How To Make Money Blogging For Beginners In 2023
Pat Flynn, the founder of Smart Passive Income makes over $200,000 per month from his blog! Jon Morrow has made over $6 million from his website, the Smart Blogger. The Penny Hoarder, a personal finance website is known to make over $4 million per month!
In fact, the list can go on and on and on…Believe it or not – many bloggers are crushing it with their blogs.
According to ConvertKit, professional bloggers make an average revenue of $185,975- with average expenses of $47,912 and with $138,046 in profits.At the end of this article, you will find out how these bloggers made these mind-blowing figures from their blogs.
Let me walk you through it!
How To Start a Blog
The different types of blogs.
- Personal blogs
- Professional/ personal brand blogs
- Business/ corporate blogs
- Travel blogs
- Food blogs
- Lifestyle blogs
- Fashion blogs
- Multimedia blogs
- News blogs
- Review/ affiliate blogs
Personal blogs
This is the pioneer of all the blogs. At the time that blogging started, somewhere in the late 1990s… people got the privilege to write what was on their mind and things that were happening in their lives to the world.
Even though some personal blogs do exist, it’s not one of the blogs for reaching large audiences or making a decent income.
Professional/ personal brand blogs
Personal brand blogs are used by people to establish their public persona for their target audience. Mostly, these blogs show the works or projects of a person with the core motive of making money from them.
Nielsen stated that only 33% of buyers trust messages from companies, but interestingly, almost 90% of buyers or – customers trust recommendations from someone they know.
The same study made it clear that 92% of people trust recommendations from individuals – “even if they barely know them” over those from companies. Owners of online portfolios, influencers, and freelancers are people who mostly use these blogs.
Business/ corporate blogs
According to BlogHer, 81% of U.S. online consumers trust information and advice from blogs. BlogHer also stated that 61% of U.S. online consumers have made a buy based on recommendations from a blog.
In a survey, businesses were asked whether blogs were helpful to their businesses. 81% of these businesses or companies confirmed that their blogs were useful, important, or critical to their business. (Source: Hubspot).
The blog is a way a business can exhibit its unique and expertise voice.
Writing quality and helpful blog content that relates to your business profile can propel a business forward and give them authority in the niche they are in.
Other businesses also use blogs to announce upcoming events or products. In fact, blogs help drive traffic or people to business websites and in effect, increase the rate of conversion.
Travel Blogs
With over 80% of travel planning done through the internet and still soaring – and over 33% of US travelers using travel blogs for travel advice, it might be cool to create a travel blog.
But the reality is that it is really difficult to be a travel blogger. Listen to this brief story and you will understand why…
For instance, Lakisha Johnson, a travel blogger based in Wichita, Kansas wants to create very nice content about the place I believe is the most peaceful country in Africa – I mean Ghana.
She can’t write this content while sitting in her room in Kansas. She has to fly to Africa to get the real experience so she can share it with people who would love to visit.
It’s her first time going to Africa so she’s a bit uncomfortable, probably because of what she has heard about the continent. She touches down in Accra after about 16 hours of flight.
BECAUSE she wants to write the best ever content out there on the web about “reasons to visit Ghana”, she has to eat some of their foods, banku, waakye, fufu, etc even if she doesn’t feel like it.
She has to travel all the way from Accra to a place like Paga, to see the unbelievable crocodile pond in order to get enough to share with people on her blog!
She has to cope with the hot weather. I haven’t talked about the money she will spend while there in Ghana.
Moreover, if Lakisha owns and edits her blog site, she would have to put insane hours in content preparation, SEO, email marketing, social media marketing, and others…
Although it’s fun to be a travel blogger, it takes hard work to be one.
Food blogs
Food! The sustainer of life! If you don’t believe me then stay away from food for just 6 hours and watch out for how weak you will feel in your body.
Everybody eats therefore information about food is something that people are always searching for – most especially, the foodies – and I am their King!
Cooking healthy food, diversifying our meals, and getting the right ingredients are part of our everyday routines.
Because of this, food blogs will continue to grow and it would be a good move to start one if you take delight in cooking.
