If there’s one thing I’m always asked it’s, “How do I start a blog.”
It can be overwhelming as your researching various things.
I’m here to alleviate some of that stress.
I’m going to show you, step by step, how to start a money making blog today in this one post. You don’t have to go researching everywhere, ALL the information you need to get started is RIGHT HERE!
How to Start a Money Making Blog Today
Is Blogging Really Worth It?
You may be wondering if blogging is REALLY worth it. Yes, it is…..as a blogger who makes a fantastic living, I dare say HECK YES. 🙂
What’s Your Passion?
As a beginner, the first thing you want to figure out is what type of blog to have.
What can you talk about for hours and hours? What is your favorite thing to talk about? What advice do your friends always come and ask you for? What does everyone around you say you’re good at? What do you enjoy doing?
Perhaps you love to do DIY or home decor…start a DIY blog. Maybe you love to teach children…start a parenting blog. Maybe you love to cook…start a food blog. Whatever it is that YOU love to do, do it.
If you try to do a blog that you are not passionate about, you will fail to make money blogging. Sorry, it’s true.
First, you won’t stick with it. Blogging is hard work. No one wakes up a year down the line a superstar without having poured blood, sweat, and tears into their blog. If it’s not fun for you, if you don’t enjoy it, if you don’t wake up each morning excited to blog, all that hard work won’t be worth it to you.
Secondly, your readers will smell it a mile away. Whatever you are passionate about or not passionate about, for that matter, comes through. Whenever I go through a day or two of not wanting to blog and just being tired and drained, boy is my blog dead. It’s like they know. They feel it. They see it. They read it in my words, in my tone, in my language. You can’t fool your readers and you don’t want to. You want to be genuinely happy you.
Hosting
One of the first things you’ll need to decide is who to host your blog through. Now, listen carefully when I say, don’t go through GoDaddy. As a new blogger, my blog got hacked when I was with GoDaddy. They fully admitted it was because they didn’t install an update and it should have been. Two other companies I’ve had serious issues with and would not personally recommend are Host Gator and Lunar Pages.
Likewise, I sat there and watched the hacker hack away at all my hard work and GoDaddy could NOT get them off. It was absolutely ridiculous. I have never heard anything good about GoDaddy since I’ve been blogging.
A great company that is worth investing in (and backed by myriad of bloggers, including WordPress themselves!) is BlueHost. They are a great company and handle both small and bigger blogs, so you don’t have to find another host for a long, long time. They offer 24/7 support and will walk you through everything you need to know, without making you feel stupid.
Ready to sign up? Starting a blog is super easy and literally takes less than 5 minutes to do. Click here to get the best deal available online when you take that step, along with a full tutorial and video to help you get started. I wish it were this cheap when I started MY blog!
Right now, you can get hosting as low at $2.95! They have you pay upfront and yes, you absolutely WANT to do that, so you don’t lose your domain name forever. It’s yours and no one can take it from you for as long as you purchase it in advance (I have 9 years on SarahTitus.com!)
The pricing is as follows:
- $2.95 for 36 months –> $106.20 (so cheap seriously! I pay that for ONE month on my blog now because my blog is so big; I’m jealous. LOL)
- $3.95 for 24 months –> $94.80 (great deal!)
- $4.95 for 12 months –> $59.40 (but I wouldn’t recommend this one because I see no point in starting up a blog if you’re just going to do it for a year and these prices next year WILL GO UP! Better to pay less now all at once).
Remember that you MUST click HERE in order to get this special deal.
What’s in a Name?
Everything! I’m a big fan of using your first and last name as your URL if you have a common name. It’s easy to start out as something and change directions if your URL domain name is your own name. If it’s something else, it’s harder to change and I see lots of bloggers, new and established, re-brand and start over. Save yourself the trouble now!
If your name is something hard to spell or you really want to go with a niche, for the love of pete, pick something unique. Don’t go with something generic (example: frugal this or frugal that or mom this or mom that).
Why?
It’s REALLY hard to remember YOU and your unique brand when it’s a generic name. There are already so many common URL’s out there. Even me, myself, I can’t remember some of my own friends blog URL’s because they are all variables of the same thing. You want to be memorable, so people visit you more! 🙂
Be unique, be different, just as each and every one of you is unique and different, so should your URL. Now, I’m not saying to go out and be all crazy, don’t pick some really long name, but do let it represent YOU.
YOU are one in a million! Let your blog be too.
Click here to see if your URL domain name is available.
Themes
Themes are a little bit hard to understand. Right now, just know that it’s best to have both a “parent theme” and a “child theme.” You want both and you want to pay for both. Many blogs that get hacked is because they have free themes. The hackers know who has what, as it’s public information. Having a paid theme means you are paying for support AND protection.
For the parent theme, I highly recommend the Genesis theme, for many reasons, but here are my top three reasons.
- It is the industry standard.
- The SEO (search engine traffic) is known to be better with Genesis, which helps you get more traffic!
- They are extremely user friendly
For child themes, there are some great ones out there. Before I started designing my own site, I really loved Modern Blogger Pro. Eventually after you get going for about 6 months and have your feet wet and know your direction well, I highly recommend having a professional theme designed specifically for you and your audience. This can cost about $250-$600, depending on what you’d like to have done, but it is worth every penny.
Pick a Tagline
If I spent 6 months figuring out the difference between a post and a page, I spent the next 2 months picking out a tagline. I kid you not!
Your tagline defines you. It defines your site, and it’s REALLY hard to re-brand your site with a new tagline once you are visible to the world, even on a small level. If it takes you months to pick something that is completely unique, then take that time. Trust me, you will thank me in the end.
Wanna know my secret weapon? Clary Sage Essential Oil. When you want to be in a creative mood, put Clary Sage on your eye brow bone and smell it; it will help drastically! I am NOT a creative person by nature and this helps me tremendously in so many ways on my blog.
Social Media Platforms
The next thing you’ll want to do is grab your name on all the social media platforms A-sap! It’s horrible when you’re trying to brand yourself and someone else already has your name, so grab them quick. The main platforms you want to join are Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Google +, and Instagram.
While it’s a good idea to be present on all the platforms, I’d encourage you to pick ONE to focus on at a time. Honestly, I’ve not even touched, Google +, or Instagram yet, but I know Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook like the back of my hand and in knowing the platforms so well, I can really capitalize on the traffic.
It is better to know ONE platform very well, than all of them poorly!
Newsletter Anyone?
You want to establish this right away. I know, I know, at first you will be talking to yourself, get used to that. Everyone does it. It’s okay. Just know that it won’t always be like that and you can recycle your own best content again when you do become famous. 🙂 It’s not something you want to do all the time, but there have been a few articles or newsletters where I’ve gone back and was like, “Hey, that’s good stuff. I bet I can make it popular now.” And I have. We all start somewhere, but you need to establish yourself as a serious blogger with a newsletter.
Your newsletter is ONE thing that no social media platform can take away from you. It’s YOUR list. So, your newsletter is gold. It is your most loyal readers. Never sell it and never harm it in any way. Protect it.
I use Madmimi for my newsletter. They’ve been great so far and I’ve been with them a really long time. They were the only company that provided in-depth support as a new blogger. They made video’s of my own account for me to teach me and within 1 hour they respond by email to any email I send them. For a long time, I didn’t have much of a newsletter, but Madmimi treated me well, as if I had a million, and now that I have a good sized list, there is no change. It’s always been impeccable service, service that goes beyond the norm!
What to Talk About
Whatever it is that you decide to talk about on your blog, whichever direction you go, you absolutely need editorial calendars. You can download each month you need for 2021 here, 2022 here and 2023 here.
