How To Start A Blog Doing What I Love And Making Money Too

There are lots of guides about how to make coin blogging, simply here's what makes this i different:

I've taken three different blogs to over $i meg per twelvemonth. In fact, the blog you're reading right now has made a total of $6.vii million.

And in this postal service, I'thousand going to requite yous a step-by-pace case study showing yous exactly how I did information technology, starting from zero, along with my step-by-stride guide for beginners trying to go started.

Let's bound in.

7 Ways to Make Coin Blogging (with Examples!)

Online Courses and Workshops
Books and Ebooks
Chapter Marketing
Advertising
Speaking Gigs
Consulting/Coaching
Selling Freelance Services

In a moment, I'm going to show yous a general framework y'all can follow to start a assisting blog from scratch.

Merely commencement, let's leap into the specifics of how to brand real coin blogging, including real-world examples you can study and learn from.

Here are the acme 7 awesome ways to brand a good blogging income:

i. Online Courses and Workshops

Here at Smart Blogger, we brand most of our income from online courses and workshops — over $1 million per year — merely we are far from the only successful blog doing this. Nearly of the people making a lot of money from their blogs are doing it through online courses.

Ramit Sethi reportedly crossed $x one thousand thousand dollars in annual revenue with his suite of premium courses:

And it's not only business organisation or wealth-focused topics that are doing well. You tin find successful blogs on just near whatsoever topic or niche monetizing with online courses. For instance, the popular interior designer Maria Killam has quite a few courses and workshops in her catalog:

Online courses and workshops tin bring in 1-time payments or, depending on your model, recurring income via subscriptions.

2. Books and Ebooks

Quite a few writers have parlayed their blogging success into a major publishing deal. Marking Manson, for instance, published a blog post called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck in 2015. Millions of readers later, he got a book bargain with Harper Collins and went on to sell over iii,000,000 copies in the U.s.a. alone.

Cocky-published books have too been successful. The well-nigh notable success story amongst bloggers is probably James Altucher'due south Choose Yourself, which is now sold over 500,000 copies:

iii. Affiliate Marketing

If you'd like to create some passive income streams from your blog, one of the best choices is affiliate marketing — recommending the services, digital products, and physical products of other companies in exchange for a commission.

Here at Smart Blogger, we make more than $100,000 per twelvemonth promoting affiliate products, most of that coming from casually recommending products we love like SiteGround (affiliate link) and Elementor (chapter link).

But there are lots of other examples too. For case, John Lee Dumas of EOFire made $710,835 in affiliate income final year. Digital Photography School has reportedly fabricated over $500,000 in commissions as an Amazon Acquaintance from promoting photography equipment:

With and so many companies offering referral programs to help spread the discussion about their digital product or service, the number of different chapter marketing opportunities is enormous.

Joining an chapter network such as CJ Affiliate, ClickBank, eBay Partner Network, or ShareASale is one manner to begin tapping into this revenue stream and to kickoff earning extra income from your hard-earned organic traffic.

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4. Advert

Normally, nosotros're not big fans of selling ads on your site as a monetization strategy. You need roughly a million visitors per year for the large ad networks to take you lot seriously, and chapter marketing is almost always more profitable and only every bit passive.

That beingness said, some niches similar recipes, style, and news are hard to monetize through many of the other methods mentioned here, and they get LOTS of page views. In that case, putting a few imprint ads on your site can brand sense every bit a supplementary income source.

For case, hither'due south a screenshot of a 2016 income study from Share the Yummy:

Normally, you make money by joining an advertising network. Nearly anyone can join Google AdSense and add a Google Ad or two, for instance, and yous can subsequently grow into more than selective networks similar Mediavine and AdThrive.

5. Speaking Gigs

If your blog takes off, and you lot start being recognized equally an potency in your space, you might be surprised by how many invitations you become to speak at conferences. And information technology's amazingly profitable. I typically make a minimum of $10,000 per oral communication and it can go as loftier as $100,000 when you count product sales resulting from the speech.

