How to Make Money Blogging 2024

Are you looking for the top ways to make money online that are NOT scams?

If you landed here, you want to know how to make money blogging, right? Do you want to make money blogging but need help figuring out where to start?

In this guide, you’ll learn how to make your first dollars blogging and keep it up to grow your revenue consistently. If you put in the work, you’ll be getting the rewards.

Blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme. You must put in work, time, and money to grow your blog sustainably in the long term.

The point to note is that this article will not get to your first $10,000 month in 30 days.

It doesn’t matter if you started your blog a year ago or started one today! I will tell you exactly how you can make money from your blog and all the tactics I used to make money after only 3 months.

The other thing you need to know is that to have a successful blog, you need to treat it like a business. Think of your blog as a piece of digital real estate in a business portfolio.

Have you ever seen a small business succeed without any money to support its growth? The answer is No.

Every single blogging business out there needs some type of investment to grow, and your blog is no different.

There are various other factors like consistency, your network, personal motivation, and goals that also contribute a lot.

You need to listen to people who know what they are doing better than you, but then it will be down to you and you alone to put in the hard work.

No one is going to do the work for you. Blogging takes a lot of time and commitment.

There will be moments in which you are alone, and no one is reading your blog, and you will be thinking: “Why am I doing this? Will this ever work?” but you must keep pushing and be motivated. You need to always keep your goal in mind.

And if this hasn’t scared you away, you can keep reading!

Want To Learn How To Make Your Own Blogging Website? I put together the most in-depth, comprehensive post to help you start your blogging website. This is NOT a quick read.

I will share with you all the tips I used to create a successful 6-figure blog. If you want a thorough guide to help you along with all the steps, just click here and get started!

WordPress.org is the largest publishing platform on the planet, and it powers over 43% of all websites.

You can use WordPress and blogging to earn money online by doing what you love. You can work from home, on your own time, and there is no limit on how much money you can make.

How much money you can make depends solely on a few factors such as:

Which niche are you picking?
How much traffic do you drive to your blog?
What digital marketing techniques do you implement?
How much time are you dedicating to learning and implementing?

2. CHOOSING THE RIGHT NICHE

Let’s start with a little brutal truth, shall we?

Passion does not equal profit.
Neither does expertise.
Hard work doesn’t guarantee anything either.

In other words, you need a large audience who buys things. Without that, nothing else matters. It’s a requirement for everything else.

To create a successful blog, you must ensure a commercially viable blog niche.

Some of the popular topics for this kind of blogging are:

Lifestyle
Fashion
Travel
Motivation
Entertainment

The key here is to keep it entertaining, add value, and create a community around your brand. Depending on your style and consistency, you could mint a lot of money with this strategy.

A lot of beginners also ask, should I focus on blogging or vlogging?

Well, it’s a good idea to have a mix of both. Having a good blend of both techniques will help you to grow faster and start significant earnings sooner.

with vlogging; Producing video content (Recording, editing, and publishing) is time and money-intensive, whereas creating text content takes less time.

3. SETTING UP YOUR BLOG

WordPress.org is the most popular website platform in the world. It’s free and extremely flexible.

Although WordPress.org is free, you must host your files on a server (using a hosting provider such as Bluehost).

This option comes at a cost, but you won’t be able to add ads to your website if you set up your blog the wrong way.

Reasons why you should use Bluehost

It’s recommended web hosting company by WordPress.org.
You will get a FREE domain name.
It’s the best affordable hosting for beginners if you are just starting and you have limited resources to invest in your blog.

You just need to click here to Get Started Now to choose your package. I have a special deal with Bluehost where you can get started for just $2.95 a month.

Make sure you are selecting the Basic starter package, it’s the cheapest, and it’s all you will need to start.

To monetize your blog, you need to make sure you are not using a free blogging service.

And these are the reasons:

There is a limit to how much money you can make from a free blog.
If you use a free service, you WILL NOT own your blog or your website content.
You will have limited options to customize your design, and you will have limited support.
If you want to make money from your blog, your website must be self-hosted on a web server that allows you to customize your website.

