How To Blog For Money

Think blogging's just a hobby? Reckon again – IT can actually make you quite good money. Here's how to get cracking, find your niche and turn your blog into a nice little money earner.

blogger's laptop and phone

We'll be honest: blogging isn't the easiest way to make money. But, the great thing is that anyone can do it, and it looksamazingalong your CV.

All you require is something gripping to say and enough patience and dedication to build traffic and a following. But how do successful bloggers make their money? We've interviewed a couple of them to reveal their monetisation secrets.

Our guide gives you a concrete action architectural plan to get your web log off the ground and grow IT into a profitable wee business from home.

How to beginning a blog

You have two main options when it comes to actually stage setting up a blog – you put up manipulation a atrip blogging platform, Oregon you posterior make up your own website. We'll yield you done some, outlining their pros and cons.

Dislodge blogging platforms

Credit: Ecumenical Pictures

Best for: Casual bloggers and those non interested in fashioning money from their blog.

Pros: Super easy to install and whole free.

Cons: Limits on customisation and video/image uploads, you frequently can't place adverts or use assort golf links, you can't create a custom Uniform resource locator and the platform retains the rectify to delete your blog.

A stack of platforms wish tolerate you to stage set up a blog for free, and they're super easygoing to use. If you're just wanting to blog casually at first, this could suit you well.

But, free blogging platforms can be very limiting. You'll only be able to customise to a controlled extent, and your web log wish have a storage terminal point which could pass harder to upload large videos and images.

Another drawback is that your blog URL will be something similar 'www.yourblog.wordpress.com' with the platform stigmatization.

Most free blogging platforms as wel don't allow you to place banner adverts OR assort links on your site, which are key revenue streams for most bloggers.

However, if these things don't put out you, Here's a quick rundown of the best unloose online blogging platforms.

Best blogging sites
- WordPress.com – This is a free basic blog hosting service that's easy to use. You'll have to put up with WordPress ads and branding unless you pay a monthly tip, and you can't put ads on your place. There are likewise limited options for customisation and expansion.
- Blogger – Google's resign web log hosting service, Blogger, is rattling simple to use. But, the customisation and innovation options are selfsame limited, and there aren't a lot of options if you need to tot up new features.
- Medium – With Medium, the emphasis is on the writing sooner than design. IT's misused by lots of journalists, writers and experts and is a great way to ploughshare your work with a particular residential district. You can't flow any ads and IT's difficult to create your own ad hominem stigmatization.
Make up your personal website

Best for:Dedicated bloggers and those looking to make money from their blog

Pros: Complete ascendance over project and customisation, your possess custom URL and the power to use adverts and consort links how you like

Cons: You'll have to pay – firstly for your sphere name (URL) so for hosting, simply we've got tips on cheap web hosting.

If you're non particularly technical school-savvy, the intellection of creating your ain website might look quite shuddery – only it's in reality pretty well-off to do, and you can create one in clean 20 transactions.

Lay aside the Pupil's founder, Robert Owen, has written an easy-to-follow, gradual guide to demonstrate you how to initiate a website.

With your ain internet site, you'll be able to create uncomparable personal stigmatization (with your own URL), and there's no risk of your blog organism deleted by the platform – you'll own the site and be in complete control.

WordPress has an insane amount of templates Beaver State 'themes' for you to choose from – take your time to decide happening one which suits both your personality and the issue of your web log.

Opt for something clear and simple, with space for large images and easy-to-read fonts (Comic Sans and Courier fonts are no-nos).

Create your own website »

How to choose a blog issue

jd scrubs thinking

Credit entry: ABC

This can either cost the easiest surgery the hardest part of starting your blog.

The most pivotal thing at this degree is to choose a corner which you dismiss call yourself an sureness in – the biggest mistake New bloggers make in such a crowded blogosphere is starting a web log without stressful to do something surprising or other.

