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Have you been considering starting a blog, but worry that it’s too difficult? I remember having those same worries just a few short years ago. But the good news is that it’s much easier than you think! You don’t need to learn HTML and you can have a site up and running in just a few short minutes. Let’s walk through exactly how to create a blog of your own, and then grow it to the point where it can start earning some money.
Step 1: Getting Hosting and a Domain Name – The very first step in creating a blog is finding a domain name and purchasing a hosting plan. The number one web hosting company in the world for bloggers is Bluehost, because they make setting up a WordPress blog as easy as possible. The best part is that they offer hosting for only $4.99 p/month (good luck finding a rate that low elsewhere). Readers of See Debt Run can also sign up here to get a domain name registration included totally free and 50% off the cost of hosting!
Step 2: Setting Up WordPress – Once you are signed up with Bluehost, you only have to click the “Install WordPress” button in the middle of the screen (see the image below), and in just a couple minutes you will have a beautiful new blog, ready for you to add content.
Step 3: Customizing Your Site – WordPress works right out of the box, but you will probably find yourself wanting to customize it a bit to add your own personality to the site. Thankfully, it is extremely intuitive and I know dozens of non-technical people that have picked it up right away. You will have to select a “Theme” for your site, which will control the basic look and feel of your content, sidebars, and menus. I would recommend starting off with one of the dozens of free themes available, as you can always switch it out later.
Step 4: Adding Plugins for Additional Functionality – You will also want to add a few “plugins” to provide site backups, security, SEO optimization, and to give users the ability to share your content. I have included a basic list of recommended plugins below to help you get started. Recommended WordPress Plugins For Initial Blog Setup (all free):
– Akismet – protection from spammy comments
– BackWPup – backup your wordpress site
– Better WP Security – protect your site against hackers
– Contact Form 7 – provide your readers with a way to contact you
– Subscribe/Connect/Follow – describe icon buttons to social media sites
– W3 Total Cache – cache data for users to dramatically increase site performance
– Wordpress SEO – helps to optimize your posts for search engines, also handles xml sitemaps
Now that your blog is up and functional, you are ready to start adding great content. It would be nice if Google would start sending traffic your way soon as you started posting, but this isn’t the way that it works. The most important thing you can do right from the start is to begin networking. Find other bloggers who write about similar topics and start commenting on their articles. In my experience, most bloggers will return the favor and comment your articles right back! Getting that instant feedback is very rewarding and motivational for you to keep going.
You should also go ahead and setup a Twitter and Facebook account for your blog, so that you have another way to network with other bloggers and build those relationships. The awesome part is that the traffic and (eventually) links that you get from these other bloggers will eventually lead to Google noticing you and starting to send traffic your way as well.
Remember, Google judges your relevance based on a complex algorithm that is heavily dependent on the amount of links to your blog from other sites.
I wouldn’t recommend monetizing your site until you start to get a little bit of search traffic. Other bloggers are likely not going to click your ads, so at best– your time and effort is better spent in the beginning months writing great content and networking. However, once you do start to get that traffic and decide that your site is ready to start earning some money, there are three main ways to go about it.
Google Adsense – This is the easiest way to put advertisements on your site. Basically you establish a “block” of space on your site for ads, and Google then runs chooses which ads to display in that space. The ads that are displayed will be calculated by Google to be one that your readers are likely to be interested in. Every time a site visitor clicks one of your ads, money automatically transfers into your Adsense account.
Affiliate Sales – The holy grail of online income for many bloggers is figuring out ways to make money off of affiliate sales. These are links from your blog that go out to products that your readers can purchase. Every time a product is purchased through one of these links, you receive a percentage of the total sale. For example this binary options review site earns money through such affiliate sales. Ideally, you could use this method to sell your own products (ebooks, software, material goods), but even if you don’t have any products- there is nothing wrong with becoming an affiliate for someone else. A few of the more popular affiliate programs are FlexOffers, ClickBank, and Amazon Affiliates. Bluehost also has a great affiliate program for those that sign up for their hosting plans.