Lifestyle blogs
As the name goes – lifestyle blogs bring together content related to staying fit(workouts), productivity, nutrition, wellness, beauty, travel, and everything out there to help you live a great life.
AND who doesn’t want to have an amazing life? Everyone does, therefore Lifestyle is a profitable/ lucrative niche to consider.
BUT be informed that you would be required to put in more hours in creating the content since you’re writing about everything it takes to make life better.
Wellness Mama and Goop are examples of lifestyle blogs out there.
Fashion blogs
The first Fashion blog appeared in 2002. In 2006, the number had grown to 100 fashion blogs. Currently, it would be a hustle to count the number of fashion blogs we have. Founder and CEO of Fohr Card, James Nord, made mention that fashion bloggers that engage well with their audience and have around 500k followers are more likely to make not less than $7,500 from a single post on Instagram from sponsored content.
Competition is high in this niche but I guess you have all it takes to stand out from the crowd.
One interesting thing to know is that fashion alone takes 23% of all affiliate products, therefore products to promote wouldn’t be that much of a hustle.
Check out these amazing fashion blogs: The Blonde Salad, Manuella Vitulli, 10 Magazine, and Fashionista.
Multimedia blogs
Multimedia blogs combine visual storytelling, audio(podcast), vlogs, and live-casting.
People nowadays crave entertainment – so no matter how great your content is, it must not be words throughout.
People who land on articles but barely see pictures or videos or infographics – or anything visually appealing quickly get bored no matter how precisely the article answers their question. Because people have a short attention span, scanning is the latest way of reading.
Statistics show that over 50% of businesses will rely on visual content marketing from 2021 and beyond.
News blogs
Blogs like these focus on informing you about what is happening in an industry or a sector. The most well-known news blogs on the internet today receive millions of visitors.
BuzzFeed, a trendy news blog for millennials, focuses on entertainment and social news. It came into the limelight in 2011 even though it was started in 2006.
Content on news blogs is mainly written to inform you of what’s happening – they are barely written for entertainment purposes, unlike other blogs.
Review/ affiliate blogs
On these blogs, the editors behind the blogs evaluate products – physical or digital and afterward write an unbiased feedback article to their audience.
People are always looking for products or services to help them solve their problems.
Trust is guaranteed here if you give a genuine evaluation of the product, by giving pros and cons, pricing, user experience, and everything that readers may likely want to know.
Products and services out there for you to review and write about are countless if you join affiliate programs like ClickBank, Digistore24, Warrior plus, and Amazon Affiliates, just to name a few.
Where to create your blog
Right now that you have decided the type of blog you want to create, the next question is “Where do I create the blog?”.
There are some free website builders out there to start with, which I don’t recommend because you can build an amazing website that will captivates your visitors and boosts your Google ranking for as low as $2.95 per month on Bluehost with WordPress.
Plus, you get your domain name for free for the first year! Squarespace, Wix, Zyro, GoDaddy, Hostgator, and Hostinger are also great places to create your blog.
How to find topics in your niche to write about.
Pro bloggers don’t just get up and start writing about anything.
Remember that you want to serve the masses, besides, every successful dude out there is someone who serves people – from Elon Musk to the last person on the list.
This is the same mindset(serving the people) you should have as a blogger in order to taste success.
In the intro of this article where I made mention of the Penny Hoarder making $4 million+ income per month, if you check out their website you could see that every article over there is to help people solve their financial problems.
Therefore it is what it is. You have to help people solve their problems! So how do you get topics( keywords) to write about? What are people searching for?
Here are some places to find “keywords” or “content ideas”.
The first and easiest way to get topics(keywords) to write about for your blog is from the Google search bar. If you start typing any keyword, let’s say “ starting a blog…” you could see that Google provides you with extra predictions or options.
These options are what people are also searching for all the time. This is a great way to find what to write about.
Moreover, Google Keyword planner is also there to help you. It is free to use, all you need is a google account. The keyword planner tool is actually hidden when you land on the page, you have to dodge a few hoops to get there.
- Use Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, or KWFinder.
