Welcome to my how to make money blogging for beginners guide.
This guide was set up for beginners and people that have some experience as well but still need a little help.
So, many years ago, right before I got into blogging, I discovered that people were making money online through blogging.
I didn’t really know what blogging meant when I first got into it, I just knew people were making money with it, and I wanted to figure out how so I can make money blogging too.
In some instances, the bloggers were earning remarkable amounts of consistent money per month!
I also noticed that several of them were everyday people just like me.
I took a second and wondered how exactly they were making it work.
I wondered if I could also make the kind of money online by blogging just like they are doing.
For the record and for full disclosure, this post has a few affiliate links that can potentially earn me a small commission, at no extra cost to you, if you click and buy stuff from here.
Starting Your New Blog
So, the first obvious step that I want to cover is how to set up your blog, especially if you have never set one up, but how do you do that?
- The first thing you will want to do is pick a topic for your blog.
- After finding a topic you will want to get a domain name. There is a good tool that I would suggest using to see if the domain is available can be found here.
- After you get settled on what the name of your blog is going to be and you purchased it you are going to need to get web hosting. There is a wide variety of options for website hosting that is affordable for bloggers but what we highly recommend is SiteGround (affiliate link).
- When you get your Siteground hosting for your website you will want to connect your new domain name with your hosting account through the DNS servers.
- Once you get your domain and Siteground hosting connected you will want to install WordPress, which is the absolute best blogging platform you can use. Fortunately, Siteground offers an easy install option from within your account.
- Lastly, you are going to want to make your new blog look good, and to do this you are going to want to upload a good-looking theme so your blog looks professional. You can find a ton of free themes in the WordPress depository in your blog’s back-office (not recommended) or get a premium theme that has more features available for customization and speed which is highly recommended for all blogs. (I recommend starting out with the Generate Press (affiliate link).
Once you have everything set up you can now start publishing content, but I would highly recommend adding legal pages and having a content design in place before starting your blog.
Make sure you have a plan of action before getting started with a new blog that you want to make money from.
Can Blogging Earn You Money Online?
Of course, a lot of bloggers are making good and legit money online.
There are many bloggers that I have discovered that have 100’s of posts that I can tell are getting a ton of traffic and promoting various affiliate programs.
By doing these promotions you know without a doubt that these bloggers’ websites are designed for the specific purpose for make money online.
There is no doubt about it.
How Can Blogging Earn You Money Online?
You can follow the example of the most successful bloggers who have succeeded by using their blog as an online home-based business or a business hub through which several streams of income are generated.
Using a blog as a hub would be an essential part of your online business structure, which would enable you to coordinate your messages back and forth with potential buyers, and provide your business with a marketing presence on the world wide web.
As a blogger, you can directly earn money via your blog posts and indirectly earn money via other extended opportunities related to your blog posts like building a list and promote related affiliate programs to earn an additional income online.
The multiple streams of income from various avenues all anchored by blog will make up a huge river of revenue.
Another great article: Is WIX Good For Blogging? 2 Things You Should Be Aware Of
What Steps Should You Take to Earn Money Online by Blogging?
- Begin a blog.
- Start creating helpful and high-quality content as blog posts on a chosen topic to position yourself as an authority. (instructions in my guide)
- Decide on which one(s) of the several income streams you’d like to implement.
- Get social about your blog online to keep it fresh on people’s minds.
- Relentlessly dwell on steps 2 to 4 until you and your blog become the go-to resource and authority on your chosen topic!
Just to recap this section, I want to explain how important it is to provide very helpful, and engaging content.
For example, if you are going to blog about how to set up a WordPress site on Siteground, then make sure to answer that question along with everything that goes along with simply setting up a WordPress site on the Siteground hosting platform.
Always try to go above and beyond in helpful information compared to what other bloggers are providing is a good rule of thumb to put in practice.
How Much Money Can You Make Blogging?
There’s a wide range of potential income for bloggers.
But the question is how much money can you make blogging?
You would be surprised to learn that there are in fact a few people that make several million bucks a year blogging.
Others earn a wholesome, better than full-time living like me.
Some others earn less, while some don’t even make a penny. (those are usually the people that give up too early to see results)
In my opinion, rather than ask “how much do people make blogging?” a more appropriate question would be “how much can I potentially make blogging?”
