Blogging has been around for years before Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok were a thing. It was one of the first things that anybody could do on the internet and make money.
As of now, there are more than 600 million blogs on the internet, and you can just expect the number to grow more and more in the future.
Blogging is still preferred by many because of the low entry barrier, low overhead costs, and high earning potential.
But in this age of visual media where people will prefer to watch a video rather than reading, is blogging still a good idea?
Also, when there are thousands, if not millions, of blogs in every category, what are your chances of success, and how can you make money blogging?
All these questions will be answered today by Holly Homer, a millionaire blogger and someone who’s been doing it for more than 15 years.
Holly started blogging 15 years ago accidentally when it was not even a thing. The reason was just to stay connected with her friends, who also had their own blogs on Blogspot to post about little things in their lives.
Soon, this passion for blogging turned into a profession when companies started approaching Holly to feature on her blog. Today, her blog KidsActivities.com gets 500k+ hits every month.
How to Start Blogging
The first step in starting a blog is not buying a domain or hosting but deciding what you wanna blog about or in what niche.
You can’t blog about anything and everything, and in most cases, it can’t be just about you or your life as well.
Your blog needs to be in a niche that already has a good reader base. So that people know what they can expect from you, and you can build a loyal audience.
There is no magic way to instantly find which niche will be perfect for you. The only way is to start writing in a niche that you currently like and see if it works well.
A trend you will notice when you’ll start writing about various topics is you won’t particularly like writing about many things you do like doing or reading.
But writing regularly is eventually going to lead you to the path where you’ll find out what people like to hear from you and what you want to write about.
It doesn’t matter how good of a writer you are or bad your grammar is because everything on the internet is fixable, shiftable, and maneuverable.
It is not like you’re writing a book where once it’s published, it’s set in stone, and you can’t make any changes to it.
In fact, accept it as a fact that when you’ll start writing, your first few pieces are gonna be bad. So bad that you won’t even like claiming them as your own when you’ll re-read them in a few months.
But the point is, you can’t reach the level where you can critique your own writing until you keep writing for a few months.
How to Make Money Blogging
Most probably, you want to start a blog so that you can make money from it. If not now, then sometime in the future. So let’s talk about how to make money blogging.
You see, like any other social platform where you put content in front of an audience, there are broadly two ways to make money: Ads or selling a product.
On your blog also, you have these two options. For ads, you can connect your blog with Google Adsense, and if you wanna sell affiliate products, use websites like ClickBank, ShareASale, etc.
1. Google Ads
Google ads are the most used and most preferred source of earning for most blogs. Nearly 75% of Holly’s income comes from ads on the sidebar and inside the content of her blog.
The reason why Google Adsense is preferred by many bloggers is its simplicity. Once the ads are placed, your job is only to drive traffic on the blog and increase those pageviews. The more the traffic, the more your income.
However, there are certain requirements you need to fulfill as a blog in order to get Adsense approval, but that is a topic for some time else.
For now, you should know that Adsense is not the only platform that allows bloggers to monetize their blogs with ads.
There are many others that you can use, such as Mediavine, Media.net, Adversal, etc. that make a great alternative for Adsense.
Apart from this, there’s also sponsorship, ambassadorship, direct advertising available to a blogger when your blog reaches a certain level.
2. Product Marketing
The second most sought-after way to make money blogging is product marketing. This includes marketing of own products and/or affiliate products.
Affiliate marketing is selling someone else’s product for a commission on every sale you make from your link.
The most common and popular affiliate program is Amazon Associates, where you can advertise Amazon’s products on your website and earn a small percentage of every sale you make through your affiliate link.
There are numerous big and small companies that have their own affiliate program and pay out a good commission to their affiliates.
Some of the best affiliate programs include Amazon Associates, eBay partner network, Coursera Affiliate Program, Shopify Affiliates, and many others.
So if you think that your audience might be interested in your recommendation of products, then affiliate marketing might be a great option for you.
But if you’re someone not satisfied earning just a percentage of what you sell, then there’s an option to market and sell your own products.
Whether you have a physical or digital product, a course, or an ebook, you can sell them through your blog.
Bloggers literally make millions selling a few dollar ebooks on their blogs. So if you think you have an audience that trusts you, then creating and selling your own products is not a bad idea.
3. Email Marketing
Consider this as a bonus way to make money blogging. If you regularly read and visit some of the blogs, you might have noticed a lot of them asking for your email address using different offers.
It is because successful bloggers know the power of an email list and email marketing. Once you have substantial people in your email list, there are many different ways you can monetize it.
The most straightforward way is to simply promote your offers/products on email, but other more sophisticated methods include selling ad space in your newsletter, promoting affiliate products and events, renting or selling the email list, obviously if you have email owners consent, etc.
Whether you are trying to monetize your blog right now or later. Do not make the mistake of letting readers go without anything.
Always have an email opt-in page or pop-up on your blog. So interested people can drop their names and emails.