The process is really easy to follow whether you are 20 years or 60 years old. However, if you need help, our expert team can help you set up your blog for free.

→ Click Here to Get Your Free WordPress Blog Setup! ←

If you haven’t already, setting up your blog is the first step to start making money blogging. Here’s how to do that:

Step 1: Pick a domain name and hosting provider.

Choosing a domain name is an essential step in the process of starting a website. It will be the web address where your website can be found and accessed.

If you already have a domain name, congratulations! If not, we recommend using Hostinger as they provide reliable hosting and offer low prices.

Step 2: Install WordPress on your server.

WordPress is a free content management system that 90% of websites currently use. It’s designed to make creating new websites easy, with templates and themes available to customize design. To get started, you’ll need to install WordPress on your server.

Step 3: Upload your content to your site.

After you’ve set up your website, it’s time to start writing. Uploading content to your site helps readers find your platform. It also helps search engines like Google show your site in the search results.

→ Click Here to Get Your Free WordPress Blog Setup! ←

4. CREATING QUALITY CONTENT

Blogging is not different from anything else. The more of a badass you are, the easier it is for you to make money online.

Do you want to know how to make money blogging?

Become an awesome writer.

The truth is, having good ideas and powerful words isn’t enough. You have to create the best content ever published on blog topics lots of people are interested in learning more about. And that brings us to the three levels of content creation:

You know what blog content is popular in your niche, and you write exclusively about those topics
You’ve mastered frameworks proven to make your content more popular (list posts, how to post, etc.)
Your content delivers more value to the reader than any other post published on that topic

If that’s hard to understand, think about it this way:

Lots of bloggers sit down and think, “What will I write today?” They jot down some thoughts, doing their best to be helpful, original, and entertaining. If they’re disciplined, they might even stick with it for a few months.

But it rarely works. Here are a few reasons why:

You weren’t using a verified content framework
It’s not the best post ever published on the topic
What you want to say isn’t what other people want to read

The only reason people will come to your blog is if you are solving a problem they have, and they can get something in return for giving you their time.

No one wants to read about your struggles, but they might want to read about how they can overcome their problems.

You need to make sure you are not writing for yourself, but you are writing to help your readers solve their problems.

But how do you do that?

You learn from what works on other blogs!

Why can’t I just follow my passion and write what I want?

Of course, you can, but if you want to blog for money, I suggest you don’t.

5. MONETIZING YOUR BLOG

When you think of how to make money blogging, advertising is often the first thing that comes to mind.

Yes, it is possible to make money with ads on WordPress, but there are also other ways you can monetize your blog content.

There are various methods that you can use to monetize your blog. Depending upon your level of blogging and the kind of blog, you could pick the method that matches your style.

Do check the end of this article to get the answers to many important questions asked by bloggers like you.

Here are some of the methods that work:

Ad Networks like AdSense
Direct Advertisements
Affiliate marketing
Native Advertising
Paid reviews/Sponsored posts
Sell Digital products (eBooks, Blueprints)
Launch an Online Course
Offer Online consulting
Offer Services based on your skills

Apart from the traditional forms of advertising, you can work on other monetization tricks. Instead of just adding ads, work on adding value for your advertiser.

If you want to know more on how to monetize your blog and make it profitable. Check out my Blog post ; how to monetize your blog

Once you make some money with your blog, it’s wise to start investing more to keep growing.

6. DRIVING TRAFFIC TO YOUR BLOG

When you’re a newbie, getting traffic is confusing.

Should you focus on optimizing your keywords? Growing your Facebook page? Leaving comments on blogs?

Answering questions on Quora? Being active in Facebook groups? Creating videos for your YouTube channel? Starting a popular podcast?

And so on.

There are a gazillion traffic tactics out there. Everybody says theirs is the best.

