How To Make Money Blogging

I imagine you have found this page because you are interested in how to make money blogging as a side gig or maybe as a full-time job! I was in your place not too long ago! I was a new mother searching for a way to make money while I stayed home with my new baby. I was trying to think of anything I could do that would provide extra financial support while also taking care of our child.

As I was looking on Pinterest, I found a post about people making money from home maintaining a website or blog. It seemed so fascinating to me that people could make a full time income all while staying at home and setting their own schedule! Who doesn’t want to be their own boss!

It didn’t take much thought to realize this is something I wanted to try myself! And now I want share with you all that I have learned in this last year and half about starting a blog. I will share with you the beginning steps that I took that has eventually led me to making a full-time income for our family all while working on average 2-3 hours per day!!

**This post has a lot of information, so if you have planned on creating a blog or website I would save this post by bookmarking, saving to Pinterest, etc so you are able to come back to it as needed.

1. Create an account through WordPress and Bluehost.

Creating a website domain

When creating a WordPress blog/website, you will have to pick a website name/domain and decide what content you are wanting to share. This is actually a VERY important step!! You will want to pick an idea that you have a passion for and have a lot of good information to share! You will want a name that is not too long and is easy to remember. (Think of all the most popular websites out there and how short most of their website names are). You will also want to pick something that is not too overdone, so you aren’t fighting for the spotlight with thousands of other websites.

When I starting blogging, I originally planned to do a blog about being a mom. You know the typical “mom blog”. I realized pretty quickly that this is a topic that A LOT of moms have done. I felt like I was standing on a stage with a thousand other people trying to get the audience to notice me. After a month or so I realized that I was better off picking another topic that I had interest in. I love old houses and realized there were some, but not a lot of websites that shared about old houses. So I changed my name and the format of my site to this passion that I had! And I was all the better for it!

WordPress

When starting a website/blog you will have to pick a place to create your website. WordPress is a very well-known and reliable company. And as I looked into what options to pick, WordPress was the one who stood out as one of the best! You can start up your website for FREE! They also have plans that you can upgrade to, but I chose to start out with their free plan and have not needed to upgrade at this point.

*One important piece of information about WordPress!! There are two WordPress websites (WordPress.org and WordPress.com). You will want the WordPress.com because this option allows you to include advertising on your blog/website the other does not!

Bluehost

After creating your website through WordPress you will need hosting. I personally chose Bluehost because they are also a reputable company and they offer a lot of good free things with your purchase of their plans.

This is where I realized that starting a blog is basically like starting your own business! And when you start your own business there will always be an investment that is needed. However, the perk of blogging being your business is that the investment is VERY LOW!! Bluehost has an offer for only $3.95 per month for the first year! This includes a free domain name and a free SSL Certificate (which allows you to change your website from http to https to make it more secure, you will want to do this!)

Knowing that I had to pay money to maintain my website, I knew that I wanted to test the waters to see if this kind of a business would be profitable for me. The nice part about Bluehost is you can stop blogging at any point and get a refund, if you paid annually, and have not finished out the year. For me personally, I set a goal of having a blog for a full year and then I would re-evaluate if this is something that I wanted to continue doing. I would suggest you do the same. Pick how long you want to try this and set that goal for yourself.

Personally, I just wanted to make my money back and then a couple hundred dollars on top of that by the end of the year to see if this would be something I could be successful at. The first year I was able to do that then way more! And now starting my second year blogging I have been able to pay off $10,000 of student loan debt from my site and we are only in May!

**So if you would like to start with Bluehost click below! ↓**

2. Create Content.

Creating Great Content is one of the most important thing you can do for your site. It will improve your SEO (search engine optimization) and it is will make people want to follow you and keep coming back. You will have to get quite a bit of content on your site before you will start noticing more traffic and followers. So make sure that you don’t get discouraged if you aren’t getting a ton of traffic at first. Remind yourself to keep creating consistent and great content and your site will continue to grow!!

3. Set up Social Media Accounts.

When you are deciding what the name of your website will be, it is important to also consider if the social media handles are available that match your website. When I created my website domain, I checked all the main social media accounts and checked to make sure a matching handle would be available. And then created them very soon after creating my website to make sure that no one else took them.

Social Media sharing is VERY important when growing your following and getting more traffic to your site. At first you won’t get a lot of traffic from SEO, but you can get a lot of traffic from social media! When all the names of your social media and website match it will help new people to find you and pick which way they prefer best to follow you! Also below are some tips for increasing your following on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Facebook:

To grow my facebook page, I first started with inviting all my friends and family. At first I thought, I would go through and pick which family and friends I wanted to invite, but then I realized that there might be someone who has interest in my topic and I wouldn’t know that without inviting them. So I just ended up doing a mass invite.