Nifty for a lx-90 minute talk. 🙂

6. Consulting/Coaching

While this certainly isn't everyone'due south loving cup of tea, doing a flake of coaching or consulting is an online job that can earn you a surprisingly overnice living, even when your audition is pocket-sized. I rarely do consulting anymore, merely the final time I did regularly, I charged $1,000 an 60 minutes with a half-dozen-month waiting listing.

But I'm not the simply one. Going dorsum to Maria, again, she'southward been quite innovative in coming upward with ways to practice blueprint consultations by photo and email, currently charging $1,275 per room:

You can make this work in well-nigh any niche. You but demand to know what yous're doing and be confident in the value yous are providing to clients.

7. Selling Freelance Services

The next step upwardly from consulting is to actually exercise information technology for them.

Typically, you'll make more coin freelancing than with anything else, merely it's besides the well-nigh draining and time-intensive. That being said, I've seen bloggers brand six-effigy incomes with no more than than a few grand readers on their blog, substantially using their blog every bit a atomic number 82 machinery to get clients.

It'southward so profitable, fifty-fifty if successful bloggers continue to do it. For example, Elna Cain continues to sell her freelance writing services:

If you're a freelance writer, designer, lensman, programmer, or other service provider where your skills can be sold digitally instead of you having to be there in person, you might want to consider this income stream from day one. All you really need to get started is a contact form for clients to achieve out to you.

Okay, now for the fun part. Let me bear witness you the framework I used to become an honest-to-goodness millionaire…

If y'all're a new blogger starting from scratch with no traffic or influential friends, it's like shooting fish in a barrel to wonder…

Is it reasonable for you to believe you tin can make money blogging?

For that affair, how do blogs even brand money? Ads? Sponsored content (i.eastward. writing a sponsored postal service)? Sell products? Expert luck? Or something else?

Well, permit's take a look at exactly how I did it at Smart Blogger. Here's my complete pace-by-stride process for how to make money blogging:

1. Cull the Correct Blogging Niche (a Assisting One)

Let's outset with a little cruel truth, shall we?

Passion does not equal profit.
Neither does expertise.
Hard work doesn't guarantee anything either.

For example:

You can be the world'south foremost expert on square-shaped tomatoes, wake upwardly every morning with a called-for passion to educate the public on their vast superiority to normal-shaped tomatoes, and work until your fingers bleed and your eyes fall out of your caput, following all the right tactics for turning your new web log into a popular i, and…

You lot'll never have a chance in hell at making any amount of money.

Here's why:

Nobody but y'all gives a damn virtually square tomatoes
Even if they did care, they wouldn't spend whatsoever money

In other words, you lot need a big audience who buys things. Without that, nothing else matters. It's a prerequisite for everything else.

In the instance of Smart Blogger, I noticed early on that bloggers buy lots of different things:

In fact, at that place are companies with $ten meg+ per yr of revenue in well-nigh of those categories. It's also a growing space with millions of people:

The only problem?

Loads of competition. Whether it exist my previous employers Brian Clark or Neil Patel, my good friends over at Problogger, or the gazillion other "blogging most blogging" peeps infesting the social media space, anybody was intent on snagging a piece of the pie. They likewise had a several-year caput beginning on me.

So, how did I compete? The honest answer:

2. Improve Your Content Skills

Embed This Infographic On Your Site

You've probably heard that "Content is male monarch," and it's true… to an extent. A more accurate argument would be…

The Best Content Is King

If that'south hard to sympathise, recollect about information technology this way:

Lots of bloggers sit downward and think, "What volition I write today?" They jot down some thoughts, doing their best to be helpful, original, and entertaining. If they're disciplined, they might even stick with it for a few months.

Only it almost never works. Here are a few reasons why:

What you lot want to say isn't what other people want to read
Yous weren't using a proven content framework
Information technology'due south not the all-time post always published on the topic

Granted, information technology'southward not your fault. Until today, chances are no one ever told you about any of those requirements. Yous thought, to become a successful blogger, you lot just had to write interesting stuff and publish it.