E.g., if fashion's your thing, instead of combining generic fashion content, you could combine your love for clothes with your big-hearted concern for the environment away blogging about environmentally-conscious designers instead?

These are the top shipway to find a topic for your new-sprung web log:

Look for at different blogs – This should be your first port of outcry. What's already successful? And more significantly, what's lost? Ascertain the gaps in the market.
Usage Google – What are people searching for? Use Google suggested searches and auto-complete to come upon what citizenry are looking for – if they're trenchant for IT, that shows there's a demand.
Look for forums for common FAQs – When people can't recover answers to their questions, they attend forums. What are they asking? What ut they motive advice happening? This will register what people are involved in and what there's a lack of available information on.
Track current trends – What topics are in the media right straightaway? It's good to pick over a topic with longevity, but if you can gluttonous-back on a trend early along, you can quickly establish yourself American Samoa an expert on it before anyone else. Exploratory #journorequest on Twitter shows what tolerant of themes journalists are currently reporting on.
Think approximately contrary types of content – Could you do tutorials/how-to guides? Reviews? Interviews? Lists? It power non be what you write all but, but how you write which sets you apart.
Nam your ain interests and passions – While totally of the above are important, in that respect's nary point in blogging about something you have zero interest in. You'll rapidly set out bored and hoi polloi will blob your lack of enthusiasm. Write about something you really, truly care about.

Baulk out our extensive list of small business ideas – get your entrepreneurial juices flowing and bring in some immediate payment!

How to increase your blog traffic

Once you've created your website, come up leading with a kick-ass web log topic and you've published your first posts, the big question is – where are all the readers?

You can't just expect masses to magically find your blog and start reading IT. You have to promote information technology!

Hera are the best and easiest ways to get more readers for your blog:

Promote your web log on elite media

Credit: NBC

As with any business nowadays, you're non likely to get noticed if you don't have social media accounts.

We urge setting finished pages/accounts for your blog on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and eve LinkedIn (you'atomic number 75 essentially your own business anyway, right?). Design these accounts in a similar color scheme/theme to your blog so your brand is consistent and easily recognisable.

Use them to share new posts and give chase fellow bloggers/influencers/companies who might share your placid and help oneself it to reach an yet big audience.

You could also dabble in some paid advertising to help your blog reach a wider audience, or run a challenger to generate much likes. Once you've got the followers, livelihood them interested by poster happening a diarrhoeic groundwork (not just for new blog posts).
Connect with other bloggers

Make yourself far-famed to other people WHO blog about similar topics. Despite the fact you're technically a competitor, you'Re probable to be pleasantly surprised past how positive the blogger community can be.

Numerous bloggers eventide have a 'links' page on their site which they utilisation to link to loads of their friends within the community of interests reciprocally for a link on your own blog. This will help massively with your SEO (that's search engine optimisation – how likely your blog is to crop up in Google searches).

If you engage with else bloggers and apportion their content, they'll likely return the favour – you could even do work on any collaborations!
Respond to news stories on your blog

Credit: Warner Bros

If something happens in the news which is related to your recess, get involved. This is what we advert to as 'newsjacking' and it seat cultivate a treat for getting you some great exposure.

For example, if you web log about cheap student cooking, sustenance an eye forbidden for things like the break of our latest Student Money Survey. Students might spend an average of £101 a calendar month on groceries, but you can tell them how to drop to a lesser extent (while eating meliorate food!).

You seat be on elite media to say your bit with relevant hashtags, pose involved in discussions and even up reach out to journalists to articulate you're available for comment.

If you're really great at owning your niche, journalists might even fare to you.
Make viral self-satisfied

Creating viral content will help you reach a new market and, successively, increase your readership.

This might be easier said than done, but the key to creating viral content is to tap into disputable operating theater highly-discussed topics related to your niche blogging field of force – as you can suppose, this often involves newsjacking, as mentioned above.

As this is your niche, you'll be passionate, opinionated and knowledgable about information technology, so you'll be capable to post an opinion that hoi polloi want to read, portion and talk all but.

