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If you’re interested in blogging, you’ve come to the right place. This article will be your complete guide on how to start a blog and make money as a beginner.
According to this study by WebTribunal, more than one-third of websites on the Internet are blogs. And on average, there are over 6 million blog posts published daily. Clearly, blogging is still a very popular way to create content online.
So, if you’re a good writer and would like to blog, there’s still room for you to get started!
In this article, I’ll cover everything you need to know about blogging as a beginner. Before I begin, feel free to use the table of contents below to help you navigate through this article.
How Does Blogging Work?
Let’s start by going over how blogging and websites work. That way, you have a better understanding of the steps you’ll need to take to start a blog and make money.
How Does a Website Work?
Every blog is on a website, so let’s learn how a website works.
Every website has two parts: a domain and hosting. A domain is your website’s address on the Internet. It’s what you type in your browser’s address bar to get to a specific website. Hosting is a service that gives you a server where information on your website is stored.
What Is a Blog About? (Niche)
Every blog has its own niche. A niche is a part of life that some people are interested in. For example, travel, finance, fitness, and music are niches.
A blog can be about any niche. Bloggers usually pick one niche they are passionate about. They brand their blog around this niche and use that to write topics for their articles.
Here are some examples of blog niches:
- The mom blog is one popular blog niche. Mom blogs are very popular among stay-at-home moms. They usually talk about their experience as mothers and share advice. Mommy on Purpose is one of many mom blogs.
- Recipe blogs like Get on My Plate and Pinch of Yum.
- Fitness blogs like Well+Good.
- Travel blogs like The World Travel Guy.
- Finance blogs like Get Rich Slowly.
These are just some of the many blog niches you can choose from. If you’d like a detailed list of blog niches, check out Ryan Robinson’s niche list.
How Do Bloggers Make Money?
Ways to Make Money Blogging
So what ways do bloggers use to make money? RankIQ did a blogging study in 2021. In that study, they found that the majority of bloggers made money using any of these four strategies:
- Running ads. A blog allows an ad network like Google to show ads based on a visitor’s interests. Every time a visitor clicks or buys through an ad, Google pays you as the blogger.
- Affiliate marketing. An affiliate blog contains special links to products sold by other people or companies. When someone clicks and buys something through an affiliate link, the seller pays the blogger a commission for the sale.
- Selling courses. A blog might sell courses that teach topics in an organized and clearer way. Courses act as information hubs compared to a blog where the same information can be scattered across different articles.
- Sponsored posts. Some bloggers reach out to other companies and brands for sponsorship. Companies can pay bloggers to write articles on their blogs to help promote their brand.
Most of the blogs that are making money discuss topics that are very important to people’s lives. In the same study by RankIQ, blogs that are in the food, finance, lifestyle, and travel niches are the top four types of high-paying blogs.
Blog Income Reports (How Much You Can Make)
And, if you’re wondering exactly how much bloggers make, that’s not an easy question to answer. Some bloggers make more money than others. The best way to get an idea of how much you could earn from a blog is by looking at income proofs from different blogs. Here are five worth checking out:
- Making Sense of Cents – over $159,000 in November 2018
- Create and Go – almost $400,000 in 2022
- Cassie Scroggins – $10,000 in January 2023
- Get on My Plate – almost $25,000 in October 2022
- Ryan Robinson – $35,000 in March 2021
And there are many more blog income reports out there. You might be able to google for some of them. Scott Max also has a list of popular blog income reports.
How to Start a Blog to Make Money (4 Steps)
If you’ve read up to this point, you now understand how a blog works and how these blogs are making money. Now let’s get practical and start your own blog that makes you money.
Here are the steps we will cover in this section:
- Start with a niche.
- Create a brand for your blog.
- Buy a domain and hosting.
- Set up WordPress.
1. Start with a Niche
As I mentioned earlier, every blog centers on a specific niche. So, before you start, you should pick a good niche for your blog.
How to Pick a Niche
When picking a niche, here’s what I recommend: find a niche that interests you and also pays well. Your niche should be a niche that other people are making some money with. It should also be a niche that interests you enough to write about it. You don’t have to be passionate about it, but you should at least be interested.
High-Paying Blog Niches
Earlier in this article, I mentioned this study by RankIQ. This study showed that four types of blogs are making good money: food blogs, finance blogs, lifestyle blogs (which include mom blogs), and travel blogs. Thus, I would recommend picking any of these four niches.
2. Create a Brand for Your Blog
The next step is creating a brand for your blog. This is how your readers will identify you.
Let’s start with the name. Here are three quick tips for picking a good blog name:
- Keep it simple and easy to remember.
