How to Make Money Blogging

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Can you really make $10,000 per month blogging? Can you really make money blogging? Yes, I have consistently made this kind of income publishing websites for 10+ years and I know dozens of other people who have as well. Some months are higher, and some are lower and there was even a year I lost the majority of my income because a woman stole one of my websites. Making a full time living running a website business is not easy, and it is not for everyone, but for those of us who do it, we would not have it any other way.

Want to know the secret? Write GREAT content that monetizes well. There are a 1,000 steps, large and small, you can take to make your content better and more favored by search engines (like Google), improve traffic, get backlinks and all the other things it takes to create and maintain a successful website. If you’d like to learn How to Start a Blog Business and Make Money, following are some of my top tips and experiences from the last 10 years.

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Is Blogging The Right Career For You?

I publish websites about things I love and my websites make money. For over 10 years, I have had no boss, no clients, no external deadlines. I can live fairly comfortably in my hometown of NYC or I am free to roam the world. When in NYC, a topic about which I write, I get invited to shows, sales, tours and so much more and do them free or heavily discounted. Tennis is another of my passions and websites – I’ve now been to almost all of my bucket list tennis events and even got to live at a 4 star tennis resort for two months. I get paid to explore NYC and play tennis. Sounds idyllic, right? In most ways, it is.

On the other hand, I work a lot of nights and weekends, am responsible for a 24/7 business that (hopefully) never shuts down, but when it does, I am earning $0 income. I am CEO, HR, Tech Support, Accountant and Product Manager. I outsource plenty of work and hire experts when appropriate, but I still have to manage a lot. Also, blogging can sometimes take away the fun. When I’m out enjoying my events and passions, I am always thinking about how I’m going to write them up. I’m taking notes. I’m analyzing what photos will look best on my website. I’m mixing work and pleasure, which is fine most of the time, but occasionally can take away a little bit of the fun. If you’ve always enjoyed cooking, are you going to enjoy it as much if you have to write down the exact ingredients and recipes you use and take photos every step of the recipe? Food for thought:)

If you really think blogging is the business for you, check your skillset against those I think are the most likely to lead to success blogging.

Are you generally self motivated? Are you disciplined enough to sit at your computer for hours on end without any formal schedule, boss, deadline and quite often, no immediate income? Your motivation to work will always have to come from within, so be honest with yourself if you are truly capable. My motivation is money. I make money by providing value to people. The more value I deliver, the more money I make. But I don’t get a paycheck every Friday. I have months that are $10K higher or lower than the month before. Blogging is a long game and roller coaster ride and you must be willing to take risks and wait for the rewards.

THIS is what motivates me. When I look at my phone after a few hours or when I wake up and see this. This is the income from my own products I’ve created. My affiliate income is completely separate (more on that below).

How to Make Money Blogging

Some other skills and qualities I think are beneficial include being analytical, good at time management, business experience, patience, ability to put thoughts to paper, not a perfectionist all the time and basic computer skills. Some skills you DON’T need to make money blogging? Any specific software (ie, WordPress), design or outstanding writing skills.

Think you might want to start with remote employment before jumping in to your own business? Check out our list of top Remote Jobs – I guarantee the featured job will blow your mind!

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How to Make Money Blogging

You are probably thinking this is the time I’m going to tell you how get a host, domain, install WordPress, etc. No, no and NO! None of that is crucial to building an online business. You don’t have to worry about any of that right now, because I’m going to show you the easy way to get started later. First things first. This isn’t “How to Start a Blog.” This is How to Start a Blog Business and Make Money. See the difference?

Think about things you know or are willing to learn about. Topics about which you are passionate. Topics you will be motivated to write about and research for long periods before you start making money. What is that topic or question for which everyone knows you are the go-to guy/gal?

Here is how to make money blogging about them. If you are stuck, keep reading for ways to brainstorm ideas

1) Ads – this is the fastest and easiest way to make money online. You put a small piece of code on your site, usually Google Adsense. People go to your website, click an ad and you earn a small fee. Ads are easy to implement, however, it takes a LOT of website traffic to come close to a full time living. It will likely be a portion of your income, but not a focus right now. As you get more website traffic, there are much higher paying ad networks like Ezoic, MediaVine and others. So with a simple code change, you can triple your ad income overnight.

2) Affiliate Income – this is how most bloggers earn their income. When you are on a website and that website has a link to another business, and you click through and make a purchase, that blogger is likely earning affiliate income. Hotels, airfare, tickets, books, clothing, beauty, wellness, nutrition, sporting goods, cookware, camping equipment, tours, info goods like ebooks and courses, insurance, medicine, financing. There’s hardly any industry that does not offer an affiliate program.

Some are offered directly from the company, like the Amazon Associates Program. But many are offered on aggregators – huge companies that manage these programs. You become a publisher and the companies paying you for sales are advertisers. A company like CJ (formerly Commission Junction) manages everything about the program – they give you the links, which have code in them, to put on your site and track your sales. Let’s say you are a publisher for 15 programs in CJ. Monthly, you receive one payment of all your commissions from CJ, along with a detailed report by advertiser.

There’s tons more to it, but for these purposes you are looking for ways to monetize your site, so you will sign up (free) at these aggregators and start researching for ways you can make money on your topics.

Want to see an affiliate link in action? Some of these are my affiliate links, where I may get a commission if you sign up for their programs (at no cost to you). It’s how I’m able to offer this free information, but in no way does it affect what I write.

