Here we're looking at what is blogging and how to make money with it?
I started blogging with no idea of how to make money with it.
Making money wasn't even on my mind if I'm honest…
I just saw it as a good way to talk about my interests (I like to talk a lot!)
But there's a world of difference between blogging as a hobby and blogging as a business. (More on that in a second)
I only learned how to combine blogging with making money in March 2014 when I accidentally stumbled across a training website and community called WealthyAffiliate.com.
I created a free starter account and started going through their training courses. They gave me two free websites so I could experiment with what I was learning and see the results.
My breakthrough when I made my first sale just 2 weeks later. I made a lousey $1.20 but I didn't care – everyone in my house was sleeping and there I was dancing aroud my bedroom in my pyjamas.
I shared my success story with the Wealthy Affiliate community…
I was ecstatic because though I was following the training, I was naturally very skeptical, but I was also desperate so I kept going.
That first $1.20 proved to me what I was doing was right and I saw my whole life before me change before my very eyes and I just needed to keep going…
I made more sales more often; what started out as a slow trickle grew into a daily and consistent flow of sales. My income grew and grew. Money was being deposited into my PayPal account on a monthly basis – and as I scaled up what I was doing, the money grew with it.
What happened from there is a complete life change – I transitioned from quiet village life in England to the life of my dreams living and travelling around south east Asia.
Why does this matter?
Because I make money blogging and you want to do the same.
So what is a blog exactly?
Simply put, a blog is a website where you can write about any topic that interests you, build a readership who trusts your advice and if you learn how to monetise your blog, it can be a full-time business.
A blog can inform and educate, entertain, trigger conversation and change the way people think. A blog is an online platform for you to express your creativity, share ideas, educate, entertain, trigger conversation, change the way people think. They're a way to build relationships with people and give you 24 hour access to an international audience.
Blogging is a tool to talk about your passions, hobbies and interests, make money doing it and help make a difference in people's lives – it doesn't get much better than that.
And the cost of starting an online blogging business? A lot lower than you think.
What to blog about to make money?
You can make money blogging about absolutely any niche or topic because there are billions of people searching Google everyday.
Once you've made the decision to start a blog to make money, choosing what to start a blog about is the next step.
The best way to come up with ideas for your website is to think about your passions, hobbies and interests. Think about the problems you could help people solve.
Here are 10 untapped money making website niche ideas.
You can turn almost any topic idea into a proftable niche website.
If you sign up to my 10 day Online Business Builder course I'll help you to choose niche that's best for you.
How to make money blogging
Everyday more and more aspiring entrepreneurs are tapping into the enormous earning potential of blogging as a business.
There are literally hundreds of ways you can make money with your blog. They all involve picking a topic, creating your blog and getting readers.
Here's the 4 step process I follow to make money with my blogs:
It's important to say here that I'm not talking about making money as a freelance blog writer on other people's blogs; rather, making money by building a blog you own yourself.
This is when you're not just a blogger/writer but an online entrepreneur. Your blog is your online business that will give you an income stream for years to come.
I earn $6,000+ per month from my blogs, it's growing steadily and I haven't finished yet! I won't try and tell you it was easy, I've worked my butt off to get to where I am now but there is a step-by-step process you can follow.
If you're serious about making serious money blogging, enter your email below and you'll get instant access to the tools, training and support you need to succeed… IF you're determined and willing to put in the work.
The most important thing is to start! Grab your free 10 day make money blogging course here!
Simon Crowe is on a mission to help as many people as possible kiss their bosses goodbye.
Take the free Wealthy Affiliate test drive to discover how to smash your online income goals and make your dream business a reality.
Hi Simon, Thanks for the read, I’m always looking for ways to make my blog better, I believe the same if you’re passionate about something and like to talk a lot that can help haha, also been able to write down what is in your mind is always a good stress relief, but choosing a niche your passionate about is important and to keep learning and the income will come later.