No, grasshopper. No.

The truth is, having good ideas and powerful words isn't plenty. Yous have to create the all-time content ever published on web log topics lots of people are interested in learning more than about. And that brings us to the three levels of content creation:

Yous know what weblog content is popular in your niche, and you write exclusively about those topics
You've mastered frameworks proven to brand your content more popular (list post, how to postal service, etc.)
Your content delivers more value to the reader than any other postal service published on that topic

You're probably thinking, "Geez. That sounds hard." And y'all're right, it is.

I personally spent nigh three years honing my skills by writing for other sites before I started my ain blog. It doesn't take to take that long — I'grand only a perfectionist, then I wanted to learn from the best people in my space.

It worked, though. Nowadays, my posts get millions and millions of visitors, not considering I know some special "secret," but because I'm really good at what I do.

Blogging is really no different than anything else. The more than of a badass you are, the easier it is for you to brand coin online.

So you desire to know how to make money blogging?

Go an awesome writer.

Then the next step is to…

3. Choose a Traffic Source (Google Search or Facebook)

When you're a newbie, getting traffic is confusing.

Should you lot focus on optimizing your keywords? Growing your Facebook page? Leaving comments on blogs? Answering questions on Quora? Beingness active in Facebook groups? Creating videos for your YouTube channel? Starting a pop podcast?

And so on.

There are a gazillion traffic tactics out there. Everybody says theirs is the best.

Just here's the data:

referral traffic sources by topic — Source: Business Insider

Pretty much all the traffic for written content comes from either Google or Facebook. The remainder of traffic sources combined don't even come close to competing with those two Goliaths.

So, how exercise y'all get them to send you a agglomeration of traffic?

Ane choice is you lot can pay for information technology. They like that.

But chances are, you're reading near how to make money blogging because you lot don't want to pay for traffic. You want it for free, correct?

Well, imagine this:

There'due south an loonshit where all the bloggers in your space become to compete for traffic. The number of other challengers you defeat determines the amount of traffic yous receive.

In other words, getting traffic is a sport.

There are winners, and at that place are losers
To be good, you have to train
You need to study your opponents

There are actually ii sports, and I'd bet you've heard of both of them: search engine optimization (SEO) and going viral on Facebook. Both take years (aye, I said years) of report to master, only yous can start getting pretty decent traffic afterward only a few months of study and practise.

Which one should yous focus on?

Well, here are two questions to guide yous:

Is your topic something your friends and family unit regularly talk most on Facebook? Examples: pets, parenting, self-improvement, and health. If and then, focus on playing the viral traffic sport.
Is your topic something people actively search for information most on Google? Examples: product reviews, specific questions they would inquire an expert, how-to information. If so, focus on SEO.

For nigh topics, you can practice both, but one or the other will exist dominant. In that example, focus on whichever one is dominant.

In the blogging infinite, for example, stuff about writing and grammer occasionally goes viral on Facebook, because we love criticizing our relatives almost their terrible English. On the other hand, you rarely talk with your family nigh blogging platforms, WordPress plugins, affiliate marketing, digital marketing, keyword inquiry, or any other blogging topics.

You will, even so, search for them on Google. Simply as you would guess then, the blogging niche is heavily dominated past search. Hither'due south a breakup of Smart Blogger's traffic by source:

The truth is, nosotros pretty much ignore Facebook. The volume of traffic bachelor in that location comes nowhere shut to the book of traffic bachelor from search engines. So, we focus on Google.

I also spend WAY more fourth dimension keeping up to date on SEO stuff than I do on social stuff. I'm a geek nigh it. Throw me in a room full of Google engineers, and I'd probably know more than than half of them.

Not to imply I'm the all-time, though. I'k too competing confronting people like Darren Rowse, Amy Lynn Andrews, and Neil Patel. They're pretty freaking good likewise.

In time, I think I can exist amend, just who knows? That'southward why sports are fun. You never know who is going to win.

