There are many reasons as to why someone starts a blog:
- Passion
- Authority Building
- Love for Writing
- Creating a Brand
- Growing a Business
- Making Money
Whatever the reason, it would be such a huge plus to make money from this gig as well, right?
Some people dream of making thousands of dollars! But to make $10,000 blogging you first have to learn how to make $100.
So in this quick article, I will pretend that you just followed my guide on how to start a successful blog, and now you are ready to start making some income.
- Note: If you haven’t started a blog yet, join my Free 10-Day Start a Blog E-Course!
The Basics of Making Money Online
First things first, why would you make money from your blog?
The reason is simple – VALUE.
Your blog, if done right, is delivering some kind of value to the reader.
Whether it’s helping them learn a new skill, stay entertained, get inspired, solve a problem and so on. Hopefully, all of the above.
And when you deliver value success follows.
Your tribe grows, people look forward to reading new articles and your readers begin trusting you.
Trust is key here, so don’t let it break just to make a quick buck, there are better ways of making money.
And let’s get something straight, you can’t make money blogging if you don’t have an audience.
Audience is crucial! The rest follows.
Okay, let’s dive in.
Step #1. Valuable content
It all begins with creating valuable content.
If your articles are good people read them, share them, subscribe to your email list (also super important, read more here) and come back for more!
This content has to be targeted for the people you want to build a community with. So give that some thought if you haven’t already.
That’s why when I teach how to start a blog the right way I always urge bloggers to create 1 stellar article and 9 more awesome ones even before they launch their blog.
The next step is to get people to read your content.
Step #2. Welcome to My Blog
As I said in my previous articles, first you create Valuable Content then you focus on Traffic.
You need to spend as much time (if not more) promoting your content as you do writing it.
You need TRAFFIC. Period.
I’m not talking here about hundreds of thousands of visitors daily, but just enough to get the ball rolling.
Make it your goal to get 100 visitors/day, you can begin making some money even with that sort of traffic.
How do I get most of the traffic to my 2 blogs? Pinterest!
Pinterest + Tailwind = Traffic + Money.
I covered that topic in way more detail in this article: How I Went from 0 – 47,386 Pageviews/month in 16 Months of Blogging.
So if you are on this step now, give it a read.
Also, you can grab my free Pinterest Canva templates below:
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These are 10 Unique Pins I use on My Art Blog!
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When that’s done, the next step is to find a way to connect with your readers many more times.
- Note: if your Pinterest account ever gets suspended and you think they made a mistake, I share with you how I got it back in this article.
- And if you are unsure how to check your blog traffic, I explain in detail how to set up Google Analytics step-by-step here.
Step #3. Building a Tribe
Most people who visit your blog once will never come back again.
That should be pretty obvious as not many people use bookmarks or write down the names of blogs they liked.
So, we need to find a way to make sure that one-time readers become a part of your community.
It important for a couple of reasons:
- Growing a tribe
- Building Relationships
- Making Income
- Getting Feedback
- Traffic (Bringing People Back for More)
How do you do that? Again, VALUE.
But this time you will be offering it for exchange for their email addresses! Pretty clever, right?
Starting an Email List from DAY 1 is one of the 24 things about blogging I wish I knew when I was just getting started.
Now, it’s my top priority!
Usually, I create a couple of valuable freebies on topics my readers would be interested in and give it to them.
I create my opt-ins and automate email sequences with ConvertKit.
I also use Elementor Pro for email opt-in pop-ups (as it allows for absolute design freedom for non-techy wizards like me).
If you are ready, read the 6 email list building strategies to get started!
When you have stellar content, stable traffic and a growing community – you will have to really try not to make your first $100.
Making Your First $100 Blogging
I remember when I first realized I made $100 blogging. It looked something like this:
There are many different ways to make money online blogging:
- Display Advertising
- Affiliate Marketing
- Sponsored Posts
- Selling Your Own Products
But the best thing you can do is to master 1-2 and then keep adding more. The key thing is to diversify your income streams as much as possible.
At the beginning, I suggest focusing most of your attention on affiliate marketing and maybe ads.
The reason why I say “maybe ads” is because with them you will be making cents at first. So until your traffic picks up you won’t notice much of a difference there.
Once you hit 30,000
Only when I switched from Adsense to Mediavine I noticed an income difference and started receiving nice paycheques every month.
Affiliate Marketing Rules When…
- You are promoting products you believe in/use yourself
- There is a nice commission %
Being an affiliate for a product, linking to it within your articles and emails is how you can make a great chunk of money every month.
But first, you need to find affiliate programs worth your time.
At the beginning, I recommend signing up with Amazon Affiliate Program.
There is one for most of the countries, and you will have to sign up separately to each one, so make sure you do so for the country your readers are coming from.
On there, you will be able to create an affiliate link to any of the products and get a certain commission %. That rate differs on what category the item is coming from.
One of my other favourites is SHAREASALE.
It’s a superb platform because it includes a variety of stores and programs within it.
All you have to do is look for your topic or a specific product/store you are interested in and apply. There are a few
Once you do, you can grab links, banners and coupon codes with them.
If your desired product/store isn’t on ShareaSale it should be on Awin. Which works very similarly in a way that you apply to become an affiliate for each program separately.
You could also search for some other programs, but these 3 should cover most of the spectrum.
Another way that I find affiliate programs is through courses or softwares I buy online. Usually, they also have affiliate programs that you can apply to.
You should check at the footer of a website to see if they offer any affiliate programs.
You don’t need to become an affiliate for a lot of programs, you just need a few good ones that you focus on.
Okay, I’m an Affiliate. Then What?
Then comes the work.
Take all of those links you got from the best affiliate programs you believe in and create a resources page, link to them within your articles if relevant and talk about them inside your emails.
Tip: make sure to comply with FTC regulations (disclose your affiliate relationships).
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What Should You Expect?
That’s a tricky question because each audience and style of writing is different, therefore so are the results.
But let’s just say that you wrote an article on how to use a certain product. It’s an awesome article, people are interested in the product and you get traffic to it.
If the commission you get for it is $10 (which is pretty average for good products) and the conversion rate (% of people who buy after reading) is 0.5% (also pretty average) then you need 2,000 people to read your article to make 100$.
If you promote something on Amazon and the commission is only $1 per purchase, then you will need 20,000 people to read your article to make $100.
On that note, there are also affiliates who pay more, like $50. Yet, then the product or service is usually more pricey and the % will most likely be lower as well.
Or if your cut is $100 (and the product is probably very expensive) then your conversion rate could be 0.01%. And then you will need 10,000 readers before making $100.
These are just assumptions based on what I’ve seen on my blog. Yours could be better or worse.
If you don’t get any sales at all, then maybe you should reconsider how relevant this product is to your audience!
On a positive note:
You only have to apply for programs and write a certain article once. If you can automate traffic with TailWind and emails with ConvertKit as I did, then you have yourself a nice steady passive income.
That’s probably what I love most about blogging, doing work upfront and then reaping the results for a while after.
I hope this article helped and you are ready to go make your first $100!
Advanced Make Money Online Idea
A lot of bloggers make most of their income selling products online. That’s just the truth!
I’m mentioning it just so you know what your next step should be after you are making a couple of hundred dollars from your blog already.
If you are interested in learning the strategies behind how to make money online selling products, I suggest you grab these 2 FREE books by Russel Brunson:
Studying these 2 books is how I was able to start making money online! And they are both free (Which blows my mind)!
In them, Russel explains his secret tactics, techniques and strategies behind how he was able to grow his company past 7 figures a month (!!!).
I do suggest getting your feet wet before you begin implementing his strategies!
Good luck,
