You don’t need to invest years of labor to create blogs that make money, but you do need to follow a plan. If you can learn by other peoples mistakes, you can monetize a website or blog and earn money while you sleep very quickly.
Happily, it’s a very simple plan which doesn’t require some of the strange SEO techniques you often hear about.
Step 1: Setup Your Blog
This step doesn’t require much discussion—there are thousands of articles, tutorials, and videos which show you how to setup a blog on one of the major blogging platforms, such as WordPress. This site also has a number of great tutorials about how to build a WordPress website from scratch with videos included.
I do encourage you to avoid spending too much time tweaking the technical settings in your blog. Internet readers see dozens or hundreds of different blogs every day, from low-quality homebrew sites to amazing professional sites, but the only thing they tend to remember in the long term is how informative the site was. Good sites always have good content, and little else matters.
Step 2: Blogs That Make Money Publish Often
Almost all blogs that make money make their money from content—that is, blog posts. The more blog posts you have, the more opportunity you have to make money.
That doesn’t mean you should publish low-quality junk. The goal should be to publish useful information as frequently as possible.
Note that once you have an established readership, they’re going to expect new posts on a regular schedule, so it’s no good for you to burn yourself out writing post after post in the first few weeks or months after establishing your blog—but you should make your best effort to publish as often as you can.
A great way to publish extra articles to your blog without creating an expectation of frequent publishing is the submarine post—this is a lower quality post you publish without promoting to the front page or main RSS feed, so the search engines can pick it up but your regular readers don’t see it.
Again, I don’t recommend that you deliberately write or buy lower quality posts, but I also know from personal experience that not every post will turn out as interesting as you initially hoped it would.
See what I think Quality content is?
You can use submarine posts to make a brand new blog look authoritative—just back date the initial set of posts to make it look like your blog has been active for a few weeks or months. I suggest every new blog launch with about 10 posts already published. I also do the opposite on an old blog by revamping old posts and re-publishing them as new. This works a treat and ensures you make the most out of your posts and evergreen content.
Step 3: Choose Your Business Model
All blogs that make money have a business model. Some early for-profit bloggers may have been lucky and stumbled upon a working business model, but in today’s competitive online industry, you need a solid plan to make money before you start investing your valuable time.
The solid plan doesn’t need to be complicated.
Here are the three most common types of blogs that make money:
1. Blogs that make money through advertisements are probably the most common but least profitable. They’re super-easy to set up, but you need a lot of traffic to make them profitable.
2. Blogs that make money through affiliate commission are probably the next most common, and there’s potential for significant income, but you need to find an audience which buys either high-price/low-margin items (such as high-end technology from Amazon.com) or high-margin items (such as independent ebooks).
3. Blogs that make money from list marketing are less common but can make the most money. The challenge for a blog is to get random visitors to sign up for your mailing list, Twitter feed, or Facebook page so you can market products to them.
If you are creating an authority website then all of the above can be put to good use.
Step 4: Find Your Partners
It’s possible to rank for long-tail keywords on Google and other search engines today simply by publishing keyword-optimized blog posts relevant to those long-tail keywords—but it’s easier and better for your blogs that make money if you start collecting incoming links as early as possible.
Although there are hundreds of somewhat-scammy techniques for link building and at least a dozen or so legitimate link building techniques, such as guest posting, the easiest and best way to get links is to actually talk to other bloggers and people in your niche.
You don’t have to talk in person—something quite rare in the blogosphere—but you should start posting informative comments on their blogs and maybe sending them news and other useful information by email.
Don’t spam them, of course, but do try to build up goodwill gradually and hint at the fact that you have a blog. If they appreciate your help and they enjoy your blog, they will almost certainly link to your blog not just once but repeatedly over the course of several months.
Just remember to return the favor and link back to them whenever you get the chance.
Step 5: Try One New Technique A Month
Many blogs that fail to make money follow a sad progression: they launch, they publish a few posts, they try a bunch of SEO techniques, and then they fade away with less and less frequent posts. I have seen them come and go over the years, believe me. Some blogs I noticed and admired as a true competitor in my niche, but sadly not many still stand.
The problem here is the focus on SEO techniques. Search Engine Optimization is a good thing for your blog, but you should be very careful using any technique you haven’t mastered. Think about it: would you want your doctor practicing a new surgery technique on you? If not, why should you do virtual surgery on your blog without mastering the procedure first?
This is why I have SEOPressor (a WordPress plugin) watching over me. This is my expert on the side telling me if I am implementing the right mix of SEO into my content.
This is also why I recommend that you limit major changes to your blog to once a month. Not only does this give you time to learn the new technique, but it also helps you focus on the number one way to get more traffic—writing more blog posts.
