Can you still make a ton of money using a blog in 2019? Of course! The fundamentals of making money online through blogging haven’t changed much, but it is a heck of a lot noisier out there than it used to be. Here is a very high-level overview of the process.
How money is made with blogging
Making money with a blog starts with writing content that attracts an audience and engaging with that audience to create a regular readership. When that readership is large enough and receptive, the blog is monetized by offering something for sale or selling space on your site to advertisers. From there, additional products and content are created to continue revenue generation.
Making a blog
The first thing you have to do is decide on what sort of content you want to create to attract your audience and the kinds of products you’ll eventually make to sell to that audience. This is called finding your niche. You must determine if there is demand for what you want to sell and a large enough audience out there to meet your blog’s financial goals first before you do anything else.
If this is the case, then you need to handle the technical part of your blog. You will need to purchase a domain name and hosting for your website. Make sure that whoever you host with allows commercial sites and what your visitor limits are before you have to get bumped up to different tiers of service. Once that is done, the site will need to be built. By far the fastest way to create a blogging website that can be later turned into a business is WordPress. Most ISPs will have a way to automatically install it and there are many guides out there to help you create a beautiful, functional, and secure eCommerce website with WordPress.
Creating content and growing an audience
If your goal is to attract people, you will need to post a fresh piece of content at least weekly. If you can draft out topics for six months in advance that will help you keep on top of the content treadmill. Once you have regular content going, it’s time to build your audience.
The fast way to do it is to hire an SEO company. An SEO services company will know all of the technical things that have to happen to get ranked on keywords that are related to your niche. This will draw in prospective customers who will be interested in what you are writing about. They can also help you create PPC campaigns if you want to pay for advertising and draw in an audience fast. However, PPC is best used after you’ve monetized your blog.
You don’t need to have a big site to start with an SEO company, but you will have to pay for their services. Starting early will keep you from making mistakes that can be expensive to undo, such as eliminating bad backlinks or creating a poor site design.
If you don’t want to pay for an SEO company or PPC up front, then your best option is to use social media to advertise your site and its posts. Find out which channels your audience likes to use the most, then start interacting with them on those channels and share your posts.
Monetization
Once your audience is large enough, then you can start experimenting with monetization. There is a balance that has to be struck between continuing to give your current readers what they want and putting in your sales pitches.
If you’re already attracting an audience, you may have already received pitches for sponsored posts or guest posts. This is a great way to start making money, but you must be certain that the content they offer is suitable for your audience and doesn’t read like a bunch of spam. Ask yourself if you’d post that content yourself. Charging a suitable price for posting (e.g. $100 for a post) will drive away many of the low-quality people looking for a backlink.
The same principle applies to putting up banner advertising. It has to be something that your readership wants. However, banner advertising is not as attractive as other methods of monetization. Many people use ad-blockers and new privacy laws could put you on the hook for any private information gathered through those ads.
The best way to monetize is to give them more of what you’re already giving them but in a richer form. The creation of a webinar, course, e-book, or a software product related to what you’re already giving them is the most lucrative way to monetize your blog. It’s more work on your end, but it can pay off handsomely if you’ve built up a receptive audience.
These are the basics, but each one of these steps could be fleshed out into a whole book! Do your research beforehand, and don’t neglect the basics. Make sure that you have an idea for a product and that there is a market for it before you sink money into building a money-making blog.
Author
Chris Hickman is the Founder and CEO at Adficient with 15 years of experience in search marketing and conversion optimization. Since 2006, he founded GetBackonGoogle.com, helping businesses and websites suspended in Adwords to Get Back on Google
