Can beginners make money with blogging? You can make a living blogging with your knowledge base, by sharing and helping others in your field, when you build trust from your readers and have a lot of daily traffic. That’s when the money goes into your pocket.
Making money blogging is not a theoretical concept, it is a reality. Anyone with some basic knowledge of blogging, SEO, and a general idea of how the Internet works can start blogging and make money.
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How to make money from blogging |
How Bloggers Make Money – Recommended for Beginners
The blog you are reading now is a real example of a monetization blog.
The purpose of this guide is to help you understand how to make money blogging by avoiding mistakes or wasting valuable time on tasks that don’t contribute to your main goal.
It is aimed at beginners because I remember when I started (in 2002) I found it very difficult to understand how blogging can make you money.
It took me so many years to see the big picture and figure out what I was doing wrong and how to turn things around.
Hopefully, this comprehensive step-by-step guide will get you on the right track from the start and give you a solid plan to follow that will produce results as quickly as possible.
Before going into details, let me make something clear from now on.
This is not an easy job, it is a complicated and time consuming process that requires a lot of effort and hard work but it is also one of the best and most rewarding jobs in the world.
The rewards of building a successful blogging business are not just money but most importantly the feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction of creating a business without relying on anyone but talent and world. your own strength.
Have you ever wondered why there are so many articles about “how to make money blogging”?
If some people know the magic formula, why would they share it with the World without keeping it to themselves and making more money?
Simple answer. Every blogger’s dream is to reach the point where they make money online and then share how to start a blogging business with the rest of the World.
Of course, as we’ll see below, there’s another way to make money through affiliate marketing or by selling your own products and capitalizing on your success.
How to make money with a blog?
Let’s rewind and go back to the beginning. How do most bloggers make money online and how can you do the same?
Here are 7 steps to follow to make money blogging.
- Step 1: Set up a blog and sign up for your blog hosting (web hosting)
- Step 2: Start publishing great content
- Step 3: Build organic traffic to your blog
- Step 4: Build a community around your brand
- Step 5: Start making money by selling ads
- Step 6: Make money by selling your own products or services
- Step 7: Make Money Through Affiliate Marketing
It seems like a simple process! In fact, some of the steps are quite simple but others are complicated and you will need the right knowledge, the right tools and patience.
Step 1: Set up a blog and sign up for your blog hosting (web hosting)
This is probably the easiest step. These days, it’s easy to register a domain name and set up a blog. All you need is a little help and direction in the right direction.
I won’t go into all the details of how to set up a blog, but the good news is that our How to Start a Blog guide has everything you need to know.
In summary, it covers the following topics:
- How to register a domain name (domain)
- How to sign up for web hosting
- How to set up WordPress
- How to publish your first blog post!
It’s a comprehensive guide written for beginners to blogging and it will certainly save you a lot of time looking for this information online and from a lot of stress.
Mistakes to avoid when setting up your own blog
As a beginner in blogging , it is normal to make mistakes. That’s perfectly fine as long as you learn from your mistakes and don’t repeat them.
When starting a blog, keep these tips in mind.
Stay focused on your main goal – making money online.
Your goal is to reach a point where you will start making money from your blog, you shouldn’t forget that.
I bring this up again because I know from experience that a common mistake beginners make is spending too much time and effort designing the ‘perfect blog’, forgetting that in the early stages (when there is no traffic), no one cares about the design of your website and that includes Google.
I’m not saying website design is unimportant, but not in the early stages. Your main goal at this step is to have an active blog and start creating content that will help you get traffic.
There is a lot of work involved in attracting traffic (and leads), and you should devote your energy to those tasks in the first place.
You need your own domain name and hosting for your blog
As you will read in the ‘ Start a blog/website ‘ Guide , there is a big difference between hosting your website on a free platform like medium.com and having your own domain and self-hosted website. only you.
Make the right decision from the start and choose the right platform. By far, a self-hosted WordPress site is your best bet.
Simple
If you’re starting now, try to keep things as simple as possible. Don’t complicate things as you will get lost in the process.
You have a lot to learn and as you go on, you will change your mind about many things, so save your time and energy for more complex tasks.
Step 2: Start publishing great content
So you have a live website, that’s great!
Now it’s time to take on one of the most difficult and challenging tasks of blogging, which is not creating actual content for your blog.