- Include your personal name or the name of your niche.
- Make sure the name is available as a domain. (I’ll show you how in the next step.)
Next, pick one or two colors for your brand. They can be your favorite colors or the colors you think best represent your niche. These colors will be used to help you design your website.
You can also design a logo to make your brand really stand out. You can craft a logo yourself using a website like Canva or have a freelancer on Fiverr design one for you.
3. Buy a Domain and Hosting
As I mentioned, the two parts of a website are a domain and hosting. So, in this step, you’ll learn how to buy these two things to get your blog started.
Websites to Get a Domain and Hosting
Many websites offer domains, hosting, and a bundle that includes both. Instead of doing the research yourself, take a look at my top five picks for a domain and hosting below. Note that this table compares the most basic hosting plans available.
| Bluehost | DreamHost | A2 Hosting | AccuWeb | Hostinger |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |  |
| Recommended by WordPress | Recommended by WordPress | Recommended by PCMag | Recommended by PCMag | Recommended by PCMag |
| $2.95/month for 1st year, then $11.99/month | $2.95/month for 1st year, then $6.99/month | $1.99/month for 1st year, then $9.99/month | $4.49/month for 1st year, then $7.49/month | $1.99/month for 1st year, then $6.99/month |
| Free domain for 1st year | Free domain for 1st year | No free domains | No free domain in the basic plan | Free domain for 1st year |
| No backups in the basic plan | Only automatic backups | No backups in the basic plan | Backups included | Only weekly backups |
| 10 GB storage | 50 GB storage | 100 GB storage | 50 GB storage | 100 GB storage |
| Automatic Cloudflare setup | A manual Cloudflare setup required | A manual Cloudflare setup required | No CDN in the basic plan | No CDN in the basic plan |
| Email addresses included | No emails in the basic plan | Email addresses included | Email addresses included | Email addresses included |
| Rated 4.2/5 on Trustpilot | Rated 4.7/5 on Trustpilot | Rated 4.5/5 on Trustpilot | Rated 4.0/5 on Trustpilot | Rated 4.6/5 on Trustpilot |
| Bluehost | DreamHost | A2 Hosting | AccuWeb | Hostinger |
What Do Those Words Mean?
To help you in your decision, here is an explanation of the technical terms in this table:
- Backups of your site come in handy in case your site stops functioning correctly or gets hacked. That way, if you need to start over, all you need to do is import your backed-up site files.
- Storage is how much space you will need to store data on your website. Any images and videos you upload as well as plugins and designs for your website take up storage space.
- A CDN (content delivery network) like Cloudflare allows your website to load faster in other parts of the world that are farther away from your site’s server. This increases the speed of your site for all visitors and might result in more people staying on your site.
- Email addresses are part of your site’s domain. With an email address named after your domain, you can send an email to your future customers. Thus, by looking at your email address, your customers can see that the email came from you as the site owner and not somebody else.
Pick a Domain Name
Once you select a hosting provider and pick your plan, the first thing they will probably ask you is about your domain. Since you need a new domain, select the option to “register a domain.”
This is where you get to pick a domain name. At this point, you should have a name for your blog. If so, check to see if your blog name is available as a domain name. Most websites use “.com” at the end of their domain, so I recommend checking for a “.com” domain.
If there is a name for your blog that you really want to use, but “.com” is not available, then consider good alternatives like “.co” or “.net”. And, if you want people around the world to read your blog, then avoid using country-specific TLDs like “.ca”, “.co.uk”, or “.nz”.
Check Your Add-Ons
Depending on the hosting provider you choose, you might be offered different add-ons. Here are some examples of add-ons they might offer you:
- A backup service like CodeGuard that can back up your website
- Paid email addresses (if your plan doesn’t come with free email)
- A security service like Sitelock to protect your website from cyber threats
- Domain privacy protection which keeps your personal information associated with your website’s domain private and protected from identity theft
If you’re happy with your plan and any add-ons you’ve selected, confirm your purchase. Now, let’s go to the next step so you can start your new blog and make money!
4. Set Up WordPress
To help build your website, your provider might have a built-in website editor or they might offer you something called WordPress.
WordPress is a CMS (content management system) that helps you manage your blog or website. Without WordPress or some kind of CMS, you would be relying a lot on code to make changes to your website. The WordPress I’m talking about is wordpress.org and not wordpress.com (which is another hosting company).
Why Should I Use WordPress?
I believe bloggers like you should be using WordPress and here are 4 good reasons why.
- According to W3Techs, WordPress powers 43% of all websites on the Internet.
