I know starting a blog seems like an easy side hustle, but there’s a lot of work to it, and people often get in over their heads when trying to figure out how to start a blog. Many are also looking for a backup content home after the temporary TikTok shutdown nearly wiped out massive income for influencers there.
Blog and blogging are terms that get thrown out a lot without much context. It started off as sort of an online diary that eventually led to the creation of powerhouse content management system (CMS) platforms such as WordPress. It evolved to incorporate video blogging, called vlogging, and most personal websites or personal brands.
Today, blogging usually means frequently updated content published on a website, but it can sometimes also refer to content on another platform such as social media or a publishing platform. I’m focusing primarily on website-based blogging but will cover some of the differences with other platforms as well.
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5 Steps To Start and Monetize a Blog
Taking one step at a time helps take the confusion out of starting and monetizing a blog
Blogging is a lot of hard work. Even doing what you love takes time and effort. While blogs are relatively inexpensive to start monetarily, your time investment can be significant. Taking the time to create a plan early helps avoid pitfalls that cost even more time and could damage community-building.
1. Pick a Niche
There’s a big difference between casting a wide net and throwing spaghetti against a wall to see what sticks. Even if you have multiple areas of expertise, each blog needs a focus. You might later wind up creating a family of blogs, but each needs to appeal to a definable audience and brands if you want to try for sponsorships.
Reasons To Start a Blog
A great blog requires a great topic, but it also requires staying motivated. Examining your motivation to blog can help prevent it from becoming a slog later on if you’re only in it for the money. Building a fun side hustle or a full-time income blogging are far from the only reasons to start a blog.
Common reasons to start blogging include:
- Having a creative outlet
- Feeling connected to others by sharing experiences
- Trying to influence public opinion
- Building a personal brand to promote existing work
- Teaching a skill or hobby to others
- Creating a record of events—a digital diary of sorts
- Practicing writing for an audience
Knowledge and Passion for the Blog Topic
If your blog niche is fueled by personal knowledge and passion for the topic, you generally have a better chance of building a community and creating a successful blog. You don’t have to be perfect at any of it, but the authenticity and passion shine through and connect with audiences.
Popular Blog Topics
Even if you know why you want to start a blog, you might struggle to choose a niche based on your interests.
Some popular blog topics include:
- Photography
- Nature
- Hiking
- Travel
- Beauty
- DIY home improvement
- Food
- Finance
- Music
- Fitness
- History
- Crafts
- Sewing
- Couponing
- Sports
- Books
- Movies
- History
- Cosplay
- Tabletop role-playing games, such as Dungeons & Dragons
- Geek culture
Remember that every topic has subtopics to help you differentiate yourself, and sometimes topics merge. For example, travel could be broken down into adventure travel, travel after 50 and family travel.
There are also great options for combining topics, such as Tank Tolman, who combined fitness, cosplay and a love of geek culture into a Viking persona that spreads love and positivity while teaching fitness.
Competition
Regardless of why you started blogging, when it comes time to try and make a little cash from it, you’ll need to know your competition. Research how many other bloggers are covering your topic, what kind of content they publish, what their website looks like and if there are any big names already out there that you must compete with. Niches with less competition are sometimes easier to break into, build a community and monetize.
2. Plan Monetization
The monetization plan you choose, that is, how you hope to make money from your blog, will determine the content you make and where you publish your content. Because of that, it’s a good idea to at least roughly plan monetization methods before starting your blog.
How To Make Money With Your Blog
There are a lot of different business models for blogging and vlogging. Some work almost exclusively from built-in social media ad programs that depend on traffic levels, others build exclusive sponsorship relationships with a specific brand and still others use their blogs to sell subscriptions to gated content such as fitness tutorials.
Which features you’ll need from your blogging platform will depend on what type of monetization you want to use. Ads and affiliate links are the simplest, but gated content and sales of any sort require payment processors and checkout e-commerce features.