There are no surefire, guaranteed amounts to make from blogging, besides not being easy as far as staying consistent and provide value in each post.
However, there are no glass ceilings to limit your income potential, making the sky your limit, which is one of the reasons why I love blogging.
It’s difficult to authentically pin down how much, on average, bloggers make.
For instance, the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the U.S. generically categorized bloggers with a very wide class of “Writers and Authors,” which generates an average of $61,240 per year.
That estimate is nowhere near accurate because of the very different fields of “types of blogs” lumped together from which an average annual income was derived.
It’s also possible to gather information from small group surveys and individual disclosures of blogging income online but even then you will have very different amounts.
But even such information is often outdated or simply can’t apply across the board.
As hinted earlier, some bloggers make their blogging income public.
But it’s hard to reach generally applicable conclusions since every blogger’s case is unique.
A lot of bloggers have stopped the publishing of their blogging income for whatever reason.
But some well-known bloggers, like Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income, and the Penny Hoarder still do.
How Long Before You Start Seeing the Money Roll in by Blogging?
As potentially rewarding as it is, blogging isn’t a piece of cake in terms of getting instant results.
Like everything else with real value, a high-quality, money-pumping blog takes real commitment, time, and hard work to successfully get up and running.
It requires several hours of work a week to create and sustain.
You’ll also wait for months before you start seeing revenue because Google and other major search engines take between 4 days to 6 months to index your website (depending on several factors) before your site can begin to grow in exposure (or search engine ranking) without which it can’t make you any money.
You will need rankings in order to get traffic from the search engines which can result in blogging profits.
I advise newbies in the blogosphere (the world of blogging) to wait between 12 to 14 months to start making a part-time income, (with consistent effort) and around two years to start regenerating regular full-time revenue.
There are exceptions to the general rule, though.
However, having successfully operated as a blogger for 9 years, those are my reasonable estimates.
When I first started blogging, I built small niche sites and blasted with questionable SEO practices that actually did work at that time to get fast rankings and results, but not now, not with how the algorithm works.
In today’s search engine land like Google, you will need to have to think in the way of “slow and steady wins the race” which is 100% true with how blogging has always worked for long-term success but is more important now to get results.
For most bloggers, it isn’t realistic to start a blog today and start earning a full-time living in a couple of months.
That’s because blogging involves a learning curve, which isn’t too steep but still requires time for a newbie to learn.
Blogging requires a good knowledge of how to build your site, how to create your content library, how to go about your social media reach out, how to earn trustworthiness, how to develop a relationship with your site visitors, and so on. (all found on my free 61-page blogging guide here)
If what you’re looking for is how to make money online instantly, building a blog isn’t right for you.
That’s not to say you can’t make it by blogging. I managed to start blogging in spite of my pressing financial needs many years ago, which now financially rewards me handsomely every single month on autopilot.
If you can create some time for blogging, no matter your present state or need, it will be well worth it at the end of the day.
Another great article: How To Start A Web Business
What are the Ways of Monetizing Your Blog?
There are five potential income streams to monetize your blog with.
- Affiliate Marketing
- Digital Products
- Physical Products
- Services
- Advertising
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing works by promoting and selling someone else’s product service with your blog visitors/readers to earn a percentage set by the owner which pays you a commission per sale that is generated by you and your blog.
This is possible by linking to the person’s product on your blog post using a unique affiliate link that keeps track of your sales and makes the automatic computation of your sales commissions possible.
When a site visitor clicks to buy a product or completes a desired action through your affiliate link, you get a commission.
There are many highly-rewarding affiliate products to promote out there.
I promote some of them myself.
Some of them are as follows:
- Amazon Associates: This affiliate program allows you to earn a commission when your site visitors buy an Amazon product via your affiliate link
- Generate Press: This one is a WordPress theme I personally use on some of my blog sites and also promote. Get the Generate Press theme here. (affiliate link)
- Siteground: This is a web hosting service provider that I use and recommend to new bloggers because it has great customer support, and WordPress works great and loads fast plus it includes free extras like an SSL certificate.
- Aweber: My personal “go-to” (just because I used them forever) autoresponder to build my subscriber list. Very good support and pays commissions each month per your referral’s monthly renewal.