Let’s Talk Traffic, Shall We
Two of the best ways to get traffic as a new blogger (and even as a seasoned blogger) is to join link up parties. I have a Frugal Friday Link Up Party (update: no longer active) that begins each Friday at 6 am MST. There are many link up parties to be involved in, and I plan to go into more depth in how to be successful at link up parties at a later time. In the meantime, try different ones and see which ones bring you the most traffic. Don’t take on more than 5 per week and always be there when they open to post as close to the top as you possibly can.
Another great way to get traffic, and more importantly, is to connect with other bloggers by commenting on their blogs. I just LOVE hearing from my readers and most bloggers do. Every single comment that comes through this blog gets seen by MY eyes. I try to comment back on every single comment as well, though there are times I don’t because there’s not really anything for me to comment.
Either way, commenting regularly on YOUR favorite blogs is a great way to connect and get traffic and connect with other bloggers.
Speaking of Reaching Out
Make friends with other bloggers. The faster you get involved with other bloggers, the faster you will learn and be a part of a wonderful online group. Seek out those in your own niche. When I first started blogging, and even now, I totally admit that I stalk my favorite bloggers.
- Follow them on social media
- Comment on their blogs
- Email them reaching out to them, telling them I’m a fan and I love their work
A few haven’t had time for me, but that’s okay, I’ve met some AH-mazing bloggers in doing that. I love being a part of their lives and them in mine and all it takes is reaching out. Blogging is very much a social sport. Get involved. Always have the motto that it’s NOT a competition. There is room at the top for many.
Hire a Coach
This may be last on the list, but it’s definitely your first priority! Listen, when I first started blogging, I spent THOUSANDS of dollars doing everything wrong. I didn’t know where to invest, so I did this and that and the other and NONE of it panned out. I was new and I was taken advantage of many times over because I simply did not know.
THE single, most important thing you can do for yourself and your blog after you hit about 50,000-100,000 in traffic per month is to hire a coach.
When I say hire a coach, be very, very careful. Again, there are sharks out there in the coaching world too. People who promise you fame and fortune and just take your money, but there are also some solid coaching programs as well. The ones that will profit you the most of course, are the ones that offer private mentoring. One-on-one personalized programs are where you’ll learn the most amount quicker than any other training.
If I would have purchased some good, solid personalized one-on-on coaching when I first started, I would have paid at LEAST 1/4 of what I got scammed out of, I would have flew right from the start, and I would have known where, how, and what to invest my time into and what was a waste of time, energy, and money. I could have sped up my blogging career by a long shot.
That is my biggest mistake I made in my blogging career thus far. I wish I had the opportunity to take what you can now and the very reason I offer it and for so little. I have been told time and time again I should be charging at least $4,000, and I could, but I just want to prevent someone from going through what I did and set them on the right path straight away.
When researching mentors, always check them out thoroughly. Don’t just believe everyone who says, “Oh, I have a million pageviews a month or oh, I make $40,000/month.” You can easily flub or lie about those stats as a blogger and many do either unknowingly or knowingly. Be careful.
One of the first things I check out is their Alexa score. Just go to Alexa’s site and type in their domain name. You want to see their score as 500,000 or less. If it’s higher than that, they may not have enough credibility for their programs and it might be a waste of your time and money. In all honesty, I would look for someone under 200,000 and if it’s under 100,000 you know it’s the real deal for sure.
You can also install the Alexa toolbar on your Chrome browser to check out sites quickly and easily.
The most important thing I can share with you is to take your time.
Blogging is not a spectator sport and it’s not a sprint. You want to be in it for the long haul and that means investing time, patience, and money (spent wisely in the right things) to help you reach your goals. I also say this solely to show you that it’s possible, but I know a few people, myself included who are less than 2 years old in blogging and run extremely successful blogs and genuinely have a million pageviews a month and more. It is very possible.
If a blogging business is your dream and you are willing to put the time into it, you will reap the rewards of making money.
Related: Want to monetize your blog? Check out my resources page here with all the tricks and tips you need to know to steer clear of scams!