These keyword research tools are amazing! With these, you get accurate search volumes for the keywords you search for.
That is not the case with Google Keyword Planner, since what it gives you is only the search volume range.
You will also know the Keyword Difficulty, that’s the competition around a particular keyword – as well as the websites that are ranking high for that particular keyword.
NOTE: The lower the Keyword Difficulty, the better.
Ubersuggest is free to use but the paid plan gives value for your money. Ahrefs and KWFinder only have a 7-day free trial available.
Here are other free keyword research tools:
- Bulk Keyword Generator
- Questiondb
- Keyworddit
- Keyword Surfer
- Keyword Sheeter
- Google Search Console
- Google Trends
- Answer the Public
- Join social media groups in your chosen niche.
Joining Facebook social media groups in your niche will be of great benefit to you.
The reason is that in such groups, members are more likely to be looking for help with something.
Finding out that a reasonable number of people are seeking answers to a particular question would be your chance to write an article answering the question.
- Check other blogs in your niche/ your competitors.
What other blogs create content related to your niche?
Go to these various blogs, check the keywords that have been used for their articles, and select those you want to write about. Entering these keywords in Ubersuggest will show you their SEO difficulties.
Go for those with less SEO difficulty but high search volume.
- Pay attention to trends.
It is very imperative that you stay up to date with trends of the niche you’re in.
When there is the latest news in your niche, it is likely that people who are interested will be searching for more information about that.
Creating content on trends will get your audience hooked to your blog because they know that they wouldn’t miss any fresh stuff happening in their industry.
8 Great Resources For Keeping Up to Date With Industry News and Trends.
- Google Alerts
- Podcasts
- LinkedIn posts
- Quora
- Trade Journals
- RSS feeds
- 2PML
- Slack groups( Niche-specific).
How To Maximize Your Blog Traffic.
According to Demand Metric, businesses that make good use of a blogging strategy receive 97% more links to their website.
You can be the best writer ever to be alive, but if your articles are not getting exposure, nobody will read them.
Traffic is what is needed to build an email list, make some product sales, get some decent commission from affiliates, and perhaps, some followers.
This is why this part of the article is very IMPORTANT, therefore take notes.
- Write viral content.
All viral contents tap into the emotions of readers and make them desire to know what will actually happen at the end. Even if it is a sensitive and polarizing topic, people will still be interested to find out more.
Start your content with a great and compelling headline. Does your headline leave your audience with suspense that even if they are busy would save the content to read later?
Look, I came across this and it seems that great and compelling headlines have been around for quite long enough.
This as you can see, was written by a heroic ad man, John Caples in 1929. He created this ad for one of his trusted clients, Phoenix Mutual. So tell me! Who wouldn’t click on this headline?
Everyone wants freedom, everyone finds it less pleasurable waking up to an alarm clock every 5 am to go to work no matter how much this person loves the work – strictly scheduled work feel sometimes sucky! Therefore people wouldn’t hesitate to click on this headline to find out what it entails.
Also check out these, by Mike Schauer in 1934 and 1948 respectively.
After the great and compelling headline, if you are able to write an article that literally relates to the headline – you’ve won!
Follow these steps to create your viral content:
- Try to understand your audience.
- Develop content ideas using topic generators.
- Get ideas from comments on socials.
- Check Answer The Public for more ideas.
- Use information from reviewed products.
- Use keyword research tools(Ahrefs, Ubersuggest / SemRush) for more ideas.
- Write lengthy content.
“Lengthy content?!”
“Won’t that bore my readers? People now have short attention spans and you want me to write lengthy content?”
YES, I am telling you to write lengthy content. Aim for at least 1,500 words.
Your lengthy content must be in-depth; you should put yourself in the reader’s shoes and answer all questions you would have asked…
Don’t go around in circles talking about what you have already said.
If your content is in-depth and readers don’t have to go elsewhere for supplements, trust me, they’re going to share the article without you asking.
This will also make it easy to get backlinks from other websites that are at the top of the food chain when you reach out.
- Promote on social media.
The fact that social media can help you build your brand recognition, foster a community around your business(blog) and after all, grow your bottom line is incredible.