- Thrive Leads: Perfect capture page building plugin for your WordPress site to help design several different types of lead capture types like ribbons, popups, exit and entrance splash screens… etc.
- Namecheap: In my opinion the best place to purchase a new domain name. I never had any issues with them. Small affiliate commissions but hey, everyone needs a domain name. (yes, I feel they are better for purchasing a new domain than GoDaddy)
I love and recommend affiliate marketing.
It’s my favorite blog monetization income stream because it has proven the most profitable for me.
With affiliate marketing, you can market virtually anything (products or services you’ve used and benefited from) without having to create or maintain them yourself.
Digital products
A lot of bloggers make and market their own digital products.
Digital products have the advantage of not requiring inventory plus the ability to distribute them easily and quickly with minimal or zero cost of distribution.
They’re low-risk and without the overhead.
Some examples are as follows:
- Live online tutorials: Teaching people via webinars or other video calls for a fee
- E-courses: Teaching people via recorded media (videos, audios, etc.) that can be sold over and over without extra cost of production.
- Ebooks: You can be self-published via the creation of eBooks, which can be sold recurrently online without any extra cost of production.
- Paid membership site: This is a combination of digital training and an online forum.
- Graphics: These can be photographs or artworks that can be digitally marketed.
- Movies and music: These, like other digital products, can also be created and sold digitally online.
- Software: These are apps, plugins, themes, etc. that developers can produce and market online.
- Premium content: You can package the examples of the digital products given above as premium content.
Physical Products
As a blogger, you can also sell physical products.
A few examples are as follows:
- Books: A lot of bloggers have leveraged their blogs to become conventional, published authors.
- Handmade products: If you can create cool stuff manually, you can market those via your blog.
- Retail arbitrage: If you can spot great deals and market them for a profit via your blog on
- Amazon, for instance, you can make money.
- Manufactured products: A lot of bloggers have successfully used manufacturers to translate their ideas into marketable and profitable realities.
- Physical, live conferences, training, and special events: If you have expertise on a subject, you can organize and use your blog to circulate information on in-person meetings, which people will attend for a fee.
Many bloggers have been marketing physical products for a while now.
However, it can be a bit challenging as you scale up.
For instance, you’ll need an inventory, worry about shipping, have to go back and forth with manufacturers, worry about customer support, refund requests, and so on.
Services
As a blogger, you can render services in connection with your blog topic for a fee.
You can render these services either online or in-person, depending on what kind it is.
Some examples of services are as follows:
- Speaking: You can get an invite to speak on subjects you’ve knowledgeably written about on your blog for a fee.
- Virtual assistance: You can be a virtual assistant.
- Event planning: You can present yourself as an event planner via your blog and be an event planner who plans weddings, parties, and so on for a fee.
Rendering services is a good way to get started monetizing your blog because it isn’t capital intensive as you’ll be rendering services with skills you already have.
Furthermore, it’s totally scalable.
For instance, if you get more event-planning contracts than you can handle, as an event planner, all you need to do to scale up and meet the upsurge of demand is to employ extra hands.
That way, you can become an employer of labor and scale up your business and profit.
Advertising
Advertising is a popular income stream and many bloggers use it to make money.
However, it doesn’t have as much potential to make blogger money as the other income streams because it requires a ton of traffic to generate anything significant.
It’s my least favorite blog monetization method until one of my blogs starts to generate a ton of traffic.
I’m not saying that this can be a very lucrative way to make money blogging, I’m just saying that it is not a great source of income until you are generating at least 30,000 page views per month.
Some of the most popular advertising platforms are:
- Google Adsense – This ad network is well known for being the #1 banner ad space online. Although it doesn’t pay the best, probably more like the worst, it is extremely easy to get started with. You can get started with little to no pageviews.
- Infolinks – This ad network is a good place for new bloggers to get started. It offers in-text ads in combination with banner ads and pays a little more than Google Adsense.
- BlogHer – This ad network is geared more toward women meaning that the ads that are shown involve women-related products and ads.
- Revenue Hits – This ad network pays better than Google Adsense but offers commissions through CPA which means that the commissions are generated when someone clicks on their ad banner and “also” completes the sale or sign-up. Revenue Hits is the best as far as payouts are concerned in this list but take more active steps in order to trigger a commission.
