The following post is authored by JT of Cash Flow Mantra.
Many people have asked for practical tips on how to make $1000 per month as a part-time blogger. I was initially a little hesitant to provide them since I didn’t want to give the impression that you only need to do steps 1 through 6 and you will be guaranteed to make lots of money.
Making extra money through blogging is anything but quick and probably won’t make you as rich as you might dream. But if you are willing to put in the effort, it can over the period of six months to a year provide you with some meaningful extra income that can be used to pay off debt, increase your savings, pay a bill or two, or help with the effects from a layoff.
Tips for Making Money with a Blog
- Content is King: There is no getting around the fact that what you write about is vital to making money with your blog. You have to make the information useful to your readers in a format that is easy to follow to keep them coming back for more. Writing about your puppy in broken English with poor spelling is a guaranteed money loser!
- Pick a Money Making Niche: If you want to make money with a blog, you have to figure out how you will monetize before starting the blog. Will it be AdSense? Will you sell products as an affiliate? Will you sell ad space? Look at some of the other blogs in the niche you are considering and see what monetization methods are being used. This will provide you with clues as to what may be possible with a particular niche topic.
- Look for Earnings Reports: While you are searching for blogs in the niche that you are considering, look for earnings reports on those blogs. How are they making their money and how much are these bloggers making? Are they selling affiliate products? Do they market their own product? Are they making $500 per month on AdSense ads?
- Self-Host Your Blog: You want to go with a hosting company. Personally I use a WordPress blog on Hostgator (yes, this is an affiliate link). You aren’t likely to make money with a free blog on blogger unless you have thousands of visitors per day and get lucky with AdSense. If you want to increase your odds of successful money making, you will have to spring $7-$15 for your own domain name and $5-$10 per month on hosting.
- Networking is Vital: Developing relationships in blogging is vital to your success. You can’t just write and expect it to be read. There is too much noise on the internet as it is and no one will find your blog. You need to get out there and comment on other blogs in your niche. Most of the new blogs I find have come from reading comments of others who have a link back to their blog. Having some visitors will help keep you motivated while you are waiting for the search engines to find you and while you are waiting to earn.
- Outsource: As you network and read other blogs, you will learn what is working for them and how you can use outsourcing to your advantage. If you are blogging part-time, you won’t have enough extra hours in the day to do everything you need to do to run a profitable blog so outsourcing is essential.
These are the things that I found which led to my ability to make money with my blog. I started with a topic about which I had a great passion, investing and personal finance which happens to be a money making niche on the internet.
I came up with a domain name, purchased it, and had my blog hosted at Hostgator. They were wonderful and their online help led me through the process of getting my blog up and running. It took me 8 hours that first day but only about 3 total to get this one together.
I started writing to the best of my ability and began to comment on other personal finance blogs which provided me with traffic while developing relationships. I started seeing that some of these fellow bloggers were earning decent sums of income blogging and noticed how they were doing it. I then went about outsourcing those tasks which would help grow my blog while I focused on the content.
Now, I am using the earnings from Cash Flow Mantra to help launch this blog which will not only help others (a passion of mine) but hopefully earn a respectable return and cover my costs in the first six months.
I will probably have to break down each of these six tips and write a complete article to drill down deeper since this post really just hits the highlights.
In the meantime, I would encourage each and every one of you who is thinking about starting a blog to just go out and do it. It took me two years before I came up with the courage to get off blogger and HubPages and start a blog.
That was two years of wasted time when I could have been learning and gaining experience. I can only imagine how much farther along I would be had I simply taken that first step. Don’t be afraid to get out there and try. The worst that can happen is you are out a few bucks for a name and some hosting, but the best that could happen is that you find yourself making multiples of the $1000 per month for which you are shooting.
What are you waiting for?
Hi -
I came upon your blog on Hubpages. I only joined Hubpages a few months ago because I heard that it was a great way to get some additional traffic to my blogs.
Excellent blog! You started out at the opposite end of the scale than I did
I am finding that it can be much more than that
It is also a great place to meet people and build more relationships. Something I need to work on…
I got started online a year ago – from scratch, knowing NOTHING
Thankfully, I got started in the right direction, immediately getting set up with Host Gator and currently have 10 websites/blogs.
