How to Start a Blog and Make Money for Beginners in 2025

In this complete guide, you will learn how to start a blog and make money as a complete beginner.

Blogging allows you to make money online by writing blog posts that educate your audience on a specific topic. You can then make money any time people visit your blog.

In case blogging isn’t for you, check out my other complete guides to make money online here:

• YouTube Guide: How to Make Money with a YouTube Channel for Beginners
• Affiliate Guide
• E-commerce Guide
• Freelancing Guide
• Survey Guide

By the end of this article, you’ll be able to start making money with blogging. Feel free to bookmark this page for reference so you can come back to this article easily.

There will be a lot to cover in this article, so if there is a specific section you’d like to read, you can use the table of contents below. With that said, let’s get started.

Can I Still Make Money Blogging in 2025?

Yes, you can still make money blogging in 2025 and beyond. Many people like you are still using Google to search for answers to questions that can only be found on blogs. As long as search engines like Google continue to exist, you can still make money blogging.

Don’t take my word for it. Check out these blogging statistics by Ahrefs. Here, they show that 77% of Internet users still read blogs. WordPress, the world’s largest blogging platform, is used by over 40% of websites. But more importantly, people are still making money blogging, with the most popular strategies being Google AdSense and affiliate marketing.

Bottom line: it’s not too late to start making money blogging as a beginner in 2025 and beyond. So, if you’re ready to start your own blog, keep reading.

How Does a Blog Work?

In case you’re not sure how exactly a blog works, I’ll explain here. Otherwise, you can skip this section.

What Is a Blog?

A blog is a website (or part of a website) that contains articles, also known as blog posts. These posts provide information about a topic in a specific niche. A niche is an area of life, like fitness, cooking, travel, or technology.

There are recipe blogs like Pinch of Yum, fitness blogs like Well+Good, and finance blogs like Get Rich Slowly. There are also mom blogs run by stay-at-home moms that give advice to other mothers around the world.

Now, there are also personal blogs that act like an online diary or journal of someone’s life. But, unless you have a large following and have some kind of influence, you will not attract many readers to a personal blog. These blogs are usually treated as hobbies and not as businesses.

What Is the Goal of a Blog?

The goal of a blog is to attract readers by giving them information on a specific niche. There are millions of people online every day who use Google to solve problems and ask questions. By having a blog, you solve those problems, grow an audience, and sell products that can also help your readers.

Steps to Start a Blog as a Beginner

It’s time to start a blog and make money. Here are the steps we will take to get you started:

1. Pick a niche.
2. Name your blog.
3. Sign up for hosting.
4. Register a domain name.
5. Set up your blog.
6. Follow a content strategy.
7. Promote your articles.

Once we finish these steps, I’ll show you how to monetize your blog. Now, let’s get started.

1. Pick a Niche

Overview

A niche is an area of life that your content will be focused on. This niche will be the way you connect with people and get them to read your blog. For example, if you decide to run a fitness blog, you will be writing blog posts about staying healthy and fit. These blog posts will attract an audience of people who want to improve their physical health and fitness.

Popular blogging niches include fitness, cooking, travel, technology, and mom blogs. If you’d like even more ideas for blog niches, here are 160 niche ideas from Blogging Explorer.

What to Do

• Pick a niche that you are passionate about. You do not have to be an expert or have a ton of experience in your niche, but you should at least be willing to learn as much as you can about this niche.
• Stick with this niche when writing your blog posts. I do not recommend going for multiple niches or writing about something not related to your niche.

2. Name Your Blog

Every blog has a name. This is how your readers will identify your blog. There are two ways you can name your blog:

1. You can pick a brand name for your blog that is related to your niche. For example, a blogger named Tim who loves solving tech problems might name his blog “Tim’s Tech Fixes.”
2. You can name your blog after yourself. Ryan Robinson, Emily Luxton, and Martha Stewart are examples of self-named blogs.

If you cannot think of a good name for your blog on your own, you can try an AI-powered website name generator like Namelix.

3. Sign Up for Hosting

Overview

Web hosting is the company that will serve your blog on the Internet. Every hosting provider has a ton of plans for you to pick from. I suggest you select their most basic hosting plan because it is very affordable and gives you everything you need to start a blog.

It is very difficult to search for a good web hosting provider. You would need to do a lot of research to learn about each hosting provider and what to expect if you sign up.

Thankfully, I did the research so you don’t have to. Here is a table that compares five web hosting providers and their basic hosting plans.