If you lot're good though, you'll always be in the "playoffs," for your space, and you'll become lots of traffic. Maybe non the nearly, but however plenty.

And and so you can focus on how to…

four. Grow Your Email Listing with Popular Ups

Chances are, yous run across popular ups as an annoyance.

They make it the way when you lot're trying to read. They ask you lot to manus over sensitive information like your name, email address, and phone number. Sometimes you take to deal with multiple popular ups on the aforementioned site, and information technology makes yous feel hassled and uncared for.

And all that sucks. In my opinion, you take every right to be annoyed.

But here's the thing…

That'due south where the coin comes from. The best predictor of the acquirement for a money making blog is the size of their email list. Hither'due south a breakdown of our revenue at Smart Blogger comparing revenue dollars from electronic mail to other sources.

The dominion of thumb is you can look to make $1 per subscriber per month. So, if y'all accept 10,000 email subscribers, yous should be able to make almost $10,000 per month.

So apparently, growing your e-mail list is a acme priority. Yous might, however, experience conflicted about using pop ups. What are you lot supposed to exercise?

Here'southward a different way of looking at it:

If a visitor comes to your site and doesn't give yous their electronic mail address, the chances of them returning are virtually zero. You'll never take another opportunity to help them.

If yous believe your content is the best, and you believe yous can help them over time, I believe you owe it to them to be as pushy equally possible near staying in contact. In other words, not using a pop upwards is unethical. A little annoyance is a pocket-size price to pay for change.

And remember, that doesn't hateful you accept to be extremely pushy or spammy. Y'all tin can absolutely use pop ups in authentic ways.

But you absolutely must employ them. Assuming you desire to make coin, anyhow.

5. Begin Monetizing with Affiliate Programs

And then, you're operating in a profitable niche, and you have traffic and an email list. What adjacent?

Lots of new bloggers leap into creating an online course or book or community of some sort, just that'southward a fault, in my opinion. Before you start selling things, you need concrete show those things are what people desire to purchase. Otherwise, you're risking wasting months or fifty-fifty years of your life trying to push a product no one wants.

The simplest style to obtain that evidence:

Affiliate programs.

By seeing what your audience buys from other people, you can get a much improve sense of what they might desire to buy from you. If you lot promote an affiliate product and it converts well, yous should think about creating a similar production. If information technology doesn't convert well, yous should probably movement on.

In other words, affiliate plan offers are a class of market place research. As a bonus, you just so happen to get paid commissions on the products your customers buy in the process. So not only are you learning what your target audience wants to buy, but yous're making money from your blog at the same time. Pretty sweet deal.

At Smart Blogger, I've tried lots of dissimilar offers. WordPress blog hosting, landing page tools, email marketing software, Amazon chapter content links, WordPress themes, and half a dozen different types of high-quality courses. Since nosotros sell courses, I pay the most attending to the results from those programs, and here are a couple of lessons:

End to cease solutions sell best. Courses promising to take someone from knowing zilch to making money far outperformed the others. For instance, hither's a screenshot showing us equally the #ane affiliate for Danny Iny'southward Form Builder'due south Laboratory:

Tools with a clear connection to money making also sell better than the others. For instance, landing page builders. As proof, here's a screenshot of our earnings from promoting LeadPages:

By themselves, neither of those promotions actually moved the needle on our revenue, simply they did teach united states of america useful lessons that went into creating Freedom Machine, which brings us to…

half-dozen. Develop a Unique Mechanism

Before yous recall almost launching your ain products or services, there'south one essential indicate virtually human nature y'all need to understand:

Whenever anyone purchases anything, they await to transition from where they are at present (Point A) to where they want to be (Point B). For example…

When you lot buy pizza, you desire to transition from being hungry and peckish pizza (Point A) to tasting succulent pizza and feeling full (Point B).
When you hire a plumber, you lot want to transition from having a clogged, flood toilet (Point A) to having a normally performance toilet (Point B).
When you purchase a form on SEO, you want to transition from feeling bewildered and getting ignored by Google (Indicate A) to ranking for competitive terms and getting swell blog traffic.

