How to Start a Profitable Blog

If you want to learn how to start a profitable blog, then you have come to the right place!

There are so many great reasons to start a blog and benefits of starting a blog. In my opinion, blogging really is the best job ever because of the opportunity to help people to solve their problems and improve their lives and to be able to spend your time working on something you are completely passionate about.

It’s also a way to potentially earn a great income in order to help provide for your family (as an entrepreneur, your income is virtually limitless—there are many bloggers who make over $100,000 a year).

And other perks include being able to have autonomy and be your own boss, have a flexible work schedule, and work from home or anywhere else that you want. So another benefit of blogging is that you can work from home in order to be there to take care of children or elderly parents.

Interested? Awesome! The great thing is you can start a blog in about 10 minutes! Learn how below!

 

The Earning Potential of Blogging

Maybe you’re afraid that you won’t be able to make money as a blogger. Well, the awesome thing about blogging is that bloggers are just wonderful but truly ordinary people sharing what they really care about and trying to help others improve their lives.

As a newer blogger I am still learning a lot about blogging and am working to increase my income, but over the last several months I have been able to earn between $1,500 and $2,000 a month blogging part-time, while working my full-time job.

But the true earning potential of blogging is huge! Here are a few of my favorite bloggers who make great incomes (many of them are personal finance bloggers like me, but there are a few from other niches as well):

Rosemarie at The Busy Budgeter: More than $100,000 per month.

Kristin at Believe in a Budget: More than $100,000 a month as of 2018.

Michelle at Making Sense of Cents: More than $100,000 a month.

Carly at Mommy on Purpose: Over $5,000 a month when she published her last income report a couple of years ago (plus additional income from blogging about blogging); you can receive current income reports by joining her email list.

Heather and Pete at It’s a Lovely Life: More than $100,000 a month after expenses.

Abby at Just a Girl and Her Blog: More than $40,000 per month.

Lena at What Mommy Does: She was making more than $10,000 a month a couple of years ago, and her income has undoubtedly increased measurably since then.

Caroline Vencil: More than $10,000 per month.

Alex and Lauren at Avocadu: More than $20,000 per month (without including income related to blogging about blogging).

Sarah Titus: More than $100,000 per month.

 

Other Amazing Benefits of Blogging

The awesome earning potential of blogging is incredible alone, but there are many other amazing benefits of blogging, like being able to work for yourself (be your own boss!), set your own schedule, work from home (or anywhere you want!), and so much more! Check out these awesome reasons to start blogging!

 

Steps to Start a Profitable Blog

Now, here are the simple steps to start a money-making blog. Each step listed here will be explained in more detail in the next section below. You can follow the steps below and have a blog started in just 15 minutes. It’s easy and fun!

1. Identify a topic to blog about.
2. Choose a name and domain for your blog.
3. Choose a hosting service provider.
4. Choose your plan and set up your account.
5. Install WordPress.
6. Choose a theme and start setting up your blog through WordPress.org.
7. Start creating amazing content for your blog!

 

7 Simple Steps to Start a Money-Making Blog

Blogging has got to be one of the simplest and least expensive businesses to start. All you need is some time, a laptop and internet connection, and a passion you want to share with others. You can literally set up a basic blog in 15 minutes or less. So let’s get started!

 

 

1. Identify a topic (niche) to blog about.

The first thing that you need to do in order to begin blogging is to choose a topic to blog about. While it is true that you can set up a blog and write about any and every topic that you want, if you want to monetize your blog, you should generally choose a particular topic and stick to it. This is important in part because you will rank higher in Google results if you make it easier for the search engine to understand what you are blogging about by staying with one topic. In addition, when you blog about a particular topic, people who come to your blog will know what to expect, and so it may be easier to turn them into loyal readers. In other words, your following will grow more quickly.

Because you are going to have to write a lot of content and do so pretty consistently (at least for the first few years), if you want to make good money blogging, you should choose a topic that is pretty broad and that you love.

You can probably create a money-making blog in virtually any niche (read this article to learn how bloggers make money), but because the following are broadly popular topics, you are likely to have more success earning income from you blog if you stick with one of the six niches listed here.

