I tell people to look at blogging the same way they should look at investing. You have to give time for your investments to grow before you can reap the rewards.
However, blogging is one of the most ideal side hustles to have as it doesn’t cost much money, it doesn’t take much time, and it’s virtually effortless to assimilate into your lifestyle.
There are many full-time bloggers I know who make a six-figure income from their blog. What’s nice is that they do this while only working on their blog anywhere from 10 to 20 hours a week. As more and more people turn to the internet for product reviews and how-to articles, now is the perfect time to start a profitable blog in any niche.
How to get started blogging
Blogging has such a bad reputation because it takes some time to see any revenue. Sure, there are exceptions, but you won’t see many people coming to your site in the first year — expect to earn between $ 0 and $ 500 a month in the first 6 months.
This is mainly because the revenue from your blog depends largely on your monthly traffic. In the first months, you may have a few hundred to a few thousand visitors a month. This causes many to give up blogging, as many of us are eager for instant gratification.
However, there is no reason to give up your blog after the first moon. All blogs really need is time, because the money spent on keeping a blog up and running is marginal. Your main expense will be your hosting plan, domain provider and CMS platform (WordPress, Squarespace, etc.). You can find a hosting plan of up to $ 10 per month, a domain provider of $ 10 to $ 20 per year, and most CMS platforms cost no more than $ 100 per year.
This means that all you have to do is earn over $ 250 a year to make a profit. Now, this may or may not happen in the first year. But, if you can manage and set zero expectations for the first 6 months, then you will be well positioned to enjoy the long-term satisfaction of running a blog.
Monetizing your blog
There are three ways to monetize your blog. You can either use graphic advertising, affiliate marketing, or sell a product or service. Most bloggers start with graphic advertising because it is easy to set up. In your early days, when you could only partner with Google Ad Sense, you would earn between $ 0.30 and $ 2 per thousand views.
As your blog grows in traffic, you’ll be able to start collaborating with award-winning ad networks like Ezoic, Mediavine, and Ad Thrive. Once you partner with these networks, your revenue per thousand page views will increase anywhere from $ 7 to $ 30.
This is why it is so important to learn SEO, because it will be the backbone of your blog growth. As you increase your number of visitors, your ad revenue will also increase, not to mention the sales of any affiliate products or services that you offer on your site.
How I built my blog to make money
When I started taking blogging seriously and started writing on Medium in February 2022, I had no traffic, I was wondering if blogging is right for me.
We have managed to massively increase our content production. By the end of the month, I had 30 articles written, and I received about 2,500 visitors that month.
While I was growing my income on Medium, I covered everything from
made money online from marketing, business strategy and personal finance. By the end of May, we realized we were covering too many topics, when only one was driving most of my traffic: money online. So I decided to write and focus only on money.
We have maintained an aggressive content strategy and have managed to traffic from 2,500 visitors in February 2022 to 20,000 in June 2022.