Choose a Traffic Source (Google Search or Facebook)

Pretty much all the traffic for written content comes from either Google or Facebook. The rest of the traffic sources combined don’t even come close to competing with those two Goliaths.

So, how do you get them to send you a bunch of traffic?

One option is you can pay for it. They like that.

But chances are, you’re reading about how to make money blogging because you don’t want to pay for traffic. You want it for free, right?

search engine optimization (SEO) and going viral on Facebook.

Which one should you focus on?

Well, here are two questions to guide you:

Is your topic something your friends and family regularly talk about on Facebook? Examples: pets, parenting, self-improvement, and health. If so, focus on playing the viral traffic sport.
Is your topic something people actively search for information about on Google? Examples: product reviews, specific questions they would ask an expert, and how-to information. If so, focus on SEO.

For most topics, you can do both, but one or the other will be dominant. In that case, focus on whichever one is dominant.

In the blogging space, for example, stuff about writing and grammar occasionally goes viral on Facebook, because we love criticizing our relatives about their terrible English.

On the other hand, you rarely talk with your family about blogging platforms, WordPress plugins, affiliate marketing, digital marketing, keyword research, or any other blogging topics.

You will, however, search for them on Google. Just as you would guess then, the blogging niche is heavily dominated by search. Here’s a breakdown of Smart Blogger’s traffic by source:

The truth is, we pretty much ignore Facebook. The volume of traffic available there comes nowhere close to the volume of traffic available from search engines. So, we focus on Google.

I also spend WAY more time keeping up to date on SEO stuff than I do on social stuff. I’m a geek about it. Throw me in a room full of Google engineers, and I’d probably know more than half of them.

Grow Your Email List with Pop-ups

Chances are, you see pop-ups as an annoyance.

They get in the way when you’re trying to read. They ask you to hand over sensitive information like your name, email address, and phone number. Sometimes you have to deal with multiple pop-ups on the same site, and it makes you feel hassled and uncared for.

And all that sucks. In my opinion, you have every right to be annoyed.

But here’s the thing…

That’s where the money comes from. The best predictor of the revenue for a money-making blog is the size of their email list.

The rule of thumb is you can expect to make $1 per subscriber per month. So, if you have 10,000 email subscribers, you should be able to make about $10,000 per month.

So obviously, growing your email list is a top priority. You might, however, feel conflicted about using pop-ups. What are you supposed to do?

Here’s a different way of looking at it:

If a visitor comes to your site and doesn’t give you their email address, the chances of them returning are nearly zero. You’ll never have another opportunity to help them.

If you believe your content is the best, and you believe you can help them over time, I believe you owe it to them to be as pushy as possible about staying in contact. In other words, not using a pop-up is unethical. A little annoyance is a small price to pay for change.

And remember, that doesn’t mean you have to be extremely pushy or spammy. You can use pop-ups in authentic ways.

But you absolutely must use them. Assuming you want to make money, anyway.

Use Pinterest to drive traffic

How do you find new blog posts and articles on the web?

Google search!

But getting your website ranking in Google takes a good few months, and who has a good few months to hang around before seeing people coming to your website?

NO TRAFFIC = NO MONEY

So I did some research and read everywhere that other bloggers were driving traffic FOR FREE to their websites using Pinterest.

Pinterest?! Yes!

I always used Pinterest to find lovely kitchen inspiration and recipes, but I knew little about getting blog traffic.

I now see Pinterest as a visual search engine and a free ads platform, but the great thing is that “normal” people don’t look at Pinterest images as ads.

They look at them as images that will help them to solve a problem.

But how do you use Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog?

Here are the 5 steps I used to bring traffic to my blog!

1. Set up a great Pinterest profile and convert it into a Business Account

Make sure you have an image in your profile. Most people suggest having your picture, and I can see the appeal of that, as you can relate more with a person than a brand, but I always wanted to keep my privacy, so I decided to use my logo.

It works for me!

2. Make sure you have at least 15-20 boards that are relevant to your audience

Personal boards are critical on Pinterest right now.