• Making money
• Personal finance
• Lifestyle
• Food
• Health and fitness
• Beauty and fashion

For myself, I have been passionate about personal finance ever since I learned about the power of compound interest back in 2005. I was in a class that had nothing in general to do with personal finance, but on that day the instructor chose to teach about compound interest, and it changed my life forever.

After that I wanted to learn everything I could about the subject, and so I started devouring articles and books on the topic. At one point I even went alphabetically through the library’s personal finance section, reading all of the books in the collection until well past the middle of the alphabet.

Eventually I got interested in another topic, but by then very little of what I was reading was new information, in any case. I’m an editor by trade and have also done freelance editing and writing for over 15 years (since before I graduated from college), so when I learned that you could actually make money blogging about personal finance, I was ecstatic!

Of course I love the opportunity to make money writing about and teaching others about something that I care about so deeply.

So how can you decide on a niche? Ask yourself these questions: What am I passionate about? Is this something that a lot of other people are passionate about, as well? Are there good ways that I can make money in this niche (through affiliate marketing, selling products, or ad revenue through high traffic)?  (See the list above for a good indication of whether or not you can.) If the answer is no to any of these questions, then you might want to keep looking at other options.

 

2. Choose a name and domain for your blog.

Once you have followed the guidelines above and chosen a topic to blog about, your next step is to choose a name for your website, such as iloveallcupcakes.com. This is the fun part! But it can also be a little tricky because of course many of the simplest names are already taken, such as personalfinances.com. But you could use your name, if it is not common and isn’t already a domain name for someone else. Or you could try a variety of pairings of words to find an available domain name. For example, you could blog at bestfitnesscoachever.com.

In general, when choosing a domain name, you should follow these guidelines:

1. Make it short. (My own blog title is not the best example of this, but I love the name anyway! :))
2. Make it easy to remember.
3. Include a word related to your niche market if you would like, as this can be a slight advantage in search rankings.
4. Make it something easy to pronounce.
5. Don’t use the name of another company in your domain name. So, for example, don’t choose “bestiphonereviews.com” or “bloggingforapples.com.” If you do, you could get yourself sued for copyright infringement.
6. Use something that you could keep for the long term, if desired.
7. Typically avoid web addresses with hyphens or numerals,
8. Check to see if the URL you would like is available. If not, keep trying similar words and combinations till you find one that works that is available.
9. Go with .com, since that is what is easiest to remember.
10. Consider purchasing the other extensions of the web address so that someone else can’t buy them out from under you.

Once you have decided on one or a few potential domain names, type them in a search bar or Google them to see if they are still available. If you are from the U.S., you may also want to do a search for the name in the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

If you would like help choosing a name, go to our new, closed Families for Financial Freedom community Facebook group and create a poll and ask group members to vote on their favorite. It is an awesome, supportive community,

3. Choose a hosting service provider.

The next step to open a blog is to choose a hosting service. The hosting service is the company that puts your website up on the internet so that others can find it. It is basically like an online hard drive for your blog content.

There are a lot of hosts to choose from, and honestly I did quite a bit of research before I decided on one. I finally decided on SiteGround because of the comments in the threads about web hosting providers in a couple of private Facebook groups that I am a member of. The majority of bloggers in both groups use SiteGround, and they said they were happy with both the hosting service and the customer service and technical support.

There were also some people in both threads who said that they had had bad experiences with Bluehost, but no one had said that about SiteGround. So even though I love saving money, the $1 or $2 a month I would save with Bluehost with the two smaller plans just aren’t worth the potential problems.

SiteGround’s hosting price is a good deal (though it is not the cheapest—but at an introductory rate of just $3.95 a month for their starter plan, it is still a great deal!), and the web hosting service also had good reviews when I Googled “SiteGround reviews.” I did the same thing for Bluehost, and looked through at least three pages’ worth of results for each—because I really wanted to make a good choice since I planned to sign up for at least a couple of year’s worth of hosting service.

Bluehost is cheaper, but it also had a lower ranking in various review sites, and again, those in the FB groups recommended SiteGround (and many who initially started with Bluehost said that they had moved over to SiteGround later). So I don’t know why so many bloggers promote Bluehost, but unless the price is a real factor (and the price difference should only be a couple of dollars a month at most, so I think for most people it won’t be), I recommend you go with SiteGround.