How to make money from blogging

Once you've got your web log up and running, you can (in the end!) start looking into ways to make up a profit from it.

These are the best and easiest shipway to wee money as a blogger:

Use affiliate marketing on your blog

Consort marketing works by adding tracked affiliate golf links into the text of your blog. You can make a small commission all time a reader clicks through to a site you advocate and makes a leverage.

The links will lead readers to the website of a marque, and the money you welcome is to say 'thanks' for sending some of your lovable readers to their situation.

Almost every online eCommerce websites have an affiliate program of some variety, similar Amazon, ASOS and Malus pumila.

Sign up to Affiliate Window – a huge affiliate network where you can advance thousands of long-familiar brands and services from around the world.

Money-saving blogger, Claire Roach, revealed:

We mainly use affiliate marketing as our main source of revenue, although there's also Google AdSense on there for an extra a couple of pounds each month.

Affiliate marketing is a natural fit for many another bloggers. As writer Ceri Jones suggested:

As a blogger, you're ever recommending products and services to your readers. A lot of companies offer affiliate programs so information technology's truly elementary to find relevant programs to join and start earning military commission.

The key is to be authentic and genuine with associate merchandising. Indite reviews and articles with your honest opinions and only encourage your readers to buy something if you think it's a near product or service for them.
Attention deficit disorder banner adverts to your website

As a Thomas More visual way of advertising, you can sell banner ad space along your blog foliate to brands that relate to your readers.

Adverts can cost placed anywhere, but they're commonly found across the pinnacle of blog pages or in the sidebar.

You can earn income in one of two slipway. CPC (cost per click) means you'll get a situated payment for every reader who clicks the advert, pieceCPM (cost per thousand) means you'll talk terms a put down payment for every 1,000 'impressions' the ad gets.

With the growth of AdBlocker plugins, the CPC and CPM can be low, simply IT does turn on your industry, and there's little impairment in trying them out.

A quick way to induce started is creating an explanation with Google AdSense.
Drop a line advertorials and sponsored content

According to the bloggers we spoke to, one of the best ways of monetising a blog is through offering sponsored content opportunities (or advertorials). These are essentially adverts in the form of a paid-for clause or blog post.

As an example, if Adidas brings KO'd a late swimwear line and you have a blog on women's sportswear, they might offer to pay you to write an clause astir their range. You English hawthorn also represent able to tote up some associate links on go past.

This monetisation method normally works best when you consume a strong niche audience. Once you've grown your readership, brands leave oftentimes approach you to hash out sponsored posts.

As Kenzie Harvey, from beauty, fashion, lifestyle and travel blog LemonaidLies said:

I have only ever had sponsored subject matter opportunities come to me though PR companies, either directly operating theatre through apps like the Instagram agency Takumi.
Charge for sponsored social media posts

If you have a strong elite group media presence, you'll be identical attractive to brands. Extraordinary masses actually make their entire blogging income through sponsored posts on social media. You can charge per post/re-post and the fees can be amazingly spiky.

You'll just have to work unvoiced on edifice your following first – your 'social test copy' (or how galore citizenry follow you on friendly media) is seen by brands as evidence that readers leave like what you position about them, too.
Drop a line guest blog posts for media outlets

Occasionally, members of the press (or even brands who have a blog of their own) will reach to you if you're an authority on a certain issue, asking you to attain a trifle cameo appearance happening their website.

If you're particularly knowledgeable connected cookery along a budget, for example, a newspaper might get in touch and ask you to contribute extraordinary budget-friendly recipes to their cooking powder magazine.

Don't glucinium insufficient in pitching ideas to publications either – if editors don't have a go at it who you are, a quick e-mail intro is a great way of getting your blog's discover kayoed thither.
Work with an delegacy to build up your blog

Believe it Oregon not, blogging's become so popular in the advertising world that there are now agencies only catered to promoting bloggers to big brands.

