How to Make Money Blogging for Beginners

There are actually many ways new bloggers or a beginner can make money with their blogs. But I’ll talk about a few things that really worked for me.

The first one is Content Marketing which is almost obvious.

As I write this, victorwinners.com has been read by more than two million people, across 135 countries but when I started blogging, I didn’t really care about Content Marketing. In fact I knew almost nothing about it.

I started out with lifestyle blogging and I blogged about anything I felt like talking about.

From Poetry, short stories, leadership to personal opinion, i wrote all these articles on my blog.

Looking back, I can say that at some point, it was almost difficult to place a finger on what exactly my blog was all about.

And this didn’t help me. Because, at the end of the day, the blog only managed to survive for a very short while.

Why was this so?

The reason behind this was because my y blogging strategy was not sustainable. I didn’t have any decent traffic except a few family and friends who stopped by to read some of my posts, whenever they could.

It was so bad that at a point I couldn’t renew my hosting subscription because the blog was not making profit so I had to quit.

3 years later, I didn’t just start a blog that had a decent traffic, my new blog started making some modest success that was pretty noticeable.

Gradually, we got cited by major publications. Other bloggers teamed up to collaborate with us at different times.

At a point, we were even got listed as one of the top 50 web design blogs on the internet, alongside major websites like Hongkiat, Envato, Sitepoint etc.

But, what did we do differently?

You might be wondering, what exactly did we do differently, but here’s the thing; everything you do online is about traffic.

Whether you’re running ads, selling products and services, etc., your blog can only make money if you have some decent number of people coming over to read and interact with the blog.

As soon as you’re able to fix your traffic, you will be able to fix a lot other things that can enhance your ability to make money with your blog.

Now, we’re going to discuss this in details much later. Meanwhile, let’s look at the important factors that you’ll want to note if you really want to make money blogging online.

Important Factors to Note

The following are important factors that will decide whether you will make money blogging or not…

In this part we’ll discuss about the three factors that determines whether your blog will make money or not.

I’ll divide this part into three sub heads, Niche, Popularity, Business Model, Consistency and we’re doing this right away…

Your Niche

The niche you’re blogging about is one of the biggest factors that can affect your ability to make money blogging. To a large extent, your niche can also determine the duration it will take for you to make money with your blog, whether new or old.

Here are some instances…

Let’s say you’re blogging on a niche that has a large number of experts for instance…

Usually, a lot of bloggers will tell you that where a large number of experts exists in a niche, it is an indication that the niche is very profitable.

Now, that’s not wrong. But, here’s the catch; as a beginner, the more the experts you have in a particular niche, the fiercer the competition and the harder it is for you to make a lot of headway in the niche, compared to another blogger in a different niche with just a few experts.

Of course, I’m not saying you should ignore niches with a large number of experts. With the right strategies, you can still scale your new blog and make some decent income online even in competitive niches.

But everything all boils down to your goal, the duration of time you’re willing to wait and the effort you’d be ready to put in before your blog can start making money online.

Another instance your niche will influence how soon you make money with your blog is where you’re blogging on a niche that’s relatively new, seasonal or a topical area with very little interested searchers…

Niches like these may take too long to make any impact compared to other niches. Or in some cases it may not generate any online income altogether.

So, at the end of the day, the niche you decide to blog about may be one of the biggest decider if blogging will actually work for you as a means of generating income online or not.

With this in mind, you have to be very careful while choosing a niche. And you have to put in considerations for your blogging goals and the resources you have.

Like I mentioned earlier, if you can choose the right niche, then you have better chances to make money online with your blog.

That said, in some cases, it might take a new blogger extra work and effort to really break through a niche that’s saturated with established experts.

Popularity and Engagement

The second factor that can affects a blogger’s ability to make money on their blog is the popularity of the blog. And, the rate of engagement it has.

If your blog is popular then that means a lot of people will know about the blog.

If this happens and you decide to monetize the blog by way of placing advertisement, more people will want to advertise with you. And the more of such advertisement you have, the more money you make off the blog.