 

 

 4. Choose your plan and set up your account.

Choose your hosting plan. Now that we’ve got that settled, you can choose your SiteGround plan. To set up your site right now (it takes only about 15 minutes), open a new browser window and go to siteground.com.

Then choose the option on the right, Managed WordPress hosting (to host your WordPress site) by clicking on Get Started.

SiteGround has three plans to choose from: StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek. One thing that is super helpful on their site is that they give you a guideline for which plan to choose based on how big you think your site will grow to (or how big it is, if you’re transferring your site from another web hosting service).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because I intended to grow my site quite rapidly and because the price difference between the least expensive and the middle plan was only a couple of dollars a month, I went with the GrowBig plan to start.

Since I’m going to assume that you want to grow your blog in order to grow your income, as well, I’m going to recommend that you start with the GrowBig plan. But if you choose the StartUp plan and then outgrow it by receiving many more visitors to your site than the plan is meant to accommodate, you can easily upgrade to the GrowBig plan at that time.

And even when I’ve now had more than 100,000 visitors on my site in a month, I didn’t have any problems with the GrowBig plan, so I really wouldn’t worry about getting too many visitors and slowing down your site.

So choose your plan, and then click Get Plan.

Enter your domain name. Now, type in your desired domain name. Then click Proceed.

 

Enter your account information. Here, you will fill out your account information by choosing an email address and password to use with your SiteGround account (it can be your personal email account, such as yourname@gmail.com).

 

 

 

Enter your client information. And then you will fill out your contact information (address and phone number).

 

Enter your payment information. Next, enter your payment information. (Choose to pay for 12 months or more at a time for the best deal.)

 

 

Determine if you want any of the extra services. You can also register your domain name at this time (which you should do unless you’ve already registered your domain name with another service provider or haven’t decided on a name yet), decide whether to make your domain private or not, and choose whether to pay for the optional site scanner that will check your site daily to see if it has been hacked. If you don’t want your personal information tied to your blog to be publicly available, you should choose to purchase domain privacy (which I did do, as well; it is only an extra dollar a month, and the privacy protection is worth it I feel).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next, make sure you check the box that says you agree to the terms of service (and also check the box that indicates that you want to receive SiteGround news and special offers, if you choose to), and then click the button that says Pay Now.

Awesome—you now have a hosting service! Woohoo!

Now you’re ready to install WordPress (more on this below; you can even ask one of the awesome customer reps at SiteGround to do it for you!) and set up your site. Again, you can do it in 15 minutes or less!

This is where the fun part really begins!

5. Install WordPress.

Complete software setup. While there are several blogging platforms to choose from, the most popular choice for those who want to run profitable blogs is one from WordPress.org (not the free WordPress.com—because you don’t own the content and so your options for monetizing might be limited). The reason most bloggers use WordPress is largely because WordPress is very customizable with thousands of different themes and countless plugins.

Installing WordPress really is easy to do (learn how below), but if that part seems overly daunting, you can also contact a SiteGround representative via live chat and ask them to set up WordPress for you. They can do it for you in about 15 minutes, and then you’ll be able to access your new site.

If you choose to set up WordPress yourself, then from within your SiteGround account, from the Websites tab, click on the red CPanel button.

Then, from the Autoinstallers section (just a little ways down the page), click WordPress, and then click Install.

Then fill out the Software Setup information. Choose your protocol; I recommend you use https (rather than http). This gives visitors to your site more confidence that your site is secure.

Choose your domain name from the drop-down list (such as www.myblogname.com).

For the In Directory option, you can leave this blank unless you know you want to use it.

Complete site settings. Fill in the site name, such as  My Blog Name.

Provide the site description with a sentence about the purpose of your blog.

Choose an admin username and password that you will use to log in to your blog.

For admin email, enter your email address.

Then choose your preferred language, decide if you would like to select plugins to limit the number of login attempts, or allow login without a password (passwordless login).

You can then choose a theme right then if you want to (such as the Astra theme or Divi theme from Elegant Themes, which I will talk about below), but you may want to wait until you are in the backend of WordPress once you have it installed to do that. (I go over how to choose a theme and install it from the backend of WordPress in the next step.)

Then click Install. Congratulations—you now have a blog! Yay!

