How to Start a Blog and Make Money in 6 Easy Steps

Before we get started

1. There are many different ways to start a blog and make money from it. I’m sharing ALL the steps & tips that worked for me and it’s up to you to choose which ones would work best for you
2. You need to be willing to learn and put in the work. You get as much return as much as the work you put into it. My point here is, don’t give up if it doesn’t work out immediately. Think of your blog as a fun experiment and you’re figuring out what works and what doesn’t work.
3. Lastly, my request to you is to let go of any negative mindset or excuses that you may have that could get in the way of you going for what you really want like “I might fail,” “I don’t have enough time” or “it has to be perfect.” You’re more than welcome to keep your excuses but if you want a successful blog, you will constantly be confronted by these excuses so it’s best to make it a habit to give up them up as early as now.
4. What I’m sharing with you is a short version of my free PDF, the Bold Blogger Launch Checklist where you’ll find a no-fuss checklist of everything you need to do to launch your blog in doable steps.

Got it? Okay, now let’s get started!

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*I may collect a share of sales from links on this page. I’m very picky about the products & resources I promote. And I would only recommend the ones that are highly-rated or ones that I have had the best experience with. If you make a purchase through any of my links, I want to thank you for supporting my blog! Prices are as accurate as of the date indicated in this post.

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#1 Plan out your blog with a strategy and brand in mind

Coming up with a strategy for your blog is THE first thing you should do before setting up your website. This includes choosing a niche, coming up with your blog name and finding what makes your blog unique from others.

Choose a niche to blog about then niche down

In order to start a blog that makes money, you need to build your expertise & trust with your readers. The fastest & easiest way to do that is to choose one niche then choose a sub-niche within that niche. And if you can, choose another sub-niche within that sub-niche.

Example 1: If a blogger chose to blog about food, they can choose to niche down into gluten-free food where they share gluten-free recipes & diet tips

Example 2: If a blogger chose travel as their niche. Their sub-niche can be female travel. And if they wanted to niche down more, they can niche down to solo female travel.

How to choose a niche

Here are a few questions you can ask yourself to choose a niche:

• What am I passionate about?
• How do I like to spend my free time?
• What can I share about my life experiences that others can learn from?
• What kind of advice do people go to me for?

Come up with a blog name

There are plenty of different ways to name your blog. I highly recommend choosing a name that best describes what you blog about and keeping it short. Write down keywords used to describe your niche and yourself and play around with them. Here a few great examples:

• Gluten-Free Foodie –  a gluten-free recipes & diet tips blog
• The Financial Diet – a personal finance blog
• Traveling Petite Girl –  a female travel blog

How to check if your blog name is available

Before you set your heart on THE name, check if your name is available as a .com domain on Namecheckr.com. While you’re there, don’t forget to check that it’s also available on social media channels that you would like to create your account with (most definitely with Pinterest). It’s good branding and common sense to make sure that your name is the same across all your channels.

Create your blogger brand

The next step is to create your brand!  I’m not talking about your logo, fonts, business cards and etc. I’m talking about your blog’s personality, uniqueness and style. A great place to start to create your blogger brand is to ask yourself these questions:

• What are my core values & beliefs?
• What personality traits of myself so I want to be portrayed in my blog?
• What life experiences in my niche makes it unique from others?

Along with your core values, personality traits and life experiences, your style will also make your blog unique.

Example: Blog 1 and Blog 2 and both solo female travel blogs. Blog 1 has a bubbly personality and posts long-form articles about traveling solo & making money at the same time. Blog 2 has a grounded personality and posts video tips about traveling solo as a vacation from their full-time job. Blog 1 will attract readers who want to travel & work at the same time. Blog 2 will attract readers who have full-time jobs and want to make the most out of their vacations.

“My niche is [your niche] and it’s one of the most saturated ones out there. How am I able to stand out from other [your niche] blogs?”

First of all, if your niche is popular, that’s great news. It means people are always searching for tips & advice on your topic. And that means your niche is profitable.

Second, not one blog will appeal to everyone in that niche. Your blog will appeal to a certain audience based on your personality, how you write and your style. Just like how other blogs will appeal to another audience based on their personality, how they write and their style.