There’s another benefit too—if you can only implement one major change to your blog each month, you’ll probably focus on the most effective technique and you’ll spend the month mastering that highly-effective technique and getting the most out of it before moving on to a less effective technique.
The Final Step: Learn About Your Customers
Depending on which business model you use, your customers could be people who click on ads, people who buy commissioned products, or people who sign up for your mailing list. But whoever your customers are, it’s critical to building blogs that make money that you learn more about them.
The more you know about your customers, the better you can serve them—and the better you can serve them, the more they and people like them will visit your site.
There are many ways to learn more about your customers:
• For advertising-based sites: put up an advertisement on your own site to a survey. (You can increase the survey response rate by entering respondents into a drawing for a prize.)
• For affiliate-based sites, you can offer a free ebook or other product to anyone who emails you a copy of their receipt from buying a product through your site’s affiliate link. When you reply to the email, ask them to answer a few questions about themselves. (Warning: you probably don’t want to use a contest to collect affiliate information—some countries such as the U.S. have anti-gambling laws which complicate contests involving sales.)
• For newsletter based sites, learning more about your customers is easy—run a search on their email addresses or send them a personal email asking them to fill out a quick survey. (Again, you probably want to attract more responses by offering some sort of freebie in exchange for filling out the survey.)
Although the whole survey process may seem complicated and unnecessary, just think of how you can use that additional and definitive information about your customers to build more blogs that make money.
Conclusion
I have been making money online with WordPress websites for years now but I always look back with regret about how long it took me to actually start making a full time income online. The problem was, I thought there was some big secret about creating money making blogs. I was always searching for the best way and unfortunately ignored the basic simple knowledge I already possessed.
I really like your blog! (Y)
I’m struggling for about an year now but I’m unable to earn anymore than $10 or so through adsense.
I hope by implementing your tips I reach my goals
Fahad recently posted..5 Killing Tips to Reduce Your Blog’s Bounce Rate in 2014
I think one must start fro a free blog gain experience of all skills like quality writing ,seo and much more and then should start up his fresh new niche build site surely the earning process will be late for this one.
himanshu recently posted..6 best android movie player apps.
agree with you on most of the points mitz. and the best one is finding a partner. blogging isnt easy. we should have a partner which can helps us because we all get tired by working
raj recently posted..Temple Run for PC Free Download for Computer, Android
I am following the hove steps from last 2 months and I have already recovered my domain cost
hope it works in future too
Dhaval recently posted..Verification
Great post with great information for new blogger. But i think build a blogger for making money not so easy. Its need long time in maximum cases.
Synthi Fasmiya recently posted..Ladies Handbags
the backbone of every successful blog is nothing but the content, content is king.The guidelines from experienced bloggers also became more effective. Thank you for sharing…..
Jithin recently posted..Get any mobile number information with truecaller
I think your advise on finding partners is very important. Many bloggers think they can do this alone. I understand that many people consider themselves introverts and don’t like to play with others. Unfortunately just because your not physically working, doesn’t mean you can build relations via the internet.
thomas wooldridge recently posted..Google Nose – is this a new product that you need to pay attention too?
Than you so much for sharing this information with us. Your tips are relevant to new bloggers and the ones that have basic knowledge and don’t make money from it.
Really great post! Thanks,
Alina
Great post. Thanks for sharing the information.
Not only can blogging lead to money, but it also keeps your mind ocupied and opens to doors to valuable connections via other blog owners etc..
It’s definitely a worth while hobby if not a career!
It’s really cool to read how you build your blog successfully in 8 months Oni. Just today, I read the blogpost by Glen which you shared, and the topic is how he build a successful blog too
You guys are magnificent out to change the world:) Love both posts I have read.
awesome tips mitz
fully agree with you on almost all points . building a blog doesn’t take time but working on it takes. but once you start making some money it gives you confidence which is really helpful
prabhat recently posted..Free Download Kik Messenger For Android,iPhone,Symbian and Windows
In the beginning, it really seems difficult making money from blog. For a new blogger like me, getting traffic is the most difficult.
Rajan recently posted..Cash or Credit Giveaway
Some very successful blogs I know don’t even build links. They just produce amazing content and verybody link to them. On of those blogis niche pursuits by spancer. He said that he never created any links. He is making a lot of money by getting affiliates. Susan
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I don’t think that the blogs who makes much money publish often. In fact you could take the example of popular blog called Dailyblogtips.com, which publishes post once a week and is still very popular. On other hand I know a lot of bloggers who publish content every alternate day but hardly have any decent visitors.
Rinkesh recently posted..Deforestation
That is great observation. But I believe publishing often and consistently is the key. Of course, on top of this, other methods play a role too, for example you must promote them through social media sites, practice good SEO, leverage on multiple traffic sources, etc…
Dailyblogtips.com already has tonnes of good content on the site.