You should now be able to log in to WordPress with the new username and password you just set up a couple of minutes ago.

 

6. Choose a theme and start setting up your blog through WordPress.org.

Now that you have installed WordPress, you can start setting up your blog!

Go to https://www.YOURDOMAINNAMEHERE.com/wp-admin

You can use one of many free themes (I have heard that the free Astra theme is one of the best because it is easy to use and fast [and it has excellent ratings, so I believe it], so if money is pretty tight, this is a great way to go) to get you started, or for about $100 you can choose a potentially more professional-looking theme from one of the theme families like Genesis or Divi from Elegant Themes.

I chose the Divi theme from Elegant Themes because it works great, has a lot of design layout templates to choose from, and has a super helpful drag-and-drop feature to save time while creating your web pages. It is also user friendly and customizable and offers features that other services charge extra for, such as A/B testing and countdown timers (which are very helpful when you intend to make money from your blog!).

The Divi theme has close to 100 design layouts you can choose from (and they regularly add more, so they very well might have over 100 layouts by the time you read this!), so you are sure to find a layout with a look and feel that you love. Or if you want to keep things super simple, you can even choose the Simple layout to get started, like I did.

If you have the money, you can pay $250 to buy an unlimited license for the Divi theme, which means you can use it year after year. Or again, you can pay $100 for the first year, and according to what I have read, you can then just pay the difference in price ($150) after a year to upgrade to the unlimited license if you want to. (I decided to go with the unlimited license to start because I had heard great things about the product and plan to use it for years to come with this and perhaps future websites I create, which you can also do with the unlimited license.)

I am not an overly techie person, but learning to use the Divi theme has overall been pretty simple (and fun!).

It really is a great product. For example, in addition to having different types of web pages already laid out for your in various designs, such as the home page, about page, post page, sales page, contact page, content page, and more, you can clone pages you have already made and modify them to create similar pages and do other time-saving tricks. Learn more about the Divi theme here.

And just a word of caution: From what I have read, the Genesis theme, though it has some great features and functionality, is not very user friendly. So I would recommend that you not start with that theme while you are just learning to use WordPress and learning the ins and outs of blogging.

Again, if money is tight, you can get a free WordPress Astra theme that will work well and give you all the functionality you need to get started.

 

As you set up your blog, make sure you include the following:

• A good profile picture (but you do not need to spend money on a professional photo if you do not want to)
• A well-thought-out blog menu with your blog’s main categories and other important pages
• A strong About Me page
• A privacy policy page
• A Disclosure page (if you plan to use affiliate links)
• Contact information
• Links to your social media pages

7. Start creating amazing content for your blog!

You’ve arrived! You can now start creating awesome content for your future readers. Before beginning to really promote your blog through social media and other methods, you may want to have at least 5 to 10 pillar posts, which are (generally longer) posts made up of core content that helps your readers solve problems that they face.

Remember to keep your ideal reader (your avatar) in mind as you write. And then write, write, write! Set up a schedule of days you plan to post blogs, and then stick to it. Your readers will appreciate the predictability of knowing when to expect to hear from you.

And remember—blogging is supposed to be fun!

To learn more, read about ways that bloggers make money and why blogging is the best job ever.

 

Conclusion

In my opinion, blogging really is the best job ever. It lets you write about your passion. It allows a flexible schedule and working from home (or anywhere!) in your jammies! It allows you to be your own boss and have autonomy in your work. It allows you to work as hard and as much as you want—and to see direct results and rewards for the effort you put in. It allows you the opportunity to earn an amazing income. It allows you an outlet for your creativity. And most important, for me, it allows you to be home with your little ones or to take care of elderly parents.

Note: If you really want to learn the basic ins and outs of creating a profitable blog quickly, I recommend the Blog by Number course and ebook by Suzi Whitford. It’s the course that I took to get started as a new blogger. You can complete the course in less than three hours (not all in one sitting, unless you want to! :D) and have an excellent introduction to how to start a blog and how to begin monetizing it in order to earn money. And the class was just updated this month!

I have actually purchased all of Suzi’s courses now (and she has a lot of them!), and they are all excellent. She is an engaging and fun instructor who teaches in an easy-to-understand and even fun way. She’s great.

 

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