How To Make Money Blogging At Any Level What It Takes

Last updated on August 16th, 2018 at 01:07 pm

Ready to make money blogging at any level? In this post, I am going to share exactly what it takes to create a profitable blog. As long as you stick with it, I have no doubt that you will turn your blog into a profitable venture that actually pays the bills.

Are you ready to turn your blog into a business? Maybe you have read those income reports that other bloggers share and talk about how easy it is to earn money from a blog and become a full time blogger.

Related: How Much Do Professional Bloggers Make And How They Do It

Maybe you read someone’s story of how they started their blog as a hobby and now several years later, they are earning thousands per month with their blog.

If you still haven’t started your blog, then go here to start your blog. After that, head on over here to this page to start learning the basics of WordPress.

Whether you’ve been blogging for awhile or are just starting, I am here to tell you that you can make money blogging at any level. In fact, it’s not impossible to turn your blog from a hobby to a profitable business and actually get paid to blog.

However, don’t believe for one minute that it’s going to happen overnight. Now, I am NOT trying to burst your daydream bubble of earning thousands from home. I am just going to keep it real and help you understand of what it takes to turn your blog into a business.

Ready To Turn Your Blog Into A Business?

It really doesn’t matter if you started your blog with the intentions of making money or not. Believe it or not, there are several successful bloggers who started their blogs and had no clue how to make money with their blogs.

I am going to assume that you want to earn money from your blog. That you started a self-hosted WordPress blog because you want complete control over your blog.

Related: Blogging Costs A New Blogger Should Not Skimp On

Basics of Blogging

 

Starting a blog is so easy. You can literally set up your blog in less than 30 minutes and own your own piece of the virtual real estate. It doesn’t even cost that much if you’re using SiteGround you can literally get started for less than $5.00 per month.

I personally think it takes a lot longer to choose a blog name than to get WordPress installed. After all, without a good blog name, you’ll have a hard time pivoting your business later on down the road if you need to.

Once your blog is set up, it’s easy to sit down and write amazing content. Especially, if you started your blog in a niche that you’re passionate about. However, after a few weeks of writing content and realizing that no one is visiting or sharing your amazing blog posts, it’s easy to get discouraged.

Building a blog that actually makes money is a lot more than just setting up WordPress and writing amazing content. If you want to make a living or earn extra income from your blog.

There’s

• Generating Traffic
• Affiliate Marketing
• Networking
• Email Marketing
• Promoting Your Blog
• Ad Networks
• And so much more..

Blogging for Profit Is A Business

It’s so easy to think that you can do everything yourself. After all, there’s so much free stuff online, why should you spend money on your blog?

You end up trying to do everything by yourself because you don’t want to spend money. After all, your blog isn’t making any money, why should you spend money?

Well, you’ve probably heard that saying “it takes money to make money.” This is so true and if you’re blogging for profit, there’s absolutely no way around to not spending anything on your blog.

The great thing is that you don’t have to spend a lot of money on your blogging business.

So many people tell you that all you need is $3.95 to start a WordPress blog on Bluehost. While it’s true that you can start hosting a blog for an extremely cheap price. What those bloggers don’t tell you is that if you want to earn an income with your blog, you’re going to have to invest in tools and education.

I’m not saying that you have to invest in all these tools. I know that there are bloggers who created a successful blog without investing in any type of education or blogging tools.

When I first started my blog, I refused to invest in blogging tools because I wasn’t making any money. No one wants to spend money on their blogs if it’s not making any money.

However, once I got serious about building a profitable blog. I let go of those beliefs and started investing in both myself and my blog.

So you’re probably thinking, what’s the one thing you need to do to make money blogging? Well, let’s talk about that right now.

How To Make Money Blogging At Any Level

 

Yup, if you want to eventually earn money from your blog, you need to start treating it like a business. This means that you need to do something to grow your blog each and every day.

Related: How to Make Money With A Blog For Beginners

If you’re one of those bloggers who only work on your blog when you feel like it. That’s probably the reason that you’re not making any money yet.

I know that it can be challenging when you’re still juggling a job and don’t have a lot of time to devote to your blog. But you need to devote at least 30 – 60 minutes for your blog every day.

