Are you looking for a way to make money online with just your computer?
Maybe you want to make a blog but you aren’t sure where to begin.
If you like writing then blogging might be for you. With its low start-up cost, blogging can be a fantastic way to start making money even in 2024.
Many people don’t know that blogging can be a very high-income business idea. There have been many blogs that eventually were sold by the owners for millions of dollars. One of the biggest blogs in the world, HuffPost, made $500 million in 2020.
There are thousands of small bloggers that make over $1000 per month. You can start writing and building up your audience so that you can start making money too.
Choosing a niche
The first step in making a blog is choosing what your niche is. A niche is the topic that your blog will write about. One awesome thing about blogging is that you can choose any niche you want to write about.
Some of the most common niches in 2024 are:
- Health and Fitness
- Travel
- Food
- Personal Finance
- Fashion
- Making Money
- Technology
- Parenting
These are just a few ideas but there are so many more to choose from.
Research Your Niche
Once you have chosen your niche you are going to want to research questions that people in your niche have. One way you can do this is by doing a Google search about your niche and seeing what other bloggers in your niche are writing about.
For example, for this blog, I had to think about what kind of questions people in my niche would ask. One of them was, “How do I make money online?” And so that gave me many ideas about articles that could write to answer that.
Start Your Website
While many websites allow you to make an account and start posting, I would recommend creating your own website. The reason for this is that it allows you to monetize your blog in many different ways.
To create your website I would use Bluehost. This is the same web hosting company I used for The Money Making Minds. There are lots of resources and videos to help you set it up.
Another benefit to Bluehost is that it is relatively cheap for their web hosting services. You can purchase the basic plan without breaking the bank. This is the one thing that you will have to invest a little bit of money into to get your blog started but it is worth the return.
Your First Post
Now you’re all set to write your first post! If you’re like me you might struggle with figuring out exactly what you want to write about in your articles.
I used Chat GPT to come up with ideas for blog articles. This is a great resource that can be helpful in some parts of your research although I would not fully rely on it.
Once you have your idea then you can start writing. There is not a certain word count that you need to meet to have a blog post, but I would recommend at least 1000 words.
You will want to add pictures because that makes your blog look more attractive plus it gives the reader a break from reading. It may be tempting to just use a picture from Google but you definitely should not do that because that can cause copyright issues. There are a few websites that allow you to use photos commercially for free.
Here are a few:
- Unsplash
- Pexels
- Vecteezy
Photo by RetroSupply on Unsplash
3-Step Monetization
Now that you have started writing articles, you want to start making money with your blog right?
I want to give you three steps that you can take to start making money with your blog. They are put in this order so that you can start implementing them as your blog gains more readers and popularity.
- Ads
The first step is ads. These will be posted on your blog and you will get paid when people view your articles with the ads on them. I recommend using Google Adsense at first.
It is pretty easy to set up and all of the instructions can be found on the Google AdSense website.
Ads won’t make you lots and lots of money at first but it is a great way to start monetizing your blog. Once you set it up and have the ads on your article you will make money for people just opening your article.
- Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the next step. This is how you can start making a lot more with your blog.
Affiliate marketing is a program that many companies have that allows you to make money by recommending products. Once you get accepted into the program you will be given an affiliate link. This is the link that will allow you to make money from your blog. The best part is that it can be used in any niche.
For example, let’s say you are part of the health and fitness niche. You can sign up for affiliate programs for companies that sell products that you use or that your audience would use.
Recommend Products
Then you recommend these products to your readers and if they purchase that product through your affiliate link, then you will make a commission on that sale.
Depending on the company that commission could be as little as 5% or some affiliate programs will pay you up to 50% or more! This is why when you look into affiliate programs you want to make sure you sign up for some with those high commission rates.
An easy affiliate program to join is Amazon Affiliates. It is easy to get in and you can recommend some of the thousands of products that Amazon has. The commission rate is not very high but it’s a good start!
As your blog gains popularity, your affiliate marketing can make you thousands of dollars per month. Make sure that you are recommending quality products because you don’t want to mislead your audience and lose their trust.
- Online Products
Once you have gained a good following and have shown that you know a lot about your niche then you can start making online products. These could be something like a guide.
After creating this guide, you can sell it to your audience and make money from the knowledge that you can share with others.
The nice thing about online products is that you can receive all the money because unlike with affiliate marketing, you are the one who created the product instead of only recommending a product from another company.
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
This article showed you the steps that you can take to create a blog and monetize it. There are so many ways that you can make money online, and blogging is a great way to share your knowledge with other people while making some cash at the same time. The cool thing about blogging is that there is no limit to how much money you can make with it.
I hope this article helped answer questions you had about blogging and encouraged you to start making your own blog today!
Blog post photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash