How to Make Money with Blogging – Modern Hacks
Do you want to take up blogging as a profession? Do you want to earn money from the passion of writing? You will come across thousands of blogs, stating different processes on how to make money with blogging.
Of course, as the “Expert” bloggers say, you need to have a consistent strong content with visuals to attract and engage visitors to your blog.
But, the traditional way of blogging can take years for you to start earning from website traffic. Sometimes, the time taken to monetize the blog is a bit low, especially when going for paid traffic, affiliate marketing or tools like Google Adsense. But still, why wait that long when you have other hacks to make this happen quickly?
You just read it right. There are other ways, ditching the stereotype and acting like a CEO, that will help you monetize your blog soon enough.
It’s time you think of your blogging as a startup business and deduce systems to scale it up. Of course, you need to focus on what you write, but put more emphasis on the system.
After thorough research, it is evident that all these factors are equally needed to get the desired traffic and income from a blog-
- SEO
- WordPress Blogs
- Researching the keywords
- Affiliate marketing
- Content marketing
How to Make Money with Blogging?
Before we get into the tricks of making money blogging, let’s take a brief look at how to create a good blog, or just start one.
The first thing you need to have to start a blog is the support of a web hosting service provider and a domain name registrar. Go for any option that supports WordPress websites.
WordPress recommends the use of
Nearly 30% of the successful bloggers use WordPress as their preferred platform to publish their work.
Once you have a trusted web hosting and domain name for your blog, it time to move to the next step.
The step is all about choosing a suitable niche for your blog, scaling up your contents, and finally, making money from the blog.
We will not be following the tradition of adapting affiliate marketing from the beginning or fall for advertising and sponsored posts. We will try something new.
Choosing a Niche for Your Blog
“Go by Market Demand, Not the Passion”
There are millions of bloggers in the world, but 95% of them fail to earn much from blogging. Do you know why? Because they follow the myth of passionate writing and underestimate the market demand.
Like I mentioned before, we will not fall for the myth. We follow a business-oriented path towards successful blogging.
When you see passionate writing in the light of a business ideology, you’ll see that the blogs that didn’t succeed, were mostly non-profitable. They didn’t meet the market demand, and naturally, didn’t get the desired website traffic, losing money.
If you are just starting a blog as a hobby, ask it is fine to write about your passion. But after a certain time, if you are repeating similar topics and sticking to one passion, you are mostly wasting your time and earning nothing out of it.
Instead of starting like a fresher and figuring out how to make money with blogging later, I say, let’s start as a pro by selecting the right niche.
There are three factors in blogging that will help you determine your niche precisely.
- The potential budget of your target audience
- Professional knowledge
- The demand in the market
1. The Potential Budget of Your Target Audience
If you want to catch your audience’s attention, you need to cater a valuable blog to them. A blog, that eases their daily concerns.
As a blogger, it is your essential duty to provide your audience with a solution in-demand for the challenges they face in their life. Try stepping into the shoes of your target audience and identify a niche that addresses their problems. However, at this point, it is important that you can’t prepare a wide list of niches and narrow it down mentally. You need to consider something that seems to affect most of the people.
The biggest factor you need to consider here is the budget of your audience.
Not sure how this works? Let’s make it simple for you.
You can choose any crucial niche and write about it. You will have different readers with different perspectives. Some might just be casually checking, some might be serious. You need to capture those serious minds and provide a solution that fits their budget.
The majority of bloggers try to monetize their blog with a Sales Funnel concept. Though it is a standard procedure, that is not what our approach should be. Do you want to know why? Check-out where it all goes wrong.
The Mistakes Commonly Made by Bloggers:
- Creating a blog with attractive contents for individual readers (when you write on personal factors)
- Adding freebies to interest your audience and convincing them to share their e-mail ids for listing
- Using affiliate marketing techniques to promote brands
- Once they have the audience’s confidence, offering the subscribers a paid online course (mostly high-paid options) with a guarantee of money-back, on hacks about solving problems.
This might work for people with money. But remember, you are are going to have mixed readers? What about the students and home-makers? Will they be willing to spend on some paid course for hacks? Not really. You can make some amount of instant money like this, but it won’t serve the purpose long.
So, how do we improve our approach?
Make your article a lot about B2B business. Once you make these changes in the niche, your audience base changes from individuals to professionals or rather businesses, i.e. an audience for whom the budget will not be insignificant. Naturally, the income rate increases. In fact, it can even increase up to 200x.
Do you know why this helps you succeed? Just 2 reasons are involved-
- A business will have higher funds than an individual
- It’s never their personal money, it’s the company’s asset that pays for your blog
The Sales funnel model is definitely applicable for both B2C and B2B clients but has a better effect on B2B. When you continue with the B2B approach, you soon earn your blog a tagline of being an “Expert” about the B2B niche.
Once you start developing your brand name and gain the confidence of more audiences, you earn a place with your affiliates such that their commission amount also increases. So, now you start earning from two platforms at the same time.
Addressing to audience’s problems is never enough to make money with blogging. Having a B2B approach along with the B2C line is always helpful. Getting about 2-3 high-value readers is always better to have hundreds of low-value and passive readers at your site. This ensures a recurring earning.
2. Choose a Niche Based on Your professional Knowledge
By now, you are aware of the need to have a valuable audience for your blog niche. Let’s now focus on the professional advantages you might have on certain niche over others. This is a great way to strategically plan your niche.
Points to consider for using professional leverage while choosing a niche for your blog
- Your current experience in your field of working
- Your industrial connections
- Can your experience influence your blog into a profitable one?
- In case, you pitch your blog to other websites belonging to your industry in the world, would you be taken seriously?
