Many people have heard that bloggers make five- to six figures each year. To make money with your blog, you don’t require any coding skills or startup capital. Blogs are a great option for passive or extra income streams. They have a low entry barrier, which makes them a very popular choice. You might be inspired to make it a full-time business after your success.

Blogging is worth it

There are many reasons to blog if you aren’t certain if it is the right path for you.

Bloggers are not just about displaying your talents. With minimal investment, you can make your blog a fully-fledged business. Making money blogging is much easier than starting a brick-and-mortar business. A Statistical report shows that 80% of internet users read blogs. This is a little more than 4.54 billion people around the world, which means there are plenty of opportunities to make money and reach new audiences.

If done correctly, blogging can also be very lucrative. According to Glassdoor, an average blogger earns $8,000 per month. Highly successful bloggers can easily reach six- to seven figures per year. This is why blogging can be a great way to achieve financial security. Most bloggers today cite their financial goals as their main reason for blogging.

Blogging is not only a creative outlet but also offers the chance to offer value to your readers. This is a great opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in your subject matter, building trust and authority with your target audience. An authoritative blog can be a great way to build relationships with customers and establish customer trust.

Blogging is an excellent way to expand your professional network. You’ll find other professionals in your niche as you build your credibility and expand your exposure. These professional relationships can help you build your business and expand your reach beyond your target audience.

How to Start a Successful Blog

It’s easier than ever to start a blog. Three things are necessary to get started with a blog:

• A web host
• Domain name
• A Content Management System (CMS).

These don’t need to be purchased separately, which is good news. Many web hosts will register your domain and host it for you (most of them are free with premium plans). They can also integrate with WordPress, our favorite CMS.

Time is the other major investment. Your blog can take from a few days up to several weeks to set up. When you are ready to scale your blog, you can write the content yourself.

You should consider the fact that most bloggers post at minimum twice per week. This figure may be a good starting point for your blog. The rule of thumb is that the more often you post, you will drive more traffic to your site and convert more people to your site.

These are the steps that will make you a successful blogger:

1.  Choose your niche
2.  Choose a good web host
3.  Buy your domain name
4.  Install WordPress
5.  Create your WordPress blog
6.  Create your first blog posts
7. Make Money

7 Steps to Make Money Blogging

This section will walk you through the steps to make money blogging. Although we have our preferred web hosting (and CMS), the process is the same regardless.

1. Choose Your Niche

Spend some time brainstorming topic ideas for your blog. Your blog’s success may depend on the topics you choose to focus your blog content on.

You will likely be creating content weekly, or even daily. Therefore, you need to ensure it’s something you are interested in. Expertise in the area is a plus, as you will be able to provide value to your audience. You should brainstorm at least ten topics that are related to your expertise and interests.

These are some of the most profitable niche ideas that can help you get started:

• Personal Finance
• Food
• Online business opportunities
• Fitness and health
• Lifestyle
• Marketing and business
• Fashion
• Gaming and technology
• Travel
• Parenting

These topics can be very broad so it’s important to narrow your focus. You’ll be competing for eyes with nearly 4.4 million blogs being published every day. Targeting a specific audience is easier when you choose a sub-niche. A sub-niche is also more competitive and offers higher profitability.

Let’s say you choose Lifestyle to be your niche. Potential sub-niches may include:

• DIY
• Parenting
• Home hacks
• Cleaning
• Survival
• Organization
• Beauty
• Gardening
• Home Decor

The next step is to do some research and determine if there’s enough interest in your topic. Google Trends is a great tool to gauge interest in your topic. You will receive two important data points from this tool:

• What number of people are searching for your niche?
• How is the interest in your niche increasing or decreasing?

Let’s say you have chosen the lifestyle niche. Now, you want to find a sub-niche. Your sub-niche is gardening. You can simply enter your topic in Google Trends (it is free) and see how the topic has been doing over time. You can also choose a period (I used the past five years as an example) or a location.

