Step By Step Guide To Make Money From Blogging

(This post contains affiliate links. You can read my full disclosure here.)

Hey blogger friend, today we are going to talk about how to make money blogging. There are a lot of ways you can make money from your blog about which I will discuss in this post. But before we start, let me tell you a bit about my journey on my blog.

I started blogging (like seriously took it) in December 2016. I started out with a WordPress blog hosted on Bluehost with a few good posts and a few number of followings on Pinterest. Once I got serious about Pinterest I started seeing my traffic to grow. (I get more than 200,000+ pageviews from pinterest. Click here to find out how.)

But there was one big problem. I was not making any money from my blog. In fact, when I thought I would make money off my blog, I made $14 for the first month. I know this is not big but it gave me the much-needed motivation to go on.

This post is all about how I started making money from my blog and about the mistakes I did when I started so that you don’t repeat them.

Step1. Create your blog first!

This is obviously the first step. You need to get out of your comfort zone and create your own blog. Creating a blog is not tough.

You can get a blog up and run in 10 mins. Here is step by step process on how to get your blog on Bluehost.

Don’t get overwhelmed by the big players in your industry. When they started they also didn’t have that massive fan following on Pinterest or Instagram. It takes time to reach to those massive figures but for that, you need to start first.

So stop about earning money from your blog before you even start it.

Step2. Finalize your traffic source. Just ONE traffic source. I recommend Pinterest for beginners.

You need to decide on the traffic source.

A very important thing to consider here is to finalize ONE traffic source only.

You don’t have the time and resources to be everywhere. In fact, you will get less traffic if you don’t concentrate on ONE source only.

For beginners I recommend Pinterest. Pinterest is huge and there is a place for everyone there.

Pinterest is great if your blog belongs to any of these categories –

• Hair and Beauty
• Food
• DIY
• Lifestyle
• Clothing and Fashion
• Health and fitness
• Blogging
• Arts and Creativity
• Parenting
• Home Decor and Improvement
• And a lot more …

Here is the post which shows you how I get 200K page views per month from Pinterest.

Step3. Create content that gets searched

A lot of bloggers when they start just concentrate on creating content. Although great content is awesome but if no one reads it then it’s useless.

Create content which your readers are searching for.

There are a number of ways to do it. Most of the ways are free but there is software which will help you understand what topics are searched the most or what your competitors doing to drive traffic to their blog.

Here I will quickly discuss a technique which I use to find topics for my next blog post.

I use Pinterest to do it. And it’s completely free.

For example, if I want to write about “face masks” then I will go to Pinterest and search for “face mask”. Pinterest will show you some suggestions. These suggestions mean people are already searching for these topics and you can create an awesome post on these topics.

If I decide to write about “face mask DIY acne” then Pinterest will show you, even more, topics which go along with “face mask DIY acne” like “face mask DIY acne oily skin”. So I can write a post on “10 DIY face masks for acne and oily skin”.

And this is true as I get a lot of traffic on posts related to acne and oily skin face masks.

You can find a lot of other ways to do keyword analysis to make your post SEO (Search Engine Optimization) ready.

For beginners, I would recommend using Pinterest as its easy, simple and completely free to use.

Also, make sure to create awesome content for the post topic you decided. You want your visitors to be your readers and not get disappointed with your content.

Step4. Run ads on your website but make sure it’s not annoying your readers.

The first way to make money from my blog was through ads. For sure you can not rely on ads for all your income as it would need continuous content creation which you will not have time for. Also, you would need a massive amount of traffic to earn a living from ads.

But ads are definitely a passive way to earn money from your blog. It’s like you set up once and then forget about it.

But always remember to first create quality content for your readers, get traffic to them and then you can start serving ads to your visitors.

You can start with Google Adsense or media.net. I started out with media.net. I think they are great and you would love them when you are starting out.

Click here to get started with media.net and you will get 10% more of your monthly earnings for 3 months. This offer is valid only if you register using this link.

Once you have around 20K monthly traffic on your blog, you can register with Ezoic. I have used Ezoic in the past. They certainly made my income grow. They use various Artificial Intelligence algorithms to show relevant ads to visitors and thus maximizes your income.

