How I’ve Made Over $1,000 With My New Blog

Today is Nov. 14, 2016. I started My Income Journey in June 2016 so I’m just about at my 6 month anniversary. That’s counting from day one with absolutely nothing on this site. No name, no content, no knowledge of how to do any of this! The past 6 months have gone by crazy fast and I feel like I just started this a month ago. I am still a small site by almost all measures, my pageviews are just about to hit the 10,000/month mark this month, I haven’t paid for any advertising, I have only done one guest post, I don’t have any products of my own (yet), and I’m only active on three social media sites (FB, Pinterest, Twitter). So in all, I’d say I still have a lot of room to grow! Even though I’m still small, I’ve made $1,062 with this blog! Woo Hoo! If you read my income reports, you know I make more money with other jobs I do from home and I do not put full-time hours into this site. This blog has been a bit of an experiment to see if I could actually make money and I think it’s working. I’m excited about the endless possibilities blogging provides and the income potential is huge! I believe my income for these first 6 months was probably the hardest earned income. Getting the site setup the way I wanted, gaining a following from zero (haven’t even told my family about this yet), figuring out how to monetize, etc. was a huge learning curve. However, it’s been easier than I anticipated. I really didn’t think I’d make any money more than a few dollars from some ads per month. Obviously that has not been the case and now I’d like to share with you how I’ve made these first few months of blogging profitable.

This page contains ads/affiliate links. See my full disclosure for details.

Let’s state the obvious here, you aren’t going to make money from a blog if you don’t have a blog. Before I started My Income Journey I went back and forth and back and forth and back again of if I should actually do it. Am I crazy to think I can make money blogging? Will this just be a waste of time? Is this just something that a few lucky people make money with but not regular people like me? Thankfully my husband was very encouraging and talked me into it. Now here I am encouraging you to do the same. It’s awesome to be able to work from home, make some extra money, and not sacrifice any family time or my mom duties. In fact, starting a blog is about as low risk an endeavor as you can do. Other than paying for hosting, I haven’t invested a dime into this site. I signed up for three years of hosting through Bluehost and I made that money back within three months of blogging. Pretty low-stress business startup if you ask me. Sign up with Bluehost here and get hosting for only $3.95/month and a free domain. If you aren’t sure how to do that and need some step-by-step guidance, read my detailed article here that steps you through the process. You are going to need a professional site if you are planning on monetizing. Using BlueHost and WordPress allows you complete control of the URL, design, plug-ins, etc. Plus you don’t need to know any programming or design skills to create a unique and awesome website! Go ahead, make the leap, get started today and start your own journey!

There are many people who blog as a hobby and simply want to express themselves or share their knowledge. That is great and you should definitely enjoy what you’re writing about, but there’s no reason for you to not be making money from your blog. I started My Income Journey with the goal to make money from it. I started placing ads and affiliate links before I had any readers. Monetizing your blog does not decrease the quality of your writing or lessen the integrity of your site if you do it correctly. Now that I know how to monetize a blog I am amazed at how many sites I go to that are missing out on the awesomeness of affiliate marketing. If you ever recommend a product then you need to be an affiliate for that company. Almost every company has an affiliate program. Whether your blog is about fashion, books, being a mom, recipes, etc. there are hundreds of companies that I’m sure you use and mention that you could be getting paid for. There’s no reason to wait, get monetizing right away!

There are a lot of ways to monetize your blog – ads, affiliates, selling a product, selling ad space, selling a service, creating an online course, etc. As I mentioned earlier, up to this point I have only done two. Affiliate marketing has been my best money-maker, but placing a few ads on my site has paid off as well. I am planning on adding a product or course to my site soon. If you have a variety of income methods then you are more likely to have consistent income streaming in. Give all these methods a try and see what works best for you. If you’re a new blogger, I recommend starting off with Google Adsense first. Just a heads up, they did reject my application the first two times, but that was because I had almost zero visitors when I was first applying. It didn’t take me long to get accepted with very few pageviews so don’t give up if they’ve rejected you. I also recommend the following affiliate companies for new bloggers – ShareASale,  Amazon, FlexOffers, CJ Affiliate, and ShopHerMedia. These companies will work for any niche and don’t require you to be a big name blogger to get accepted.

If you aren’t sure what your blog should be about, just think about yourself and what makes you unique. What topic do people ask you for advice on? What subject interests you or you’re passionate about? What do you enjoy reading and talking about? I started My Income Journey because I enjoyed trying a variety of ways to earn money from home. I do stock photography, run an Etsy shop, teach piano lessons, created two websites, and do a variety of side hustles. Many bloggers try to convince you to narrow your niche to something very specific. I do believe there is some truth to that and a narrow niche will help you stay focused, understand your audience, and create a loyal following. But the beauty of your blog is it can be whatever you want it to be! If you love cats and cooking, then go ahead and create a site around those two passions if you can’t narrow it down. If you’re passionate about playing the cello, then that’s an awesome small niche that you could really dive deep into. The easiest way to create meaningful content for your blog is just to write about something you love. Once you’ve figured that out, the posts and ideas will most likely flow faster than you can keep up! If you’re worried about your writing be less than perfect, I recommend installing Grammarly to help you out with spelling, grammar, and sentence structure.

Now that you’ve created your blog and written meaningful posts that include monetization, the next step is to get people to read what you’ve written. Let’s start with Pinterest. It’s my best friend. Pinterest alone counts for about 80% of my page views. If you aren’t active on Pinterest then you’re missing out. There are whole courses offered on mastering Pinterest, so I’ll just offer some free and quick advice. First – you need to create eye-catching vertical pins, second – you join a ton of group boards so you can pin your awesome pin to your boards plus the group boards, third – use a Pinterest scheduler so you can be pinning all day long without actually sitting at your computer and doing it yourself. I personally use ViralTag as my Pinterest and Twitter scheduler.

There are bloggers that make $100,000 per month and bloggers who are making a few dollars per month. Both bloggers would be making zero per month if they didn’t give blogging a try and see what happened. If you’ve already started your blog and have yet to see success, don’t quit. Make yourself a monetization plan, advertising plan, and posting plan. Want to see the exact breakdown of my income each month? Check out my income reports here. You too can make your work-from-home dream a reality. Give it a go, what have you got to lose?

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