Currently, there are over 4.2 billion social media users worldwide – a five percent increase from last year! ( Source: Statista). Out of these over 4.2 billion users, your assignment is to just get a tiny fraction of them to your blog.
HOW DO YOU DO THAT? Be informed that there are many social media platforms out there where you can get traffic from. Maybe the only ones you’re thinking about right now are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. I cannot emphasize how these options are also very imperative:
Quora – use this to prove your knowledge in your blog’s niche, and engage with the amazing community.
Quora in 2018 reached 300 million monthly unique visitors to their site!
And have a look at the number of monthly visitors now. ( Source: Similar web)
Do This – Search for a keyword on Quora. To demonstrate this, suppose you are in the personal finance niche – there are many questions people want answers for.
Do your due diligent research, write amazing articles answering those questions – and then leave a link in these articles telling the readers to read more on your blog.
Who wouldn’t click on that link if you already made them fall in love with your article? Tell me!
Pinterest – share fabulous visual content( infographics and images) from your blog.
Because Pinterest is adding more countries to its ad targeting portfolio, its quarter-over-quarter change in advertising reach soared by 6.2% and will definitely continue to rise in the future.
There are over 100,750,000(million) users from the U.S. representing more than 50% of the 200.8 million audiences available to you and other advertisers.
Design beautiful pins on Canvas with catchy headlines to redirect users to your blog whenever they click on them.
There are many designers on Fiverr to help you create pins at affordable prices in case you can’t create them on your own.
Snapchat – archive the behind-the-scene of your business with the use of quick video clips.
A few additional tips:
- Leverage Instagram stories
- Use hashtags(#) in your posts on Twitter, Facebook, etc.
- Create pins for every post on Pinterest.
- Use search-friendly descriptions.
- Share content more than once to increase the number of people that see your post. According to Buffer, on average, their retweeted tweets get 122% more impressions, 87% more engagements, and 90% more link clicks.
Quickie: Do you know that you can send out your old content on social media automatically by scheduling?
Use Hootsuite, Social Jukebox, and Buffer.
- Collaborate with other bloggers and write Guest posts.
Writing a blog article requires you to get peace of mind for brainstorming – because of that, blogging is somehow lonely work.
But let me tell you this, after posting some articles you have to get in touch with the blogging community.
Feel free to give shout-outs to other bloggers by leaving a link in your article to take readers to their blog or an article they wrote that relates to what you have written.
This will make your article more relevant and authentic in the eyes of your readers.
If it’s your first time hearing a guest post, it’s simply writing an article for other bloggers on their blog.
Firstly, make sure the readers of that blog would love that kind of content – you cannot talk about simple pomodoro sauce on a marketing niche blog.
The next move is to write your pitch to convince these bloggers. Learn how to write a great pitch here!
Guest posts can expand your reach, and bring you much traffic from other blogs.
AND now, the biggie!
How to make money blogging
After doing all that I have talked about above, it’s now time to think about earning from your blog.
1. Include banner adverts on your website.
How to go about this is by signing up with ad networks. Google Adsense and Medium.net are the commonly used ad networks.
Graphical banners promoting the services or products of other businesses will be displayed on your blog – either on the sidebar, at the top, or bottom.
There are two ways you can earn money from doing this – the first is CPM. That’s, Cost Per Mille( Thousand). This simply means you will be paid a certain amount for every 1,000 impressions the ad displayed on your blog receives. The other is CPC which means Cost Per Click.
Whenever a reader clicks on an ad displayed on your blog, you get paid a certain amount. So the question is how much can you expect?
Check this video
2. Affiliate Marketing
This is one of the main avenues many blogs use to make money – according to The Penny Hoarder, the $4+ million income per month they make all come from affiliate commissions.
In affiliate marketing, you(the affiliate) get compensated in a form of a commission whenever you give a company leads or traffic to their products(physical or digital) or services.
The commission can be between 1-50% or even greater. The only time an affiliate gets paid is when someone pays for a product or service offered by a company using the affiliate’s unique link given to by the company.
