There are many reasons why you might want to start a blog and make money from home as a blogger. Perhaps the most obvious one is that it allows for more flexibility and freedom with your time and money – I know that was the main deciding factor for me to start this blog.
You see, I already had a successful career in Network Marketing, making it to the top 5% of my direct sales company – but I just wasn’t happy. I was being pulled in a million directions – giving classes, talking with customers, providing business trainings and so much more. I was making a great income for my family but I was burned out. I needed greater flexibility, while still providing something of value to the world. Read more about how this blog started by checking out the About section.
When you have a blog, you can work at whatever time of day works best for you, and your family. This is especially great if you have young children or other commitments that make traditional office hours difficult to keep. Even when you’re not actively working, a blog can earn you passive income and contribute to your overall financial freedom.
Another big advantage of blogging from home is that it’s often much cheaper than working in an office. You don’t have to pay for childcare, commuting costs, or expensive business clothes. If you have a good internet connection and a laptop, you’re all set up to get started!
So let’s go! Here’s a quick guide to help you start a blog and make money from home. Be sure to also sign up for our blogging newsletter with great advice for getting started the right way and growing traffic. Use this handy index below to bop around this post as you need.
1. Choose Your Blog Topic
2. Research Your Blog Niche
3. Keep Your Sharp Writing Skills
4. Select a Domain, Hosting, and Blogging Platform
5. Monetize Your Blog
6. Create a Posting Schedule for Success
7. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
8. Promote Promote Promote!
9. Track Your Progress
10. Take Heart – Your Blog Will Make Money Over Time
1. Choose Your Blog Topic
The first step when you start a blog is to decide what you want to blog about. This can be anything that interests you, from your hobbies to your work life, or even just your day-to-day experiences.
Blog Topic Options
When deciding on a blog topic, there are really two options to choose from. What you know, and what you know is profitable.
• Write about what you know. What are you an expert on? What could you talk about for hours and hours? What do people often come to you for advice about? This is the topic you can quickly build a flourishing blog about and create content rapidly.
• Write a blog about what you know is profitable. This may overlap with the first topic choice but sometimes there is a big difference between what is profitable and what you know. So spend some time doing a bit of research.
It’s certainly a lot simpler and more enjoyable to write about something you’re interested in, but there may not be much outside interest or money in it, depending on your passions. The ideal situation is to select a topic that satisfies both criteria.
A good approach is to develop a list of everything you’re interested in. If you have specialized understanding or abilities in an area that other people with your interest don’t, that’s even better.
Consider what you’ll talk about and do some research. Is there a high level of interest in your topic? Do people spend money on items in that sector? Can you add something useful to this topic, perhaps through your expertise or experience? If your answer to any of those questions was yes, then you’re probably on the right track!
2. Research Your Blog Niche
Finding a niche, or one specific area of interest for your first blog is wise. That means instead of choose a broad topic like “food” you might instead start a blog about one aspect of food you enjoy – such as coffee. Believe it or not, the coffee niche is huge!
So how do you research a blog niche? There are a few different options.
You can hop on Google, type in your preferred blog niche and look at what comes up. Check out how many views and social shares these sites get and that will give you a beginning understanding of what might be a good topic.
For even deeper detail you can use an SEO tool like Ubersuggest. You can use the free version with very limited capability. Or use the full version – buy it once, and use it for a lifetime.
Inside Ubersuggest, use the Keyword Overview Tool found in the lefthand navigation menu. Type in your topic to see what related keywords come up, and view the popularity of your keyword. You’ll also get to see how competitive your keyword is which will give you a good idea of your chances of ranking well.
My best advice is to not get too caught up in the research stage and have analysis paralysis. I’ve ranked for plenty of keywords that are in a saturated market – so take the keyword research lightly. The main thing is to choose something you know a lot about, and that gets a decent amount of traffic.
3. Keep Your Sharp Writing Skills
You don’t need to be writing the next War and Peace, but it is essential for your writing to be clear and engaging.
Until recent years, you could get away with subpar content. Not any more! Google is wise to the content game, and there’s just too much competition out there to be successful with anything less than grand.
So brush up on your skills and consider these steps to becoming a strong writer, and having strong content on your blog.
• Take a writing class at a local college or online if you think that will help improve your writing. Online classes like Udemy are great because they are a low investment with a big return. Learn how to effectively write a blog post, email copy, and social media content. Just be sure to research the instructor carefully before choosing a class. Also, sign up for our blogging newsletter which also covers these same topics, and from time to time we give away free ebooks and videos too.
• Invest in a good grammar tool. Especially if Grammar isn’t your strongest suit to wear, you may want to help from a tool like Grammarly. To put it simply, Grammarly works on your grammar while allowing you to do what you love. The free version simply corrects easy mistakes. The premium version corrects mistakes, improves your writing, and even writes in a desired tone of voice for your desired audience. All the while suggesting copy edits, and sentence structure.
• If all else fails, there is always the option of hiring someone else to do the writing for you, but that can get expensive quickly. This is especially true at the beginning, as it can take some time to start generating enough income for both you and the writers.
4. Select A Domain, Hosting, And Blogging Platform
You can easily purchase a domain name from NameCheap or other popular registrars for about $10 per year. You’ll also need to find a place to host your website, which you can do for usually less than $10 per month. We recommend NameCheap because they are fast, effective, and inexpensive.
