On a daily basis, the amount of information that we consume on the internet is growing by the day. So its no wonder that many people are seeing the huge potential for making money online. Simply by producing content and information pages to cater to the needs of millions of people we can reach a huge online audience.
In this article, we look at how to make money blogging for beginners. Believe it or not, even if you have absolutely no experience with blogging or making money online, you can get started today and it need not cost you a penny to get started.
Table of Contents
How to Make Money Blogging for Beginners – Getting Started
The earning potential for blogging is huge, although there are many factors that will determine how much money you can make. In this article, we are going to look at the best options for getting started. We also take a look at some of the most common myths and questions that people ask.
Amazing Potential
Every online business, every website and every page starts with an idea. Luckily transforming that idea into something that everybody can benefit from is getting easier by the day. One thing that puts a lot of beginners off from starting a blog is the technical side of things. The sound of creating a website or blog sounds like rocket science to some people.
Blogging – It’s Not Rocket Science!
Are you worried about creating a website and think it all might be a bit too complicated? Well, think again! Things have come a long way online over the past few years. Gone are the days where you need a certificate in computer programming to get your ideas online.
There are lots of blogging platforms that make the process of setting up your own blog extremely easy. In fact, you can sign up for a free service and have your blog live on the internet within 10 minutes in most cases. But by far the most popular choice of blogging platform has to be WordPress.
Top Recommendation
WordPress is the ultimate tool for helping any newcomer get their blog online. This blogging platform is so easy to use, whilst giving you the freedom to customize the look and feel of the site. With many blogging platforms, especially the free ones, the end results can look very similar.
With WordPress on the other hand, the sky is the limit. There are hundreds of pre-designed templates that can be further customized to produce the results that you want.
Make Money blogging for beginners – How is the money made?
You may be wondering how you go about actually making money as a blogger. Well, there are several ways that bloggers make money online. The process of making money on the internet starts with an audience that is interested in a particular subject.
Most blogs have a theme or a subject that the entire website is based upon. It’s this theme or “niche” that will eventually attract an audience. The more you blog and the more people that you reach, the bigger your audience will become. And where there are a lot of people online, there is potential to make money.
With Time And Effort The Sky Is The Limit!
Some blogs have thousands of visitors each and every day. This, of course, doesn’t happen overnight but with time and effort, it is possible to start building an audience for your new blog within quite a short space of time. Once you start getting visitors to your website you can then begin to “monetize” your blog.
Make Money blogging for beginners – “Monetize” your blog
Some blog owners display advertising on their site that pays out every time an advert is clicked. Some bloggers prefer a strategy known as affiliate marketing to make money. Affiliate marketing is the process of being paid for a product or service that you mention or recommend within your blog. There are other methods of being paid from blogging but these are the two main methods that are used. Of course, you can also choose to use both of the methods!
Make Money blogging for beginners – Selecting your niche
If you want to make money as a blogger the first thing that you are going to need to do is to come up with your “niche” or subject. When choosing your niche there are a couple of things that you need to think about really carefully. The best niche that you can select as a beginner is one that really interests you and that you can talk about for a long time. As a blogger, it is going to be your job to produce content for your audience. Your audience will return time and time again if you produce regular content that they can read and enjoy.
Content Really Is King!
The more content that you can produce, the better chance you have of reaching your audience. More pages and posts on your blog therefore increase your chance of earning.
Publishing new content on a regular basis also means that you have the potential to make money online on a regular basis. This is why it’s really important to consider your niche carefully.
Consider this:
- What are you really interested in?
- Are there other people that are also interested in your chosen subject?
- Can I talk about my chosen subject for a long time?
Chances are you are going to be working on your blog for quite a long time if you want to make money on a consistent basis. Choose an interest or a passion that you really enjoy, this could be absolutely anything! So long as there are other people out there with the same or similar interests then you will get an audience that is interested in what you have to say.
Do you need to be an expert within your niche?
A lot of people have put off the idea of choosing a particular niche because they think that they don’t know enough about the subject. This should definitely not sway your decision. Often the best blogs and pages online are those that simply offer the opinion of ordinary people, just like me and you!
Think about it this way… What would you rather read? Say you are interested in buying a new laptop computer. Would you rather read a sales page that offers the specification of the computer or would you rather read a real review from someone that has had real experience in using the laptop in question? Most people would like to read both types of pages although the opinions of real people are seen as being far more valuable.