- WordPress is open-source, meaning it is developed by ordinary people like you. (In fact, you can help contribute to WordPress too!)
- You can pick from all sorts of themes and plugins to improve your blog’s design and functionality.
- WordPress is the easiest way for a beginner like you to build a professional blog or website. It’s so easy you won’t need much assistance from web developers.
Install WordPress
Most hosting providers make it easy for you to install WordPress, so just follow their steps. If you need assistance, contact your hosting provider. Once you have WordPress installed, you should see a dashboard that looks similar to the one shown below.
This WordPress dashboard can only be accessed by you, the site admin, and anyone else whom you want to set up as a blog contributor or manager. To get to your WordPress dashboard, type in your website followed by “/wp-admin” in your browser’s address bar (example.com/wp-admin). Then enter your username and password to log in.
More Information about WordPress
If you are new to WordPress, you probably would like a tour of WordPress’ dashboard. Since doing a WordPress tour would make this article really long and off-topic, I recommend you watch this WordPress dashboard tutorial video published by the WordPress team.
I also suggest you check out WPBeginner. They have thousands of articles that can help you navigate WordPress, fix common problems, show you the best plugins and themes, and more.
How to Create Awesome Content (6 Steps)
Congratulations, you learned how to start your own blog to make money. You picked your brand, got a domain and hosting, and set up WordPress. All you need now is some awesome content for your visitors to read.
Here are the steps we will cover in this section:
- Think of something to talk about in your niche.
- Do some keyword research.
- Research the topic you chose.
- Write what you learned in your own words.
- Include visuals and links.
- Publish and repeat.
These steps here are repeatable. Every time you write a blog post, you will be following these same six steps over and over. Feel free to bookmark this page and study these steps one by one until you memorize them.
1. Think of Something to Talk About in Your Niche
Before you started your blog, you thought of a niche that you want to focus on. Now, you need to think of things to talk about in your specific niche. For example, if your niche is drumming, you can talk about how to play the drums, how drums work, or what songs you can play with drums.
Here are some tips to help you find a topic in your niche:
- What is one question someone might ask about your niche? Google that question and see if other websites or videos are answering that question. If so, that means it’s a good question to talk about.
- Visit AnswerThePublic and type in your niche to get some topic ideas.
- Join forums or social groups related to your niche and see what topics other people are talking about within your niche. You can also look for people’s questions about your niche using Quora.
2. Do Some Keyword Research
Keyword research is what you do to check if your topic will allow your article to appear at the top of Google for a keyword.
A keyword is a word or group of words someone searches for on Google about a specific topic. For example, “how to play the drums” and “what are the best drumsticks” are keywords.
With keyword research, you get to see whether your article will appear at the top of Google’s search results for a keyword. This is called ranking on Google.
Follow these steps to do keyword research:
- See if Google suggests your keyword. When you type into Google, a list of keywords drops down. See if you can get Google to suggest your keyword before typing it. That means people are searching for it.
- Figure out if there’s room for you. Look at the websites already ranking for your keyword. If the websites are big brands, chances are you won’t be able to rank as a new blogger.
- Check if your keyword has a featured snippet. A featured snippet is a special result highlighted at the top of the page that Google thinks is the best answer to a keyword. Featured snippets get more traffic than the other results, so try to get your article to appear in a featured snippet.
See if your keyword can work with all three steps. If not, you should probably try a different topic instead.
Also, if you’re willing to pay a few dollars, take a look at Keywords Everywhere, a browser extension that gives you information about search traffic and ranking difficulty for any keyword.
3. Research the Topic You Chose
If your topic is good enough, it’s time to do some research. Even if you already have enough knowledge about your topic, it helps to do even just a little research. That way, you have a detailed understanding of what you are about to explain.
The best place to start is Google. Search for your chosen topic on Google and use websites and videos to help you understand how to address your topic. Visiting forums and Q&A sites like Quora are also great ways to see what others have to say about your topic.
4. Write What You Learned in Your Own Words
Writing can be a difficult skill to master as a beginner blogger. You know what you want to say, but how exactly do you put it into words? Here are some guidelines to help you write:
- Consider what type of article your topic needs. Some articles are how-to guides that explain step-by-step, while other articles give you lists of different things. Still, other articles are written to explain a topic for beginners.
- Make an outline. A how-to guide is outlined in steps while an explanatory article has an outline of subtopics that help explain the bigger topic. For example, the quick navigation at the top of this article shows you the outline of this article.
- Keep your sentences simple and easy to read.
- Avoid long paragraphs. More people are reading blogs from mobile devices, so your articles need to be optimized for small screens.