Please keep this in mind
A blog without content is nothing, a blog with mediocre content is just another of the millions of blogs that have been published, a blog with great content is a money making business.
Having said that, it is important to understand from the outset how important content is to the success of your blog.
Great content (good, great, or awesome – you choose), will bring you traffic (we’ll see how below), authority, and make you money (in other ways). together).
So, what is great content?
Great blog content doesn’t have to be text, it can be images, videos, infographics, or even audio. BUT, for the sake of achieving high rankings on Google (and other search engines), your content should be mostly text.
As I mentioned above, keep it simple at first. Later, for best results, you can combine text with other forms to make your content more interesting.
Great content has the following characteristics:
- It is unique to your site (it is not an exact copy of an already published post)
- No spelling and grammar errors
- It makes sense
- It’s profound
- It’s not biased
- It’s something that helps people do/understand/learn something
- Very easy to read
Don’t worry if the above list doesn’t make much sense at the moment, as you get more experienced you will understand it better.
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Characteristics of Quality Content |
Let’s see how you can create good content for your website.
Choose a topic that you enjoy reading/researching/writing
When you start writing content for your blog , you should provide content that meets the criteria of good content (as explained above).
If you are not passionate about the topic, the process will be very difficult and you will give up before you even start.
A monetized blog takes a lot of content and you need to come up with lots of ideas and topics to come up with weekly (if not daily), so keep this in mind when choosing your niche.
Choose a topic with the right viewership
It’s not enough to be passionate about one topic, so should be for other topics.
Remember that to make money from your blog, you will need people to buy your products or advertisers to pay for your ad space.
If your chosen topic doesn’t have the right audience, none of the above will happen.
The easiest way to do a preliminary search on the potential of your niche is to open Google and search for terms (keywords) that need your attention.
Look for the number of results and the type of site that appear in the first pages of Google.
Don’t go too broad, make it specific
While you need the right audience for your chosen topic, don’t go too broad as there are chances that there are already thousands of websites on the same topic.
Popular topics have a larger audience, but they are also very competitive. If you are starting out as a personal blogger now, it will be easier to compete with other bloggers than online businesses that have teams of writers and SEOs behind them.
An example makes this easier to understand.
Let’s say that you are passionate about ‘fitness’ and ‘healthy living’. If you do a Google search for ‘weight loss’ or ‘diet’, you’ll get thousands of results, many from online magazines or websites that have been established for many years with thousands of pages of content.
It’s impossible for a new site to compete with these and get Google traffic for such broad terms.
What you can do instead is narrow down your topic and go for a specific niche that is still relevant to your passion but less competitive. An example would be “healthy living advice for kids”.
It is a topic that attracts a lot of interest, mainly from parents who want to learn how to provide a healthy lifestyle for their children, and who also hold money to buy a product (maybe a product). an e-book) to help your child do so.
The process of finding out what to write in your blog is called keyword research.
It’s a process that you need to master from the start and I strongly recommend you take some time and read the following articles:
Resources
- Keyword Research Process – 5 simple steps on how to do good keyword research.
- How to find SEO Keywords for blog posts .
Step 3: Build organic traffic to your blog
Let’s recap the process so far.
Your first step is to register your own domain name and set up your blog. You can register to buy a domain name in AZDIGI here
Your second step is to decide on the topics to include in your blog and master the keyword research process.
The next step is to start building organic traffic to your blog and this is what I will discuss in this section.
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What is Organic Traffic?
Organic traffic statistics
To monetize your blog, you need organic traffic, not just general traffic. Organic traffic is generated from search engines (mainly Google).
What makes organic traffic more valuable than any other traffic source, is ‘ user intent ‘.
The user enters a query into the Google search box with clear intent. The person is looking for an answer to a question, wants to learn something, is looking for information, or buying a product.
Their intent is expressed through the actual search terms they use in the search query.
For example, a user searches for “how to do an SEO audit of my website”, he is obviously looking for a step-by-step guide on how to do an SEO audit .
It’s very specific, and to be eligible to rank for that (or related) term, you need to provide Google with thorough instructions on how to perform a manual check.
When you do this properly, your blog posts will eventually rank high on Google and you will start getting targeted organic traffic to your blog.
How to get organic traffic to your blog?
Targeted organic traffic is the most valuable source of traffic for your blog because it is the traffic that converts.