Direct Advertising – Direct advertising is a blanket term used to cover any income that comes from a business wanting to leverage your blog specifically to promote their product. As your site grows, you may start to get contacted by ad reps that think that your audience would be interested in hearing more about their product. Often times, they will offer to pay you to review their product on your site, to run a banner in your sidebar, or to promote their business in some other way. The only caveat here is that you likely want to make sure that you are complying with Google’s terms of service if you want to stay in the most popular search engine’s good graces.
Before getting into specific numbers, I want to say that you can’t start blogging *just* for the money. If you do, you will likely burn out far before your site reaches the point where it starts to bring in income. You must also embrace the fact that your blog is a great platform to share your voice with the world, and to connect with others who have similar interests. It’s okay to get excited about the prospects of earning money online, but you need to first make sure that you enjoy blogging in and of itself.
One threshold that bloggers often talk about is how long it takes them to earn their first $100 with Google Adsense (we discussed Adsense earlier). This is the amount when Google finally sends your first payment, and for many site owners– it can take up to a year after starting the blog. For See Debt Run, we didn’t put Adsense on the site until it was about four months old, and we didn’t reach the $100 mark until six months later. However, the site did eventually start to bring in some regular income, and the income that we were earning online certainly did help us finish paying off our debt.
The amount of money that we earn each month from See Debt Run has been trending upwards for the entire two years that we have been running the site. I have been working hard to make sure that this growth continues throughout 2014! As of this writing, we pull in from $1500 to $2000 each month from affiliate sales, Google Adsense, and direct advertising. We could certainly drive that number even higher by selling more advertising or by trying to push credit card signups on the site, but we choose to instead make an effort to keep the site content-focused and on message.
Since I continue to work a normal 9-5 job and Michelle is super busy with the kids and all of their activities, all of this income has been earned in our nights and weekends. It isn’t easy and it does eat a good chunk of our free time, but it absolutely helps our family’s bottom line.
If you’ve ever considered blogging to start earning extra income, why not get started today with the step-by-step tutorial at StartABlog123.com? You too can network with some great people, have a lot of fun, and make money with a blog!
The authors featured on this site are not financial experts, but are instead normal folks just figuring out how to make ends meet. The opinions and advice featured on See Debt Run have worked well for our families, but may not work for yours. If you choose to incorporate any ideas included on this site into your own financial planning, you do so at your own risk. We do NOT take any responsibility for the decisions you may make, even if they were based on something you read on this site.
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Great article- I started my blog 3 months ago now, and finally added adsense- not making any money yet- but not to fussed. One of my 2014 goals was to do something I enjoy to create alternative revenue streams. Hopefully after a year or two I will have similar success as you!
I love this site! I started a blog too, and am actually working with my (new) husband on getting out of debt. We are currently doing the Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover. Although, we are working with a lot more debt.
I did have Google AdSense on my account, but then they blocked me. I changed who I had my host through, and really started pushing my blog on twitter, facebook, instagram, etc., and my numbers went up. But too fast; so I can no longer have an adsense account.
That really sucked, but then I remembered that I started blogging for fun and I really didn’t need to make money. I too am documenting our getting out of debt. Although, it’s really slow right now. We have made the decision to go on a kick butt honeymoon since we didn’t have a big wedding (we only spent $543 in July getting married). And, with having $142k in debt, we know we won’t be going on a vacation any time soon after our honeymoon.
Sorry for the long post! 🙂
Nice writeup, clean and to the point. I especially like the bit about not worrying about making money on your blog. Too many people jump into this thinking it will be an easy way for them to pull an extra grand a month, and they don’t realize how much work it will actually take. It has to start as a passion before it can become a profit.
Hi,
Great honest post about making money with a blog. There are thousands if not millions of personal finance blogs out there so for sure it’s going to take a while before a new blog would rank in Google. A more obscure niche with less competition could bring in income faster I guess.
After 6 months maintaining mine and countless hours I’m finally starting to see some income coming in. I’m publishing my progress on my blog. I’d like to see it grow to a couple hundreds or a couple thousands eventually.
1500$ per month is great! Congratulation!
Thank you