Common monetization methods include:
- Affiliate links and ads
- Ads
- Social media built-in monetization features
- Brand sponsorships
- Custom app subscriptions
- Gated content
- Digital product sales such as printables and e-books
- Subscriber-only newsletters
- Direct merchandise (merch) sales, often branded
Blog Monetization Platforms
For bloggers, monetization platforms save a lot of effort and give you access to brands and audiences who might not give you the time of day otherwise. The two biggest categories are ad networks and affiliates.
Ad network programs such as Google AdSense allow you to sign up to have ads placed on your website. Ads are placed based on your traffic and topic. However, while easy to set up, low-traffic websites attract the lowest-quality ads. Ads such as “one weird trick” or “new law for drivers in (viewer state)” bid pennies for ad placements and are used to fill in anywhere there’s a cheap unused spot.
Affiliate advertising gives you more control over your ads. While you can go directly to a brand to set up an affiliate relationship, most affiliate advertising is handled by affiliate aggregators. These affiliate platforms manage affiliate programs for hundreds of brands and getting started usually just requires filling out a bit of “about you” data and applying to the brands you are interested in.
Two of the biggest affiliate groups are CJ (formerly Commission Junction) and ShareASale.
I’ve personally used both and never had any issues with payouts.
3. Get Your Blog Online
The bare basics of how to get a blog online is create content and upload it to a platform. However, as with most things worth doing, there’s a lot of nuance and surrounding steps involved in getting those two main items done.
Pick a Platform
Where your blog will call home is important. You can supplement content elsewhere, but you need a primary spot online to act as a hub and host the bulk of your monetization efforts.
The main choices for where your blog will live are social media, a video platform such as YouTube, a third-party publishing platform such as Medium or a stand-alone hosted blog website. Each one has pros and cons, and different ones work better for different goals and styles.
| Startup Costs | Continuing Costs | Monetization Options | Ownership/Control | Limits on What Content You Can Publish | Built-In Audience | Ability to Affect Visibility | Security Features | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Video Platform | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Social Media | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Third-Party Publishing Platform | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Blog Website | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
Whichever platform type you choose, whether it’s one of the reigning best blogging platforms, a budget-saving free blog system or an underdog, match the features as closely to your specific needs as possible.
For example, if you want to offer on-demand gated video workout tutorials, you’ll need to look at a website builder, CMS or a video platform with that option. Likewise, monetizing by brand sponsorship may work on social media, but you can’t place Google ads as you could on your own website.
For a website blog, you’ll need a hosting package. Many prefer a website builder with blogging features, such as Wix offers, because it is hosting and blogging all for one cost. However, WordPress is still the reigning blogging champ and offers more flexibility in hosting and customization. Just keep in mind you’ll need separate WordPress hosting.
Register a Domain Name
Whether you set up a full blog website or work through a third-party platform, registering a custom domain name helps your personal brand recognition and credibility. It also protects the name from being taken by someone else, even if you don’t have a stand-alone website yet. For a blog website, you’ll absolutely need to register a custom domain name as part of setting up hosting.
Many of the best website hosts offer first-year free domain names, but renewal costs may be inflated. All reputable hosts allow you (on packages allowing a custom domain name) to point a domain name you register with a third-party domain registrar without needing to actually transfer the domain to the host.
Customize Your Blog
Regardless of platform, customize the look as much as possible. For social media and other third-party platforms that are often limited to a few color choices, you can include your profile text and an image or two. For a full-fledged hosted blog, your choices are nearly limitless.
Start by picking what pages to include. Even blogs can have (and usually have) supporting pages such as about us, contact us, legally required disclaimer pages, gated content, promotional free digital download samples and, of course, your blog.
Next, you’ll choose a theme that supports the pages you want to use and customize the look of your theme. Adjust layouts, colors, images, fonts and even sort orders for your blog posts to make it reflect you and your blog topic well.
As part of customizing your theme, you’ll connect any plugins or activate specific features you need, such as e-commerce features for an online merch store or paywalls for gated content.