The fact that affiliate programs are now countless as the beach sand doesn’t mean you should join any of them and start promoting any product or service even if you don’t know what it’s actually about.
You’re more likely to suffocate the trust your audience has in you if it happens that what you recommended for them is crap.
Therefore try as much as possible to understand what you’re promoting, whether it’s worth it or not.
Here are some of the best affiliate programs for beginners you can join:
- Amazon Associates
- Clickbank
- Shopify
- Bluehost
- Digistore24
- Fiverr
- Click Funnels
- Buiderall
- GetResponse
- ConvertKit
- Coursera
- Teachable
- AWeber
- Rakuten
3. Sell Ebooks
You can either choose to create your own ebook or get a PLR product, rebrand it and then sell it! Which one do you want? Let me explain both to you so that you can decide.
Creating your own ebook: To commence, research your target audience and find out the topics that intrigue them.
A way of doing this is by using a keyword research tool to know the search volumes for the various keywords related to your niche.
You can as well use Google Analytics to view the articles on your blog that are getting the most engagement. This should give you a clear picture of what your audience wants.
Don’t forget to;
- Use a great headline/ title.
- Personalize your ebook. Leave your social media and blog links in the ebook to connect new readers who know nothing about your work to your website.
- Make the title specific. “ Making $2,000 Per Month Selling eBooks” will perform better than “Make Money Online”. Narrow down your title, because if you want to attract everybody, you’ll end up attracting nobody.
“It’s better to be a meaningful specific, than a wandering generality” Zig Ziglar.
Use PLR: PLR( Private Label Right) products consist of ebooks, articles, checklists, video courses, and many more which are made ready for you to be used even commercially.
Almost all rights in the work are sold, including the attribution and resale rights. This would be the option for you if you want to skip the long process of writing the ebook yourself.
But note that you have to rebrand the plr ebook to make it unique for your audience. The reason is that the same PLR ebook you buy is also available for everyone else to buy.
Best websites for quality PLR ebooks.
4. Coaching/ Consulting.
This may not be for everyone, but after establishing your presence with your blog articles and letting your audience know your expertise, you can start coaching people. It doesn’t matter the niche you are in. If you are confident of the value your clients would be getting then you can charge a decent amount.
For instance, Alexis Meads’ dating coaching for women comes at $29.00 per 15 minutes.
5. Create Online Courses and Workshops.
Based on the unique skills you have, you can create a course around it. To excel with your online course you have to show people that you have walked the walk and that you know what you’re doing.
Creating an online course usually requires you to get a great eLearning authoring tool that enables you to build all the eLearning modules, as well as all the other authoring needs.
iSpring Suite for instance has all the tools under one roof that can take care of a variety of tasks – including videos, quizzes, and dialogue simulations to your course to make it more interactive is hence made simple.
6. Freelancing.
If you are a programmer, graphics designer, video editor, freelance writer, etc, freelancing would be an incredible money-making avenue you would want to consider.
These skills don’t require you to be physically present – you only need your pc and internet connection and you can work for anyone no matter the location.
Using your blog to promote your freelance services is much cooler provided that your website gets enough traffic because you escape much competition than being in a pool of freelancers on let’s say, Fiverr.
Final Words
Finally, here is the end of this article! I watched one of Shelby Church’s videos where she said she never thought there were ways blogs could be monetized. Maybe before reading this article you thought likewise. If your blog is new, writing quality articles and maximizing your blog’s traffic should be your utmost priority. Before you even consider becoming overly obsessed with monetization.
Suggested Post: Start a Lifestyle blog that makes money.
Blogging is a marathon, and not a sprint so be patient if you’re not seeing results in the early months. Always remember that winners never quit and quitters never win.
What is the name of your blog and what is it about? Leave a comment.
Manuelo is an entrepreneur and a personal finance nerd. He is the founder of Dollars And Freedom. An expert in side hustles, online gigs, and everything about making money. His works have been featured on major financial publications, like Business Insider, GoBankingRates, Investopedia, Entrepreneur, and more. When he’s not busy with his blog or writing for others, you’ll catch him hanging out with loved ones or reading books on stoicism and self-development.
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