By ‘convert’ we mean a few things:
- Users are more likely to stay on your page longer, reading your posts
- More likely to subscribe to your newsletter
- More likely to request your services
- More likely to buy your product
We’ll cover each of these in more detail at the end of the post, but for now, let’s see how you can get more search engine traffic to your blog.
You need great content
Although I mentioned this in step 2 above, I am mentioning this again because it is extremely important. If your content doesn’t meet Google’s standards, anything you read below won’t work.
You need to do your SEO right
Technical SEO is concerned with setting up your blog and how well it is optimized for search engines.
Your blogging platform (especially if it’s WordPress), is by default SEO friendly, but there are still a few things to check and change to make it better.
Things like:
- Blog/website structure
- URL structure
- Optimize XML Sitemap
- Using Schema Markup
- URL Cannonical
- Optimize your categories and tag pages
- Website speed
- Mobile-friendliness and accelerated mobile pages
- SEO Webmaster Tools
All are very important in this process.
You need to do your On-Page SEO properly
On-page SEO goes one step above technical SEO and deals with how you can make your content and website more visible to search engines.
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On-page SEO techniques |
When looking at your on-page SEO, you’ll deal with things like:
- Optimized Title and Description tags
- Post length
- Use images and videos in your content
- Use the right post title and format
- Internal linking best practices for maximum SEO
You need to work on your Off-Page SEO
All the actions described so far to increase your organic traffic, relate to the items you can change/optimize on your website.
Another very important aspect of getting more traffic from search engines is off-page SEO.
Off-Page SEO is the process of promoting your website on the Web with the aim of increasing awareness of your content, products or services.
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In other words, you need to let other website owners know that you exist. The benefits of doing so are numerous:
- Search engines are more likely to rank websites that have references (links) from other websites.
- You will get more traffic.
- You will become an expert in your field.
As I have mentioned many times before:
Good On-Page SEO can get you to the first pages of Google while good Off-Page SEO can get you to the top positions.
The most popular and effective off-page SEO method is link building.
What is link building and why is it so important?
Search engine ranking algorithms are always looking for ways to understand the quality of a web page.
The main purpose of search engines, and especially Google, is to keep users happy by presenting them with websites that have good content, are easy to navigate and, in general, are considered to be of high quality. .
Besides on-page SEO optimization, another way to convince them that your site falls into this category is to have external links from other websites pointing to pages on your site.
Other things being equal, the site with the most incoming links, will rank higher in the SERPS.
Link building is a complex topic and one that people who are just starting out with blogging find it confusing. I know this from experience and from the feedback I receive from my blog readers and clients.
What you should know about link building at this stage is:
- It is not a matter of quantity but mainly of quality. This means that there is no magic number for how many links you need to get high rankings but where they come from.
- Links from sites related to your topic that are highly trusted by Google will be more valuable than links from article directories or other low-quality sites.
- If you engage in black hat link building practices (i.e. buy links, exchange links with others), you’ll be in trouble with Google.
- Google algorithms will penalize your site for trying to manipulate their algorithms and you will lose all your rankings as a result.
How to increase traffic to your blog through link building?
The most common link building methods are:
- Post Guest blogs on your bigger and more famous websites
- Link to other sites from your content and contact them to let them know. If they find your site useful, they may decide to return the favor.
- Contact other webmasters and recommend your site and content
Resources See more:
- How to write guest blog articles that are easy to accept .
- What is SEO – The Ultimate Guide to SEO for Beginners.
- SEO Best Practices – Best practices for tracking higher rankings.
Step 4: Build a community around your brand
Once you have a blog with great content and traffic starts pouring in, your next step is to build a community around your brand.
A common mistake beginners make is skipping this step and going directly to the monetization section, but this is not the most efficient way.
Before doing any sales (conversions), you need to first gain the trust of your users and this is achieved through community building.
Note that I used the term ‘brand’ and not just a blog and this was done on purpose.
At this stage you need to stop thinking about your blog as a hobby but you need to change your mindset and approach it like you are approaching a ‘real’ business.
We all know that branding is a very important aspect to the success of any business and your blog is no exception to this rule.
There are many things you can do regarding branding (like having a distinct logo, unique tagline, etc.) and building community is one of them.
What is community building for blogs?
In a word, what you are trying to do is create a community of people who will follow your blog, interact with your content, and buy your products or services.