- Use more words to explain. As a blogger, your job is to give all the information someone needs about a topic. But remember, you don’t have to use too many words. You just need enough words to get your point across clearly and completely.
- Use your own words! Never plagiarize someone else’s writing.
Can I Use AI to Write?
AI has been on the rise since 2022 when ChatGPT came out. So, can you use AI to blog? When it comes to blogging, AI can help you think of ideas for topics or sentences to write in your article. So, if it helps you become more productive, feel free to use AI.
However, AI should not replace you as a writer. It is still up to you to turn the ideas of AI into proper writing. Also, anything that AI writes will not always align with how you want to write the topic. So, always refine anything that AI writes before you publish it.
Some good free blogging AI tools include Simplified, Rytr, and ContentEdge.
5. Include Visuals and Links
Visuals and links are important for your blog to keep people’s attention. You can use these visuals to help enhance your content:
- Images to help people see what you’re trying to say
- Infographics to help explain a process or share data
- Headings to indicate what part of the topic you’re covering
- Lists that use bullets to indicate each and every item you want to talk about
- A video that explains your topic in a narrative format (if you use someone else’s video, make sure to give them credit)
You don’t need to include every single one of these visuals in your article. However, you should have at least a few of these visuals to help paint a picture for your readers.
Another thing: avoid using AI-generated images. Be sure to use authentic photos you take yourself or photos taken by people who allow you to use them on your blog.
Last but not least, add links to relevant websites. Not only are links helpful for readers to learn more, but they also help Google recognize you as trustworthy. That means adding links can give your article a higher chance of ranking in Google for more search visitors.
6. Publish and Repeat
Before you publish your article, I suggest you skim through your article carefully to make sure everything is written well for your visitors. Check for typos, confusing words, or incorrect visuals.
If everything looks good, go ahead and publish your article. And that’s it! Your article is online!
Now, repeat these same six steps for every new article you will be writing on your blog. Remember that, as a blogger, you need to write regularly, so make it a habit to follow these same steps. Be sure to bookmark this page and use this guide to help you until you have the steps memorized.
How to Drive Traffic to Your Blog
We’ve come to the next step on how to start a blog that makes money. Before your blog can make you money, you need readers. As a new blogger, you can’t expect people (or traffic) to find your blog on their own, so you need to advertise your blog.
In this section, I’ll go over each of these well-known strategies to drive traffic to your blog.
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Social media marketing
- YouTube channel
Some bloggers also use paid methods like paid ads and sponsorships to drive traffic. However, I won’t go over those because I do not recommend this for beginners as they tend to be risky.
1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO is a strategy to optimize your blog and its articles to be ranked on Google. Many bloggers use SEO to drive traffic to their blogs.
Earlier, I showed you how to do keyword research, which is an important step in SEO. Not only does keyword research keep you on topic, but it helps give you a chance to rank on Google.
Besides keyword research, here are some other things you can do to work on your blog’s SEO:
- Write a good meta description for each article; SEO plugins like Yoast can help
- Mention your keyword in the title, meta description, and a few times across your article
- Link to other articles on your blog and other websites outside your blog
- Improve your blog’s loading speed by compressing your images with a plugin like Smush and by having your blog cached with a plugin like W3 Total Cache
For more information about how SEO works and what you can do to improve your SEO, check out Yoast SEO‘s website. There, you can download their WordPress plugin and sign up for their SEO newsletter. You can also enroll in their SEO academy which has hundreds of videos that teach you WordPress and all things SEO.
2. Social media marketing
With social media marketing, you will be using your brand’s social media profiles to engage with social media users in your niche. Here are some social media marketing strategies you can use to promote your blog:
- Facebook: Create a Facebook page for your brand and post snippets of your articles on the page. You can also join a Facebook group in your niche using your Facebook page. There, you can interact in the group’s comments and discuss topics while mentioning your blog articles as references.
- X (Twitter): Create an X profile for your brand and post snippets of your articles on your profile. You can also comment on tweets that talk about your niche. You can find these tweets by following brands or influencers that are in your niche.
- Pinterest: Create a Pinterest account and upload pins that use stunning visuals to entice people to read your blog.
- Reddit: Create a Reddit account and follow subreddits in your niche. If there is a thread that addresses a topic in your blog, join the conversation and mention a relevant blog article.
- Quora: Create a Quora account and find questions that relate to a topic on your blog. Make sure to give a good answer and mention your blog article so people can get more information.
3. YouTube channel
YouTube is a big traffic goldmine. As the second most active website on the Internet, YouTube allows you to send traffic to your blog. Follow these steps to get YouTube traffic:
- Create a YouTube channel for your blog’s brand.
