Create A Blog: The Perfect Business that you may not realize, that it makes money.
Money making with blogging is one of the most amazing things that could’ve happened to so many bloggers. There is an opportunity for financial gain. Creating a blog is definitely not hard, it is quite easy.
Although it is important to say, income earned is on a personal basis and blogging can take either be quick or slow process. It will all depend on you.
Starting a blog isn’t just purchasing hosting and becoming instantly wealthy.
Hosting is only a small percentage of what makes a successful (profitable) blog. You obviously need hosting since without it your blog won’t exist. EZ Host Pro has the perfect plans for your blog.
But having a blog live on the internet isn’t going to do anything.
Let’s get right into how to start a money making blog.
Create a blog. Money Making Blog Niches
The most important thing is your niche. You can make money on almost any topic, but you are more likely to make money on these evergreen niche’s.
Evergreen topics are topics that regardless of the time of year these niches are always being searched and always relevant. So their lifespan can potentially last forever.
Parenting Blog
Parenting is a profitable niche and one of the popular blogs new bloggers can start. New parents are always looking for advice. This a niche that is also universal, moms are everywhere.
Parenting is tough and always in need of help. People aren’t going to stop having families any time soon which makes this a very much evergreen niche.
A famous blogger and also a stay at home mom who blogs about pregnancy tips and being a mom. She quickly grew her blog to over 200k pageviews and was able to make $5,000 a month in less than a year!
Her main methods of monetization are ads, affiliate marketing and products. To be successful in this niche you should niche down. Parenting is very broad and can get lost with all the other blogs. But what’s going to make you more special?
Health, Fitness and Wellness
This is a great niche to be in because your market can be anywhere. This niche has become a very profitable blog niche.
You can easily bring in a lot of traffic to your website which can mean a lot of money in your pocket. You will need to zero in on a limited number of topics as this niche has a ton of different categories.
Another Mom shares her love of eating healthy and living a fit life. she earns $12,000 a month from her blog. Her main ways for generating income is from sponsored content, ads, affiliate marketing and her own products.
You can target this audience through Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube even Facebook!
Frugal Living
Saving money is one of the biggest niches on Pinterest? There are some massive group boards just for frugal living bloggers.
How do you make money by giving tips to save money? Jenny from This Tiny Blue House knows how! I have seen blogs on couponing which can be a great way of saving at the grocery stores.
Money
Another niche that never goes out of style is money. Many topics related to this niche can be: budgeting, personal finance, how to make money doing x, and so much more.
How to Set Up a Blog
The first thing is to secure your Domain Name and hosting package. Which EZ Host Pro has great rates on both. Matter of fact at the time of writing this article they are running an awesome special get a free domain name and lifetime hosting for a one-time payment of $97.00. Hosting is an ongoing cost of having a website or blog and this lifetime deal will save you tons of money through the lifetime of your blog or website.
Setup WordPress
Once you have secured your Domain Name and Hosting Plan you will need to setup WordPress. If you purchase a WordPress Hosting Plan your account will automatically have WordPress installed. An excellent walk-through on WordPress, I suggest viewing an expert on WordPress Adam at WPCrafter on his YouTube Channel. You can learn everything that can be done on WordPress.
“How to Make A Business Website Using WordPress & Elementor Page Builder”
You will need some plugins to build your Blog
An excellent service to use to get the very best prices for one-time payments is GPLDesigner. I have purchased a lot of the plugins from them and they are an excellent provider. If you purchase the plugins elsewhere, you will be paying for them on a yearly basis. With GPLDesigner all the plugins are a one-time payment, which will save you tons of money over the years. Many of the plugins are priced at $5.99 and they constantly offer discount codes to save even more money. (Sign-up for a yearly subscrition is the best way to go)
The most and best page builder plugin is Elementor Pro and it is available at GPLDesigner. Simply go to GPLDesigner and click on Plugins and go to Page Builders. Elementor is usually the first plugin because it is the most used page builder and also it is very easy for newbies.
WordPress Theme and Templates
You will now need a Theme for your blog. There are thousands of themes available which once again you can purchase with a one-time payment instead of a yearly price. Astra is an excellent theme and easy to work with and if you purchase Astra Premium Starter Sites you will have a library of great starter templates.
Another free resource for getting website templates is Envato Elements, I use it quite a lot. Keep in mind that you are looking at the main layouts that they have because once you find a layout you like you can change the colors to whatever you like, thus customizing any of the templates are easy to do. Hint: Setup all your colors and if you want any changes in the global customizer before starting to build your website. It saves a lot of time doing this in the very begining.
Elementor and Astra are the main plugins that are the most popular and easy to work with. But as you build your Blog you may find you need other plugins. I highly suggest that you first shop at GPLDesigner before purchasing the plugin for the vendor, GPLDesigner will always have the cheaper price and a one-time payment rather than a yearly payment.
Elementor has a theme builder, that is where you want to make templates for paarts of the website that you will use multiple times, like your header and footer, all your pages will have a header and footer so it is best to design them before building your pages. Another item you should setup in the theme builder is the template for your single blog page and the blog archive page, it is the pages that will automatically add your new blogs as you write your articles.
Creating Legal Documents and Disclosures
Once you complete the WordPress Tutorial, you will need to create Legal Documents in order to comply with laws. To make it easier to do this task you can use a plugin called “Complianz – GDPR/CCPA Cookie Consent”. If you plan on having affiliate links (more on this below) you will need to disclose that information to your readers.
You will want to start with creating your important page, your “About Me” page.
You can either opt to make an entire page with your story and background or you can have a recap on your sidebar/homepage. I find this page to be very important because it allows your readers to trust you through knowing you.