Google Trends allows you to compare your interests over time on different topics.

This example shows that home decor is more popular than gardening and has a higher level of interest over time.

Google Trends also allows you to see (and even compare):

• Increased search frequency
• Most popular search queries
• Breakdown by sub-region/city

This data should give you a clear picture of how much engagement you can expect in your chosen topic or niche.

2. We recommend hosting.

It’s now time to select a web host. Hostinger has been our top choice since it serves a wide market and can easily meet your needs. Hostinger offers WordPress hosting starting at $1.99 per month (with a 4-year contract).

The Single WordPress Plan will get you started. You can upgrade at any time. This plan will allow you to host up to 10,000 visitors per month, which is enough for a brand-new website.

Hostinger offers a 30-day money-back guarantee if you are unhappy with your host.

We have reviewed a lot of hosting providers, and we’ve narrowed down the list to eight top-rated services. You can find our post about the top web hosting services right here.

Create Your Hostinger account

Go to the Hostinger Website and select your plan. We will choose the Single Shared Hosting Plan. You have the choice of how you want to be billed. There are four options: monthly, annual, bi-annually and quadrennially. To maximize your savings, you may want to subscribe to an annual, biannual, or quadrennial plan.

Next, enter your email address, and sign in with Facebook or GitHub, or Gmail.

To create your account, select your payment method, and click Submit Secure Payment.

Setting Up Your Hostinger Account

After you have successfully paid your money, it is time to set up your hosting plan. Shared Hosting is the best option for you if you are just starting. This is the most affordable option, and it’s well-suited for new blogs without much traffic.

Hostinger offers three plans for shared hosting:

• One shared hosting
• Premium shared hosting
• Business shared hosting

The Single Shared Hosting plan is the best option. Hostinger’s hosting plans include Single Shared Hosting. This is a great advantage. Hostinger takes care of the technical aspects of your site, so you can focus on your core business, blogging.

The Single Shared Hosting plan includes 10,000 monthly visits, 100GB bandwidth, 10GB SSD storage, a complimentary SSL certificate, and weekly backups.

Click on the Plan you like and then click Setup.

Complete all fields and click on the Setup button. Your account will be activated immediately by the host.

3. Buy Your Domain Name

We recommend the cheapest Hostinger plan but it does have one drawback. The entry-level plan does not include domain hosting for one year, unlike the more expensive plans. Hostinger still offers affordable options starting at 99 cents per annum

Hostinger offers a domain name-checking service to ensure that your desired domain is available.

Navigate to Domains from your Hosting account’s homepage and click Setup next to the domain you wish.

To complete registration, enter the information required and click Setup at the bottom of the page.

4. Install WordPress

To power your blog, we highly recommend WordPress. WordPress is a content management system (CMS), that offers the most advanced SEO extensions and plugins. It is easy to use, cost-effective, and extremely secure.

Log into your CPanel to install WordPress. Click Hosting. Next, click Manage your domain.

Click on the Website to choose Auto Installer

Choose WordPress and fill out the details

To finish the installation, click on Install. Installing WordPress will take only a few moments and you’ll be one step closer to making money blogging.

5. Get your WordPress blog up

Log in to WordPress You can use the same credentials that you used to install WordPress. It’s a good idea to check the Remember Me box so that you don’t have your credentials to log in every time. This should only be done on your personal computer and not on a shared computer.

Next, click on My Site > Manage > Settings. Click Site Title. To name your blog, enter your site name.

Also, you will need to select a theme for the blog. Navigate to the Administration Screen > Appearance> > Themes.

Three themes come pre-installed, but you have the option to select from thousands of themes available on the WordPress Marketplace.

6. Create Your First Blog Posts

At least five anchor posts are required. You should write high-quality posts that are informative, interesting, and relevant.