Jasmine recently posted..OpenCart Shopping Cart Application
I feel like there is money in blogs but only for very limited amount of product. How much can you write about door handles relay ? I feel like it could somewhat work but only as a backlink builder for your main site,
Hey Mitz !
Learn about your customer is very important point. Your customers are all in all. Either they can make you successful or a looser. So, their choices are the top priority.
I really liked the whole article. All the points are important indeed.
Thanks.
Matt
Matt recently posted..Win a Luxury Center Parcs Break at Butlins Bingo
I guess I really didn’t about writing a blog for income possibilities. I started it to get my name out in the real estate community. But the advice that you gave Darryl Thode about creating a blog about home building or house furnishings kind of opened my eyes
Sam Martinez recently posted..Short Sale Tax in 2013
very detailed and nice post, Regular updating is really important when it comes to gaining traffic people who subscribe need to find something new every time they visit the website
Collaboration with other successful bloggers and your blog promotion can also become very important steps in this process. But, of course, all the tips you mentioned are also very effective
Julia Spencer’s recent post.. Facebook Templates: Create a Stunning Fan Page for Your Needs
Blogging is a good way of making money but the content of the blog should be related to blog and it should be updated content.
My site was not accepted by google for adsense so I have to rely solely on affiliate products. I wish to get atleast five hundred visits daily to my site otherwise it difficult to earn with a blog.
Thara recently posted..Guaranteed Income
Yep, once you decide that you’re willing to invest the time and energy into creating a blog that’s going to make money, the profit will follow soon after. You just have to engage in a bit of trial and error, and you’ll see profits within a month or two. Is there a single business in the real world where you can see profits that quickly without starting out with a massive amount of capital?
Hi !
I really believe in your advice. I used some of these tips and were very helpful.I think “Step 4:Find your partners” it’s the most important. Partners can help you at the marketing and you really can learn from them. It’s not easy to make money from a blog or website but with whis advice,will be easier.
Thanks a lot !
Michael David recently posted..Minecraft Gift Code Generator – Get a Free Gift Code
The best platform for creating blog is Word Press. Because it is fully user friendly. It does not need more knowledge. It gave easy plug in and free themes. Thanks for sharing great business articles to us…..
“The Final Step: Learn About Your Customers” – In my opinion this is the most important part. Studying the patterns/behaviors of your visitors is good way to go. Once you learn about their interests, its time to get your plans on motion. Great tips on offering ebook for affiliate-based sites, I do this myself and found it very effective indeed.
James Dreesen recently posted..Part 3: The Search Engines and How to Protect Your Online Reputation
I feel like there is money in blogs but only for very limited amount of product. How much can you write about door handles relay ? I feel like it could somewhat work but only as a backlink builder for your main site,
choosing a niche about door handles is very limiting and you’re right, there is only so much you can write. On the other hand, creating a site about house furnishings or building a new house will give you an endless scope.
i Mitz i landed on your blog from basicblogtips and this and extremely interesting blog. Regarding the post i found your two points extremely remarkable i.e to publish content quite often and try some new techniques every going month..
Prateek recently posted..Aakash 3 tablet
It is always a profitable business, if we are regularly updating the blog. This is an awesome manner for getting more from the site. Creating more traffic is not so easy but if we can make blog which is updated on a regular basis, then it will generate good amount of visitors.
Hi Mitz,
Creating such blogs that create money in less time is really difficult. Yes an organised way can make it possible. Nice post we can learn a lot from this post.
Thanks for this post……………
Prakash recently posted..Bluehost Webhosting 2013 Review :: Best webhosting company
Thanks for good advising! I run one for a year ago but I just get only ranks 1 and least traffic so my blog cannot monetize the money.
Kimsea recently posted..Basic Conception of Blogging for Business to Newbie Bloggers
The problem is that most people do not have enough time to publish articles of high quality every day.Therefore we can find a large number of blogs articles that have low quality.One of the ways to solve this, is outsourcing (Odesk, Fiverr, Freelancer).Here we run into another problem.How to find the right writers?It took me a long time before I found the right people.If you take my advice, do not buy articles that are worth $5.
Hi Peter
It took me a long time to find the right writers too!! And I totally agree not to buy articles for $5 unless you are willing to fix them later.
Problem with $5 articles is that, most of the time they will need more time to fix than writing from scratch, haha!
Jasmine recently posted..OpenCart Shopping Cart Application
That was really a great post. Thanks for the valuable information and insights you have shared here.
Gurwinder recently posted..How to Check What WordPress Theme is That Blog Using?
Building a blog requires a lot of patience and hard work. But its better paid off if we do smart work and see that our efforts are not wasted. Choosing a right business model is very important. Building up relations with other bloggers is nice for us bloggers.
vicky recently posted..Sony Xperia Tablet Z Features Price
Many thanks to author who wrote such an informative post which relates to money making. I am on blogger platform since 2010even that I have not earned a single dollar!! Any suggestion ?
