How To Start A Money Making Blog

A new popular thing on is for people learning to start a money making blog. So many more people are wanting to learn how to make money at home which is what I will be teaching you how to do today.

Disclosure: this post may contain affiliate links. That means if you click that link and  make a purchase I may receive a commission at no cost to you.

Hosting

If you want to start your own blog the first thing you need to do is decide on your hosting platform. I decided to go with Bluehost which includes WordPress. WordPress is for sure the preferred option of bloggers and I like Bluehost. I also love Bluehost’s support. It’s 24/7 and they always help me with exactly what I need instantly. If you want to try out Bluehost at a discount you can use my link here. Once you have your website bought (which you need if you want to make money legally) then you can pick a theme. To do this all I did was Google free WordPress themes to find mine.

Some people wonder if they should start their blog for free and then convert to paid but every blogger will tell you that you shouldn’t! If you want to make money you can start trying to make money right away if you own your own blog. Also, with the free version of WordPress there are a lot of limitations which includes some important plugins you can’t use.

If you’re looking for even more insight into starting a blog and making it all it can be make sure you check out my friend Sarah’s blog Business Women Thrive for tons of great information.

SEO

There is so much to know when it comes to SEO. Basically SEO stands for search engine optimization which is just a fancy term for how your blog ranks in search engines like Google. So, you want to be continually improving your SEO to be able to rank higher on Google to get organic views to your blog. If you want a little insight into what your SEO is looking like you can check it through MOZ. This will give you a DA score which stands for Domain Authority and is directly linked to SEO.

The first tip I have for you is to get the Yoast SEO plugin through WordPress. This is a good starting point for SEO and will help you get some smaller important steps down first. Some things this plugin teaches you about is H2 titles, alt text in images, meta description, and so much more.

Another way to improve your SEO is linking. Each blog post you put up you should link to 2 or 3 of your own blog posts. This will also help keep readers on your page. Also, add your new blog post link to older posts if you can. Another important thing you need to do is backlinking. This means someone clicks on your blog link somewhere else and it brings you to your blog. You can do this by guest posting or adding your blog link when you comment on someones blog post. Also, the higher the DA of the blog you comment on the better for you.

Another huge par of understanding SEO is understanding keywords. I struggle with this until I discovered KeySearch. KeySearch helped me to know what keywords I have the possibility to rank for so I’m not making posts that I will never be able to rank for.

Making Money

There are so many ways to make money from your blog so I will quickly review affiliate marketing, ads, working with brands, products and client work.

Affiliate Marketing

There are so many affiliate marketing companies you can apply to be a part of. Some of my favorites are Amazon, Booking, Bluehost, ShareASale, RewardStyle, ShopStyle, and ebooks. Heads up you can be an affiliate for my ebooks which I will mention a bit more about later.

Affiliate marketing if great because it’s an easy passive income which means you can make money even when you’re sleeping. Affiliate marketing is actually a quite easy way to make money. You bought a new outfit you like? Make a post and link it. You like your new face wash? Do a review and link it. One of the best options is coming up and that would be gift guides. There are so many different gift guides you can do and they are great for linking products.

Ads

Now lets talk about ads. I’ll be honest some people are very against ads but I don’t understand why. The biggest websites and blogs in the world have ads and make great money from them. As long as you don’t over do it there’s no reason not to. I think it’s safe to have an ad in your side bar and once or twice in a blog post but no more than that. Especially no pop up ads because they ruin the experience especially for mobile readers.

The program most bloggers use to start out if Google Adsense. It’s very reliable and easy to use. Now don’t expect to make tons of money from ads because you won’t starting out. Once you at least 50,000 sessions a month you can apply for Mediavine and this is where all your ad money will come from. Bloggers can make hundreds, even thousands of dollars using Mediavine every month so work hard to get those views up so you can make great money too.

Working With Brands

Now working with brands is an interesting one because it’s not a passive income. You don’t need a lot of followers or views to work with brands but of course some do have somewhere they want bloggers that they work with to be at. One thing I do want to quickly ad in here is a legit brand will never ask you to pay for product. Not just shipping or they will reimburse you or any of that. If they mention any of that than they are most likely a scam and you should not answer them. There’s a lot of these so be careful.

One thing I see so often is people wondering how they get brands to come to them and the answer is you don’t! You go to them! So many if not most of the brand sponsorships you see are bloggers going to the brand themselves. I’ve been approached by brands and have also reached out to brands myself to get deals. One thing I do is anytime I see a blogger in my niche with a brand sponsored post I add that brand to my list. That way I know they are willing to work with bloggers similar to me.

An important thing to have when reaching out to a brand is a media kit. This is basically your blogging resume and is very important to them. If you don’t know how to make one or what to include you can read my blog post about how I made mine. Also, if you don’t know what to include in your email I have included an example in my everything you need to know about blogging ebook.

Products and Client Work

When it comes to products you’re selling and client work they are very dependent on what your audience needs as well as what you have to offer your audience. For example I’m constantly seeing people talking about how impossible it is to grow their Instagram. I grow by at least 800 new followers a month as well as have at least 2,000 views by hashtags on each new post. Because of this I decided to make an Instagram ebook for my followers to learn from. I also struggled with Pinterest in my early blogging days and bought a Pinterest ebook from a girl who’s blog I follow. This ebook helped me so much and I couldn’t recommend it more.

Another thing you can do is client work. This can be things like running social media accounts, making an scheduling pins, etc. The services I offer are audits on your Instagram, Blog, and/or Pinterest. This means that I will take an in depth look at your account and let you know anything you’re doing wrong and everything you can do to improve. Sometimes all you need is someone else’s eyes to let you know what you need to fix.

And those are all my tips I have for you in this post. If you want some more important tips check out my friend Kat’s post on 10 important tips every blogger should know. If you’re looking for even more help with your blog my Blogging Ebook has over 50 pages of information of what I’ve learned in my 3 years blogging.