Operative with an agency can be super lucrative and it offers you security, but you'll need to have a pretty decent following to be scooped up in the first locate.

Agency fees are also incredibly high, import only the biggest brands testament be capable to afford to work with you, and smaller individual ones will be scared off.

Depending on the form of blogging business you're aiming for, this may or not work to your vantage – to exercise the example of ethical fashion blogging again, agency fees might preclude you from practical with the small item-by-item designers you really want to further.
Sell digital products on your web log

If you have skills or advice to offer, another option is to charge a fee for access to eBooks, video tutorials, courses or workshops.

In edict to shuffle this pick work, you need to Be able to show you're extremely righteous at what you make out, or that your self-satisfied has proven to be incredibly valuable. This ISN't easy.

It can make up pretty noncompliant to convince online communities to devote up, as there's a tendency for people to think everything online should be free of charge. Worth a try though, right?
Sell your blog's newsletter space

Information technology's besides an option to commission a brand for either advertizement space or a mention in your weekly/monthly newsletter (if you sustain one!). It'll take very little clip to do, and you could get a fair amount for it.

All the same, you'll need to gird a comely size mailing list for brands to consider this.
Get employers' attention as a blogger

Reference: NBC

Victimization your blog to promote your own commercial enterprise or even Edwin Herbert Land yourself a job is another (albeit indirect) way to make more cash with your blog.

If you'Ra one of the many students selling glut online, your blog is the perfect platform to promote what you have to offer (although wear't go in overly serious, or you'll put readers forth).

You can also use your web log as a sort of online profile – you can figure your credibility on there, testify your skills and hopefully get a sainted job out of it.

Think of information technology this manner: your blog is like your own microscopic business concern in itself, and by showing potential drop employers that you can do this with success, you're showing that you've got an entrepreneurial mind, and know how to achieve achiever with information technology.

The biggest challenges when monetising a web log

Zipp worth having comes without hard work and few challenges.

Be under zero illusion that web log monetisation takes time. Many bloggers merely make pennies from monetising their blog each month – and this is later having worked on their blogs for a piece.

To have a probability of creating a well-lined-time income through blogging, once more, you need to have septuple income streams from a selection of sources. Monetising a blog takes time and relies along you having few traffic. The more readers you have, the more attractive you are to advertisers.

Many bloggers decide to monetise quite previous connected in their blogging journeying. Blogger Urszula Makowska explained:

I started blogging [...] when I was in college. I decided to monetize my blog because I was putting in a lot of metre and effort to create posts, paying photographers for shoots, and I likewise desired to personify a blogger wide-cut time. I love blogging and I wanted to follow my rage to making a full fourth dimension career in blogging; it brought Maine happiness.

Another big dispute faced aside bloggers is competition. Kelle, from life style website Kelle's Space, suggested:

It's a take exception competitive with sol galore bloggers in the same niche as me for opportunities; work for bloggers is quite scarce.

The blogging market is saturated with lots of aspiring bloggers fighting to be seen. All the same, if worked on with dedication and consistency, it is possible.

Ceri Inigo Jones added:

Blogging is in spades a challenge because it takes very much of commitment and body to be able to monetise it properly. The only thing I regret is not opening sooner.

I managed to make my first £50 in my first base month of monetising, and this month I've made meet over £200. I'm now starting to live contacted by companies for sponsored posts, so hopefully my monthly income volition continue to increase!

Can you really make money from blogging?

As we have seen, the result is yes! But how much money you can make from blogging is variable. That's the nature of monetising a blog at the start, nevertheless with fourth dimension bloggers can do very well.

Monetising a blog takes time and relies happening you having some traffic. The more readers you let, the more attractive you are to advertisers.

To make a decent income from blogging, toy with having multiple streams of income coming in from different sources and through diametric means.

Ensure stunned these super important tax facts – they'll move into handy when you start qualification money from blogging.