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#2 Create a WordPress website with a host in 15 minutes

The next step is to create your blog with a host! This is the part where you invest money in your blog. And if this is where you get stopped, I encourage you to read on. Creating a WordPress with a host is going to get you much farther than any free website builder, like Blogger, Wix, Squarespace & etc., ever will. There are many reasons for this but here are a few:

• It’s professional  & builds credibility with your readers –  Not only do your blog posts position yourself as a trusted & go-to resource with your readers, but a .com address also does. It shows your readers (and future collaborators) how serious you are with your blog. If you look at the difference between petitetraveler.com vs petitetraveler.blogspot.com. Who are you likely to trust as a resource? Someone who invested in themself or someone who didn’t?
• No limitations in design – You get to have full control of the user experience of your website without the branding and ads of a free website builder getting in the way.
• Higher traffic – Self-hosted WordPress blogs rank MUCH higher in Google thereby increasing your traffic. You also get to use SEO plugins to boost traffic while free website builders have little SEO functionality.
• A free website won’t cost you money but a self-hosted website will definitely make you money – Along with the professionalism and credibility of a .com address, most affiliate & ad programs require a self-hosted website before you can use their affiliate links or post their ads.

How much it costs to start a blog

If you’re wondering how much it costs to create a self-hosted WordPress, it will cost you $3.95/month with a website hosting service such as Bluehost. There are many website hosting services to choose from but I highly recommend Bluehost: their Basic plan is affordable & perfect for bloggers and comes with a free domain for 1 year (which is usually an additional cost), they have a 1-click WordPress installation if you’re a beginner, and 24/7 support if you have questions or need handholding to start your website. I’ve personally had many handholding experiences with their 24/7 support because I was such a newbie! Start your self-hosted WordPress with Bluehost here.

How to design a beautiful blog with no experience

If you have no experience with web design (like me), you need not worry! You can buy templates specifically made for WordPress and install it in your own WordPress. If you want to know where to find WordPress templates, Themeforest.net is the perfect place. They have templates specifically made for blogs just like the one I use on this blog. If you’d like to know the exact template I use for this blog, it’s called CheerUp and you can see it here.

Another great resource to find WordPress themes is Creativemarket.com. I, personally, haven’t purchased a WordPress theme from them but I’ve purchased other resources I needed for blogging like fonts, stock photos, and graphics. That said, I think Themeforest has the upper hand with WordPress themes because you’re able to view & scroll through their themes live on your device instead of looking at screenshots like you would on Creativemarket.

Before you purchase a theme, do make sure it checks all these boxes:

• Made for WordPress – Of course
• Simple & clean design – This is so that it’s easy for your readers to read and navigate your website
• Optimized for fast loading speeds – Nothing is more annoying to a reader than a slow website. If your website doesn’t load fast, your reader is likely to exit out and check another blog
• Responsive layout – Meaning the layout changes depending on the device of your reader (computer, tablet, mobile phone) for the best viewing experience
• Customizable – So that you’re able to customize your theme, fonts, colors according to your branding

If you already had an available name for your blog and theme to use, you can essentially create your blog in 15 minutes from creating an account with a website hosting service, registering your domain, installing WordPress and installing your theme. (It could be slower with other website hosting websites but the 1-click WordPress installation with Bluehost makes it quicker.) Honestly, the hardest part of creating a self-hosted WordPress is choosing a name and a theme. That’s the part that takes the longest. Everything else is cake.

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#3 Write & publish your content

Once you’ve set up your self-hosted WordPress and installed your awesome theme, the next step is to write and publish your first blog post! But before you write your first post, you should do this first–

Figure out who your audience is and what their pain points are

Based on your niche and your brand, who are your ideal readers? Let me first say that you’re not writing for everyone and you’re not trying to appeal to every kind of gender, age group, industry and interest out there. Just like choosing a niche and creating a brand, you want to specify who your audience is so that you can create content especially for them, better positioning your blog as a go-to resource.

How to figure out who your ideal readers are

A great starting point to figure out who your ideal readers are is to create a profile based on their demographics and interests such as:

• Age
• Gender
• Marital status
• Income – dependent if your niche is based on how your readers spend their money like personal finance or budgeting
• Hobbies & interests
• Magazines, blogs, TV shows, movies
• Where they like to shop

How to find their pain points

Once you’ve created your ideal reader profile, the next step is to put yourself in their shoes to figure out their pain points. What problems would your readers come across? What concerns would they have?

Example: If a blogger had a solo female travel blog, their readers would comprise mostly of women who like to travel solo. What issues would they come across as a solo female traveler? They would have concerns about safety and great places that are “female-friendly”. Based on those pain points, the blogger can already create content that would provide solutions like “The Best Destinations for Solo Female Travelers” or “10 Safety Things Every Female Traveler Should Do Before Traveling Solo.”

Research the right keywords for your blog post

As you write your blog post, you’ll want to make sure to use the right keywords to make your blog post SEO-friendly. SEO means Search Engine Optimization and it’s the process of making your blog posts easy to find via search engines. This is why I want you to create content based on your audience’s pain points. Everyone is always searching for tips & solutions on search engines.