You need to set up at least one board for your blog.

This board/s will contain all the pins linked to your blog posts on your website.

You then need to create another 15-20 boards of topics related to your blog that will interest your potential audience. Ideally, you need to create a board for each topic you think that your target audience would search for to find your blog.

3. Create great “click-worthy” Pinterest images that lead to your blog posts

I can’t stress how important this is. If people don’t click on your pins, all your effort in writing great content will be worthless, as no one will ever read it.

Make sure you use readable fonts.
Use a call to action on the pin and intriguing wording that people have to click.
Test several pins: create 2/3 pins for each post and then create a new pin every week for a few weeks to see what works best.
Once you find something that works, keep doing it! But don’t be afraid to change and experiment with new pin designs.

4. Find group boards and apply to relevant ones

What are group boards? Group boards are boards owned by other people. They can invite you to “pin” into their board, and once you are in, your pins will get in front of their audience. This is a great way to get pins in front of more people if you have a small number of followers.

To find group boards:

Look for group boards in other people’s Pinterest accounts.
Join the Facebook group Pinterest Group Boards: they have some great group boards opening every week. Just keep checking it!

My favorite method is spying on other people’s profiles, especially the smaller bloggers. If they get accepted to a board, I will likely be accepted on it too.

To join a group board, you need to send a message or an email to the person who owns the board.

Sometimes you will find instructions in the group board description. Other times you will have to hunt around.

Never stop applying to group boards, and never give up.

During my first couple of months of blogging, I wrote to at least 30 board owners a week, and most of the time, I got one or two replies.

This is normal! Just keep doing it, and things will get better.

5. Set up your daily schedule

There was a time when you had to pin 30-50 pins a day to make sure Pinterest was showing your pins in its feed.

Things couldn’t be more different now. What Pinterest wants is fresh content, and repinning the same pins all over the place many times doesn’t work anymore.

Pinterest now wants fresh content every day.

What is fresh content?

New pins related to a new blog post
New pins/images created for an old blog post

Ideally, you want to create fresh pins every day. I try to create at least 2-4 new pins per day.

And the trick here is to reuse one design and use it several times for different pins.

You can simply change some of the font colors or change the pin aspect ratio. So if you use the same image, you could make one pin 1000×1500 and another one 1000×2000, and Pinterest will count them as 2 different pins.

Recommended ;Carly’s book Pinteresting Strategies. Using the system in her book, Carly managed to get to 200,000 page views in just a few months!

Stupid Simple SEO

Stupid Simple SEO isn’t just a course. It gives you the right mindset to use SEO to up your game and use Google search to convert your traffic into money.

4. Learn from the best in the business

One of the things I spend time doing more than anything else is to check out other blogger’s content:

How do they make money?
How do they get page views?
What are the most shared articles they have on their website?
What do their pins look like, and which pins have the most repins?

You shouldn’t copy other people, but you need to take inspiration from them. If something is working for them, could you do it better?

8. CONCLUSION

If you have been using these traditional methods of making money from your blog, it’s time to revise your blogging business plan. Make some new tweaks, change the design, and optimize the marketing aspects of your blog.

Is it possible?

Absolutely, but only if you treat it like a blogging business.

Yes, you can start your blog as a side project. Yes, you can slowly grow it in the background. Yes, you can turn your blog into a source of passive, full-time income that eventually lets you quit your job, travel, spend a lot of time with your family, whatever you want to do.

But like anything worthwhile, it’s hard work getting there.

You have to study. Practice. Master your craft. Put in a lot of work. Hustle.

If you love writing, I can’t imagine a better business, though. Not only is blogging a great way to get your writing noticed, but it’s a great way to connect with people around the world who need you, teach them what you know, and get paid pretty damn well in exchange.

There’s never a day I regret dedicating myself to blogging. Never.

It’s not just because of the money, either. It’s because I also get to do what I love and help people at the same time.

What could be better than that?