There are some blog niches that make money a lot quicker than others. So if you’ve been blogging for a while and still haven’t made a dime, you may want to take a look at the most searched blog topics to see if you’re in one of them.

However, before you go changing your niche, remember it takes time to make money with a blog. So don’t expect to start a blog today and make thousands by next month.

It just doesn’t happen like that for a lot of bloggers.

Invest In Your Blog to Build A Business

It’s so easy to spend a ton of time reading Facebook Groups or other people’s blogs to see what they did to grow their blog. But the truth is that the time that you spend doing those tasks you’re taking time away from building your own blog.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s okay to ask questions in Facebook Groups. But you shouldn’t rely on Facebook Groups to get all your blogging education.

If you don’t have a lot of money to invest in your blogging education, sign up for this FREE 12-day blogging Bootcamp that will save you time and money on your blogging questions.

Choosing the Right Investments

As a business owner, it’s important to choose the right investments that will help you see the quickest ROI. I’ve purchased several blogging courses and products to help me grow my blog to my first 1,000 page views.

While I don’t mind investing in my online education, I am selective about the products I buy. Some of the products have been extremely helpful, while some of them not so much.

I thought I would share some of these products that I feel have been the most helpful in my blogging business.

Increasing Your Page Views

If you are serious about building a profitable blog, you need to start focusing on increasing your page views. So many new bloggers struggle with increasing their page views.

Heck, this isn’t my first blog and I still struggle with increasing mine. Getting traffic to a blog is not as easy as just pumping out amazing content.

Nope, you need to get out there and hustle and start getting your blog in front of your targeted audience. This means that you need to be doing something every day.

Whether you’re writing content, learning from some of the top money making blogs or researching how to start writing sponsored posts. You need to be doing something that’s going to help you reach your goals.

When I started this blog, it had been years since I had tried blogging online. The first thing that I did was invest in the Traffic Transformation eBook which showed me several things that I could do to grow my blog.

This eBook was written by Lena Gott from What Mommy Does and she used these same techniques to grow her page views from 17k to 400k in just 10 months.

The cool thing is that the 21 traffic strategies she shares are not rocket science. They are extremely easy to do, even a brand new blogger wouldn’t have any trouble implementing them.

I have to admit, I really don’t implement all the steps in the eBook. Instead, I found what I liked from it and started experimenting with my own methods.

As a blogger, you have to be willing to run your own experiments and case studies to see what actually works for your own blog. Because you’re going to find out what works for some bloggers will not always work for you.

Promoting Your Blog

One of the biggest mistakes I made when I started this blog is I waited 6 months before I started promoting it. Then I never spent a lot of time on the promotion aspect.

It wasn’t until around 3 months ago when I started getting serious about growing my blog.

Don’t be like me. If you want to turn your blog into a money-making business, you need to spend time on promotion. In fact, you need to be spending more time on promoting your blog than creating content.

Where to Start?

So where do you start and how? Chances are you don’t have a marketing background and you’ve never grown a blog before in your life. (I know I didn’t)

Pinterest is the place to start working on promoting your blog. You might have heard that Pinterest is the number on traffic generator for several bloggers. It is for me.

Investing money to learn Pinterest and grow your page views is definitely worth your time and effort. Believe me, it’s not the easiest platform to learn on your own.

The first investment I would make for Pinterest would be BoardBooster. It’s extremely affordable and for just $5 per month I automate my pins and schedule them to go through my group boards every day.

All you have to do is set it up in advance and whenever you write a new blog post, you just add your new pin to your campaign. Then that pin will get circulated with all your other pins to your group boards according to how you set up your settings.

I also use Tailwind to help me with my Pinterest strategy. I use Tailwind to help me pin 3rd party pins and I also use it to schedule pins from Tailwind Tribes.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Do I really need to Pinterest schedulers?

The answer to this is NO you don’t. You can use either of these schedules or you can choose to do all manual pinning. If you do decide to use manual Pinning, I recommend investing in the Pinterest Strategies eBook.

Carly explains everything she did to increase her Pinterest traffic using nothing but manual pinning. I still use this book to help me with my manual pinning.

Yup, I still do some manual pinning, even though I am using 2 automated schedulers.

Email Marketing

We’ve all heard that saying, “the real income is in the list.” Even if you’re a brand new blogger, you should be focusing on growing your email list.

