How To Start Blogging For Money
Have you ever dreamed of being a writer? Start blogging for money may be the best way for you to earn extra or even full-time income. Who would pay you to blog? Read on and find out.
There are several million blog posts written every day in the world. 1 Some will make money, and some won't. Let's focus on being one that does make money. How we do that requires some simple steps, some time, and some creativity. Mainly, write often.
How To Start Blogging For Money
What is blogging?
Writing about personal experiences, opinions, or activities is blogging. So blogging is writing that is self-published on your website.
How do bloggers get paid?
Freelancers
One way people get paid for blogging is to write for others. There are numerous sites where you can get hired to write someone else's blog post, and they happily pay you provided you do a good job. Because of the demand for content, there is a heavy demand for the service of blog writers. Blogs can generate traffic to a website, so every business needs to have one. Imagine all the small business owners who don't want to write their blogs because they are too busy running their businesses. Below is a list of some sites that have freelance writers you can join.
Writing for yourself
To be clear, the main focus of this article is on passive income. Being a freelancer is great, but that is a job. There is no passive income in it. However, if you own your blog, you can get paid by having ads on your site, referring products and connecting to them with your affiliate link, and selling your digital products.
How much can I realistically make blogging?
If you are like me and you look to YouTube for answers, you will find countless videos where they are claiming thousands upon thousands of dollars per month. Are they real? I couldn't tell you. But if you find suitable sources, you can get a much more realistic idea.
Because the income comes from ads, affiliate links, sometimes readers donate because they like your content and digital products. It all comes down to traffic. If no one sees your blog, then you won't make anything. How good your content is and how much of it will determine your traffic. And then, of course, there is time. The consensus is you need a minimum of 30 articles before Google sends you substantial traffic, and then it will be around eight months.
Income School reports the following monthly expected averages.
10 posts
$0
100 posts
$2800
500 posts
$7200
What do I blog about?
You can write about anything you want, but you should think about what your audience wants if you're going to make money. Remember, no traffic means no money. You can use a free keyword tool like WordStream to see the search traffic. WordStream will give you an idea of search volume and how competitive it is. You are looking for decent volume and not high competition.
I would next go to Google Trends and make sure this is not a declining trend. Most of all, trust your gut. The tools are great, but instincts are essential also. Always think about how you can be helpful to the reader.
A niche is better
Many people write about anything and everything, but generally, it is much harder to build an audience that way. So I suggest your blog has a niche. Some examples are:
- Travel
- Fashion
- Finance
- Marketing
- Health and Fitness
- Mom
- Food
- Lifestyle
A niche will give your audience the incentive to read more of your posts. It also makes it an excellent start for writing. Once you have your niche, you are more focused and can narrow in on the particular article you wish to write. Choosing a niche that you are interested in will make writing much more manageable, which will show to your readers.
How do I get started?
To do it right, forget about all the free stuff. You are in it to make money, and the free blogging sites won't do that. To start, you need to do the following.
- Go to Siteground and get shared hosting hatchling plan. Siteground uses WordPress, which is free but you need a hosting service. Siteground is super cheap for your first year and I use them and have no complaints. If you pay for the year you get a huge discount. There are others such as Bluehost and Wix. I have used both in the past and they are good also. Bluehost also uses WordPress but Wix is its own hosting and website builder. Wix is extremely user friendly but is a lot more expensive.
- During the Siteground signup you will choose your domain name.
- Choose your theme and set it up the way you want. Good thing about a blog compared to a business website is a blog is much simpler.
- Start creating posts.
Does it cost anything?
Other than the Siteground expense, you don't have to spend any more money. As you watch YouTube videos or explore the internet, there are many tools that people will try to get you to buy. While they may be helpful, most are way too expensive to be a wise purchase for a new blogger. However, there is one exception you might make, and that is for Canva. Every blog post will need a picture, and you would not believe how hard images are to find. There are some free sites such as Pixabay and Pexels, but it is worth the price of Canva to have access to all the pictures you could ever need.
How do I get traffic to my blog?
Write good content is the first step. From there, it will take time. There is a term referred to as the “Google Sandbox.” Sandbox is a mythical algorithm that doesn't let new websites show up in searches. How long it lasts is only speculative, but it appears to be 6 to 8 months. Of course, it doesn't mean zero traffic, but most websites see a significant jump after that time frame. Thus, in the beginning, your new baby website is playing in the “sandbox.” Just get to 30 blog posts as quickly as possible but don't stop there.
Having a Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter page for your blog is another way to bring in readers. Your website builder will have free SEO tools to guide you to do your blog post right. WordPress has a plug-in called Yoast SEO. It will tell you things you need to correct, including readability issues.
Do's and don'ts of blogging
Do's
- Be professional and friendly
- Provide useful content
- Use a catchy title
- Proofread
Don'ts
- Use profanity
- Ramble
- Quit
- Plagarize
What tools do I need?
- Computer
- Web host sush as HostGator
- Grammarly
How many words per blog post?
Word count is a hotly debated topic. Some experts will tell you 2000 words or more, but I see the top blog post on a search sometimes is 500. I have even seen some suggestions of 3500 words, but the most common advice is 1000 words minimum. So If you ask Google, the answer would not be a specific number but rather use as many words as it takes to deliver value to the reader. A good article on this topic is at Yoast, and you can read it here.
Ads on your site
I would not worry about putting advertising on your site for the first 3 -4 months. But when you start to get some decent traffic, you can look at Google AdSense and Ezoic. There are others, but they won't take you until you get many daily page views. Most people start with AdSense then move on to Ezoic because it pays better.
Conclusion
As you can see, the answer to “how to start blogging for money” is simple but not easy. Getting up and running is easy. Writing lots of good content is not so easy. Like anything else, you will find the more you do it, the better you will get. You can get to 30 articles and coast, and if you get to 60 or 100, you will make more and more. There are a lot of bloggers that own and run multiple blog sites. It is widespread to build up a blog and then sell it. There is a website called Flippa that is a buy and sell mediator for websites. The numbers are a website making $1000 a month may sell for anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000. So build up your monthly income, and the bigger it goes, the more your site will be worth. There are some for sale for several million dollars.
So, there is plenty of money to be made. Are you ready to get yours?
Would you mind letting me know your comments? I love to read them and respond. Good luck with your writing! Thanks for reading.