With regard to legal announcements, remember that being online doesn’t free you from laws; it often makes you subject to more regulations, such as international laws enforced due to treaties. Check with your local Small Business Administration office to get help ensuring you meet legal requirements or a referral to a lawyer who can help.
4. Add Content
Content is king in the blogging world. While personal charisma helps build communities, your content is what keeps the monetization flowing long term. Content includes text posts, photos, videos and even reposting old content. There are no set rules on tone or style; the only rule you must follow is staying within the law, and that includes honoring copyrights and trademarks.
How Much Content Do I Need To Start a Blog?
While I personally recommend having several posts before launching, you don’t have to have a ton of content. The point is to keep people coming back. That said, I do always recommend creators keep at least several posts in reserve in case something happens to disrupt your creation schedule.
How Long Should My Blog Posts Be?
Blog posts should be long enough to make readers happy they read it. There’s no magic blog post word count that equals success. Search engines don’t really care about word count as much as what keywords you use.
That said, content agencies pushed 2,000-word minimums for years so they could get enough keywords into articles for decent placement in search engine result pages (SERP).
The rise of mobile devices and social media took the legs out from under that trend, and typical word counts for blogging have been dropping to 300 to 1,500 words, depending on the topic and depth of the article.
For example, recipe blogs no longer need to put long blocks of text before the actual recipe. A short introduction paragraph with keywords such as the recipe name, main ingredient, cooking method and which meal it works best for is perfectly fine.
Set a Schedule
Set up a blogging schedule to keep fans hyped up. Randomly posting whenever you feel like it slows down traffic, reduces community-building and can negatively influence the possibility of brand deals. I generally recommend posting no less than once a month, although some topics may allow weekly posting.
As a one-person business, you are often at the mercy of illnesses or outside influences, such as weather (if you have an outdoor topic), that can affect creation schedules. Keeping several reserve posts helps to give you a safety net.
5. Set Up Monetization Channels
The first step in setting up most monetization channels is to set up accounts with different platforms such as Google AdSense, affiliate platforms or direct affiliates with brands. You’ll also need to install any plugins for features such as gated content. From there, the exact setup mostly depends on the type of monetization and your platform.
Ads
After you’ve signed up for an ad network, setting up monetization is usually as simple as pasting a bit of code in sections of your blog. However, the process will vary by platform. Be sure to pick ad placements where they are easily visible but don’t interfere with viewing your content, as that interference creates a poor user experience.
E-Commerce Features
If you are using merch sales, dropshipping, subscriptions or even digital downloads, you’ll need to set up an e-commerce store. A CMS such as WordPress will have options for different e-commerce plugins, and most website builders offer e-commerce features as well.
Setup will vary based on what you are selling and the fulfillment method, but at the very least, you’ll need a checkout system and a payment processor.
For gated content, you may need an additional plugin or integration to allow you to place password protections on certain pages of your blog and control how many times digital downloads can be downloaded.
Affiliates
Affiliate marketing can come in the form of links that include a tracking code, or a designed ad with graphics. Most brands provide some graphics if you want to use the ad version. Add affiliate links to text in your content or place the ads in content or in sidebars on your website blog.
Be sure to pick affiliate links that make sense for your audience.
However, remember that there are rules around affiliate links. In most cases, you need a disclaimer somewhere near the affiliate content letting people know about the affiliate relationship.
Brand Sponsorships
Direct brand sponsorships, where a specific brand pays you to create content related to its product, probably won’t be available to you until you grow your audience significantly. However, you can set the stage for that avenue by creating a contact page for brands as part of your website.
It’s also a great idea to research what other influencers in your niche are charging for those services so you can make a few turnkey packages to offer brands. Also, while I’m a huge opponent of working for exposure, there may be times when posting in exchange for a product sample works for you, depending on the brand’s prestige and what the product is.
The reality is that, in the best case, the products are often garbage, and the scammers rely on desperate small influencer purchases as their business sales model. In the worst case, it’s a phishing or identity theft ring where the scammers take your personal information and credit card to go on spending sprees.