The success of a production ultimately depends on helping customers make those transitions. If the customer doesn't go to Indicate B, they typically view the feel as a failure.

So, here's the magic question:

What makes you better equipped to evangelize that transition than your competitors?

The answer to that question is what content marketing expert Todd Brown calls your "unique mechanism." It's a footling unlike from a "unique selling proposition," considering it'southward not just something about you lot that's different. It'southward something most you lot or your method that makes you improve able to help customers than anyone else.

For Freedom Machine, we accept multiple unique mechanisms:

Get published on Medium — a platform with more than than 60 meg active readers looking for great content
Content frameworks developed behind the scenes at Smart Blogger to produce pop, valuable content
A monetization methodology proven past our success with Smart Blogger

Combined, those unique mechanisms are EXTREMELY convincing at setting united states of america up as the superior solution. Therefore, the product sells like hotcakes.

To be articulate… it's not necessary to have 3 different unique mechanisms. Sometimes but ane is all you demand (i.e. fresh, hot pizza in 30 minutes or less). The core idea though is to make sure you are obviously far more capable than your competitors at delivering results.

And so all you have to do is…

7. Launch the Minimum Viable Funnel

Look effectually at successful entrepreneurs of any type, and you'll notice a surprising tendency:

They tend to sell their products earlier the production is created.

To most people, this sounds like insanity at all-time or a disturbing lack of ideals at worst. How could you possibly ask people to purchase something that doesn't exist?

The answer:

Information technology's the aforementioned principle equally Kickstarter.

You create a fancy minimal sales funnel of some sort (in this instance, simply a unproblematic sales folio), tell people the product is coming soon, and then expect to run into if enough people sign up to justify making the product. If they don't, you lot refund everyone'due south money and starting time over.

In other words, it's the final footstep in validating you have a feasible product. The steps become like this:

Identify demand by promoting affiliate products
Find a unique mechanism that makes yous clearly superior
Exam the need for that unique mechanism with a quick and dingy launch before you create the product

In my case, the minimum viable funnel was a 90-minute webinar. The first time I did it, in that location was no production, no follow-upwardly sequence, naught. Information technology was just a bare-basic test.

And it resulted in $126,000 in sales alive on the webinar.

Seeing that $30,000 sales was my minimum for success, we went alee and created the offset version of the production live with students. About a yr later, it's now budgeted $1 1000000 in sales.

That'southward also only one product. We take others, and we take still more in the research pipeline.

And approximate what I would do if I had to offset over again?

The verbal same affair. It's not easy, information technology's not fast, it'due south not even that sexy, but information technology works.

Let's shut with some questions and answers, shall nosotros?

FAQ about How to Brand Money Blogging

Then, we've covered the basic procedure. Now let's step back for a moment and answer some of the questions I hear the most frequently:

Do bloggers make money?

I certainly do, but I don't recollect that's what yous're asking. I call back you're asking…

"Is it reasonable for me to learn how to brand money blogging?"

The no BS answer:

It depends on how patient and persistent you are.

Starting a web log from scratch is simply as hard as starting a small business. For case, information technology requires the same time and effort as starting your own eating place, software company, or accounting service. Yes, those businesses are wildly unlike, simply the first few years are usually the aforementioned story: low income, lots of stress, big learning curve.

If y'all desire a more concrete answer than that, we've plant it takes even our smartest, nigh defended students iii-6 years to make enough money from blogging to quit their jobs. And that sounds like a long time, just so what? 3-6 years to exist able to work from anywhere in the world, take a vacation whenever you desire, and probably accept passive income until the day you die?

Sounds like a pretty good bargain to me.

How much money can you brand from blogging?

The fact is, nigh bloggers make equally much money as any other type of entrepreneur:

Nothing.

And information technology'southward not because there's no money in it. This blog makes more than $1 million per year, for God sakes, and it'due south nowhere close to the well-nigh assisting weblog out in that location. Blogs similar The Penny Hoarder, Moz, and Lifehacker power businesses worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

So why aren't more bloggers rich?