Think of the last thing you typed on Google, it was probably to look for an answer right? You ended up clicking on one of the first few websites for your answer. Those exact words you typed into Google are keywords that the website used to make sure they ranked high enough for you to click on them.

So whenever you write your blog posts, the goal is to make sure to rank high on search engines and the best way to do that is by using the right keywords.

To choose the right keywords, think of what a person would type in Google to find your blog post. Use these keywords in your blog post title and throughout your blog post. It tells search engines you know a lot about said keywords, so it will make your blog rank higher than others.

If a person were to write a travel guide of Tokyo, here are good examples of blog post titles using keywords (keywords are bolded):

• 5 Top Things to Do in Tokyo
• Fun Things to Do in Tokyo in 7 Days
• What to Do in Tokyo: A Perfect 7 Days

Bad examples of blog titles that don’t use keywords:

• Adventures in Tokyo
• Tokyo Travel Diary
• My Amazing Trip to the Land of the Rising Sun –  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a title like this but definitely stay away from flowery or slang language

Design blog graphics

In addition to using keywords throughout your post,  I highly recommend you design a 600X900 graphic with your title in large text. Then upload this image on either the beginning or end of your blog post.

Make sure to include a keyword-rich description of your image/blog post in the Alt-Text of your images. The goal of this step is to visualize the title of your blog post so that it can be found via visual search engines. Which brings us to Step 4–

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#4 Drive traffic to your blog with Pinterest

I’m going to cut straight to the point: Pinterest is a search engine. Sure, you can count it as a social media platform but it’s mostly a search engine that shows images (or what we call pins on Pinterest) as results. Pinterest thrives off users sharing and resharing pins. So what makes Pinterest work so well in driving traffic to your blog is that each pin is directly linked to a blog post.

So if you have a blog post such as “How to Pack Light for a 1 Month Trip” you would create a pin like this and upload it to Pinterest with a keyword-rich description and link to your blog post:

Not to forget, you’ll also want to include a keyword-rich description to the Alt-text of your blog graphic on WordPress. This is for people who pin directly from your website with the Pinterest Save Button. If you don’t have it yet, I recommend downloading this extension to save you time on saving your pins from your blog rather than uploading each pin and writing a description for each pin on the Pinterest website. TIP: Save any vertical images from your post to Pinterest as well, Pinterest LOVES vertical images.

By uploading your blog graphic as a pin on Pinterest and writing a keyword-rich description on the Alt-text in WordPress, you increase your chances of bringing traffic to your blog aside from search engines and your social media channels. There’s much more than goes into using Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog which I’ll make a specific post for in the future but for more detail, I discuss it further on Day 7: How to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Posts (for free) in my 10-Day Successful Blog Guide.

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#5 Grow your following with an email list

Now it’s time to grow a following with the traffic coming into your blog posts! You can insert a call-to-action for your readers to follow you on social media BUT I don’t recommend it. The reason for this is because there’s so much happening on social media that it’s easy for users to get distracted.

There’s also an ever-changing algorithm that makes it harder to reach your followers that you always have to find ways around. So when it’s time to share a big update or a new blog post, your followers are less likely to see it (especially if they’re following thousands of accounts).

Email List subscribers vs Social media following

So the best platform to grow your following is an email list! With an email list, it’s a much more natural and personal way to connect with your followers because not only did they make the choice for your emails to show up in their personal inbox, you also don’t have to struggle against an algorithm because email is chronological.

Not only that, you can send an automated and personalized email where you can welcome each subscriber to your community and introduce yourself so that they can get to know you better.

And if you wanted to work with brands in the future, brands know that an email list is much stronger than a social media following because email lists convert to customers much higher than social media followings. It’s really a win-win situation. The only thing that email loses out on is that it’s not sexy like Instagram or Facebook. But guess what, they don’t bring the intimacy and connection the way a personalized email does.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t grow a social media following but I do believe you should prioritize growing your email list above anything else. So to start growing an email list, you need an email service provider that not only collects the emails of your readers, but also provides you a platform to email all your subscribers at once.

Which email service providers to use to grow your following

There are many email service providers out there but my two favorites are ConvertKit and Mailchimp.

Currently, I use ConvertKit and I love how easy their website is to navigate. They keep their user experience simple to cater to bloggers & online entrepreneurs who don’t need the extra marketing capabilities. I also like them because they have a visual workflow so for someone visual like me, it’s much easier to understand how my email list is being organized and delivered emails.

Before Convertkit, I used Mailchimp and the biggest reason for that was because Mailchimp is free for users to use until they reach 2000 subscribers. This was totally aligned with my budget back then so I went with Mailchimp. It takes a little more effort to get used to their layout but once you do, it’s easy to create sign up forms and send emails.