3) Your Own Products – the third major way to make money blogging is by selling your own or other digital products. This is my favorite form of income. These can be books, courses, guides, templates, itineraries. Two major places to get inspiration for ready made products to sell – and also see other successful programs to provide ideas for you are Clickbank and EJunkie.

There are other ways to make money blogging, like sponsored posts, direct advertising, site sponsors, memberships, and others, but these become available after you have a substantial amount of traffic.

After some time on the above sites, you have hopefully come up with potential blogging niches AND ways to monetize them. You are now EONS ahead of everyone else who simply tried to Start a Blog and who thought the first question was something like “WordPress or Wix?” or “What Theme Should I Use?” You have started a very high level business plan for How to Start a Blog Business and Make Money.

There IS a formula for all the next steps. For example, you can actually use keywords to determine if you can succeed in your niche. The experts have devised formulaic ways of looking at supply and demand of keywords, so you can have a strong competitive edge before you ever start your blog. You’ll know exactly where to hone in on your niche and eliminate most of the guesswork. Maybe some of your ideas are good. Maybe they are all good. But let the numbers tell you where to focus.

Are there niches that do well even though the keywords don’t show it? Yes, I know many people who make over $10,000 a month blogging about topics that would never have passed an initial keyword test. I even run a website that makes around $2,000 a month in a very small niche. However, I strongly encourage you to ensure there is demand for your niche before you start a blog business around it.

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How to Start a Blog Business and Make Money

The absolute #1 thing that propelled my website business to earn $10K a month in the early days was joining an online course and community. I cannot stress this enough. Having experts walk you through every detail, step by step, along with providing the specific technology to use and a community of 1000s, both at your level now, and all the future income and traffic levels you will achieve, is invaluable. There is no other smart and efficient way to build your blog business. The usual price point for these courses, which include everything you need to build your website, is around $30-$40 per month and following are the top two courses:

  • SBI – this is the course I started with over 10 years ago. I earned back the cost of an annual SBI subscription my second month blogging, before the word blog even existed! I hit my first $10K month in less than two years of joining SBI. My best “online friends” (ie, other very successful website manager) all got started here as well. I have moved some of my sites over to WordPress, but I still keep one HTML site on SBI. They have two different courses. Solo Build It and SBI! for WP.
  • Wealthy Affiliate – this is a newer company, with live support, more modern training, and the guide most of my newer successful friends have used and recommend. It is far more cost effective than SBI if you have more than one website or if you know you want to use WordPress. This is the one I usually recommend now to people starting out.

***Yes, I do an earn an affiliate income if you sign up for either program. I never set out to promote either program. I am first writing this type of article after 10 years of making six figures online, because I’ve been asked so many times how to start and this is the answer I’ve given everyone online and offline***

Both courses have a large list of pros and some cons and I’ll do an in depth review of both with lots of detail soon. WA offers a free trial and both offer pro-rated refunds if you are not satisfied. Plus, if you followed my instructions above, you are already SO MUCH CLOSER to earning money because you’ve researched your business ideas before ever paying a dime. So, you really have nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying one of these two programs.

Can you do it yourself? Sure, you can go off on your own and learn about 100 things you are about to do: choosing the best platform, host, registering your domain, the technical side of building a website, plugins, creating your contact form, privacy policies, setting up your Google accounts, email account, GDPR regulations, social media, email lists, SEO, keywords and so many other new things, it’s almost mind blowing. All things that need to be done before you can try and earn a dime online. I would never recommend this route to anyone. It has been done, but it is definitely not the most efficient, smart or fast route to get there.

Learn in the right order, glean from the experts, interact with a successful community and use the built in technology each of these companies supports.

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How to Make Money Blogging – The Companion Guide

My specialty is monetizing websites. It has been my super power since Day 1 of my journey and, along with the right foundation training above, how I got myself to $10K a month quickly. I have helped dozens of other website owners increase their income with my coaching and secret sauce and I am launching a guide and course to my advanced SEO and Monetizing Methods not taught at either SBI or WA. It will launch at a huge discount, so sign up to be the first to know.

Learn How I Make Over $10K Per Month Publishing Websites

Long before the words Blogger, SEO, Wordpress or Digital Nomad even existed, I created websites that surpassed my six-figure income within one year and allowed me to work from home. Today, I am fully location independent, do work I LOVE and have total control over my schedule. Has entrepreneurship had it's ups and downs? Absolutely, and you can learn everything I know about how to build a sustainable business online, publishing websites about travel, your hometown, fitness, health and so many other niches. Learn all about How to Make Money Blogging, including how to know if it's the right career for you and how to quick launch your business.

I'll even show you how you can start totally free and not worry at all about which host, what domain name, a logo and all the other none sense most people waste their early time on that is frustrating and earns you zero income. You'll learn much of my SEO "secret sauce," completely legitimate tactics no one else is using. The course is being developed now, so sign up today (no spam, I promise) and be the first to know when I launch it at a special discounted rate.

The guide will cover:

  • My secret way of using keywords Google loves, but without having to stuff them into my content or break my writing flow
  • The best free keyword tool and how to use it
  • How to best structure your pages to maximize SEO, please your site visitors and get you sales
  • How to analyze the best affiliate programs – cookies vs commission
  • How to get yourself a free link from a DA 93 in 5 minutes or less
  • The best way to organize your content that really impacts SEO and traffic
  • How to use your competitor websites to increase your social media followers and spy on their popular content
  • A free way to look up your competitors most shared content
  • Free ways to get images

And dozens more tricks and tips I’ve learned over the years.

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Top Earning Blogs and How they Make Money Blogging

How to Make Money Blogging

via BB101

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