The truth is, most people quit. They start a blog, write a postal service or two, realize it'due south difficult work, and walk away.

Simply if you're patient and persistent?

You can make millions. I have. So have lots of other smart, defended entrepreneurs.

You just have to do the work. Consistently. For years.

Tin can you do that?

Then yes, I think y'all tin brand six figures at least. Possibly more.

How do you make money blogging? (Or, How do bloggers make coin?)

As I mentioned earlier, at that place 7 pop ways to make coin blogging:

Offering online courses and workshops
Writing books and eBooks
Chapter marketing (recommending products and services in exchange for a commission)
Blog ads
Speaking at conferences
Offer your expertise as a consultant or coach
Selling freelance services such equally writing, designing, and programming

Which is all-time for y'all volition depend on your blog, your expertise, and your situation.

How do y'all starting time your own weblog for free?

Lots of people say you tin't. They tell you to buy a domain name, a web hosting account (Bluehost is one you meet pushed a lot by influencers), and a premium WordPress theme.

But I call up that's nonsense.

You can get started for free within five minutes on Medium. They also have over 60 meg monthly readers, and then y'all can become a lot of exposure there if you go featured.

This great article walks you lot through that strategy, step-past-pace.

Alternatively, you tin can write on WordPress.com, Linkedin, or whatsoever of the other platforms out there. It doesn't actually affair. The signal is, beginning writing and learning as presently as possible.

Once people get-go sharing your great, informative posts, and you begin to sympathize how everything works, and so you can get through the trouble of setting up your own site, installing WordPress, and all that jazz. Until so though, information technology's but a headache you don't need.

What are the most popular blogging platforms?

WordPress is by far the nearly pop. No one else is even shut.

Merely that doesn't hateful information technology'due south the best for everyone. There are several blogging platforms you tin can try — and well-nigh of them are free.

Every bit I mentioned earlier, I think Medium is a skillful identify to start. Y'all tin can also create your ain blog with tools like Blogger, Squarespace, Wix, Joomla, and countless others.

What are the tiptop blogs almost how to brand money blogging?

I'd similar to think Smart Blogger is the best (and most comprehensive) site on the topic, only information technology's past no ways the only one. Non all of these talk about how to make money blogging, merely together, they give y'all a solid foundation:

Backlinko — Brian Dean doesn't talk much about how to make money blogging, but he's one of the top experts and educators in the world on SEO. What I dearest about his highly valuable content is how like shooting fish in a barrel to understand it is, despite covering some incredibly circuitous topics. If you're a beginner blogger looking for DIY insights, set for a treat.
Digital Marketer — In my stance, my friends over at Digital Marketer are the best in the world at monetizing traffic. If you'd similar to larn well-nigh marketing, list building, client research, automation, or funnels, there's no better source.
Smart Passive Income — If you're interested in using your blog to build passive income, Pat Flynn is a chief at showing you how to build a tiny little business that tin can support you and the lifestyle you want. Both his weblog and podcast are excellent.

The Lesser Line almost How to Brand Money Blogging

Is information technology possible?

Absolutely, just only if you treat it similar a blogging business.

Yes, you can start your blog every bit a side project. Yes, yous tin can slowly abound it in the background. Yep, you can turn your blog into a source of passive, total-fourth dimension income that somewhen lets y'all quit your job, travel, spend a lot of time with your family, whatever you lot desire to do.

But like anything worthwhile, information technology'south hard piece of work getting there.

You accept to report. Practice. Principal your craft. Put in a lot of work. Hustle.

If yous love writing, I tin can't imagine a better business, though. Not only is blogging a great way to become your writing noticed, but it's a bang-up way to connect with people around the world who need y'all, teach them what you know, and get paid pretty damn well in exchange.

In that location's never a day I regret dedicating myself to blogging. Never.

It'south non just because of the money, either. It'south considering I also go to do what I love and help people at the same time.

What could be better than that?

Source: https://smartblogger.com/make-money-blogging/

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