Once I hit the 2000 subscriber mark, I switched over to Convertkit. Convertkit doesn’t have a free package but they do have a free 30-day trial before you commit to paying monthly. How much you pay monthly from Convertkit depends on the amount of subscribers you have.

How to get readers to sign up to your email list

If your sign up forms say something like “Subscribe to my newsletter for more updates!” you won’t get much subscribers. You need to give your subscriber a reason for you to show up in their personal inboxes. So a vague “Sign up to my newsletter!” won’t cut it.

In my experience, one of THE best ways to incentivize readers to subscribe to your email list is by including a download or opt-in incentive in your blog posts that they can get for free once they sign up.

That’s what I did for this blog post here: “How to Create the Orange & Teal Filter Using Adobe Lightroom (It’s So Easy!).” This post was a tutorial on how to edit orange & teal-colored photos, which was a popular look for Instagram at the time. To make their life easier, I created a preset for my readers to download so that they could achieve the same orange & teal look by the click of a button if they used my preset. To this day, I still get subscribers from this blog post even though I wrote it years ago. So think about free downloads or opt-in incentives you can make for your readers to sign up to your email list!

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#6 Make money blogging

You’ve done ALL the steps from 1 to 5 and now you’re ready to make money! Just because you started blogging doesn’t mean you can’t make money yet. You can start doing it NOW. Even if you have little traffic to your blog, why not set your blog up to make money already so that when more traffic comes in, you’re automatically earning from it? That way you don’t miss out on traffic and potential income you could earn simply because you didn’t think your blog wasn’t ready for it yet. Here are three ways your blog can make money now:

Affiliate links

As you write blog posts for your readers, you’re going to recommend your favorite products to them. Instead linking your readers directly to the products’ website, you can use an affiliate link instead. This affiliate link will still direct your readers to products but it’s tagged with your account. So when your readers purchase at the store during their visit, the affiliate program will know you directed them there so they pay you a commission based on the products they bought.

Make sure to include a disclaimer before your affiliate links so that your readers know you might make a commission if they purchase through any of your links. Some affiliate programs are very strict about this so I suggest including your disclaimer at the beginning of your blog (and make sure it’s not something your readers have to search for).

Here are a few examples of blog posts you can write that incorporate affiliate links:

• 10 All-Natural Moisturizers for Dry Skin
• Top 10 Resources for Bloggers
• Best Cameras for Beginner Photographers

Here are popular affiliate programs to sign up with:

• Shareasale – one of the highest paying affiliate programs
• Amazon Associates – great for all niches

Ads

By including ads within your blog posts or within your header, sidebar or footer you can make money based on the number of people who see it or click on it. So the more traffic you get to your blog posts, the more money you can earn. Do understand so that some ad management services have a $100 threshold before they can send any money to you.

Here are popular ad management services to get you started:

• Google Adsense – needs only a self-hosted website to join so you can join once you start your blog
• Mediavine – requires that you need at least 25k sessions/month to your website to join but once you join, you can expect your income to rise

Personally, I don’t like to use ads in my blog. They interfere with the reader experience and I would rather my readers spend a long time on my blog rather than click out of it.

Brands Sponsorships

Even with little traffic and a small following you can still work with brands. I’ve heard of bloggers with 4000 views/month and 2000 social media followers work with big brands like Tuft & Needle. A great advantage to having a smaller following is that your engagement rate is higher than those with larger followings. When you contact brands, let them know the engagement rate of your social media posts along with the open rate & click rate for your email lists. Brands love working with influencers and bloggers with high engagement rates so make sure that is your selling point when you introduce yourself to them.

How to connect with brands as a blogger/influencer

There are actually plenty of influencer marketing platforms that connect brands to bloggers. Here are a few platforms you can check out to get you started:

• Aspire IQ – my favorite so far! There are plenty of great brands to connect with but they do require you to have at least 10k followers to join
• Upfluence
• Social Native

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Conclusion

And that’s it! Let me know if this post was helpful! And drop a comment if you’re ready to start a blog and make money! And if you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments as well and I will get right back to you. I would really love it if you shared this post with a friend if you found it helpful.

Here’s a recap of my beginner’s guide on how to start a blog and make money:

1. Plan out your blog with a strategy and brand in mind
2. Create a self-hosted WordPress  in 15 minutes
3. Write & publish your content
4. Drive traffic to your blog with Pinterest
5. Grow your following with an email list
6. Make money blogging

Now all that’s left to do is take action!

If you’d like a checklist of every step I talked about, you can download the Bold Blogger Launch Checklist for free so that you can launch your blog and already be on your way to living your dream life. I broke down the checklist into steps and let you know how much time is needed for each step. So you can schedule it to your planner and know exactly how much time you need to commit to it. Click the button below to download!