It’s possible to make money by blogging, whatever some people say. Actually from my experience making money by blogging is one of the best ways of making money online if you know how. I’m going to explain it in this article.
How to Start Making Money by Blogging
When you decide to make money by blogging, first you must choose a niche. What’s a niche? By niche I mean here some small section of interests that a group of people is interested in.
The niche you choose should be small. There’s a lot of competition online, and although I don’t think you should worry about the competition too much, you should consider it in the beginning.
With time when you continue blogging and you do it well, you can beat any competition, but when you start you’re just a little fish in the big ocean.
Let’s say you choose a Beauty niche. This niche is huge and very competitive, so it’ll be hard to rank your blog well in such a huge niche. But if you choose a niche Eyelash Enhancement, then the niche is very specific, much smaller and there’s much less competition. It’ll be much easier to rank well in the search engines in such a niche. People will find your blog and the traffic to your blog will continue to grow if you blog well and regularly, and then you can monetize your blog to make money. I’ll write below about monetizing a blog too.
You don’t need to worry that the niche is too small and you won’t get enough visitors. For example, once you become established in the Eyelash Enhancement niche, you can expand your niche. You can start about eyebrows. I know from my wife, who is a blogger in the Beauty niche, that you can write a lot about eyebrows, the same as with eyelashes. You can write about eyebrow restoration, how to grow long eyebrows, eyebrows tattoo, etc.
You can expand your niche even more later. You can start blogging about makeup, lips, etc. There’s practically no limit to your niche expansion, but you should start small.
Passion and Interest or Just Money?
Another important point when you’re choosing your niche is your passion for the subject. I would not, for example, choose the Eyelash Enhancement niche, although it’s a good niche in my opinion, where I could make some good money. I know it for a fact, because my wife has made some good money in this niche too.
But I am not interested in this niche. I would get bored writing about such topics and after some time blogging would become a chore. The point of making money by blogging is not only to make money online, but to enjoy it and to become free from the rat race. So, it’s important to choose a niche which you have a passion for, or at least you like.
Some people worry that they don’t know enough about the niche they are interested in. That they will never become experts in their niche. This is something that you should not worry about. There’s so much info nowadays online, in books and magazines, that by reading and getting immersed in the subject you’ll become an expert with time.
For example, I have no idea about eyelash enhancement, but I can google it, read about it, and then write about it. After researching and writing more and more about the subject, I’ll know more and more, and I’ll become an expert. But this we’ll be much easier if I like the niche. If I do it just for money, it’ll be harder to become the expert.
Keyword Research for Successful Blogging
The key to become a successful blogger is the keyword research. It’s very important to choose keywords (search terms people use to search online) that have some decent search volume, but aren’t too competitive. Especially the competition factor is very important.
Coming back to the Eyelash Enhancement niche, if I decide to first target “eyelash extension” keyword, then it’ll be hard to rank for such a keyword with a new blog. This keyword is quite competitive. But if I target the keyword “eyelash extension classes”, “eyelash extension cost” or “eyelash extensions kit”, then it’ll be much easier to rank, because the competition is very low for such keywords.
How do I know what is the keywords search volume and competition? I used keyword research tools to know it. There are many different free and paid keyword research tools and I tested many of them. Nowadays I use only Jaaxy Keyword and Research Platform, because it’s the best tool in my opinion and it’s very easy to use.
You can test it below to see how it works.
If you tried Jaaxy, you could see that it’ll give you all the info you need to decide if the keyword is good or not for your blogging.
There’s much more to Jaaxy, but the keyword research isn’t the main subject of this article. You can learn more about Jaaxy here.
How to Monetize a Blog
When your blog posts start ranking in the search engines, then the traffic to your blog will grow. You should know that it’ll take some time. Do not expect to start making money after a month or two of blogging. Usually it takes at least half a year to start making money. At least one year to start making some good money. So, it’s important to be patient, continue blogging and not give up too early.
Once you get some good traffic then you must monetize your blog to make money. Let’s take a look at a few most popular and the easiest methods of monetizing a blog.
Monetizing a Blog with Google AdSense
Google AdSense is one of the easiest ways to monetize a blog. You need to sign up to Google AdSense, get the code from their website and place it on your website.