For you to get popularity and a high number of engagement on your blog, there are certain things you need to put in place…

Starting with your SEO, you don’t just want to create random posts for the blog, you want to create an SEO strategy that will help you to get the right kind of traffic with the right keywords.

To improve your popularity and the rate of engagement you have, you can write more engaging content and also, find ways to promote the blog across other platforms like social media or engage in guest blogging or paid promotions.

Consistency

Another important factor that affects the capacity of any blog to make money is consistency.

It is true, blogging is not a fast money making venture. In most cases, it might take years before you make your first few dollars as a blogger.

Sometimes too, before you get to make the money, you will need to put in a lot of work and effort before hand.

Truth is, if you’re not putting in this effort where you have to, you may not earn a lot out of blogging.

And beyond putting in the effort, you have to be very consistent about how you’re posting on the blog.

Truth be told, a lot of new bloggers are still amateurish, with no specific strategy, posting only when they have inspiration or feel like posting, yet expecting their blogs will make money fast.

This doesn’t work.

If you’re in a formal employment, you won’t go to work or open your business only on days you feel like it. You’d show up every day, even on days you don’t feel like it. These are part of the things that makes you earn your income.

Your Blogging Model

Another factor that affects the success of a blog is the blogging model used by the blogger.

A blogging model like any business model is a repeatable strategy you can use to make money with your blog consistently.

Most new bloggers fail to realize that blogging is not exactly a direct tool for making money online. It is meant to be an indirect tool to generate income.

So, besides knowing about blogging model, you may want to ask yourself, which of the indirect blogging strategy will I use to make money with my blog?

Blogging Models you can Use

The following are some of the Popular Blogging Models Used by Successful Bloggers.

They are practical business models that have worked for a lot of these bloggers. You can also try them for your blog and see what works best…

Advertising Model

Many bloggers choose the 3rd party advertising model. This model works very well with news styled blogs…

With this blogging model, you update different kinds of posts on your blog consistently, get some decent traffic and audience, advertise to this audience on the blog via Google Adsense, Paid ads, Affiliate ads etc, thus making money from the ads.

If you look around, this model is very popular with majority of the news and entertainment blogs.

The good thing about this model is that you don’t have to be the original source of all the articles posted on your blog. There’ll always be news and information around where you can source your articles, write and update them on your blog.

Also, this model demands a lot of time investment so it may not work effectively for all bloggers, especially if you’re blogging on a part time basis.

This is because for a part time blogger, depending on your schedule, you may not have enough time to write consistent posts that will generate the kind of traffic that can help you monetize your blog successfully.

So in that case, focusing on Google Adsense, Affiliate Ads or Paid Ads as a blogging Model may not work for you as a blogging model or monetization strategy.

Physical Product Model

This model thrives on selling a physical product. With the physical product model, you create or buy products then get your blog posts targeted at potential audience that will be interested in those products.

This particular blogging model is popular with e-commerce businesses and other businesses focused on selling some form of physical products to a specific audience.

Even when the physical product model is very effective, if your product is not unique or targeted at a unique demographic, you may still have issues getting a decent traffic that can become buyers.

Compared to the 3rd party advertising model, it is easier for a new blogger to make money with this model especially if you’re selling a unique product or targeting a highly profitable demographic.

Service Model

The service model is another popular blogging model. Many renown bloggers have used this to make money with their blogs.

With the Service Model, you blog about a particular skill you’re good at for example Photography, Graphics Design, Digital Marketing etc.

When optimized properly, your targeted clients come to your blog, Landing page, etc. via the your optimized content. And then in turn, you make money selling those services to them.

One peculiar thing about this model is the fact that you’ll have to be knowledgeable in a certain skill before even getting started…

What this implies is that if you don’t have the particular skill set you want to market to your audience, you’ll have to learn the skills first.

Another noticeable thing about this blogging model is that the more expertise you demonstrate with your brand, the more people will get to trust you and your ability to deliver the services…

That means besides having or learning a skill, you’ll have to work on building a brand… Of course, this may take some effort and time.