Hi Paul, yeah I think finding the niche that is best for you is the right balance between:
1. Talking about something you can easily talk about. That’ll make writing posts and possibly making YouTube videos down the line a lot easier and make it seem a lot less like ‘work’.
2. Choosing something that’s easy to monetise. Think about how easy a site around your topic would be to monetise. Are there instantly relevant products/online courses/services you can easily identify? If so, chances are it’s a good fit.
Thank you for a very inspirational article. As a novice blogger myself I have many questions.However,the most important question is how to attract and keep the visitors.What process you recommend for getting a following?
If you have a visitor to your website how can you make sure they find you again? Are you able to collect their name and contact them by E-Mail?
And finally, how frequently you should post new blogs to your website?
My niche is about clean air indoors.I like to write about different aspects on how to improve indoor air quality. But each blog takes me several days to write since I like to do research on Google scholar to make sure that what I write is correct.
My blogs average one thousand words so I can only post one blog a week.To monetize the blog, would you recommend that I write shorter blogs but more frequently? I would like to hear your opinion. I have too much to learn so I will sign up for your training.
Hey there Carlos, first off, congratulations on getting started – a lot of people always plan on starting a blog ‘one day’ and never do so kudos to you for that!
OK, exactly how you build up a readership and interact with your readers will vary slightly depending on what niche you’re in. I think it’s always a good idea to see what some of the other bloggers in your space are doing and what’s working or not working for them. You can learn a lot that way.
I’d definitely recommend building a list of email subscribers as soon as possible and maybe start by sharing your weekly post with them. I recommend either AWeber or Mailchimp for this, you can read my comparison here.
It certainly sounds like you are thorough in your research and writing, I’m sure this shows in your final blog post. One blog post a week is good in my opinion. It’s better to have 50 high quality, in-depth posts packed with valuable content then 500 rushed and bland posts.
Your blog post length is good but I wouldn’t go any lower than 1,000. Most of my posts tend to be between 1,500 – 3,000 (but I think this one is 4,000+)
In terms of monetisation, product reviews always work well. Whatever your niche, they are always relevant products or services you can talk about that you know will help the people reading your content. In your case, you could look for air purification filter affiliate programs and start writing specific product reviews. Then you could do a ‘Top 5 best’ post comparison post to send people to from your more general posts.
I hope this helps you out, I know you’re going to find the free beginners course really helpful in terms of monetisation and setting up the overal structure and strategy for your blog going forward.
All the best!
Hi Simon, simple but powerful post as usual. Just curious, from your experience, is there an optimal length to a blog title? For instance, yours is themakemoneyonlineblog, about 22 letters. One of the blog names I’m interested in has 36 letters. Is this way too long?
Again, I see that you put many hyperlinks in your blog posts. For instance, in this post, there are six. Sometime I see them as distracting. May be a maximum of three would just be fine unless it’s absolutely necessary. Am I wrong here or is there a commercial necessity?
Personally I think TheMakeMoneyOnlineBlog.com is too long. If I could start over I would choose a much shorter, more brandable name. 36 letters definitely sounds like a lot.
Short, sharp and memorable is better. Remember you want to build an online brand that gets noticed.
You definitely want to add internal and external links to your posts. Internal being to other posts on your site and external being to other sites like Wikipedia. This is good for 2 reasons:
1) Obviously you don’t want to add links for no reason but linking gives your readers more information and gives you post more value.
2) Google really likes it. It helps them ‘crawl’ your site better and shows them you’re not greedy with your traffic, being willing to link to other sites.
Links don’t have to be distracting. I choose to bold mine but you don’t have to. They can be any colour you want them to be.
Hope this helps.
Great post and good info.
Ive started with blogging a few years ago, first for fun, but now I earn money with it, from affiliate marketing.
I love to do it, and I can tell to everybody, you also have to do it. Write about something you like and try to sell it.
Wealthy affiliate is the best platform you can find for this, and the price is cheap, if you see the other ones, and those are mostly crap.
Anyway, great tips you showed here, you will help a lot of people!