It’s easy and you don’t need to learn and do much once you set it up properly. You can continue blogging, and you don’t need to sell anything to anyone. By placing Google AdSense code on your website, the ads will be placed on your web pages too. Whenever someone clicks on the ad, you’ll make some money. You’ll also make some money if nobody clicks on the ad. You can make money by click and by impression.
You won’t get much money from one click. It varies a lot depending on the ad, niche and competition, but it’s usually less than a dollar per click. If you don’t get much traffic you won’t make much money. But if you have very good traffic, then you can make a lot of money every month.
There are websites that earn lots of money. You can read about them here.
Making Money as an Amazon Associate
Another easy way of making money online is with Amazon. Actually, Amazon associates are Amazon affiliates, but I’ll write about affiliate marketing separately next. In my opinion it’s easier to make money with Amazon than with other affiliate networks. If you do it right, you don’t actually have to do much selling to make money with Amazon. Amazon products can sell themselves.
I wrote about Amazon affiliate marketing here, so I won’t be writing more about it in this article.
Making Money Selling Affiliate Products
Affiliate marketing is my favorite way of monetizing my blogs. If you have a quality blog and good traffic, then you’ll get many visitors who will read your blog looking for your opinion.
You can recommend the products or services you think are good, and whenever someone buys anything through your website, you get an affiliate commission.
It’s important that you don’t just recommend anything because you want to make money. It would be unethical, and people would also stop trusting you.
For example, I recommended above the Jaaxy Keyword Tool, not because I’ll get the affiliate commission (I will do) if you decide to buy it, but because it’s the best tool in my opinion, which I use myself.
I could recommend you some other tools, that would pay me more, but I don’t, because in my opinion they are inferior to Jaaxy.
Actually making money selling affiliate products can be hard in the beginning. You must first put some time and effort to write many articles. But once you start getting good traffic and people start coming to your blog, then you can simply review and recommend different products.
You don’t need to spend too much time blogging, then if you don’t want to. You can then relax, and still continue earning passive income.
If you think that you want to make money by blogging and affiliate marketing, then you should check out Wealthy Affiliate. I reviewed them here. It’s like online Affiliate Marketing University, that you can join for free to learn some basics about affiliate marketing, making money online and blogging. It’s great for both beginners and experienced marketers.
Other Methods of Monetizing a Blog
The methods I wrote about above are the easiest and the best for beginners. But, once you’re an authority in the subject of your blog, you can make money in many other ways.
- You can create your own online course, which you can sell
- You can have paid membership website
- You can sell books and/or ebooks
- You can sell different products, either your own or through drop shipping
- You can sell coaching services
Summary
There are many ways of making money by blogging, but it all starts with creating a very good blog, by creating very good content about topics that people are interested in. This is really true “that content is king”. The content of your blog is both the king and the queen. It’s the most important thing when blogging.
Visit Wealthy Affiliate to Learn More About Making Money Online
I am that little fish in a big ocean. I am also my worst enemy, I expect the result too quickly and deep down I know that it takes time and effort to make money by blogging online. I can personally relate to your example, I chose a lifestyle niche in the beginning and it was too broad and I wasn’t successful with it at all. I almost got discouraged and found an article like you suggest that it is better to be more specific and once you are bigger you can take it from there to grow.
I would like to add to your tips that having a mentor is also important. I understand that it is hard to find one.
Thank you for your comment and tip, Nuttanee.
Good info here. You said that GoogleAd sense pays less than $1.00 per impression or click. At what point is it worth employing? What I mean to say is what’s the minimum amount of steady traffic does it then become a worthwhile income generator? I’m finally getting some steady traffic in but not sure if I have enough.
I think you should have at least 50,000 visitors per month to start with Adsense. You can start with much less, but you’ll make less money.
Thank you for the comment.
Good info here. You covered a lot of the main points one needs to consider when venturing into the wonderful world of affiliate marketing. The trick to any online success is building up steady traffic to your site(s). That’s the hardest part and it takes the longest. The skies the limit once you’ve got your systems in place and a publishing routine going forward.
Thank you for the comment. You’re right, the steady traffic is the hardest part, but the most important one.