We can probably all imagine ourselves being popular bloggers making a ton of money. And it’s true, we’ve heard those stories of how some people make millions, but how exactly do they do it as bloggers? What are their strategies? How do they grow so big while so many other blogs fizzle out? All of these questions can be summed up into one single question – “how to become a blogger and make money?”
And although I usually say that money should not be the main motivation to start a blog, in this case, I want to talk specifically about how blogging CAN make money. I mean, we all want to get paid for what we are passionate about, right?
How can a blog make you money?
First of all, one very important thing to understand about blogs that make a lot of money is that they have been around for a long time. Usually, it can take 5, 10 or even 15 years for them to be noticed. However, that still doesn’t answer the question of why they make the money that they make? Certainly, there are thousands of other “veteran” blogs out there that aren’t really popular and probably don’t have a lot of cash pouring in.
Let’s have a deeper dive into it.
Strategy
If you’re wondering how to become a blogger and make money, the very first thing that you should keep in mind is strategy. Yes, the strategy.
In some fields of life, short-term tactics are crucial. But in blogging, it’s the strategy that will get you ahead of everyone else. A long-term strategy is key.
I’m going to touch on the things that belong to the strategy down below, but I wanted to single out this part specifically because many people seem to have difficulties grasping the concept of S-T-R-A-T-E-G-Y.
Whether it’s war, business or blogging, a solid strategy must be involved. I, unfortunately, when starting my blog, did not know this and nobody was there to tell me about it either. So in a way, knowing that you must have a solid strategy already puts you one step ahead of me and thousands of other bloggers.
Recommended: How to Make Money With a Blog for Beginners in 2023
Platform
The blogging platform. There are many great existing blogging platforms already out there, like Medium, Blogger or even WordPress.com (notice the “com”).
What these platforms will give you is a place to write and publish your texts. Some of these platforms have free and paid plans. That seems like the thing we are looking for, right? Yes, but not really.
We want a fully personal and customizable website. Medium is owned by someone else. You can use it to publish your content, but it’s not your website. It doesn’t belong to you. It’s kind of like Facebook. You use it, but you don’t own it.
Blogger is a free platform, just like WordPress.org (notice the “org” – different from WordPress.com).
Blogger will give you space on its platform, like Medium does, except you also get to have a blog with its own special look. But the problem is that you STILL don’t fully own that blog. And this, my friend, means limitations to how you can monetize your content.
WordPress.com and WordPress.org is where it gets really confusing to some. In a way, WordPress.com is similar to Blogger. I won’t get here into the details, but the main point is that you need WordPress.org (let’s refer to it from now on just as WordPress) in order to have the freedom that we need to make money as bloggers.
WordPress is a completely free content management system (CMS). If you choose this platform, you will have a 100% personal website. It’s like having your own house, but on the internet. Do with it whatever you want. This opens up all kinds of monetization options, which is exactly what we want.
How can a blog make you money? Through full ownership of the website!
The only thing that you need to set up a WordPress blog is a hosting provider and a domain name. I suggest you use Bluehost, since that is what I use. It’s affordable and it offers a domain name for free.
If you really want to learn more about the differences between Blogger, WordPress.org and WordPress.com, I suggest you check out bloggingwizard.
Regarding WordPress.org, Bloggingwizard puts it best: As it’s part of the Open Source project, you’re free to use the software for anything without paying anyone a license fee.
P.S. If you want to play around with WordPress for free locally on your computer before getting a paid plan, I have created a full guide on how to do it here.
The niche
Want to know how to become a blogger and make money? Make sure you choose the right niche.
Picking the right niche is like picking the right path in education. If picked wrong, you’ll hate your time at work in the future. And in the case of blogging, you’ll not be able to do it for long, which means no growth and definitely no money. Remember, blogging is a long-term thing, which is why picking the right niche is crucial.
I often talk about picking the right niche topic, but in a nutshell, the goal is to go with something that you are passionate about. It can be something you’ve been practicing for a long time, like some sport, something that you know much about, like medicine, or something that you just deeply care about, like saving animals.
And even though I always emphasize the idea that you should never go for a niche just because it’s easier, less competitive, or has more “money-making” potential, there are a few things to think about.
In our case, we ARE interested in making money in the future, so to make your decision, you can study the available monetization methods for that niche in advance.
For example, blogs about gadgets can review mobile phones and computers. Travel blogs review hotels and travel gear. Some marketing blogs specialize in affiliate marketing (more on that later on). And other blogs create online courses to teach people things like fishing, knitting, programming, blogging, growing plants, languages, etc. You name it.
I highly suggest you look at this blog post, where I go deep into how to choose your niche the right way.
Selling products
In the 21st century, if you are really keen on how to become a blogger and make money, I suggest you focus only on three things:
- Physical products
- Online products
- Affiliate marketing
Things like advertisements, in my opinion, should be left out. There’s too much of that already, people hate ads, and, unless your blog attracts millions of monthly visitors, there’s really not that much money to be made through ads.
On the other hand, picking a niche around some products that you want to sell later on down the road is quite a good approach.
Click To TweetNo niche is too small if it’s yours.
– Seth Godin
For example, you are into pets. If so, what will your blog sell pet-related? If you are into electronics, you can, of course, review products, but what if you want to sell something of your own later on? What would it be? Maybe screen wipes? What about phone cases? Just something to think about.
Once you have an idea of a product in mind, you could start blogging about it. This will attract the exact type of audience that you need.
Online courses
Another way how can a blog make you money is through online courses. It’s very similar to physical products. Think of something that you are very passionate about, know a lot about and/or have experience with that you can teach others in the form of an online course.
Online courses, masterminds groups and one-on-one coaching became popular in 2020 because of the pandemic. People were sitting at home a lot and self-educating, and it seems that the trend has not ended since.
So if you have some special hobby that you can teach others over the internet, that can become the topic of your blog.
Affiliate marketing
Last but not least way on how to become a blogger and make money is affiliate marketing. A lot has been said already about affiliate marketing by me here and here. But in a nutshell, affiliate marketing is when you promote other people’s physical or digital (online) products and earn a commission for doing that.
So you don’t actually need to create something of your own, but you can think of a niche in which affiliate marketing would work best for you.
For example, if you are in the electronics niche, there are plenty of physical and expensive products that you could review and become an affiliate for. You can even become an affiliate for a whole electronics store and earn a commission for every single product sold there.
If you are in the travel niche, you can become an affiliate for a website that helps people find cheap flights.
If you are in the gaming niche, you can be an affiliate for a game store, for gaming chairs, for gaming joysticks, etc.
With affiliate marketing, there really are no limitations on how can a blog make you money. Your limitation is your imagination. But the goal is to think of these things BEFORE you make the final decision on which niche you will write about.
Forget everything else
As already mentioned, I would totally forget about placing advertisements on your blog and/or having sponsored blog posts. People have seen enough of that, they know, or at least intuitively understand, what the catch is and are quite exhausted by it. Besides, those are the least effective ways for bloggers to make money.
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This was it for this blog post. I genuinely hope you now understand how to become a blogger and money, at least in theory. If you have any questions or comments for me, feel free to leave them in the comment section below. I’ll be sure to answer them there. Or send me an email, I am more than happy to help that way as well.
Thank you for stopping by and good luck!
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