I get this question a lot.
How do bloggers make money?
It is interesting because not many realize that blogging is a profitable internet business with very less investment. And it has a long sustainability compared to any other business.
Unfortunately many don’t understand how it works. Many still think it is a hobby.
But for me, it is an opportunity. Let me explain how.
People using the Internet is growing significantly and it is estimated that there would be 4.1 billion users using the internet by 2020.
That means more people will use the internet to consume information. More people will be there to buy your products and services.
Blogging is a way of putting that information to the current users and to the people from the future.
I think of it like building asset online and create recurring income with little effort.
Getting to the right mindset
In order to start any business, it requires the right mindset to make money and sustain in that business. Since our goal is to make money from our blog, we need to understand the basics of blogging.
There are 2 types of bloggers you can see,
- Who write about their passion as an hobby or write post to keep a journal
- Who blogs to make money
The difference between 2 are, the first set of people don’t care too much about what they write and who reads their content. It is a personal hobby.
But the second set of people is serious writers who find ways to create content to help others. They build followers and a community that support the topic they write about.
There are some people that wave around the fence and try to test the water first before they become serious. Usually, they waste a lot of time and effort and finally give up.
This is the reason I recommend figuring out the goal first.
If you are doing it for a hobby then there are many free blogging platform, just sign up for one and you are good to go.
But if you are serious about making money, even if it is future then you need to put in some effort and get everything right from the beginning.
Blogging Business Model
The fundamentals to make money from your business is you need customers. In order to get customers, you need to attract the right set of people to come to you and convince them to buy your products. Only when you sell stuff you are in the business. But what about ads,
But what about ads, selling ads is also ok (not great) but it depends too much on your traffic. You will make a decent amount only when you have a significant amount of traffic to your site. Which is hard and takes time. There are other methods that are much easier and we will cover that in another post.
So in blogging, the process goes like this
- Attract readers to read your content
- Make them follow you
- Build trust
- Sell your product or service
All sounds good right.
However, in order to do all these, you need to have a solid platform. The platform that supports your business over the course of time.
Over the period of time, you will realize that the platform and tools are going to make or break your business.
The right set of tools
If you are serious about doing a business then you need to have the right set of tools. They help accelerate the growth and get to your destination much faster.
Many people I know struggle to decide whether to test the blogging using a free platform and then transition to a paid one.
Unfortunately, they end up wasting their time and effort.
Because if you don’t commit you will never make it.
That’s the reason I recommend a self-hosted WordPress blogging hosted on Bluehost.
It provides a ton of plugins and add-on tools that you will not get in any free platform. Once you get a hang of it, you will realize the value of it.
Fortunately, it’s not that expensive to get started in this Bluehost platform. It’s about $3.49 per month currently. I have seen they keep changing their price often and currently, they are running some offers as low are $2.65, so check it out and sign up now.
I would encourage you to sign up even if it double the cost, it’s not about saving those few $ but it about how you make a wealthy living by investing online.
Once you sign up Bluehost makes it super easy to launch your blog in minutes. They have everything pre-build for WordPress and the best part is their customer service. You can reach out to them anytime and they help fix your issues quickly.
You also get a free domain when you buy hosting from Bluehost and you can enter the domain name and follow the step by step instruction.
Once you fill in the form and complete the purchase, next step is to install WordPress. There is also an option to buy professional service to install it for you. But I suggest you installing it yourself.
If you get stuck or not sure about the next steps you can reach the customer service from Bluehost and they will help you out.
Under hosting section in the cpanel, you will find the website section.
Just click the Install WordPress button.
Again stick to the do it yourself and there is no need to get an expert for installation.
Once you click install it will ask you to enter the domain. This is an important step and make sure you map the right domain now, because it might get complicated if you want to change your domain later.
Since you bought the domain from Bluehost it would be listed in the drop down. Select the domain you wanted to map to.
Once the installation is completed, it will provide you default credentials to login to WordPress.
Then goto WordPress admin using the admin URL listed.
And enter the username and password to login.
Congratulations you have your blog ready.
There is a lot you can do to make your blog more professional.
Most important of all is to fill it with useful content.
Start with your first post right away and later you can work on the look and feel and adding other tools.
I would love to know how your blog is doing, so hit me up and let me know.