- Pick a topic from your niche and film a video about it.
- Mention in your video you have a blog article viewers can read for more info. (Use the video to summarize your article and encourage viewers to read your blog to get more details.)
- Post informative video content on your channel relating to your niche.
- Include a link to your blog article in your video description.
You might also want to do YouTube SEO to make sure your videos can be found on YouTube for your topics. VidIQ has an article on YouTube SEO so you can learn more. VidIQ also has a browser extension that you can use to help optimize your YouTube videos for SEO.
How to Make Money with Your Blog
This article is called “How to Start a Blog and Make Money.” So we started a blog. Now, let’s talk about how you can make money with your blog.
In a previous section, I mentioned the four different ways bloggers commonly use to make money. I’ve listed them below:
- Running ads
- Affiliate marketing
- Selling courses
- Sponsored posts
I don’t recommend trying to do all four of these. Just pick one or two ways for your blog to make money that interest you the most.
How to Run Ads
Running ads is the most popular way to make money as a blogger. By running ads, you allow ad networks like Google to show ads to your visitors based on their interests. These ad networks will then pay you for every visitor who clicks or buys something through an ad.
First, sign up for an ad network. Then, once approved, you will receive a tracking code that you will need to insert into your blog’s HTML. But don’t worry: the ad network should show you how to do this. And that’s it. Your blog is now running ads.
Here are some popular ad networks. Pick only one to sign up and start running ads:
How to Do Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the practice of selling products from others and earning a commission for every sale you make. This is my favorite way to make money as a blogger.
Many big brands like Amazon, Weight Watchers, and Newegg have affiliate sign-up pages. If you love any of these brands and they have a product in your niche, sign up as an affiliate!
There are also affiliate networks where you can find different brands and services to promote, all in one place. Here is a list of some good affiliate networks:
If you’d like to learn more about affiliate marketing, check out my complete affiliate marketing guide to help you learn everything you need to become a successful affiliate marketer.
How to Sell Online Courses
Unlike a blog which has information scattered across articles, an online course bundles all that knowledge together. This is convenient for visitors who want to know everything, all on one page.
Just sign up for an online course service and create modules around a topic using videos and text. I personally like Teachable because it looks similar to WordPress. Teachable has a lot of tools and a clean workspace to help you easily put together an online course.
Here are some other online course services to choose from. Just pick one and get started:
How to Write Sponsored Posts
Sponsored posts are articles you write on your blog in exchange for a sponsor paying you to write for them. This can be a great way for the sponsor to get customers and you to make some money.
Start by selecting a brand or influencer in your niche. Then, reach out to them via email and let them know you are interested in writing sponsored posts for them on your blog. If you get yourself a fair deal, start writing. And as long as you maintain the sponsorship, you can keep making money while adding to your blog.
Blogging FAQ
Here are a few questions you might be asking about blogging to make money.
You should be blogging as often as you can because your readers count on you to provide the best up-to-date information about your topic. I recommend publishing at least once a month, but ideally once a week.
It depends on what you’re writing about. The bigger the topic, the more words you need. But to give you a guideline, this study showed that the best blog articles ranking on Google had at least 2,500 words on average.
No, I do not recommend using a free blogging platform to blog. You do not actually own the content on a free blog. That means that if the free platform you are using decides to shut down, you lose all the work (and readers) for your blog. Plus, you will be using a subdomain of the free service instead of your own domain (example.blogger.com instead of example.com).
Conclusion
And that concludes my complete guide on how to start a blog and make money as a beginner. Let’s recap what you learned.
A blog is part of a website, which needs two things: a domain and hosting. You learned how to buy these two things. Every blog needs a brand and a niche and you learned how to select these.
Next, you install WordPress because it is the best way to manage your blog. I also gave you some tips on how to write awesome blog articles. Finally, you learned the different ways bloggers use to get traffic and the strategies they use to make money.
Further Reading
In conclusion, let me recommend some resources to help you improve your blogging skills:
- Yoast SEO Academy: this is the best way to learn how to write blog articles that show up on Google. This academy will teach you how to use WordPress, how to write well, and how to optimize for Google. Yoast SEO Academy is mostly free. There are a few courses that require a paid subscription.
- WPBeginner: this website has a lot of useful information about using WordPress.
- Google Search Central: this website run by Google gives you up-to-date information about how to make your website appear well in the Google search engine.
- ProBlogger: since 2004, this site has been providing great tips and advice around blogging.
And that’s it. It’s time to start a blog and make some money.