i hope this will help me. .i recently started a blog with wordpress and I wasn’t sure I could make it, but I think I will put in some more effort. ..thanks
Patience and writing content is everything. Try and focus on one topic rather than randomly picking subjects you think will be popular. You need to write for your readers.
Very comprehensive guide for new bloggers. As a fellow blogger I would just recommend anyone to start writing and understanding how SEO and link building works. Beginnings are tough, but you will get better very fast at writing and editing. Take it step by step and have fun in the process. THEN, start thinking about monetization.
Hi Adrian, Content is King as they say for a reason. It’s very easy to get distracted setting up email lists, focusing on the look of your site and forget that it’s content that brings in the all important traffic.
hey great stuff
Am developing my new blog in health and wellnes which am passionate about. questions
1. can I blog on healthy relationships as a catgory and incorporate dating on the same blog
2.Any ideas on.how to.enhance my content writing skills. .? Is their a prefered way or as long as you can creatively put down your content.
3.Is there a problem if i randomly use onliine materials to develop my content? because nothing is really new under the sun or rather how can I do.it professionally? .
Hi Lilian, I had a little look at your blog. That’s a great start! Answering your questions:
1. I think at the moment you need to stick to your health and wellness topic. Maybe by the time you have 15 to 20 posts about health and wellness, you could add in a separate topic such as relationships – but you do need to think about how to make the subject appeal to the same audience reading your health and wellness posts. For example, women struggling with their mental health and confidence issues and how it holds them back when dating and in relationships.
2. Write your content around a target keyword. Research the keyword first and find other posts on the topic – posts that are on the first page of Google search results. Note the points they cover and how they’re structured, then go and write a better post or a post covering the same issues but in your own voice and with your own views.
Remember people are reading your posts on a phone mainly so keep your paragraphs short.
3. There’s nothing wrong with researching content online but you must always write with your own words. Copying content from other blogs is a huge no. You can quote other blogs but always make it clear it’s a quote and link to the material. (This is a good way to show authority and I always link to authority sites when I blog about diet and health issues on my own blog.) You can find images to use for free on Unsplash.
You are actually wonderful. I want to ask that, “Will Google Adsense or other platforms ever approve Nepali blogs”. I’m Nepali blogger. Will it be possible in the future.
Hi Nayeli, I can’t see any Google Adsense restrictions for Nepal. Instead, the problem you have with your blog is you don’t seem to have much traffic. Blogging is global. You don’t even have to host your blog in your own country and it’s best to host as close as possible to your target audience. Revenue from Adsense is higher from high-income countries such as the US but don’t overlook the vast audience you have on your doorstep in India.
Having looked at your blog you have two main issues. First, the language is a bit clunky for a US/UK reader – it may be better to target an Indian audience. Secondly, you’re covering every topic under the sun and trying to rank for really hard keywords! Niche down and start writing reviews around one main topic. You can add more later when you have a successful site. Look for really easy keywords on Ubersuggest and stick to easy keywords until you build some credibility.
Hi Alison,
What really resonated with me about this post was – “Forget the “I made $103,000 last month” headlines. A good target for new bloggers is earning around $500 – $1000 per month within their first year.”
I think this is SO important for new bloggers. I’ve been thinking about blogging for income on and off and it certainly is very attractive (WFH, no boss, own schedule, etc.). My only problem is that of a niche. When I read through all the niches on various blogs, I cannot relate to a single one of them!! I think my life experience is overly academic because the only thing I am passionate about ‘and’ which might have any potential value to readers is “writing”. It sounds so depressing because there is no lucrative market for it, and the ones who might need it the most are not quite willing or able to pay for any services related to the blog!
Thank you for this blog and I will read all your other posts!
Hi Dee, I’m really pleased you found the post helpful. The list of lucrative topics is by no means definitive. I keep finding obscure topics that still make good money from blogging. For example, one of the most profitable blogs I’ve come across has just one page providing a how-to guide for a trade qualification.
There are blogs in the writing niche that make money. I’ve found a few that provide grammar tips with income from advertising revenue. There are also blogs providing courses for freelance writing. Elna Cain has an excellent free course here telling you all about how to make money from your writing.
Alternatively, there’s a huge contingent of young at heart grey-haired students looking for fulfillment in retirement. Many of these people have money to spend and harbor lofty dreams of writing a book. Help them out and you’ll have an income. You’ll find lots of blogs about how to become a writer but I’m sure there’s space for a few more.