Then, it will be important to find groups on facebook that correspond with the same topic you are writing about. I found 5 reliable groups that I share to consistently and a few others that I share to periodically. Sharing to these groups can give you traffic to your site if you share a link. And they also can grow your own following on facebook if people click through something you share to a group and they choose to follow your page.

The last tip is a consistent tip across all social media. BE ACTIVE WITH GREAT CONTENT. If you are constantly active throughout the day on your social media, then facebook is more likely to suggest your page to people who show an interest in your topic. This can become tiring to always be sharing things and commenting and liking stuff. But there are ways to help save you time. For Facebook you can schedule posts/links/video/etc to share later. So, what I do is spend and hour or so scheduling out a week or more worth of posts that will share every few hours. It makes my page look active and it saves me time throughout the day!

Instagram:

My first tip for instagram is finding good hashtags that fit what you are sharing. Hashtags will be important for people to find what you share until you develop a larger following. It is also a good idea to follow some hashtags and accounts that are similar to what you are writing about. This will help you to learn things that work best on instagram.

Another tip is sharing multiple photos in one post. I have found that even if someone does not comment or like your post, the act of them swiping to see the other photos shows activity on that post and Instagram will continue showing it to more people.

My last tip is the same as the one on facebook. BE ACTIVE WITH GREAT CONTENT! This is so important! With instagram you don’t need to share as much content as on facebook, but it is important to be liking and commenting on other peoples posts consistently. I have found that I can share one or two posts per day, and as long as throughout the day I am liking and commenting then I continue to grow a following. So what I do is every time I get on my phone to check something, I first go to instagram and like/comment at least 3 posts. I check my phone pretty frequently, so I probably do this at least 7-10 times per day.

Pinterest:

Some people don’t realize how great Pinterest can be for getting traffic, but I now easily get around 1,500 page views from Pinterest each day and it only continues to grow! So definitely make it a priority!

My first tip is creating a business Pinterest page rather than just a regular Pinterest page. This will allow you to see metrics and how well posts you share are doing. One of the reasons this is good to know is because you can re-share and re-share old posts as much as you want (however don’t get to repetitive). When you look at the metrics you can see what posts share well and which ones don’t to know what ones might do well sharing again. It also can help you to realize if a picture needs changed so improve its receptiveness.

Picture size is the next important tip about Pinterest. When sharing a post to Pinterest you will need a photo to go a long with it. Photos on Pinterest are much more likely to be clicked on if you have a taller photo. I downloaded a free app called Canva and use this to edit at least one tall photo. Then I use this photo for sharing my link to Pinterest.

And my last tip is the same as above! Sorry to get repetitive, but BE ACTIVE WITH GREAT CONTENT! I only share my links from my site to Pinterest in the evening when more people are likely to see them, but I am consistently adding pins to my boards throughout the day. This activity will cause Pinterest to suggest your account to other people and you will gain followers which will then increase your traffic to the links you share! I do the same thing I do with instagram, Every time I get on my phone I add at least 3 pins to different boards. So I probably do this at least 7-10 times per day.

4. Apply for Advertisements.

This is an important step on how to make money blogging. You will have to have advertisements on your website/blog. There are many different Ad agencies to choose from, but two of the most easiest to get accepted are Adsense with Google and Media.net with Yahoo. These are two very reliable agencies and they pay out pretty well.

I would also suggest trying to have at least two different ad agencies on your site because it will increase your revenue and if something happens with one account you will still have a backup.

I have been using both of these ad agencies and I have been very successful with them. To set them up you will have to go to Adsense and then Media.Net and set up accounts. It usually will take a day or two to get approved. Once you are approve you will need to insert the ad codes into your website/blog. For WordPress there is a free plugin you can add called EasyAdsense Ads that assists you with easily adding the ad codes. And even though it says Adsense in the title, you can also use media.net ad codes with it as well.

**Also right now if you use my link For Media.net you will get 10% more of what you make for the first 3 months. So for example if you make $100 the first month then you will get 10% ($10) added to that. Making your total income to $110 for the first month! Definitely use this link for the extra money if this is something you are planning on trying out!! ** (paid link)

 

….and last but definitely not least!!!

5. Share, Share, & Share!

This step is pretty self-explanatory! It is very important to share the work your create on your site. Over time hopefully your SEO (search engine optimization) with improve, but until that time you will get most of your traffic from sharing your website and posting on social media outlets. I once read that making a blog successful is 20% creating content and 80% sharing. This is not to say that creating good content is not important, but to show that after you create the great content no one will see it unless you share it around!