The most common ways to do this are through:
Email marketing
Subscribers to your email list (aka newsletters), are a valuable asset to your blog. You can use your email list to notify the community when there is new content on your blog, to ask for their feedback and to sell products or services to them.
This won’t happen from day one, you need to gain their trust first by providing value through your email but in the end it’s one of the most effective methods to create community around the blog by building your email list .
In my case, 20% of the monthly revenue of my SEO courses, is generated through my email list.
See also: Instructions for implementing Email marketing
Social marketing
Some people don’t like to receive emails, they prefer to use social networks to read news, communicate with friends and often spend a lot of time online.
You need to make sure that you have a social media presence in the same channels as your potential followers.
There are many social networks available that you can use but since you are just starting to set up and brand your blog, you are better off focusing on channels that are proven to be more effective than those another (when it comes to building followers), and this is Facebook and Twitter.
Start by building your fan page on Facebook and also spend 10-15 minutes a day on Twitter.
Remember that your goal is to connect with potential followers and customers of your blog, not just anyone on social media. Do some profiling and choose your target audience wisely.
- See also: How to grow a 10,000-member Facebook Group without spending 1 cent
Web push notification (Notification)
This is another way to connect with your community. Subscribers to push notifications will be notified every time a new post is published and whenever you want to send them a new message.
Reply to comment
Last but not least, you should not forget about blog commenting. I am not referring to comments you may write on other blogs but in response to comments that other people post on your blog.
If someone writes a comment to one of your posts, they expect a response and ignoring them is not good when trying to build community.
Look at some of my old posts and you’ll notice that they have dozens of comments. What I do on a daily basis is try to respond to each and every comment and help my readers in any way I can.
I don’t approve all comments; I only post comments that are meaningful (not spam or self-promotional) and this encourages more people to post their comments.
Additional resources:
Facebook marketing for beginners – A simple guide to using social media to promote your blog
Step 5: Start making money by selling ads
Do you realize how much work you need to do to get to the monetization section?
While this blog post is about monetizing your blog, almost ¾ of the content is related to previous activities and this is how monetization blogs work in real life.
As a reminder, it is important to understand that you will not monetize your blog if:
- You don’t have enough organic traffic
- You don’t have a suitable email list
- You don’t have a community of loyal followers.
- You have no converting content
Assuming that you have successfully completed the above tasks, let’s see how you can make money online and reward yourself for your hard work.
Sell ad space: Google AdSense
AdSense is fun, I admit it! I am already an AdSense publisher and although there are alternatives, Google Adsense is still one of the best ways to make money online.
I am using Adsense on my blogs and so far, I have earned significant numbers.
Some things you should know about making money with AdSense:
Easy and reliable
Adsense is easy to use and reliable. All you need is a blog with great content and lots of traffic.
You add AdSense to your blog, and when people click on one of your ads, you get 68% of the advertiser’s pay (the remaining 3% goes to Google to demonstrate this service).
It’s reliable because you know that Google will pay you on time and will do whatever it can to protect the system from fraud and spam.
You can choose what types of ads to show, how often to show them, how ads will show, and more.
How much money can you make from AdSense?
The amount you can earn from Adsense depends on three things:
- Your organic traffic level
- The position of your ad
- Number of advertisers available for your niche.
Let us take a quick look at the following factors:
Obviously, the more traffic you have, the more money you can make from Adsense . It’s as simple as that.
To make money from Adsense you need people to click on your ad and the position of your ad on the page is a very important factor.
While the best practice is to test different ad placements and find out which works better for you when you place Adsense in your main content (as opposed to sidebars and footers), you can expect a higher click-through rate (CTR) and this means more earnings.
Adsense is a keyword based auction type system. When a user is searching on Google and then visits a website with AdSense ads, it will try and show the user ads that are relevant to the search query.
If there is more competition i.e. more relevant ads, this increases the amount advertisers will pay and the amount you will earn.
When is the best time to use Adsense?
- Use AdSense on websites that cover a wide range of topics (news, magazines, newspapers, forums, etc.).
- Use Adsense on websites in the area of healthy living (fitness blogs, weight loss, etc.).
- Use AdSense on sites with lots of page views.
When is it best NOT to use Adsense?
- Don’t use Adsense when you can create and sell your own products or services.
- Don’t use Adsense when you can make money through Affiliate marketing.
Step 6: Make money by selling your own products or services
I mentioned above that I do not use AdSense on this blog. The reason is very simple. The purpose of this blog is not to make money from advertising but rather the channel I use to promote my SEO Courses and Digital marketing services .
