How to start a money making blog?

925 Millionaire is a website with a blog on it. We primarily teach people about personal finance that includes various investment strategies and passive income methods.

Out of all the passive income opportunities we recommend blogging as the best opportunity to make some (or a lot) money with less effort.

Top Reasons why start a blog?

I have been blogging for over 4 years and have helped many people to blog as well. It always amazes me how blogging transforms people’s life.

Usually, I have seen people start with some idea in the beginning and within a year they do magical things with it.

One of the blogs that I and Anto started a few years back is doing so well now. But when we started we had no clue about blogging. Now that blog is taking a lot less effort to maintain.

I have been through this blogging journey and I know this is one of the best ideas to start. Even if your planning to build it slowly.

Here are some of the common reasons people start their blog.

Passive Income on Autopilot

A blog gives a lot of flexibility to write content on various topics within your niche. Every blog post serves as a sales page, it also stays on the internet as long as the blog exists. It keeps attracting traffic and brings sales forever.

It is not unusual to see a single blog post to bring 1000’s of dollars in affiliate sales over years without doing anything. No other business can offer this type of passive income.

Sponsorship & Partnerships

As your blog grows, you will start building professional relationships with other popular bloggers and get introduced to big brands.

Many big brand companies would reach out to you for sponsoring your blog post or social media campaigns.

Not only you make money out of these but also build strong relationships with great people.

Personal Branding 

Many people have amazing skills but unfortunately, no one around them knows that. It is hard for anyone to showcase their skills to others without a platform.

A brand is your identity and the way people look at you. Blogging makes it easy for people to create a personal brand. Showcase their skills, communicate your message and build a community of like-minded people.

Share your ideas

Sometimes we want to share our mind, it could be some ideas, thoughts, motivations, something we learned and all those random things.

We look for someone to listen. In reality, not all of our friends or people around us are interested in what we have to say.

Blogging gives you that space to share your ideas. Who knows it could be something big that goes viral and you are suddenly famous.

Some Frequently asked questions

When it comes to starting a blog there are a lot of misconceptions about it. Here are some FAQ’s to clear some of it.

How much does a blog cost?

I recommend you to treat your blog as a business. If you are thinking to try blogging first and then commit later you probably won’t see the growth you wanted. You will end up wasting a lot of time.

You need to believe in this business model and need to go all in. Once you commit you will see the wonders happening.

Blogging is a business

Any business needs some initial investment and blog takes a super low investment.

To start with, I recommend to start small and grow as you make money from your blog.

Initially, it would cost you $10-$30 a month if you are serious about growth.

If you are aggressive to make money quickly then I would recommend putting $100 a month.

For a super aggressive growth-minded person like me, I would recommend running paid promotions and investing in premium tools. It takes about $150 + $50 on premium tools each month.

The idea is to quickly learn about blogging and earn a ton of money quickly.

Can I start a blog for free?

Yes, you can. There are many free blogging services. Since they are free there are many limitations on adding links or customizing the blog.

Honestly, treat the blog as a business and spend about $10 -$20 a month to get good returns.

Also, remember only when you commit seriously you will get somewhere else it becomes an option and won’t move forward. It happened to me when I started and ended up wasting a few months of my time.

Just look at the successful bloggers, no one has a free blog.

What is the difference between self-hosted WordPress and WordPress itself?

Simple answer. Free stuff is not always free and could cost you a lot without you knowing it.

In this case, the WordPress hosted will cost you a lot of money in a long-term because it has a lot of limitations to monetize your blog.

Here are some of the things you cannot do in the free hosted blogs. Which includes, WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Squarespace, Wix, and others.

• Install your preferred ad networks to your blog.
• Add more plugins to get additional features from the blog.
• Customize your theme to create better sales pages.
• Restriction on many SEO optimization techniques.

Pro Tip: Don’t waste time thinking about this topic, if you are interested in making money with your blog. You need a self-hosted blog.

4 Steps to start a blog and make money blogging

1. Pick the right topic
2. Setup blog for success
3. Blog Business plan
4. Promote your blog

Step 1: Pick the right topic

You might have heard from people to start a topic you are passionate about. Which is good advice because blogging could get boring if you are not interested in the topic you write about.

However, keep in mind we are starting a blog to make money. Not all the passion topic could make you enough money to worth your time.

Here is the trick. Pick your passion topic and add a different perspective to it.

For example, food blogs talk about recipes but they also learn photography and digital marketing from blogging.

Although, you are writing about food. You can still talk about food photography and sell products around it to make more money.

Following this approach, here are some of the top topics that are trending right now. See if you can add it to your primary interest and make more money from your blog.

