Your Guide to Making Money Through a Blog

Introduction

Well, I’d imagine you’re here because it’s your ambition, to live life just a little better. Whether you want to earn more money as a secondary income, or make blogging a full time career, you’d actually like to know, how can a blog make you money?

I’ll give you some guidance and direction as to how this can be achieved. Sure, it is possible to make money with a blog, and there’s various methods of monetisation. So, let’s have a look at how you can find the correct source on income for your blog.

The 5 Keys to Blogging for Profit

Blogging to earn revenue cannot be sporadic, you require some sort of direction and system. Here’s a brief process to make it clear.

1. Build a website from a platform such as WordPress.
2. Choose a niche that has the potential to be profitable, but also interests you at the same time.
3. Provide valuable information to your readers to establish yourself as an authority in your website niche.
4. Add income streams from some of the selections I’ll show you on this page.
5. Engage with your audience via social media, and reply to comments you’ll receive on your blog.

These 5 key points will give you a good foundation to build a great brand around. Bloggers with more credibility are going to get more website traffic, which will obviously turn into more revenue.

Money Stream Alternatives

You’ll be glad to know, there isn’t just one form of blogging income. Should you choose to have multiple streams of revenue through your website, it can boost your coffers extensively. Here’s the more common methods of monetizing your blog.

Affiliate Marketing

Probably the most common form of income generation for a blog, is affiliate marketing. It’s my main source of income, and provides the broadest range of diversity in terms of products.

So how does affiliate marketing work? Simple.

1. Choose a niche for your blog. We’ll use camping as an example.
2. Apply to affiliate programs of companies that sell camping products.
3. Once approved, write valuable advice to your readers through an article about a camping product.
4. Included an image of the product, and attach the affiliate link provided from the approved merchant.
5. If that product is clicked, the visitor will be taken to the merchants online store to find out more.
6. Should this visitor make a purchase, you make a commission.

There’s variations of this, as you can use banners ads, links in text or affiliate links sent out via email. The diversity is huge, and the possibilities of affiliate marketing income streams are endless.

The affiliate marketing model is extremely popular, and sees no sign of slowing. More and more companies are using affiliate marketers like me and, possibly you, to make them more sales.

Affiliate programs can be found either directly through a company’s website, usually by an ‘affiliate program’ link in the footer menu. Or by searching in affiliate networks such as ShareaSale or AWIN.

Here’s a link to some other more popular affiliate networks:
Amazon Associates
JVZoo
Warrior Plus
ClickBank
JVNotify
PayKickstart
Max Bounty

Sell Digital or Physical Products

Having your own asset to sell online is also a great income opportunity. This can be in the form of a digital product, or a physical item.

Digital products can be things like creating an eBook, teaching course, coded plugins or apps, or even your own photo images. Obviously many of these can take time to compile, but once complete, can be sold for years to come.

I particularly like the opportunity to sell your own photographic images, especially if you have a passion for photography. You can sell your photos per image, or have a membership area where all images can be accessed. Maybe have a VIP area for unique and unusual imagery.

Physical products may be more your thing. If you have a product which you can build a brand around, this can lead to more opportunities down the track.

You may sell home made jewelry for instance. Possibly sell second hand goods online. This can be achieved by adding eCommerce plugins to a WordPress website, or beginning an online store using a more specialized platform such as Shopify or BigCommerce.

Starting off small can lead to bigger things down the track, but there are extra details that need taking care of with eCommerce. Issues such as customer service, returns and invoices all need to be considered.

You can read more about the differences between affiliate marketing and eCommerce here.

Advertising

Various forms of advertising are another way that money can be made from your blog. This can include selling space on your homepage for others to advertise. This used to be more common than it is these days.

Adding code snippets from advertising partners such as Google Adsense or Mediavine ads are popular, but you really need to be getting a decent amount of traffic to benefit greatly. Mediavine also require you to have a limited number of visitors per month to sign up with them. I believe this currently stands at 30K sessions per month. Actually, Susannah from Mediavine has just corrected me in the discussion area below. It stands at 25K sessions in 30 days.

When you begin blogging, many of these income avenues take time to get traction. However, once your site is established and you’re regularly getting hundreds or thousands of visitors per day, more advertising opportunities will present themselves.

You may find that companies will be contacting you, as opposed to you sourcing them. It’s possible that you’ll be asked to review a product or venue, depending on your niche, and be paid a fee to do this.

Time Frame for Making Money

If you’re just starting out, this is probably the section you don’t want to hear. I’d much rather tell you what most marketers will say, as they’ll say you’ll be making money within a couple of months.

While this is possible, the more likely scenario is that it will take at least 6 months to be making money online. Some topics are less popular than others, so ranking for these easier keywords will not take so long.