Malik recently posted..How To Solve HTML Improvement Error In Google Webmaster
Following a plan, that would really be for somebody that has sat down to look at the end from the beginning…and like the expert would say…WORK back from your destination and really plan your moves…am still learning from you sir!
Thanks for share this post.
Another top notch article here. I have been blogging for about a year now and your tips have helped me and the basics never change. We need to keep posting and experimenting. That is the only way to move ahead.
Wolston Lobo recently posted..Nice quotes on life quotations | quotes on life
Great info here. I know someone who has created a product and is selling it direct from his blog with a sales page using Optimize Press. He drives traffic just by PPC and FB ads.
As always, very interesting.
Just out of interest, how do you build your mailing list?
Owen recently posted..Lady builds 3 Beauty Parlours and a Gym from Nothing in India
I just let people signup at the moment. I am in the middle of rethinking my whole email strategy. I do not make money pushing products like some do and I am just finding my own way. It is not something i like too much, compared to blogging for money so it is not important to me..But I do have thousands of subscribers as they just wont stop signing up…!! Good dilemma.
I couldn’t agree more. It’s like building Real Estate but on the internet. Easy to get information overload and get sucked in all those product launch but I love it as a career.
Amazing post. I love the content, I will keep it in my bookmarks in order to go over it once in a while. My personal opinion is that the only way to have a real blog empire is to have a model that we can scale up by having 100% commission and a daily method of operation that is simple and effective…so we can spend the rest of the day doing the thing we should be doing in life: spend time with the people we love most.
I think blogging gives you a big choice about when to work so you never miss out on family stuff. Working towards 100% commission is a great goal. I have done this through ebooks, courses, and software.
Not only can blogging lead to money, but it also keeps your mind ocupied and opens to doors to valuable connections via other blog owners etc..
It’s definitely a worth while hobby if not a career!
This is the right blog for anyone who wants to find out about this topic. You realize so much its almost hard to argue with you (not that I actually would want…HaHa). You definitely put a new spin on a topic thats been written about for years. Great stuff, just great!
ha ha thanks I think?
Hi Mitz,
Here I am again on your blogging reading an exciting article.
Truth is I started making money from my blog the very first week I started publishing. Though the amount was not that huge, it was pretty fast and encouraging. What I strive to do now is provide more content and step up on earnings.
Thanks for the very informative post
Enstine Muki recently posted..What is your blog? I want to visit it, comment and share your articles!
If you know how you made that first sale then you need to do the same thing over and over. rinse and repeat.
This is very inspirational article from where every newbie can understand what and how they should start and over their work for every their new blog post. But from my opinion newbie blogger should not think about make money in starting of their blogging career.
This is where many bloggers fail. They do not have a plan on how to build the blog or how it is going to make money. You need to know these things or you could be wasting your time.:)
Hi,
Thanks for sharing great article about tips for how to create quickly blogs for earn money at online. This is very useful information for online marketing managers. Keep it up such a nice posting like this.
Regards,
Sekhar Reddy.
Mitz-You gave me 2 incredible ideas here, one is of submarine posts and the second about sending news, informative articles to bloggers in my niche before requesting a backlink. I have been straightway requesting a backlink from hundreds of bloggers but never got one. Now, I know what to do to get them.
I have personally had some very smart emails sent to me and when I see them the person usually gets what they want from me.
I did my part. Waiting for some kindness from the The LORD
. Would be very thankful.
When you master everything about blogging, it leads you to sales and traffic to your site. Understanding and doing some steps helps a lot!
Thanks for sharing this post, I have learned something new…
Learn about your customers is what you need to master in order to get sales and leads because they are the reason why you website is still standing or now is out of the picture. Remember no sales means no business, so learn how you can get more clients in order to have the best website and online business.
Hii…its really important that your blog should appeal to a large mass..,also with the content marketing of the blog is essential..thanks for sharing..!!!
Rahul recently posted..Blogging Goals of 2013 to Make More Money
This is an awesome post Mitz. Many of those products that is sold in the internet marketing niche don’t have half as good a content as you have just delivered here about making money blogging
Steven Jude recently posted..Sensible Business Is Good Business + The Secret Keys to Anti-Aging Health
i think this is going to help the new comer who are/ have started blogging just now …..
I think it’s important to focus on marketing of your blog to right audience, unless right audience visit on your blog you won’t be able to earn money.
Pankaj recently posted..MLM Software India
I´m pretty sure that it´s really important to publish oftenly in order to be succesful… but assuming that the content is relevant, this is the most important issue for your blog´s audience!!
Very good post