Congratulations on your success Emmanuel! It certainly sounds like you’ve found your passion. That’s a real key isn’t it – writing about what you love and sharing it with others.
I recommend the Wealthy Affiliate training platform to aspiring full-time bloggers as they have the best training so far (after reviewing 100’s of so-called blogging and affiliate marketing courses).
It’s the community that makes it for me and why I’ve been a member for coming up to 5 years now. It’s great to be surrounded by fellow bloggers all helping one another to succeed. I think we all need that sometimes!
For people who are interested, feel free to check out my full Wealthy Affiliate Review 2019 to get the full lowdown.
Thanks, Simon, for your informative article, ‘What Is Blogging A How To Make Money With It.’ I enjoyed reading it from start to finish.
You have raised not only an interesting but very important point that if I choose to make money blogging I become an online entrepreneur.
I have tried blogging on other people’s blogs as a freelance writer. The payouts were not that much. I love the idea of creating and building my very own blog. The fact that you earn $6,000+ per month from your blogs goes to show it really works.
Thanks Simon for sharing your experience and amazing insight into the world of blogging. I am like you in a number of ways. First, I started blogging a couple of years ago, just for the sake of blogging. It was really just a hobby, as most of my blogs were hosted on blogger.However, I didn’t know how to monetize my blogs and I quickly abandoned them. Fortunately, I found Wealthy Affiliates just a little over 2 weeks ago. It has been an awesome experience for me. The tools are priceless and the community is massively supportive. I will highly recommend Wealthy Affiliate to anyone who wants to take their blogging activity as a serious business. With hard work and persistence, anyone can make money online blogging. BTW, did you ever get overwhelmed by the WA platform and ever thought of quitting? I am yet to make a dime from my blog, but I’m sure I will get there soon. Just like you mentioned, anyone can blog about any subject. And thanks for sharing those great niche ideas. I’ll be back to read more.
Thanks for sharing this informative and educative information. I was told one of the best ways one can earn money online is to go into blogging. last month I decided to venture into online.and I began to make researches on how to make money from blogging but the results i have been seeing are not as explanatory as this. Reading this post has informed me on the next step to take , I think I will venture into wealthy affiliate you made mention of. Thanks for this tutorial.
Thanks for sharing this informative and educative information. I was told one of the best ways one can earn money online is to go into blogging. last month I decided to venture into online.and I began to make researches on how to make money from blogging but the results i have been seeing are not as explanatory as this. Reading this post has informed me on the next step to take , I think I will venture into wealthy affiliate you made mention of. Thanks for this tutorial.
Thanks Carrie, I enjoyed reading your post. Like you I bumped into Wealthy Affiliate online, tried it out and I have never looked back. I agree with you any niche is capable of yielding money. You have to know the right way of going about it. Wealthy Affiliate helps you make money from writing blogs.
By far the best WA promoting website yet. I love that your content is very simple and easy to read, “Meet Simon” is my favorite page. great page title by the way. WA has definitely been worth my time so far and i have no complaints, you picked a very great topic to discuss within your website, hope there is more content coming soon!Congratulations on your first sale! KEEP STRIVING!
Thanks for providing great insight into the business of blogging. Your journey from scratch to the top really inspired me. I just joined wealthy affiliate too and I will be working on my blog soon. But am having a hard time getting a suitable niche, can you give me some useful tips about that?
Hi Simon, I started my own blog/website a few months ago and I agree with you that it takes serious effort if you want to make a business out of it.
It’s good to hear a truthful voice of experience such as yours with the reality about doing this sort of work. I am also an advocate of Wealthy Affiliate and highly recommend their training and tools, so for anyone reading this comment and serious about creating an amazing blog/website, I can not rate it highly enough.
Keep up the great work Simon, all the best!
There’s a world of difference between blogging as a hobby and running a profitable online blog and it sounds like you’re taking enormous strides in the right direction. Stick with it and you’ll get there!
Thanks for sharing your experience of Wealthy Affiliate with us too. I really like that they offer a free starter membership so you can test out the training and community before paying a dime.