No matter what your choice of niche, there are always people searching for new ideas and opinions. As a blogger, it is your job to provide both valuable information and your own opinion. This is what will make your blog totally unique.
Make Money blogging for beginners – Choosing a domain name
Got an idea in mind for your niche? Great! The next thing that you will need to decide is what you are going to call your website. Keeping your blog name short and simple is always best for helping people to remember what your site is called. Whilst the name of your website is no longer important in terms of getting your site into the search engines. It is recommended that you take some time to choose something that is relevant to your chosen niche.
Free and paid options for bloggers
There are two kinds of domain name that you can choose as a beginner. There are free options where you can blog on what is called a “subdomain”. And there are more professional “paid” options where you own your own domain name. There are many ways to blog at no cost online and WordPress gives us that option. Although to make your blog look more professional you should choose the paid option of setting up a domain name that ends with a top-level domain extension. Examples of domain extensions include .com, .net or even like this website which is a .zone domain. There are hundreds of domain extensions to choose from these days! You can read more on this site about which domain extension you should choose here. These days buying your own domain name is not expensive and can make a huge difference to the look of your site.
Make Money blogging for beginners – Choosing a domain name
Choosing the right name for your blog can be hard work. The name of your blog is often the first thing that people see when they visit your site for the first time. So it pays to make a good first impression! Take a look at our 14 tips for choosing a domain name here for more information and tips.
Make Money blogging for beginners – Creating content
Rome wasn’t built in a day as they say and neither was a successful blog! Creating content for your blog is an essential part of being a blogger. As a total beginner, it may take a little time to get used to creating content for your blog. Whilst some people have a natural ability to write articles and content for their blog, others find it more difficult. Like anything in life, it gets easier with practice. As you start to write content for your blog you will find that you eventually discover your voice as a blogger.
Don’t think for one minute that you need to be an amazing writer in order to create a blog and make money online. As I said earlier, some of the best blogs online are those that simply offer opinions. More often than not those blogs that offer an opinion also have a certain writing style that is easy to read and not too complicated to understand.
Talking the language of your readers
Simply taking the language of your niche audience I the key to success with your blog. Your own voice and the way that you want to talk within your pages are some of the most important elements of your blog. You don’t need to use complicated words and you don’t need to be an expert. What you do need is to simply be yourself!
Take a look at this link for more help on creating blog content.
Make Money blogging for beginners – Video tutorials + much more!
If you like the sound of making money online as a blogger and would like to get started for free, there is one place that you should definitely check out. The website that I highly recommend is called Wealthy Affiliate. This website will show you right from the beginning how to get started with a free WordPress blog.
Wealthy Affiliate teaches you how to find your niche and set up your blog with the intention of making money online. The video tutorials on this site are easy to follow and best of all they are free to get started with.
The Wealthy Affiliate Blogging Platform
Wealthy Affiliate is the ideal starting point if you want to earn online as a blogger because they not only teach you how to set everything up correctly, but they also give you the tools to get started. You can set up a free blog within Wealthy Affiliate and view a complete video training course completely free of charge. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Make Money blogging for beginners – Earn whilst you learn!
Wealthy Affiliate offers a premium membership where you can upgrade for further benefits. As a blogger, the premium version can really benefit you later on but this is not essential in the early stages. Because the Wealthy Affiliate free membership lasts forever and isn’t just a free trial, it means that you can earn money whilst you learn. This means that you can start blogging as a beginner for free and then upgrade later on.
Wealthy Affiliate has lots of success stories and is in my opinion the best possible start for any blogger looking to get started online. If you would like to be the next success story, click the link below to sign up for a free account and to start the free training.
As an added bonus I will personally contact you within Wealthy Affiliate after you have joined through this special link. I can offer additional support and guidance with your blog as well as offering you extra tutorials within Wealthy Affiliate. If that sounds good, click the link to get started! See you inside…
Thanks for your detailed explanation of what blogging is.
I agree, blogging is the way to go. Even me, when buying something online, I first check related blogs as to make sure I am getting the best deal out there. So, I agree with you when you said that even if you’re not an expert, you should consider blogging if you want to make money online.
By the way, what can you say about other popular blogging platforms like Kalatu of Empower Network? How does it fare as compared to Wealthy Affiliate’s?
Hi there! Thank you for your comments and questions. Many people are exactly the same as you, we all go online now to look for other peoples opinions. Be it a price on something that we are looking to buy, a review on a product or simply an opinion on something we have seen on TV. The internet has opened up the world to communicate whatever message we like. And no, it really doesn’t matter if you are an expert on any given subject or not. A lot of the time, so long as you are not giving out really bad advice, people are more than happy to read another persons point of view.