Think of it this way: When you sell ad space on your blog, what happens? You get only part of the money because 30% will go to middlemen (advertising agency) and advertisers who are profiting from your content and hard work.
To minimize loss of money, you should consider creating and selling your own products or services.
Of course, this is not as easy as it sounds. It requires a lot of effort and hard work to create a product that others will be willing to pay for BUT it is the best way to build a lasting online business.
Having your own product will maximize your profits, and you know that your every effort to get more traffic will help you make more sales.
The easiest types of products to create and sell online through your blog are ebooks and online courses.
Before spending any time and possibly money creating your own product, you should do some homework.
To be more specific, you need to answer the following 4 questions:
- What kind of product to create?
- Who can buy your product?
- Sell it for how much?
- How to test your product idea before actually making the product?
To answer the first three questions, you need to do your research and find out what’s already on the market, who sells it, and how much they sell it for.
But even if you have this data at hand, the most important thing is to know if your idea for a product will sell before you actually create the product, and here’s what I’ll explain. down here.
When I thought of creating an SEO Course and selling it through my blog.
So what I did to test my idea was as follows:
- I created a sales page for my course (similar to the one you see now).
- I have added banners (call-to-action boxes), in my articles and sidebars to redirect traffic to that page.
- When someone clicks the BUY NOW button, they are redirected to the checkout page, but when they try to complete the purchase, they get a message that the product isn’t available yet.
I know that this is not the best user experience but it has helped me answer a lot of questions and given me the energy and strength to create the course.
I ran the above test for 2 weeks and in the end, I know:
- How many people clicked on the CTA box (I tested different messages and found the one that converts better)
- How many people visited the sales page?
- How many people clicked the Add to Cart button
- How many people indicate an intention to complete a purchase by going to the checkout page and clicking the buy now button
I also know their country of origin, the equipment they are using and many other details.
After analyzing all the information, I decided that an SEO ebook is something my readers want and are willing to buy.
So I stopped testing and created the actual product. It was not an easy task; It took me about 6 months to create the first version of the course but in the end, I’m so glad I did.
The actual sales numbers are even better than the test and since last year the course sales generate good monthly revenue.
The bottom line is: Do your research, find an idea, and test it. If the test is successful, proceed with execution, if not start the process again.
Resources to learn more
- How to make money online with SEO – make more money using your SEO expertise.
Step 7: Make money through affiliate marketing
Last but not least, another way to monetize your blog is to sell other people’s products (digital or physical) for a commission.
This is commonly known as Affiliate marketing . Here is an overview of the process.
- You find the products you want to promote
- You sign up for their affiliate program and you get a link and banner to use
- You add links/banners to your blog
- When someone clicks on the links, they are redirected to the provider’s website
- When they make a purchase, you will receive the agreed commission
Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Yes, but the reality is not so easy. You still need to find the right product to promote, and you still need to check that your audience and community are willing to pay to buy the product you are going to recommend.
A few things to know before joining affiliate marketing:
- Do not promote products or services that you do not personally use. You don’t want to lose the trust of your users. Only promote products that you know from personal experience that will help your readers.
- Google doesn’t like websites or websites whose sole purpose is to make money from affiliate links. Your website must provide real value to users without being overly promotional.
- Don’t abuse it. You can suggest products in your blog content, but not always. Good affiliate marketers don’t advertise products all the time. They first provide value to the reader and then recommend the product.
If you want to learn more about affiliate marketing, read Pat Flynn’s blog , he is one of the most successful affiliate marketers on the Internet today.
Conclusion
Making money blogging is not a theoretical concept. Thousands of bloggers are making money through their blogs by selling their own ad space, products/services or through Affiliate marketing.
All these successful bloggers have a few things in common:
- They are having blogs with great content.
- They have managed to build community around their blog.
- They use more than one way to make money. They have their own products but they also make money from affiliate marketing and selling ad space.
- They have been blogging for years and it took them years to make a living from their blog.
If you’ve made it to this point, you should know this:
Everyone can learn how to make money blogging. The amount you will earn depends on the amount of work you are willing to allocate to make it happen.
It is not an easy job and also not something that will produce results in a few months or even years, it will take time and it takes a lot of patience. BUT, as I mentioned above, once it happens it’s one of the best jobs in the world!
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