Top Tips for How To Make Money With Your Blog
Monetizing your blog is more than just offering products for sale and placing ads everywhere. In fact, with too many ads (internal or external) your blog will start to look like a used car lot that turns off most visitors.
Beyond the basic setup of channels and the actual content, there are three big factors to monetizing your blog. These are building community, publicizing your blog and having patience.
1. Build Your Community
For blogs, building a community is part of creating your core audience. These will be your die-hard fans that keep things going when your SEO is slow or other downturns reduce traffic.
Supplementing your blog with channels such as social media helps forge connections. For example, features that show behind the scenes are generally very popular. Within your content, use first-person language and let your personality shine. If you’re too formal, your audience won’t feel as invested. Talk with your audience, not just to them.
2. Publicize Your Blog
While search engines and social media algorithms are core methods for getting your blog seen, there are plenty of other marketing channels to widen your reach, both online and off-line.
Ads
Depending on your budget, placing ads may be a quick way to start getting the word out. Search engine ads based on keywords or social media ads can help reach your target audience quickly.
Off-line advertising, such as digital billboards, helps you reach new audiences and skip algorithms.
Off-line ads are also a possibility. Billboards are great for drive-time, and services such as Blip Billboards make billboard advertising accessible with budgets of $20 or so to start. Even TV advertising is more accessible (although it is still a few hundred to start) than it used to be. Services such as Roku ads and Vibe help small advertisers reach bigger audiences.
Guest Post/Appearance on Podcasts
No blog stands alone as an island. Social media has begun to bring groups of creators together, sort of like TV crossover episodes. I’ve seen those gatherings and collaborations skyrocket viewership for newer creators and boost the established channel as well.
Reach out to podcast creators, established influencers and other bloggers to see if you can guest post or sit in on an episode. You get the benefit of reaching an already targeted audience.
Social Media
Posting on your social media account is a standard for publicizing your blog. However, don’t overlook other social media channels. For example, AMAs (ask me anything) on Reddit are often a great way to start building buzz, depending on your niche.
Free Content Samples
As part of your marketing efforts, consider giving away something. Many bloggers offer something digital as an incentive for new subscribers. A special digital download, such as an exclusive recipe, is just one possibility. However, avoid something that costs you money to give away, especially when you are just getting started.
Bio Page
A bio page is a landing page with multiple links to content. Linktree is one of the most well-known bio page builders. Used primarily on social media where your link listings are limited by the platform or clickable URLs are disabled, a bio page makes it easier for viewers to find clickable links, especially if they find your social media posts months or years after publishing.
There are many bio page builders but with a full blog website, you also have the option of making your own bio page as a landing page. Just remember to build with mobile in mind and keep it simple. If it’s too cluttered, your audience won’t find it useful.
3. Be Patient
Building an audience and gaining traction takes time. Most new blogs will take at least three months to start seeing any traction, and it can take longer, sometimes years. There are no guarantees when it comes to monetizing a blog, but the one thing all successful blogs have in common is hard work and consistency.
The Bottom Line About Blogging for Money
Regardless of the style of blog you choose, starting a blog and making money with it depends on connecting with your audience and quality content. Focus on creating quality content, carefully selected monetizing channels and building community to create a strong foundation for your blog.
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Web.com
$2.75 per month
Yes
Customiz-able templates, easy drag-and-drop technology, SSL certificate
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How much does it cost to start a blog?
Depending on your platform, blogs can usually be started for under $100, and most of that is paying for your first year of hosting upfront. However, you may have additional costs such as cameras, lighting and project materials as well. Remember that there will be continuing costs for hosting and supplies for the life of your blog.
How much money can I make with a blog?
There is no limit to how much money you can make with a blog, but most blogs make less than $1,000 per month. It’s like any other business. Most make a little, some make a decent amount and a tiny portion grow to be enterprise-level businesses.
How fast will I start to make money with a blog?
There are no guarantees to how fast you will start to make money, but the general consensus is that it will take at least three months to begin seeing any income, with a year being more common.