If you intend ranking for the most popular niche topics, you will find that it will take longer to make money. This is regardless of whether you use free organic search results or use paid advertising. Both have such high competition that it will just take longer.

Having said that, I’d still encourage you to build a website in one of these difficult niches if it’s your passion. The reason for this, is because the returns can be awesome once you’ve cracked it.

If you are determined enough to succeed as an affiliate marketer in the weight loss niche, make money niche, fitness, travel or dating, you’ll just have to wait longer for your results. You will need to keep motivation for your website, and persist until you make it.

One thing to keep in mind, Google will rank you. It doesn’t matter if you make a few mistakes here or there, the longer you do this and the more consistent you are, Google will rank your articles. Keep persisting and good results will come from your efforts.

How Much Money is it Possible to Make With a Blog

While this is a bit of a loaded question, it basically depends on a few factors. If you treat this like a part time hobby, you’ll only make pocket change. Having said that, you can always build the site up at a later date.

Website age is a big factor in Google rankings, so if you take it slowly for 6 months and decide to boost your efforts at 9 months, that’s still a good strategy.

What you need to know though, is when it comes to creating wealth online the cheapest possible way, search engine results are the way to go. Not all of your articles will rank on page 1, so you need as many fishing rods in the water to catch the most amount of fish.

In other words, the more articles you have ranking in search engines, the more chance you have to make sales.

So answering this question is not easy, but it’s certainly possible to make a full time wage from blogging. In fact many bloggers make tens of thousands of dollars per month, they do work hard for it though. Don’t think it will happen immediately, but a full time wage can absolutely be achieved within 10-24 months. Yes, this is a large range, but there are so many variants to consider.

How to Start Your Blog

Starting a blog is simple, but deciding on the direction you take can be a larger consideration. This will all come as you appreciate the various aspects of what can be achieved.

You main objective is to create a foundation upon which to build upon. Writing valuable content has to be your number one consideration, because you want your audience to trust you.

Concurrently, you need to be sourcing your income streams to complement your great content. Use your first 6 months to build the best foundation you possibly can. This means aesthetically make you site look professional, create as many valuable articles as possible, and don’t forget about starting social media channels.

Something to remember when writing your content, is attempt to make it better than other similar content. Google likes longer form content, so make sure you write at least 1000 word articles. If possible, aim for 1500 or even 2000.

Where To Get a Blog Started

Beginning a blog basically requires two things, a domain name and hosting provider. A domain name will not cost too much, usually in the vicinity of $5-$15 per year. Hosting costs more, but has a larger range due to different bandwidths and services.

So, you’re probably looking at anywhere between $70-$250 per year, for low to medium hosting. It’s possible to pay much more than this, but I wouldn’t think about upgrading until you have your blog significantly established. You’ll also be asked to pay for added extras when purchasing a domain name. The only extra you really should buy is Whois domain security. This will protect your personal information.

While you can use separate providers for a domain name and hosting provider, it’s easier to setup if you use the same for both. If you do this, the hosting provider will have easily accessible tools to begin a website through various platforms, including WordPress.

An All In One Solution

Having gone down the route of buying a domain name and hosting separately, then both through the same provider, I can say they both have their pros and cons. Now though, I use a different platform that encompasses not only hosting, but affiliate marketing training also.

For a fee not too much more than standard hosting, this is what you can get included in your membership:

• Multiple websites
• Fast hosting
• Website backups
• Affiliate training
• Community of thousands
• Immediate website support
• Weekly live training
• Video walkthroughs
• Keyword research tool
• Private messaging
• Community blogging
• Website comments/feedback
• Access to the owners

I swear by this platform, which is why after joining in 2014, I’m still an active member. Instead of directing you straight to this website, you can read my review of this platform here.

The best part, you can try it out for FREE, with most of the Premium features for a whole week. Unlike most platforms like this, you won’t have to submit any payment details when signing up.

At the completion of your first week, you have two options. Either go Premium and pay annually, monthly or 6 monthly. Or keep your free membership and website, but you’ll lose support and won’t be able to finish all the affiliate marketing courses.

What do you have to lose.

Wrapping Up

Becoming an affiliate marketer was my greatest decision. It’s given me freedom to work where and when I want, and earn the amount of money determined by how hard I work.

You asked the question, how can a blog make you money. I’ve shown you how this can be achieved, and where to get the best education. Now it’s up to you, to take the next step, and make a start.

One last piece of advice. The most successful bloggers treat this as a long term business, and don’t give up after 6 months if they don’t see results. They also focus more on great content, enjoying the ride, and pursuing their passion. The money will come when the time is right.

I’ll finish with a quote I always remember from the Shawshark redemption. “Get busy living, or get busy dying”.