There are other ad platforms similar to Google Adsense but pay much better than I would recommend have certain requirements like needing at least 30,000 page views per month to even be considered.
Another great review: How To Become An Affiliate Marketer
How Can You Become a Proud, Money-Making Blog Owner?
First off, begin a blog, if you’ve not done so yet.
After that, concentrate on creating a high-quality library of blog posts consistently.
The search engines love fresh content.
So, keep it consistent until you have a myriad of high-quality, helpful blog posts.
While you’re working on that, also endeavor to start building an audience on social media such as Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook groups including other forums where your targeted audience hangs out.
Try not to get too spammy by promoting your blog or product in those places.
Instead, update each of your social accounts with your new blog posts and try to contribute meaningfully to gain the confidence of your potential blog visitors.
It’s a gradual process and takes time just like blogging does when it comes to seeing results.
Getting obtrusive makes folks suspicious and scares them away from you.
Additionally, it’s not good for your brand.
But if you help them disinterestedly, they’re more likely to check out what you have to offer.
Can You Start a Blog for Free and Still See the Money Rolling in?
Yes, you potentially can.
But there are serious downsides you must be warned about when you are going to start a blog for free and make money.
When you blog with a free blogging solution, you won’t have the control you need over your blog because it’s not really your property but the property of the free service provider.
This is a clear-cut risk because the free service provider can decide to shut down your blog at any time and eliminate your source of income, which could be very dire if you rely on your blog for a living.
I strongly recommend you start your blog on a self-hosted WordPress CMS (content management system), which isn’t that expensive.
6 Additional Tips to Earn Money Online Blogging
#1 Diversify Your Income
Diversify your income streams and use as many of them as you can manage reasonably without it hurting your visitor time on site or page views.
#2 Offer Only Quality Content
Top-quality content is king when it comes to putting together a strong money-making blog, which is why you should never compromise the quality of your content if you want a long-term sustainable income stream with your blog. (meaning you seriously can’t cut corners with this one).
#3 Multiple Streams Of Income
Every blogger has a unique way of doing things and has a mix of different income streams, which means there are no hard and fast rules, only what works, which is why blogging is so much fun.
#4 Be Unique
Don’t be a copycat blogger, be creative in your own unique way. (although you can take ideas and content from other respected sites and make them into your own unique style and/or design)
#5 Have Passion
Have a passion for your blog topic, not just the money you stand to make from blogging so that you’ll have several, high-quality and helpful blog posts to present in the long term, which will organically give rise to the monetary rewards you’re looking forward to.
#6 Build An Email List
When your traffic starts to grow, take advantage of grabbing some of your visitor’s contact information (email address) to market to them at a later date.
The easiest way to do this is to offer a subscription to your updates and content.
The more effective way to capture your blog visitor’s email is to offer them something of value for free that applies to the main topic of your blog content like a live training, report, or how-to guide.
You can then send out updates and broadcasts at a later date for affiliate products that relate to your blog’s main topic to earn additional commissions several times.
One of the most important things that you can do while making money blogging is to build a subscriber list.
Final Thoughts About How To Make Money Blogging For Beginners
Although blogging might seem difficult and take too long to see any reasonable results, it is well worth it.
I will explain why.
I built many sites and used several traffic networks from PPC using Google, Bing, and others, Facebook Ads, and others, but I have always seemed to get back into blogging to earn the steady money that I desire in my business.
Paid ads can very volatile and the rules change from time to time that can have a very drastic impact on your monthly revenue which is true for anything, but you can really lose a ton of money fast especially if you are already scaled up.
This is what happened to me years back and the impact almost shut me down completely.
If it wasn’t for my blogs I would have probably had to get a regular job.
I made a decision a while back to stop trying to take shortcuts and provide only value with well-thought-out information on helpful topics that relate to the topic of my blogs and you know what happened?
I was able to design a well-structured, long-term, stable, and reliable monthly income.
It was the turning point in my online business when I decided to stop taking short-cuts with my blogging efforts!
I hope you thoroughly enjoyed my how-to-make money blogging for beginners overview and guide.
Also, make sure to share this guide on social media to help others by clicking on the social share buttons on this page.
Thank you.