Finally, as a beginner, with the service blogging model, you can easily make money blogging. Also, if you don’t have a skill, you can be learning a skill while blogging.

This particular model is very popular with freelancers, students and most people blogging on part time basis. Unlike the Product Model, you won’t have to spend money buying products you need to sell etc.

Digital Product Model

This model thrives on selling digital product like information products, e-books, online courses, subscription posts etc. It works almost like the Services model.

Being an expert in the niche will help you scale your blog even faster but, unlike the services model, you don’t necessarily have to be an expert before you can scale.

With a decent skillset and lots of research you can write or create digital products that you can sell online via your blog.

These are some of the most significant blogging models out there.

These blogging models have helped a lot of bloggers to earn from their blog still, if you’re not very sure of the exact blogging model to use can affect the ability of your blog to make money online.

Practical Steps to Make Money Blogging

The following are practical steps that can help you make money with your new blog;

Fix your Traffic

You might be wondering, how can I fix my traffic? To answer this question, you’ll want to start with investing in Content Marketing.

Like I said earlier, a lot of new bloggers wanting to make money with their blogs are blogging part time.

The reason you’re not making money with your blog is not because you’re blogging part time.

Your blog is not making money because you’re blogging as a hobby blogger instead of blogging as an entrepreneur.

Now here’s what i mean. A hobby blogger blogs when ever she feels like it. She doesn’t have any goals for her blog besides doing as part of her hobby. And for this reason she doesn’t have any schedule for the blog but blogs only when there’s some chance to do that.

If you want to start making money with your new blog fast, you have to turn your blogging into a business, from the onset. You have move from blogging like a hobbyist to blogging like an entrepreneur.

How to blog as an entrepreneur

Blogging as an entrepreneur is one of the easiest ways to make money with your blog as a new blogger.

This is because, as an entrepreneur, you don’t leave your success to chance as most hobby bloggers would.

You set out for your blogging business with a purpose in mind, laying out all the strategies that will help you attend that goal.

This is where planning comes in. As a new blogger Instead of going about as I did when I started out, you focus on getting a clear cut strategy for your blog.

Your strategy will involve a blogging plan. And it should contain things like the purpose of your blog or blogging goal, your posting schedule (which you’ll have to stick with in order to attend your goals), a time tag for achieving certain milestones with the blog etc.

Create Great Content

After setting up your blogging strategy, the next thing you want to do is to focus on creating Content that will drive traffic to your blog.

Make Content marketing part of your blogging strategy. This is very important. And if you don’t get it sorted out from the beginning there’s a less probability to make money with your blog.

Why is Content Marketing Important?

Content marketing is at the center of what drives sustainable and targeted traffic to your blog.

With Content Marketing, you’re able to carve out a target audience who’ll later serve as your clients, target them with valuable post that will be useful to them which in turn will help you build a good rapport and brand expertise that can convert your readers to your clients.

This is why you can’t make a living blogging as a new blogger if you’re only updating or writing your blog whenever you feel like it.

Provide Practical Solutions to your Audience

One of the things that will increase your readers’ respect about you and your opinion is when you develop a good reputation for your brand based on the uniqueness and practicality of the content you share

Even when you’re not yet an expert in your niche, with solid research backed with data from reputable sources, you can learn and grow with your audience through the process.

Be committed to Success

Blogging could get tricky. A lot of new bloggers get discouraged quite early. Others get more focused on making money than delivering real value.

If there’s a slight delay in their blog’s ability to generate income, they get discouraged and move on.

TBH, this mindset won’t take you really far with your blog. Because blogging demands lots of patience and work.

So, you have to be willing to put in the work in advance, before expecting to make some decent money from your blog.

Because, even when there are a few new bloggers raking in some income from their blogs within a few months, there are still a lot of blogs that only started making money after some years of blogging.

Most times, these could be due to the consistency of the blogger, the marketing strategy they used or they niche they are blogging in. 

So, here you have the important tips that can help you make money online as a new blogger. Do you want to learn more about blogging, sign up for our blog Mastery course.

Now, which of these tips have you used before?

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