Like many other bloggers or soon-to-be bloggers, the idea of how to make money with blogs does cross your mind more often than not. Going by the latest statistics, 77% of internet users read blogs, making money from a blog is what many people look forward to.
However, without following the right strategy, achieving this goal becomes futile. By following the steps below, you’ll learn the best way to make money with a blog in 2022.
In Summary:
- Choose a topic
- Know your passion
- Understand your target audience
- Come up with a good domain name
- Choose a good hosting platform
- Install WordPress
- Choose a suitable WordPress theme
- Install WordPress plugins
- Install Google Analytics
- Create an email list
- Have a blogging rhythm
- Build and engage an audience
- Monetizing the blog
Step 1: Choose a topic
The most important thing is to understand a topic fully when starting a blog. You should know your target audience and have good knowledge about the subject. Not having a clear direction or topic may lead you to waste so much time and effort.
For instance, if you are into cars, why would you keep researching ‘how to make money with a fashion blog? The best approach is identifying a good topic related to vehicles. You can never run short of topics to write.
Step 2: Know your passion
After a little research on how to make money with a blog for beginners, many people will start blogging about a particular topic. Some will do so after discovering that it enjoys good traffic or is currently trending.
Ask them if they have a passion for the subject, and a good number will tell you No. It’s all about making money. The truth is that you are more likely to succeed if you focus on a passion, hobby, or something that you have a proper understanding of. It’s essential to look at the following things:
- Talent or special skill
- Experience and knowledge
- Hobby and passion
Step 3: Understand your target audience
Searches surrounding how much money you can make with a blog are quite popular. This clearly shows people’s interest in making money from blogs. Sadly, many prospective bloggers don’t know their audience. They will write about a topic, but it will get little traffic.
For instance, People do love reading about dogs. Some like titles about health and fitness; others appreciate dog training and care. Blogging about how funny or cute your dog is will attract a smaller audience than a topic about health, fitness, and maintenance.
Proper research is vital before starting. Some of the popular categories include:
- Fitness
- Personal finance
- Online business
- Investing
- Freelancing
- Productivity
- Careers
- Real estate
- Test prep
NB: Google’s Keyword tool shows the most popular categories enjoying high traffic.
Step 4: Come up with a good domain name
Choosing a good domain name for your blog sites is important. It doesn’t matter whether it’s on how to make money with lifestyle blogs or any other topic. With the internet having been around for decades, it can be a challenge to select a good domain.
Fortunately, following these tips will give you the best URL:
- Keep it short- this makes remembering it easy.
- Go for .com, .net or .org- they are the most credible
- Ensure pronouncing and spelling it is easy
- Avoid hyphens and numbers – it appears clunky
- Use your name – it brings out a personal touch
Step 5: Choose a good hosting platform
While asking can I make money with a blog? Have you thought about the web hosting platform? The right web hosting provider offers the best forum for your blog site. Readers will access the site through the host’s server.
A good service provider has the following characteristics:
- Popular and trustworthy
- Reliable and easily accessible
- Offers a user-friendly service, and the price is reasonable
Step 6: Installing WordPress
A good content management system (CMS) is critical to running the website. You don’t want a boring platform as this is a turnoff to the readers. Also, a good choice is active, powerful, easy to customize, and supports extensions and add-ons. WordPress is a popular choice and manages approximately 33% of the internet.
Step 7: Choose a suitable WordPress theme
WordPress offers many themes. You must pick one that suits your site well. A good one will be lively, easy to change, and matches the topic or audience. Some Webhosting service providers include WordPress in the plan. Due to not requiring a code, installing and using WordPress is easy even for beginners.
Step 8: Install WordPress plugins
WordPress plugins improve the functionality of a website. The software introduces new features without the need to use codes.
You, however, need to be careful not to overdo it as this may have negative effects on the website.
It may cause conflicts, become harder to manage, and undermine security. Having between 5 and 10 plugins is generally acceptable.
With proper WordPress plugins, you’ll move away from asking how much money can you make with a blog to seeing your blog bringing in money. Being open-source, it’s easy to customize to suit your needs.
Step 9: Install Google Analytics
How to make money online with blogs is one thing and making money is another? Without proper knowledge of the most popular topics or keywords, you may keep pushing content but still get no traffic. Tools such as Google Analytics comes with the following benefits:
- Shows the number of visitors to a website
- Displays the demographic info of the readers
- Highlights the most visited blog posts as well as the most recent
Tip: For a beginner, all the above information can be overwhelming. It’s important to focus on one issue at a time and keep on improving.
Step 10: Create an email list
To know how to make money with blogs, it’s essential to have an email list. It’s viewed as one of the best marketing tools and easy to use. Through it, you’ll be able to keep in touch with your readers.
A good strategy is to pitch the list at the bottom or end of a blog article. It may be a podcast blogging post.
It would help build the subscriber list from the onset and slowly grow it over time. Once you achieve a good audience, let’s say 1,000, you can start sending emails to the subscribers. With at least 10,000subscribers, you should start seeing good returns.
Step 11: Have a blogging rhythm
Blogging isn’t a sprint but rather a marathon. The goal is to remain consistent as you gradually grow over time. The following are tips to staying consistent and maintaining good frequency:
- Never fail to post an article in a week
- Target 2-3 articles as a beginner
- 2,000 words is the minimum word count
Large blogging sites will rely on several authors to deliver 7 posts per week. It’s also not strange for huge sites like Huff post to push 25-50 posts weekly.
As a beginner, you’ll start slow and gradually increase cadence over time.
Step 12: Build and engage an audience
According to blogging circles, 1,000 true fans can sustain a blogger hence can quit their day job. Achieving this feat does take time, effort, research, and, most importantly, patience. It’s important to keep the readers engaged by doing the following:
- Post at least once weekly. The more times, the better
- Deliver unique and high-quality content
- Have a voice that relates to the audience
- Allow readers to post comments and ask questions
- Link to other online forums such as Facebook groups,
- Twitter, and subreddit and remain active
Step 13: Monetizing the blog
The final step is to monetize the blog. There are three steps to doing this.
1) Info products, webinars, online courses, e-books
This service aims at selling info products. People will visit the blogsites, and it’s up to you to encourage them to subscribe to an email list.
After that, using a launch funnel, you’ll try to convince them to purchase a product. The new subscriber conversion rate is usually between 0.5% and 1%. Put, the higher the volume/number of subscribers, the more money.
2) Through Affiliate Programs
Your blog will offer recommendations to products from third parties. By clicking on a featured link and making a purchase, you’ll be able to make a commission from the successful sale. The click rate from affiliate programs is usually low.
3) Freelancing and consulting
This is the method with the most promising returns. Topics such as how to make money with a blog for beginners attract lots of traffic.
Nice blogs about the topic will attract readers and improve visibility on search engines. Clients will pay to feature as guests, have links, and lead generation.
Other methods of monetization include:
- Books – good marketing tool
- Events – improve market awareness
- Banner ads such as Google Ads/Ad sense
- Speaking – great for brand building
Conclusion
Blogging has become more than just a hobby. Many people are making a living from it. To take advantage of this economic opportunity, you must follow the above tips, highlighting the best way to make money with a blog. Like any other business, you should understand that it takes time and patience to start seeing the ‘fruits’ of your effort.