Hosting Provider Comparison (as of 2025)

Bluehost	DreamHost	A2 Hosting	AccuWeb	Hostinger
Recommended by WordPress	Recommended by WordPress	Recommended by PCMag	Recommended by PCMag	Recommended by WordPress
Basic Hosting	Shared Starter / WordPress Starter	Ignite / Shared Hosting	WordPress Startup++	Premium Hosting
$2.95/month for 1st year, then $11.99/month for 1-year term	$2.95/month for 1st year, then $5.99/month for 1-year term	$1.75/month for 1st year, then $12.99/month for 1-year term	$4.49/month for 1st year, then $7.49/month for 1-year term	$1.95/month for first 2 years, then $7.99/month for 2-year term
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 free backups in the basic plan	Only automatic backups	Only WordPress core automatic backups	Backups included	Only weekly backups
10 GB storage	50 GB storage	10 GB storage	50 GB storage	100 GB storage
Automatic Cloudflare setup	A manual Cloudflare setup required	A manual Cloudflare setup required	No free CDN in the basic plan	No free CDN in the basic plan
Email addresses included	No free emails in the basic plan	Email addresses included	Email addresses included	Email addresses included
Priority support	Low priority support	Priority support	Priority support	Low priority support
Rated 4.2/5 on Trustpilot	Rated 4.7/5 on Trustpilot	Rated 4.6/5 on Trustpilot	Rated 3.9/5 on Trustpilot	Rated 4.7/5 on Trustpilot
Bluehost	DreamHost	A2 Hosting	AccuWeb	Hostinger

What to Do

• Using the table above, compare the hosting providers.
• Select the hosting provider that works best for you. Use my hosting provider article to help you.
• Go to their website and find their basic plan. I put the name of each provider’s basic plan near the top of the table.
• Make sure you understand the payment plan. Usually, this means you pay a small amount per month for your first year. After that, you will need to pay the standard rate per year to renew your blog.
• If the plan asks you to pick a domain name, see step 4 below.
• Don’t buy any add-ons you don’t need. I do recommend Domain Privacy Protection if the option is available.

Whatever you choose, be sure to pick the basic hosting plan. This type of plan is the most affordable for you as a beginner. Later on, when your blog grows and generates a lot of traffic and income, you can upgrade your blog to a higher-tier plan.

4. Register a Domain Name

Overview

Next, you need a domain name. This is the URL address that people will type into their browser to get to your blog.

Now, depending on your hosting provider, your plan may or may not come with a domain name. If your plan does not come with a domain name, you’ll have to buy one in addition to your hosting. You can buy from your hosting provider or from a hosting registrar.

What to Do

• Take your blog’s name (from step 2) and see if it is available as a “.com” domain.
• If the name is not available, try a variation of your blog’s name or change your blog name.
• If you are running out of name ideas, try an alternative to “.com,” such as “.net,” “.blog,” or “.life.”
• If you want to get readers from all around the world, avoid using a country code in your domain like “.co.uk” or “.ca.”

If your hosting doesn’t come with a domain, you’ll need to buy a domain from your hosting provider. If they don’t sell domains, go to a registrar like GoDaddy or Namecheap. After you buy your domain from a registrar, consult your hosting provider’s help page or customer support to help you connect your domain to your hosting.

5. Set Up Your Blog

Once you buy your domain and hosting, you can now set up your blog. First, you will need a CMS (content management software) that can help you design and write articles for your blog. There are several CMS to pick from, but the most popular one is WordPress.

Set Up WordPress

Chances are your hosting provider already set up WordPress for your blog or you have the option to install it. With 43% of websites using WordPress, it’s safe to say that it is the best choice for you as a blogger. Thus, I will refer to WordPress throughout the rest of this article.

But don’t worry if you’re not sure how to use WordPress. I’ll show you everything you’ll need to know to design and write for your blog using WordPress.

Navigate WordPress

Once you install WordPress, your dashboard should look something like this.

You can access your WordPress by adding “/wp-admin” to your domain name in the address bar.

You have two things to set up: a theme and plugins. A theme is a template of how your blog’s website will look. You can choose from thousands of WordPress themes. Plugins are WordPress extensions that add all sorts of functionality to your website, like a dark mode toggle, styled lists and boxes, and even a program to speed up your website. Like with themes, you can choose from thousands of WordPress plugins.

If you need help using WordPress, check out WPBeginner. They have all sorts of tutorials and help articles related to WordPress.

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 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:

1. Think of something to talk about in your niche.
2. Do some keyword research.
3. Research the topic you chose.
4. Write what you learned in your own words.
5. Include visuals and links.
6. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
2. Social media marketing
3. 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:

1. Create a YouTube channel for your blog’s brand.
2. Pick a topic from your niche and film a video about it.
3. 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.)
4. Post informative video content on your channel relating to your niche.
5. 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:

• Google AdSense
• Adsterra
• Propeller 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:

• Impact Radius
• ShareASale
• ClickBank
• CJ (Commission Junction)
• JVZoo

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:

• Udemy
• Skillshare
• Thinkific

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 for Beginners FAQs

Here are a few questions you might be asking about blogging to make money as a beginner.

In Conclusion

And that’s it for my complete guide on how to start a blog and make money as a beginner. I know there are many things that I discussed here, so feel free to bookmark this page so you can review it again later.

Let’s summarize what you learned from this article:

• [List of important points.]

Here are the tools that I covered in this article to help you make money with blogging as a beginner. You can look over these tools below.

• [List of tools and what each one does.]

Thanks for reading and happy earning!

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.