You can really sell yourself here by saying why you started your blog, why you are an “expert” in this topic and why you’re so passionate about it. In my About page I also like to add a contact form or you can create an additional page for people to contact you.
Ready to Start your Blog?
Get started with EZ 2 Host!
Blog Posts
This is really where you’ll hook your reader and get them to trust you. Your blog content needs to be valuable. Let’s begin with your Foundational Posts. A foundational post will show your readers what your blog is all about.
Since this is a how to post about making money, then your foundational posts must include opportunities for you to make money.
How can you do that? This will depend on how you plan to make money (examples below). If you plan on making money through ads then you need a lot of traffic. So you are going to want to reel in as many people as possible.
This means amazing headlines and posts on topics people love. highly recommend staying focused with building content for your blog.
A program that can help you create great headlines that shows SEO score as well as a headline score, is HeadlineStudio have a look at how I used it for the title of this blog article.
Create a Content Schedule
Make goals! Stay on track with a content schedule. Don’t feel rushed to pop out 10 new posts in a week because it seems like the right thing to do. Once you have your foundational posts you can then slow down and start doing 1-2 posts per week. Consistency and quality is better than having a bunch of random low quality posts.
If income is your goal then you will need to know how much you are planning to make by X Months and what you need to do in order to get there. How many at what price tag per month will you have to sell to reach your goal? Aside from financial goals, you should also be planning how you are planning to grow your audience.
Marketing
Getting people to read and engage in your content! The easiest way to get started is through social media.
Are you a Pinterest Ninja? Instagram genius? Whatever it is make a social media strategy and stick to it.
Keeping up with Social Media Marketing can be a huge task to keep up with. I have found that by having a program that you can use to schedule and post to all your social media platforms is a huge time saver.
This keeps you on a schedule of constant posts helps 100% for promoting your blog. One of the best programs with the best price is SocialPilot, it starts off with a free 14 day trial. “Hint” this is a program that many Professional Social Media Managers use and make a ton of money with this program.
Pinterest helps you build a brand. People can get a sneak peak of who you are before going to your blog. Build a cohesive profile with branded pin images.
Facebook is great for giving your site a mini boost plus you get to build relationships with fellow bloggers. We are no longer at the age of “competition.” Fellow bloggers should be seen as colleagues that can HELP you grow. Many Facebook groups allow you to promote your posts and ask any questions that need immediate answers.
Freebies & Email List
As soon as you start getting eyes to your blog you want to not only retain them on your site but you want to capture their information. This is what is called list building. The only way to get someone to hand over their information (usually their email address) is by giving them something else in return.
These are called opt-ins or freebies.
Make sure to develop a small sequence of emails to keep their interest. You can send them a welcome email (who you are and what they can expect), tips/ more free valuable information and then once they are settled in send them an offer to a product. This is called a sales funnel.
Now it’s time Make Money with your Blog!
You can decide how you want to make money. Although I do want to say that I have heard of many bloggers that made sales from a product they made without sending it to a list BUT majority of people recommend selling to your list because it has a higher conversion rate.
The top three ways to make money is:
- Affiliate Marketing
- Offering Services
- Creating & Selling Products
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate income is money that you get by promoting and ultimately selling a product that is not yours. You partner with a company or product (usually start with something you are already using), they will give you a link that is tracked.
In some cases, companies will pay for clicks or referrals but more often then not there must be a sale in order for you to gain commission.
The biggest or most popular amongst these I would say is Amazon. But I personally have found most of my affiliate programs through Share a Sale and VigLink. These sites are called affiliate networks.
They are a database that allows to search and apply for several affiliate programs from a single site.
The best way to make affiliate sales is by creating blog posts around the product. You can do this by doing a review, tutorial or example of how this product has helped you in some way.
Ana with the website “The She Approach” has a great program for empowering women to build their own digital empire.
Out of her first $10,000 earned, $6,211 of that was made through affiliate marketing. Although Ana does not post regular income reports, she does have a blog post that goes into detail how she earned her first $10,000.
Ana loves writing about Affiliate Marketing (in particular through Amazon) and blog growth in general. She has a pretty awesome post on how you can Monetize your Blog with Amazon Affiliate Links.
Offering Services
To me this is the easiest way to get started making money. This is actually how I made my first income on this blog. This to me is easy because you are offering something you already know how to do. I offered writing services and graphic design for bloggers.
This worked well for me because I knew a lot of busy bloggers that couldn’t keep up with content and other projects they were working on. (Through Facebook groups and networking I was able to find work.) I just sent to my blog to reference my work – I even created a landing page that had my services and prices.
Trust me people will pay if it means they don’t have to put in the work. What are your strengths? Do others struggle with it? Don’t be afraid to market yourself and sell your services.
Products
Another great way to make money with your blog is by selling your own product! Do no be intimidated by feeling like you have to create an extremely large and extensive course. Like I said above, people will pay for a desired result.
Think about something that you probably already created – what super secret sauce have you discovered that helped you?
Kristin with “Believe in a Budget”
In Kristin’s July 2018 Income Report, she earned $18,128.60 that of which $9,266.50 were of her Products and Courses. I love Kristin’s income reports because she adds that month’s highlights and a couple of extra details that other bloggers don’t add.
She is a perfect example of a bloggers selling her own products and making money.
If you are thinking of making big bucks then it’s wise to consider having multiple streams of income. Don’t rely on a single way of making money. If one falls short then you have another to pick up the slack.
Don’t waste time. If you have already made a plan, stick to it. When you start a task complete it! I wasted so much time starting a tasks and then starting another and another and ultimately never completing anything. It’s better to take one complete day planning than to waste months trying to regroup again and again.
Make a plan and a routine and stick to it!