In answer to your question about the other blogging platforms, I won’t give a direct opinion on Kalatu as I have had no experience of that yet. Perhaps this might be a subject for a future article? However, Empower Network is very well know in internet marketing circles as having a very mixed bag of verdicts. My opinion is that I don’t really agree with the way this company promotes itself. A lot of the products that they push are extremely expensive and I see Wealthy Affiliate as being a much different service.
The likes of Empower Network are out to get as much money as possible, regardless of the outcome. It really is sink or swim with these guys, and the ones that swim are the ones that constantly bombard everyone online with ads saying that Empower Network is fantastic, the answer to financial freedom and so on. Wealthy Affiliate isn’t like that. In fact WA don’t make any big earning claims, they just present the facts.
I haven’t seen a better blogging platform in terms of training and support than WA. If I ever find one, then I will be the first to write an update here on this site. The fact that you can try it out for free is great too. This gives people a chance to see what its all about and to verify that what we are saying is actually true!
Hi, what is your opinion on blogging on a free platform such as Blogspot or WordPress dot com? If it is free, are you allowed to put up ads and affiliate links and earn money from affiliate marketing? Is there any other free alternative where you get a free website and you can earn?
Hi there Ben! You have just come up with an excellent question. This is something that I have quite a bit of knowledge about, since I started out with very little money and was forced to use free websites.
A lot of people start blogging with free websites, not really knowing the truth about them. You see, although there are tons of free website providers, there are lots of things that you are probably not aware of when signing up.
Most free website providers have certain rules and regulations that must be followed. I think it’s a fact that there aren’t many people that actually sit down and read all of the terms and conditions that lay hidden in the small print. So it might come as a surprise that although most free sites will allow you to place affiliate links and ads, they can actually take your site down if they don’t like them.
The problem with free websites in most cases is the fact you never actually own the web property that you are building. Although you choose the domain name and you build the content, your site remains within a property that doesn’t actually belong to you.
I once created a website for a client that was very short on cash but wanted to have a presence on the web. I suggested the option of using a free website service and my client was very pleased that this option would save him so much money. The website was built by myself and remained online for over a year, until one day it simply disappeared. When I contacted the company they said that we had violated one of their terms and conditions. We were quite surprised by this as there was nothing offensive and we certainly weren’t aware of any violations.
It turns out that when you use a free web service, in most cases you can get your site taken down permanently if you add an image, a video, a product, an advert, or anything that they don’t like for whatever reason. There have been a lot of cases of affiliate marketers building free sites in massive quantities to try and rank for certain products and a few other techniques that give affiliate marketers a bad name. So in some cases I can see why these free services are a bit on the careful side. But in our case, we really couldn’t see why our site had been taken down and I guess we will never know!
Site Rubix, run by Wealthy Affiliate on the other hand is designed for bloggers, small businesses and affiliate marketers. So because this site is designed specifically for this purpose, you don’t have any of those issues.
Free websites for bloggers have their place, but I for one would hate to spend hours writing an article only to have it removed.
In my opinion a free website is great if you have no other choice or you are a complete beginner to blogging and want to test the waters. These sites can give you a great deal of experience with building, writing and designing a blog. But if you want to look professional, there is nothing better than your own domain name.
You have included a lot of great information for beginners, Andrew!
I like the advice to think about what you like to do for choosing a niche. I found this information very useful as I am currently at this stage again. I have made mistakes in the past and chosen the wrong niche. Now I am starting out again and this advice is what I will be following this time.
You mentioned Wealthy Affiliate on here. Does Wealthy Affiliate cover eveything in terms of making an internet business? Are there other extras that you need to buy as a member?
Thanks for your great info and advice! Stella
Hi there! Thank you for your comment. Selecting something that you enjoy talking about is always the best choice for a niche, especially if you are new to building online businesses. I myself have made the mistake in the past of thinking I could make a website based on something that I had very little knowledge of. Researching information and then producing unique content takes time to do. It takes even longer if you have nearly no knowledge of the subject.
As for Wealthy Affiliate, I highly encourage you to check it out. Unlike anything else online, this really is a complete package. Everything is included with regards to training, even website hosting is included! The only other thing that you will need with Wealthy Affiliate is a domain name.
You would need a domain name and hosting anyway so to get hosting included within this membership is really very good.