Once you have grown a lot and start getting 100K monthly traffic, you can register with AdThrive. I am currently using AdThrive to drive ads on my blog. They are simply great. I think they are the industry leaders and will get you the maximum ad income possible from your blog.

Step 5. Write sponsored posts

Sponsored posts are ones for which a company pays you to write a review about one of their product or service.  The amount can typically range between $100-$250 per sponsored post when you are new. But this can easily go more than $1000 per sponsored post if you are an experienced blogger.

You can find sponsored posts by registering to these companies –

• Tapinfluence
• Izea
• Mom It Forward

Writing sponsored posts is probably the easiest way to make money from your blog when you are new to blogging.

Step6. Collect emails from your readers

This is a step which most of the beginner bloggers don’t feel important. This is one of the most important steps to making money from your blog.

Start collecting emails from day 1. Does not matter if you are getting just 1 email signup per day or week. Improve your offering for email signup but make sure to do it from day 1 of your blog launch.

Your email subscribers are your true readers and believers. If you are not collecting emails, then you are letting the money on the table go.

I use Mailmunch to collect email signups on my blog. They have the support of almost all types of forms like a popup, top header, and embedded. They also have a lot of designs to choose from. Highly recommended when you are starting out. They have a free plan as well.

I use convertkit as email marketing tool. I have used MailChimp in the past but believe me, convertkit is the best. Its one of the easiest and advanced email marketing tool out there.

The truth is most people don’t buy your recommended product until they know you or have heard about your product for a few times. Emails help you do that.

Step7. Affiliate Marketing

This is the buzzword in the field of blogging.

Very simply it means, whenever your reader buys a product from your blog which you recommended, you get a commission of the sale. This commission can be any percent of the price of the product. It can range from 2% to 80% of the sale price.

Because of the commission model, this is a very lucrative space for bloggers.

The way you ask your readers to buy the product is by sharing with the reader how awesome the product it. For example, I earn affiliate income from Bluehost. This is the hosting I used when I started my blog. They are simple and easy to get started and also costs just $3.49 per month.

I have created a post about “how to start a blog” where I have described the steps to build a blog on Bluehost. I show users how easy it is to build a blog on Bluehost and ask my readers to register using my affiliate link. Once they do, I get a commission. However, the price remains the same for my readers. It is a win-win for both of us.

There are a lot of affiliate programs out there. Almost all products that you use have an affiliate program. On Shareasale and Flexoffers you can find a lot of affiliate programs. You can search affiliate programs as per your blog category and start earning.

You can also register for Amazon.com affiliate program and start earning. Amazon.com is the most trusted e-commerce website and you can find almost any product there. It becomes very easy to find the product you would like to recommend to your readers on Amazon.com. But Amazon.com offers very low affiliate commissions. It ranges from 4%-10%.

Thus try to select affiliate programs which pay a high percent or amount for each sale.

Make sure that you only recommend the products which you love and have personally used. Don’t recommend something which you don’t like. Trust is very important here.

Step8. Create your own product

I know this step looks over complicated. But trust me it’s not. In fact this step will make more sense to you when you have great content on your blog and a good number of readers wanting that content.

Most of the bloggers who earn more than 10K per month from their blog, do it using their own product.

You won’t make much if your affiliate sales give you just $5 per sale. You will need a lot of sales to make a figure like that.

You can create your own ebook about the most visited topic on your blog, or a small ecourse teaching your readers. You need to share what you have learned and readers will surely pay for it.

I am in the process of creating my own products. It will be out very soon. I have a very engaging email subscriber list mostly because they love what I send to them. You need to figure out what your readers like before creating your own product. But this is not hard to do.

Also, you don’t need a huge email list to start creating a product. If you have an email list of 1000 you can start creating your own product and ask your readers to buy them if they like it.

Plus you get the liberty to ask whatever amount you want for your product. You can price it high if you think its worth that much.

This is my friend. I hope you like the post. Make sure you implement each step so that income from your blog can grow. Also, do email me if you have any questions about blogging.