I see now though that I was focusing on the selling part a bit too much, and not on the relationship part enough
My goal is to make a grand a month, but first, I need to hit a smaller goal of $100 a week.
I have currently started making a small consistent income, and need to focus more on adding regular content to all my blogs, write more hubs, and continue outsourcing my backlinking in order to increase my rankings.
Cheers!
Ruth M
I started with HubPages in order to learn to write and the fact that it was free. I didn’t want to spend my own money but wanted to see what I could accomplish in my free time instead of watching television. I found that I really enjoyed writing and although I didn’t make a lot of money learned quite a bit. I continue to learn more each and every day. Sounds like you have your work cut out for you with as many blogs as you have. I will have a tough time keeping up with more than 2 so I will stick with that number for now with some extra effort toward getting the word out.
Thanks for reading and good luck with earning more.
You are right. Just get out there and do it. I am going to start a blog about mortgages. I am doing the research now but I am sick and tired of laying down and not doing. Thanks for the inspirational read.
Sounds like an interesting topic. I wish you the best with the new blog.
That would be great to break those out into individual posts. Would like to know more about the tasks you outsourced to grow your blog. I’m on Hubpages too (marriedwithdebt).
John @ Married (with Debt) recently posted..Passed Over for a Promotion…and Happy About It
I will be getting to that in time. I will check you out over at HubPages, also.
Again, the issue of self-hosting confuses me. I use blogger as my blog engine, but have it redirected to my own domain(not a blogspot address). Will advertisers frown upon the fact that I’m still on blogger? I recently researched to see if I could self-host and still use blogger, but that is not an option with Google. Google hosts all blogger blogs for free. I don’t see why I need to pay for hosting, other than fear or being paranoid of getting shut down. Please explain if you can. Thanks.
Matt recently posted..Common Sense Commentary on the Government Welfare State
Hard for me to say since I am not an advertiser. I guess you would just have to contact some and see what happens. You are lowering your Alexa Ranking which means you should be getting more traffic. You are right that if advertising is not an issue, then getting shut down is the only big issue.
Looking forward to you breaking down each item here. Also looking forward to tomorrow’s topic and seeing what you have to offer. Great topics so far and so glad that you have that “giver’s” heart in helping others.
Mary
I hope you find tomorrow’s topic helpful.
I have my own domain name, but am still on blogger. I also started a “free” blog on WordPress as I wanted to get some experience with their platform. Do you have any suggestions on who could help move my primary blog to WordPress?
Lisa @ Cents To Save recently posted..Tying Up Loose Ends Tuesday
I would head to the Yakezie forum and ask there. They have bloggers who can do that for you, plus I imagine some who have had it done and would have a good recommendation. I don’t have any personal experience so couldn’t really make any useful suggestion as to a specific individual.
The part I have the most trouble with is visitor retention. I have good rankings in Google and a couple dozen organic search visitors. I’ve got a low bounce rate. But my percentage of first time visitors remains in the 90′s and after two years of blogging, I only have 7 RSS subscribers.
Edward Antrobus recently posted..Drip Pans Save Cleaning Time: Tips & Tricks
I don’t have a lot of subscribers yet, so I really can’t offer much advice.
Edward, you should pay attention on keyword staff before writing an article. Login to AdWords and use Keyword Tool to find out whether people looking for such keywords or not.
Furthermore, make your subscribe button bigger and ask people to subscribe via RSS or email. Participate in social networks as Yakezie or Tipd and do not forget about guest posts or related blogs.
Alexander @ PipBurner recently posted..How to Trade with the Fibonacci Tools
Participating in the Yakezie network has helped me a lot.
Great tips. Anytime you want to expand on these 6 I will be hanging on every word. I am just starting out and have been learning a lot from your experience as well as many others at Yakezie.
Poor Student recently posted..Blogging Costs
There are a lot of wise individuals from whom you can learn at Yakezie.
Great Tips. I found one a blogging platform that I did not need to worry about the hosting worries and it allows me to make money from my blog. Our community teaches people about the important things about content, SEO and all the things that are so important. I remember first trying to understand the whole concept. You just can’t build a blog and hope others will find you.
Debbie Clark recently posted..Ron Brice Mentor to Network Marketing fatal plane crash
You do have to have some basic knowledge and work to grow your blog. It won’t happen by itself.