Click My Site > Posts > Create Your First Post

7. Make Money Now

There are many ways you can make money from your blog. We’ll only pick the easiest and most effective to help you get started. These are some of the options:

• Displaying ads
• Selling Courses
• Affiliate Marketing

Advertisements on Your Blog

Advertisers are not your responsibility. You can also avoid worrying about collecting money from ads. Google Adsense handles all of this for you, and you receive a check at each month’s end. Google Adsense places ads on your blog and pays visitors who click on them. The ads can be textual, video, or image.

These ads can be targeted at your audience. This increases your chances of making money from this option.

Adsense also reviews applications within eight hours. This means that you will know if you are eligible in a very short time. To be eligible, you must sign up. Adsense will review your application.

After you have set up your Adsense account successfully, we recommend the Google Adsense plugin for WordPress. This plugin automates your ad display. Just enter your Adsense ID into the plugin settings and Google will automatically publish ads to your website. Google will place ads in strategic locations on your website so that they are visible at the best times.

Sell Courses through Your Blog

It makes sense to make money if you are an expert in your field. A popular way to make money blogging is to create and sell courses.

Many Learning Management Systems (LMS), and plugins integrate with WordPress to simplify this process. These plugins make it easy to create courses, sell them, manage students, and collect payments.

LearnPress can be used in this instance. It is free and very popular. You can create quiz-based, video, or text courses with it. PayPal already integrates the plugin, but you can also choose to add on payment gateways such as Stripe or 2Checkout.

If you’re ready to scale up, this plan also offers a premium-paid option.

Affiliate Marketing on Your Website

Affiliate marketing is an option that can make you money blogging. It’s worth investigating. This involves promoting the products and services of other people on your blog. Each sale you make from visitors earns you a commission.

Affiliate marketing is low-risk and a passive income stream. The Amazon affiliate program is a popular choice for bloggers. Clickbank, Solvid Affiliate, eBay Partners, and eBay Partners are all popular affiliate programs.

No matter what affiliate program you choose to join, ensure that the products and services you promote are relevant to your blog. You can also benefit from having used the products and services. These will allow you to talk about the products and services with the knowledge and build trust among your audience.

Pretty Links, a popular WordPress plugin for the affiliate market, is extremely popular. The plugin is simple to use and works with WP themes. It also includes performance analytics that will allow you to track your success. You can also add pre-selected affiliate links automatically to selected keywords using the plugin’s auto-linking feature.

Additional affiliate marketing plugins for WordPress include EasyAffiliate, MonsterInsights, AdSanity, and Thirsty Affiliates. You can take your time and browse through the available options before you choose the right one.

There are other ways to make money blogging

You can also make money blogging by doing the following:

• Sell your products and services
• Subscriptions and memberships
• Guest posts paid
• Consulting services
• Create sponsored posts
• Host webinars
• Coaching services available
• Sell and write ebooks
• Subscribe to content

Next steps

Once you’re up and running, it doesn’t end there. You will not see any money immediately. But, each effort you put into your blog is worth it.

Longer blog posts are more appealing to search engines and people. Experts agree that a minimum of 2,000 words per blog post is ideal. Your posts should be more detailed than those of your competitors. Find blogs that are in the same niches as yours to find ways to improve them. This could mean providing more information, citing authoritative sources, or venturing into niches with very little competition.

You cannot rely solely on organic traffic to make money blogging. It is important to promote your blog aggressively. Social media is an excellent place to promote your blog, and content, and connect with your target audience. You can share your content across different platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. You can track which platform is driving the most traffic to your website and then spend your energy there.

For more great information, see our post on improving blog conversion rates.

Guest posting on blogs within your niche is a great way for you to build an audience and get your name out there. It’s a great way to network with other bloggers and grow your network.

Add email sign-up forms to your WordPress pages if you haven’t done so yet. This is another great way to interact with your audience. Signing up for your opt-in forms already shows a high level of interest in the products or services you offer. If you sell products or services, it is easier to convert these people into customers. You can optimize your blog with multiple plugins. WP Turbo speeds up your site, and Easy Social Sharing Buttons allow you to easily add social media buttons on your blog pages.