Now you can use services like ConvertKit, MailerLite or any other autoresponder service.

I personally use GetResponse and while I’ve thought about switching to ConvertKit, I just haven’t made the move.

If you’re a brand new blogger who is on a shoestring budget, I recommend starting out with MailerLite. It’s a free service that allows you to build your email list to your first 1,000 subscribers without paying a penny.

You can believe if I had known that when I first started my blog, I would’ve started with the free service instead of paying a monthly subscription.

I know that a lot of bloggers say that ConvertKit is the one to go with for bloggers. However, $29 can quickly add up every month and if you’re not making any money with your blog, don’t feel as though you need to start with it.

Start out with MailerLite and then you can always move your email list to ConvertKit when you’re ready.

Affiliate Marketing

The last product that I want to share with you that will help you learn is called “Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing” by Michelle of Making Sense of Cents. At the time of this writing, Michelle makes over $100,000 with her blog and a big portion is from affiliate marketing.

If you’re completely new to affiliate marketing, this course will help you learn everything that you need to know on how to monetize a blog.

This course is made up of 6 modules with over 30 lessons. She also includes worksheets (although I have never done the) to help you with your affiliate strategy. Plus you’ll get access to her Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Facebook group.

What You’ll Learn

• Module 1: What is affiliate marketing
• Module 2: Find and apply for affiliate programs
• Module 3: Follow the rules
• Module 4: How to get your readers to convert
• Module 5: Strategies and ways to promote your affiliate links
• Module 6: Rinse and repeat
• Bonuses

Basically, you’re going to learn the exact steps that Michelle took to start earning money from her blog. She shares everything that you need to know.

You can check out the course here.

If you already familiar with affiliate marketing, then it may be a little too basic for you. Although I did pick up some nuggets, I did already know most of the things.

However, as with every course I buy, I did manage to pick up some nuggets from it.

Oh, and the bonuses are amazing. You’ll get Rosemarie Gardner’s Pinterest strategy that has helped her build her into the six-figure business that it is today.

I am actually using her method as a part of my pinning strategy.

That’s the thing with Pinterest, you have to keep testing and tweaking your pinning strategy until you find what works for you.

FAQ

Can You Make Money Blogging On Squarespace?

WordPress does come with a steep learning curve if you’ve never used it before. I always recommend that bloggers start an a self-hosted blog because it gives them more freedom.

However, there are bloggers who have created a successful business using Squarespace. Personally, I don’t think it matters which platform you’re on if you want to build a business.

As long as your content helps your audience you should be fine. That said, you NEVER want to build your business on a free blogging platform.

How Much Do Professional Bloggers Make?

There are a lot of new bloggers who want to know if it’s really possible to make money with a blog. Yes, it is possible there are some top earning bloggers who are earning six-figures from their blogs.

Then there are some who are earning absolutely nothing from their blogs. The truth is that no two blogs are the same. Every blogger earns money differently.

Best Niche For Blogging?

I am a true believer that there are some blog niches that make money faster than other niches. Especially, if you are using a social media platform like Pinterest to promote your blog.

I’ve seen some people who write content on modern homestead topics have quick success on Pinterest. But I truly believe that the blog niches that make money are the ones that you’re a little bit interested in.

If you still haven’t chosen a niche, then make sure that you check out the highest searched blog topics to help you see which blogs people actually love reading.

I’m a true believer that if people are spending money in your niche and there are other bloggers in it. You have a very good chance of building a profitable blog.

Only if you can withstand the test of time. Because trust me, blogging is going to test your patience and you’ll be tempted to throw in the towel when you don’t see the results as quickly as you’d like.

Final Take Away

If you want to make money blogging at any level. Stop trying to do everything for free.

Start investing in the right tools and education to help you propel your blog to the next level. When you invest in the right tools, you can start growing more rapidly.

You can start focusing your efforts on implementation rather than spending time researching and trial and error activities.

Your focus as a blogger who wants to earn money from your blog needs to be on growing your page views and your audience. It’s the only way that you’ll ever make money blogging.

There is no step by step process that will help you turn your blog into a source of income that pays a passive blogger salary. Believe me, I wish there was.

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Do you have any tools or resources that have helped you grow your blog? I’d love to hear about your experience of how you grew your blog.