1. 3D Printing
2. Drones
3. Hydroponics
4. Aquaponics
5. Fitness Gadget review
6. Teach entrepreneurship for kids
7. Gaming Reviews
8. Dog
9. Technology blog about AI and blockchain
10. Real estate investment like Airbnb

What if I am not able to come up with something?

There is something called analysis paralysis which means you get paralyzed because of too much analyzing a subject.

When you start anything you are not going to be perfect. Even if you find something that is perfect it is going to change as you grow.

Most of the beginners get stuck here, they want to figure out everything before starting a blog.

Practically it is not a good idea. When you start writing and collaborating with your audience, that is when you will start getting ideas for your topics.

A blog, over time, takes shape based on your audience interactions and not based on some market research.

So stop analyzing and start your blog today.

Step 2: Setup blog for success

Domain Name

Picking a domain name is important for branding but at the same time, we don’t have to spend too much of time to figure out a perfect one.

As long as the domain name is simple for people to remember and hints what the blog is about then we are good.

For example, 925 millionaires name was derived based on what we do. We help 9 -5 (925) job people to become millionaires. Simple, easy to remember and also tells the story about the blog we run.

Hosting 

As I mentioned earlier, this is a business and you need the best tools to run your business effectively.

Imagine, if you build a crappy restaurant but serve great food, people are still not going to be interested.

You need to invest in good stuff as you would for a real business.

There are tons of options out there for hosting infrastructure. But for beginners, I recommend Bluehost. Simply because they deal with new bloggers all the time and know exactly how to help you.

Click here to –> go to Bluehost <– and start your own blog. 

Just pick the recommended one because the extras are going to be really useful. You get the lower price deal only when you sign up as a new customer.

When you pick this plan the website automatically take you to set up a blog. The customer support is also really good if you are stuck or have questions.

Don’t worry too much about the add-on features, you can add it later if needed.

Once you have signed up follow the below instruction to set up the new blog.

Blog Design

I think here is where people waste the first few months in perfecting the blog design they have in their mind.

To be honest I do that too.

In reality, it doesn’t matter as much as we think.

A good design should basically help improve the user experience. When it comes to designing your blog think from the user perspective.

If you are the user what do you expect from a site? Most likely you would be interested in accessing the content.

You need to put the same principles while designing the blog.

• Keep the site clean – Look at any popular site most of them has a white and clean background. Simple fonts and the right size to read on mobile devices.
• Get rid of all distractions – View your website from your mobile, do you see popups, buttons or any other distractions to read the content. If yes, remove them it will improve the user experience and eventually improve search engine rankings.
• Site structure – Make sure the navigation is clear. More importantly, it should help navigate the user to keep reading more articles. It also includes breadcrumbs, internal links and read more recommendations.
• Loading Speed – It is important to make sure the site loads faster. Users are very impatient nowadays, no one wants a slow site. In order to get your site load faster, you need to have clean code, fewer plugins, and optimized images. Invest in a good theme which could take care of many of these optimizations.

Step 3: Blog Business plan

Before you start a blog, you should have a business plan.

The word business plan shouldn’t scare you, it is as simple as identifying few things so you know exactly what to do with your blog.

Here are the various things goes into the business plan.

Target Audience

Define your target audience clearly. To visualize your ideal audience, think of a person that would be interested in listening to you. Define the characteristics of that person like their age group, gender, and their interest.

Problem & Solution

Let’s say the target audience is one of your friends, what would you talk to them? What problems does that person talk to you relating to the topic?

And what solution would you give them?

Write it down and those problem and solution become your blog topics.

Remember blogging is only a medium but the problem it solves is a real world problem for real people.

Competitors Research

The shortcut to be successful with blogging is just follow the people who are already successful. Analyze your competitors and see what they are doing. Try to do the same, if possible make it better.

Reinventing a wheel is never a good idea.

Tools

We have very limited time for blogging, in these hours we are required to do a lot of work.

• Writing amazing posts
• Proofreading
• Creating images and videos
• Sharing your post on multiple social media sites
• Sending emails to your subscribers
• Engaging with our audience
• Taking care of your blog
• and so on

It is hard to do all this manually. We need tools to automate as much as possible so we can do only the things that are important.

Invest in tools wherever you see a possibility. Remember your time is more valuable.

Budget

Treat blogging as a business, not as a hobby. I keep hearing people say I don’t have money but I want to make money.

The answer to that problem is you need to find a job.

If you are into blogging, it does take some investment. Luckily that money comes back to you in multiple folds very quickly.

Create a budget that you are willing to spend each month. Stick to the commitment and continue to put in the work. You will see the results soon.

Pro Tip: Think like a CEO, successful business people always leverage other people time. They buy others time with money. 

