Setting up a blog and making money from it is very simple but it will take time to get to the money part. You can set up a blog in the next five minutes if you really want to, after all it seems as though everyone has a blog these days. Not that many of them actually make a full time income from it.
The reason that most bloggers do not make any money is that they haven’t had any training on how to do it effectively. Therefore, they will work really hard but get nowhere fast and then give up. In this post I am going to tell you exactly how to set up your blog and then make money from it.
How To Set Up A Blog
First you need to decide which platform you are going to build your blog on. You do have lots of options like Go daddy, squarespace, Wix etc however I am going to tell you to build your blog on the WordPress platform. It is the most responsive, adaptable and secure platform on which to build your blog. The choices you have to design exactly what you want are almost limitless.
Now before you head over to WordPress.com and start to build your blog for free. Stop. A free website will never allow you to earn a decent income. The rules on what you can do with it are too restrictive and what’s more you will not own your blog and it can be taken away from you in a heartbeat.
What you need to do is decide which company you want to use as your host. There are many out there that use WordPress as their platform and their price points are all different. You can choose hosting for as little as $2.95 a month but as you build your blog you will need to up the monthly price point to get all of the facilities you will need.
Go take a read of my review of several of my favourites and ones I am happy to recommend. I personally host all of my blogs at Wealthy Affiliate. The reason for this is that for $29 a month I get everything I will ever need in terms of hosting, training and support for up to 25 blogs. Yes most bloggers will eventually have more than one blog in different niches.
Once you have decided where to host your blog you need to choose a domain name. All of the ones I recommend have the facility for you to purchase a domain name. This will cost you around $15 a year.
If you are ready to start then you could try Wealthy Affiliate for free ( no credit card required ) and learn step by step how to set up your blog properly. If you decide that Wealthy Affiliate is not for you at least you will have learnt exactly how to set up your blog which you can replicate with another hosting company.
This blog will be hosed on their free siterubix platform. This is the only free platform where your money making ability is not hindered.
How To Make Money From Your Blog
Before you can make money from your blog you need to have readers, to get readers you need to first advertise your blog posts on the social media platforms. Ideally you want organic traffic from the search engines but this does take time and some knowledge of keywords.
If you call a blog post “ What I did this month” then the search engines are highly unlikely to recommend your post to people searching online. Think about the things you type into search engines…. I bet you have never searched for that term ever. However, you might search for “things to do with children” or “best clothes for winter” or something more specific relating to any niche “how to lose weight fast” “how to make money online” and on and on.
Get your blog post titles right and you will be recognised by the search engines and shown to people searching for answers online. To get great keywords you need a Keyword tool. I use Jaaxy which is free with the wealthy affiliate platform but you can and should use it even if you decide to host elsewhere.
That now brings me to the point of niches. Most bloggers write about lots of subjects and this makes them ineffective when it comes to making money. You will make more money quicker if you choose a niche subject and stick to that when writing blog posts. No niche is off limits. There are people searching online for answers to all sorts of questions and as a blogger it is in your interest to help them and recommend products or services that might help them. This is called affiliate marketing and is the best way to make money online.
I will explain affiliate marketing in a minute but first I want to tell you about other ways you can make money from your blog.
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You can install Google Ads on your site which means google can place ads on your site. You will be paid pence for ads seen but it can add up over time. I personally don’t use it as it made my site look messy but every blog is different.
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You can place ads for products you recommend in your sidebar. This is another way of using affiliate marketing which I promise I will get to soon.
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You can sell advertising space in your sidebar.
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You can become an Influencer marketer. It takes time and a lot of work on social media to achieve this but you don’t need to have that many followers for brands to notice you. To start with you might just get free products which will require you to write a post about or sometimes just a mention on your social media accounts.
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You can offer guest post opportunities. This gives the guest writer a valuable link back to their site. The search engines will rank you higher if you have honest backlinks. Warning. They do not like bad backlinks so never buy them from unscrupulous sellers. There are some sites that will give you honest backlinks for a price but I don’t recommend them if you are just starting out.
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You can create your own product like an ebook on a certain subject and sell that.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the best way to make money online but what is it?
Basically you become an affiliate for a certain product or service and they will give you an affiliate link which you can use in blog posts or on social media. When someone clicks on that link and makes a purchase you are paid a commission. The commission can be anything from 5% to 50% of the price the customer pays.
Think of any product and there will be an affiliate program for it. It is becoming the cheapest and most effective form of marketing for any company. A recommendation goes a long way in making a potential customer, an actual customer and most people look online for answers to either their problems or just to satisfy themselves that they are making the right decision in buying a product or service.
The customer purchasing lifecycle is a big part of the step by step training in Wealthy Affiliate. You can read it here. Getting people to read your post when they are ready to buy is a skill you really need to learn as a blogger and there is no better place to learn than within Wealthy Affiliate.
There you will find Step By Step training and then the advice of some of the most successful bloggers online today. They chose wealthy affiliate to host and build their sites for a reason. Many have been there and built six and seven figure incomes from its inception nearly 13 years ago. Me, I have been there for nearly 2 years and have no complaints whatsoever and I started with zero experience and am self confessed technophobe! If I can you can.
Back to affiliate marketing. Many companies will run their affiliate marketing programs through affiliate broker companies like Awin, CJ Affiliates, Rakuten Marketing and more. They are easily found online. If you have a product or service in mind then stick that in to the search engine and add affiliate program. That will take you to the right place to apply to be an affiliate.
Warning. With big companies you may be rejected at first especially if you are new to blogging. I have been rejected many times but have worked on my site and then applied later and have then been accepted.
There are many big affiliate marketing companies. For example, you can apply to Amazon to be an affiliate and then you will have any product under the sun to promote. Some bloggers use only Amazon and make a great living. However, there are some smaller product owners, mostly bloggers who have created a course or ebook and use Affiliates to promote their product. Many of them use Sendowl as their preferred affiliate platform.
Using big companies or products often gives you less commission than little known products like those created by other bloggers. Personally I only promote products that I have used and have had benefit from. Wealthy Affiliate is one and several other products by other bloggers like the She Approach to making Pinterest Possible. This is my favourite learning resource for using pinterest to promote my blog.
I am also not afraid to warn people off from products or services that don’t come up to scratch.
Final Thoughts
I hope that I have given you some sound advice on how to start a blog and also how to make money from it. I didn’t say it was easy. It does take time and effort which Wealthy Affiliate has taught me, after months floundering along online trying to work out how to actually make money online.
My best advice is to give Wealthy Affiliate a go at the very least. It gives you so much more than you can even imagine you need right now and you can trial it for free ( No Credit Card Required )