Blogging is becoming a more and more popular job choice in today’s uncertain times. Now more than ever, we’re seeing the potential to earn a full-time income while working from home. This post will teach you how to start a blog, and how blogs make money, too! You’ll learn about the different methods of monetization, such as:
But before talking about any of that, let’s go over how much money you can actually make as a blogger.
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Successful bloggers make good money. The key word there is successful. But the fact of the matter is, most bloggers don’t make any money at all! It’s not because it’s impossible to make good money blogging, it just boils down to commitment. You can make 6 figures or more with your own blog. You could even make millions of dollars blogging, but only if you work hard, constantly improve, and never give up.
Don’t believe me?
Click here to read about how blogger Sarah Titus makes $10k a month and $2.7m a year with her website.
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There’s no limit to how much you can earn while blogging! It all comes down to dedication, commitment, research, and a lot of hard work. After seeing numbers like that, you’re probably asking yourself “how do I get started?” It’s easier than you might think!
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Author –Â Samantha Nance
US Patriot Loans contributing authors are experienced in areas such as personal finance, legal writing, or technical writing. Contributed articles are intended to provide a wider spectrum of views that help readers like you find the information that you’re looking for.
Starting a blog is easy. So easy, in fact, that there are over 600 million blogs online today! Needless to say, blogging is a competitive career choice.
You can start your very own blog today for free using any number of platforms.
Using a free platform means that you won’t have your own domain name. Your site name will look something like this:
www.yourexampleblog.wordpress.com
or even
www.hostwebsite.com/yourexampleblog.
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If you want your own domain name(a website ending in .com, .net, etc), then some of the most popular blogging platforms to consider are WordPress, Blogger, and Wix. Having your own domain is the best way to make money with your blog. It makes your site easier for people to find because it’s easier to remember, and it gives you the ability to monetize that free blogs often lack.
Most blogging platforms will give you a free domain name when you sign up for one of their annual subscription plans. These plans can range anywhere from $4/mo to $500/mo!
FEATURED ARTICLES
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Get funding for your business!
Once you’ve decided on a platform to use, you need to decide which topic to write about. You can blog about anything at all, but if you want to make money, you’ll have to choose your niche wisely. Your niche is just your area of specialization or your topic of interest, and some niches are more profitable than others.
For example, food blogs are immensely popular. We all like to eat, after all!
But don’t choose something just because it’s profitable. People can tell when you’re being insincere, and it’ll be that much harder for you to stay committed to blogging if you aren’t actually interest in what you’re writing about. Try to find a profitable niche that you’re interested in, instead of just going with the most profitable option.
Some of the most popular and profitable niches for blogs are:
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It’s important to choose a niche with a large audience who’s been proven to spend money, such as from the above examples.
Okay, so you don’t have to be interested in the niche that you choose to blog about. See, sometimes bloggers don’t even write their own posts!
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Being a blogger is hard work, and it takes a lot of time. A lot. So much time, in fact, that sometimes there just isn’t enough time in the day to get all of the scheduled content written.
What do you do when that happens? You hire a ghostwriter, of course!
Ghostwriters are paid writers who create content for you and allow you to put your name on their work.
You don’t just have to be busy to hire ghostwriters, though. Maybe you want to be a blogger but just aren’t that great at writing yet. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have good ideas, it just means that you understand business!
You’ve probably heard the phrase “Content is King,” right? Well, if you haven’t, it just means that the stuff that you post is the most important aspect to gaining a following and monetizing your site. So if you can hire someone to produce great content for you then you absolutely should. Quality matters.
Speaking of money, how do blogs make money, anyways?
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There are many ways to monetize your blog. You could make money by:
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Choosing the ways you want to profit from your blog have a lot to do with your audience size, and it’s good to keep in mind that when it comes to your audience, bigger is almost always better.
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Monetizing your blog through ads is one of the most passive ways to make income online. It’s also one of the most difficult ways to make money online. Unless you have thousands upon thousands of readers, putting ads on your website will do more harm than good.
Ads make a blog feel spammy, they slow loading times, and they’re just plain distracting.
The only upside to ads is how passive they are. All you have to do is set them up and wait for someone to click on them. If you plan on using ads as a passive source of income, it’s wise to wait until you already have a massive following before putting ads on your site. If and when you’re ready, Google AdSense is the most popular way to monetize through advertisements.
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One of the more profitable ways to make money blogging is by selling products. These could be physical products, like clothes, or it could be digital products, like ebooks. The products you decide to sell will be determined by the niche that you choose.
Creating digital products often involves zero production fees, so it can be done in a way that earns all profit!
If you’re planning on selling physical products, maybe handmade soaps, you’ll have to consider the cost of production and the cost of shipping when coming up with your pricing. Physical products will also take longer to produce than digital products.
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Depending on your skills and niche, you could also sell services or courses. For example, bloggers often sell coaching services, or writing services.
You could also create an online video course. It could be a course in anything under the sun, from coding to cooking, just as long as you know what you’re talking about!
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Aside from selling products and services, many bloggers make good money through affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is when you provide a link to a product or service and get paid a commission every time someone buys through the link you provided. The most popular affiliate marketing program is the Amazon Affiliate Marketing Program. It’s completely free to sign up and you can earn up to 10% commission on each sale you make.
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Sponsored posts are a little like ads, but you don’t need as big of an audience to profit from them. They’re posts that promote a product or service without being too pushy, without actually seeming like they’re trying to sell anything at all.
Unlike affiliate programs which pay you every time someone purchases through your link, a company will only pay you once for your sponsored post, making sponsored posts less passive than many of the other monetization options talked about. However, brands and sponsors will pay higher prices for sponsored posts, and it’s not unreasonable to make a couple hundred dollars just to write one blog post. Not bad, huh!
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Now that you know how to start and monetize a blog, all that’s left to do is go out there and do it.
Choose a profitable niche, invest in your business, only post quality content, and you’ll be making millions in no time!
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