In terms of a blogging platform, I’d recommend WordPress.org. It’s tough for me to recommend anything else because WordPress.org is already so well-supported, and has stellar free and premium themes and plugins.
Once installed WordPress is easy to use and looks great with little effort. Plus, the WordPress software itself is free. You can download it at WordPress.org or in most cases, your hosting provider will install it for you.
There are a lot of forums dedicated to using WordPress and you can always get the help you need in getting started and maintaining your WordPress blog.
5. Monetize Your Blog
Now that you have your blog set up – you want to start monetizing! Many people wait too long to do this step. There are several ways to monetize your blog and some methods will work better for you than others depending on the type of blog you have, your niche, and your audience.
Consider These Ideas To Monetize Your Blog:
Display Ads
This is the most common way to monetize a blog. You can use Google Adsense or another ad network to display ads on your website. The ads are usually related to your content and are displayed as banner ads, text links, or contextual ads.
The earnings from display ads are relatively low, but they are easy to set up and don’t require much maintenance.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a form of performance-based marketing in which a company gives incentives to one or more affiliates for each customer acquired through the affiliate’s unique links. In other words, you can become an affiliate for any of your favorite brands or companies, and earn a commission every time someone buys on your blog.
Affiliates can generate income from a wide variety of companies, including Amazon, Walmart, Apple, and more.
The earnings from affiliate marketing can be very high, but it takes some time to build up a large enough audience to make a significant income.
Make Your Own Info Product
Creating and selling your information product is a great way to monetize your blog. This can be in the form of an ebook, digital download, or video course.
You can use a service like Gumroad or SendOwl to sell your info product directly from your blog.
The earnings from selling products or services can be very high, but it requires more work to set up and maintain than other monetization methods.
Offer Services or Consulting
Offer your audience the opportunity to work with you one-on-one to get your advice or your service.
Sell Ad Space On Your Blog
Product owners in your field are always looking for more places to market their products. Offer space on your website for their ads and charge a monthly fee. Or sign up for programs like Google Adsense and let their ads appear on your site. You could get paid by advertisers simply by bringing visitors to your site.
Sell Your Blog
Once your blog is actively monetized – sell it on websites like Flippa to anxious buyers! There are always people looking for fresh new sites to buy and run because they just don’t have the skill, creativity, or time it takes to create a blog of their own.
6. Create A Posting Schedule For Success
Now that you’ve monetized your blog – it’s time to get organized and create a content posting schedule. This is one of the most important steps in maintaining a successful blog.
Creating a schedule will help you stay on track with your content and keep your blog fresh and updated regularly. Plus, it will help you better manage your time so you can continue to create great content while still having a life outside of your blog!
Here are a few tips to get you started:
• Set a content goal for each week. This could be one blog post, three blog posts, or whatever works with your schedule. Remember, this isn’t a race. You don’t get an award for pushing out gobs of subpar content. Quality over quantity wins the race every time.
• Create a list of ideas for each week’s content. This will help you stay on track and make sure you’re always creating fresh, new content.
• Schedule time each week to work on your content. This could be an hour each day, or a few hours on the weekend.
• Use a content calendar to plan and track your content. This could be a physical calendar, a Google Calendar, or a WordPress plugin like Nelio.
• If you can, have someone else review your content before you publish it – especially if you’re new to writing. This could be a friend, family member, or even a professional editor.
7. Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff
Have you read the book ‘Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff‘ – I just feel like anyone in business for themselves needs to read this book. If you miss a deadline it’s okay! After all, one of the reasons you started this blogging journey was for time freedom, right? So if you miss a day of blogging, don’t sweat it, just make up for it later. It’s not uncommon for me to take a Saturday and work from morning until noon, to make up for the time I missed during the week because I was enjoying my family. As a busy work-at-home mom, it’s bound to happen!
Also under this bullet point, I’m going to say, celebrate your successes – no matter how small they might be. This will help you stay motivated and keep your blog going strong. You may even want to write down two or three successes in a notebook before bedtime just to set your mind in a positive space before drifting off to sleep.
8. Promote Promote Promote!
Remember you can never promote your blog enough! There are so many ways to share your blog. This will help you get more traffic to your site and increase your chances of making money from your blog. Read our complete blog post on this topic over here.
9. Track Your Progress
Make sure you’re always tracking your progress with a tool like Google Analytics, Ubersuggest, or SpyFu – our top two picks for blog analytics. This will help you see what’s working and what’s not, and make necessary changes to your strategy.
Google Analytics will show you basic information such as how many visitors to your site, the platform they use, the country they come from, and most visited posts.
Ubbersuggest helps you see all of that, plus it shows you keywords that will rank well on your site, gives you blog post content ideas, helps you see what your competition is doing and more. Well worth the investment in the long run if you’re serious about creating content that attracts eyeballs and keeps viewers engaged.
SpyFu is similar to SEMrush. It helps you focus on the content that matters and also saves you time by eliminating the “guesswork” when it comes to content. It can help you determine exactly what content your visitors are interested in, and how to optimize it for higher conversions. It also helps you identify and track your competition which is really cool.
10. Take Heart – Your Blog Will Make Money Over Time
Your blog will more than likely not make big money in its first six months of business – no matter how awesome and amazing it is – it’s just a fact. That’s because creating content takes time and on top of that, you need to give search engines time to find your content.
However, with dedication and commitment, you can create a blog that grows over time and keeps delivering you passive income every month.