Step 4: Promote your blog

No one will read your awesome content unless you tell people about it, which is called promoting your content.

Creating a great post is just a part of blogging and most of the success is going to come from the promotion.

Your content needs to reach the right target audience who are really interested in what you have posted.

Here are some of the easy ways to promote your content.

Organic Traffic Generation

After a few months of blogging consistently, you will start to see that the main source of traffic will come from Google.

This is where blogging becomes very interesting.

You will see that many posts will become evergreen and keep bringing in a ton of traffic with no additional effort.

When you start your blog, make sure you have optimized your blog for SEO. Write content that people are looking for and your blog growth will skyrocket automatically.

Social Media

If you look at the above picture, next to organic traffic all other main source traffic comes from social media. Social media is the best way to get started to get that traffic.

Social media traffic also helps Google to know that your site is being talked about and the organic traffic also increases quickly.

Trust & Branding

This is the direct traffic in the picture.

Direct traffic is someone visiting your site directly because they know about you. This is achieved only through branding. More you post and share with your audience, they will remember your brand and you.

Once they are convinced that you are one of their go-to resources, they come to your site directly.

People often bookmark a link, for reference these are a very powerful traffic source because they are your loyal customers who bring consistent revenue to your blog.

Making money from a blog

In order to make money from a blog, you need to focus.

You should have the above-discussed business plan in place, which means know your audience well and their problems that you are trying to solve with your blog.

Once you have the clear picture, think of ways to make money by helping your audience.

Treat every post as a sales page not in a direct sales perspective by asking to buy stuff but by educating them.

Provide maximum value to your audience and recommend them to your actual product or service that would make money for you.

I classify monetization in 2 ways.

Active Income

Active income is something that brings direct sales from your blog. It is something tangible that you provide and people pay for it.

Few active income methods are

eBook – Writing short and actionable ebooks that guide people to solve a specific problem. They could cost you less time and money to make. It is a great way to get started to make money from your blog.

Courses –  It is the next level to ebooks, you can dive deeper into a subject and teach them everything about a topic in detail. This is slightly difficult to create but makes a ton of money if you have mastered the sales process.

eCommerce – Something I have been experimenting for some time now and not many bloggers do this yet. My idea is instead of referring people to Amazon for a small affiliate commision why not sell those products ourselves.

In my opinion, so far this is one of the best ways to make money from a blog. Super easy to implement and makes a ton of profit without much work, if you use dropshipping method

More reads on this topic:

How to find profitable products to sell?

How we made $1000 using Dropshipping and Pinterest?

Passive Income

The next kind of income method is passive income. This is the type of income your blog brings passively. You don’t sell anything directly instead you will help others sell on your blog.

You make money passively for helping them without any additional effort.

Affiliate Marketing

Most popular way to make money from a blog. Many bloggers do it but I have seen many do it wrong and don’t make enough money. If you nail this concept your blog could make millions passively.

Here is an affiliate marketing guide I wrote about this.

Ads & Sponsored post

Ads are another way to make some money, if you choose the right ads partner then you could make some decent money.

But usually ads are directly proportional to the traffic numbers, it is a lot of work and takes time to get that traffic and make money.

I recommend you reach out to brands directly for displaying their ads on your site. Rather than relying on platforms like Adsense.

You can do the same to get sponsorship for posts from brands to make some good money.

Influencer Marketing

As your blog grows and you becoming popular you can sign up for influencer marketing. It means that you are an influencer in your field and when you recommend something, your followers listen to you.

Brands pay to recommend products to your followers. It is effective as you gain more influence in your field of interest.

Additional Questions about blogging

How much can you make from a blog?

It totally depends on you, I have seen people making millions and some bloggers struggle to make a few 100 dollars.

The monetization method is based on understanding your customer’s interest and creating products to help them out. The more the products you can sell you make a lot of money.

How to bring traffic to the blog?

There are tons of ways to bring traffic to your blog.

• Social media sites – Share your blog post on all social media sites and people can find your site.
• Search engines – Search engines show your blog post when they search using certain keywords.
• Referral sites – Other sites referring traffic to go to your site. It could be linked to others blog.
• Direct – People exactly know your site address and visit your site directly.

How much traffic?

How much traffic is needed to make some decent money? More than the traffic number the quality of the traffic is important. You can make money even with a few hundred visitors if they are super interested in your topic.

Conclusion

I can’t stress this enough blogging is one of the best passive income (often active) opportunities available right now. You won’t believe how easy it is once you learn the business model around it.

You are not going to lose anything by starting to blog. Give it a try and you will thank me later.

p.s. If you subscribe to Bluehost hosting using this link -> Bluehost do let me know. I might be able to get you some free themes and discounts on my products.