A strong blog needs a good influence to become popular. Do you want to create this influence? You need to leave your comfort zone behind and take control of your professional connections and years of experience. You also need to think of building new connections with your outreach. Having a good relationship with your connections will help you guest post at others’ website in your preferred niche.
Having guest posts is a great way to build your relevance in Domain Authority, SEO backlinks, etc., which in turn helps with improving your Google Search ranking.
Did you know, that over 3.5 billion users search online thorough Google every day? Surely, there is huge traffic to come by your blog soon.
Startup bloggers without prior published contents and connections, may not have the same leverage as the “Experts”. But if you have a strong background, it becomes easy to make money with blogging.
For example, you might have several years of experience in the travel industry, you know the destination, you know the operators and have a strong client base. Try leveraging these contacts and accelerate your blog development.
3. Observe The Demand in The Market to Decide The Niche
What is the niche that you wish to write about in your blog? Does it get searched often? You need to do this research prior to starting your blog. this will help you understand whether the niche you chose will monetize your blog.
My research has shown that the two keywords that are often searched in Google are either “How to” or “Best”. These are high-revenue earning topics that people want in every aspect of life.
So, if you are writing a travel blog, you can always write something like, “5 Best food to try when you are in New York” or maybe, “How to travel fast in New York”.
People who search for the “Best” or “How to” Topics are basically looking for thorough guidance on that field. So, if you are an expert, prepare an informative blog to stay on top of the list. Such blogs are often promoted and joined by affiliate marketing programs.
When you are writing a “How to” blog, don’t forget to make your content like a high-quality tutorial material.
So, understanding the market demand concept was simple. Now let’s see how you can find out about people’ interest in the market.
Of course, you have chosen a niche based on your passion or professional leverage. Now you need to prepare or select some keywords, based on which you wish to write your blogs. Now use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, GrowthBar, Ahrefs, and SEMRush to find out about the market demand of those keywords.
These tools are prepared such that they allow you to research the keyword while you are simultaneously doing a Google Search. Proper keyword research is the best way to make money with blogging.
Keyword Research Strategies
Research about keyword with the above-mentioned tools is very simple. But how do you know that keyword has the necessary demand in the market to consider it for your blog? Simple, let’s consider that you have researched on 5 different keywords in the tools. How much reader volume do you see against each? If the amount is as high at 5,000, it is a strong keyword to look up to make money with blogging.
Along with the volume researches, another important point to consider will the difficulty level of each keyword. If your keyword has got a difficulty level of 75, be prepared to have high competition and your blog will have a lesser impact on the readers.
So, how do I do a keyword research strategically for less competition and more traffic?
- Go for keywords that have 2000+ searches in one month
- Choose a keyword with difficulty score below 50
- Use SEO tools to have SERP data of the keyword along with SERP history and Domain Rating
- Ensure the keyword has a consistent SERP between rank 1 to 5 in the last 6 months
- The difficulty score is below 50 on the first page (Never go for something with score 0 or above 60)
- Target a single keyword and do your research, don’t go for multiple keyword research in a go
So far, strategically choosing a niche to make money with blogging has been described with a modern approach. Try this approach, focus less on your content and more on the up-level audience, B2B clients, your professional leverage and the market demand. The revenue is sure to boom.
Write Less and Scale The Blog to Make Money with Blogging
So far you had been living under the illusion that the more you write, the better content you provide, the higher traffic and revenue you get from your blog. What if I say that for the first 90 days of your blogging time, you needn’t write so much and focus more on scaling the blog?
Like I said before, we won’t follow the traditional way to make money with blogging. We will be following the startup scaling-up procedure and build the credibility of your niche. Let’s consider that as your agenda for the first 90 days, instead of focusing on the content.
Components of The Credibility Process
- Outreach
- Outsource
- Backlinks
- Repeat Indefinitely
- Guest Post
Following the CEO approach to monetizing your blog in 90 days is very simple. Here I have listed all the simple ways that will help you to make money with blogging under the light of this new approach.
1. Relationships you build is the source of your success
Choose a theme for the blog in demand first and slowly start building a strong relationship with the influencers and audiences. Give others some value. Before you consider what you get by building the relationships, look at what you can provide in the relation.
- Providing content to match the interest of your audience based on your expertise
- Filling the empty blog calendar of other bloggers who are in need of fresh blogs
- Leverage guest post writing opportunity to others where you generally write
- Providing other bloggers and influencers with a strong topic which is otherwise not present in their sites
These things help in pitching your relationship. This shows that you value others and understand the needs. The best way to do this would be to start with e-mail outreach strategies. Of course, to start the outreach, you need to first prepare a list of target audience and influencers.
It’s all interlinked. To prepare your list, you first need an understanding of the values that you can provide to the people listed under outreach. Prepare a simple list with the name of bloggers, e-mail address, websites, blog-type, etc. Preparing this list shouldn’t be difficult. You can look up the SEO keyword research tools, check the blogs that had more traffic and find out the visitor details. Target a blog that has a Domain Authority above 50 for your research.
It is worth mentioning here that the higher DA a blogger has, the higher are your chances of developing a strong bonding and hence a better SEO influence.
The best place to build your relationship is definitely LinkedIn. You can look up 2 or 3 prospective contacts from the spreadsheet of outreach you create and find them over LinkedIn. Try to create a 2nd-degree connection over LinkedIn and see if you have any mutual connections. The more mutual connections you have the better it is for building a relationship.
Instead of investing your time in building a relationship through messages, scan their blogs with Hunter.io tools to secure their e-mail ids for the mailer. Mailers always work.
2. Relationships and Guest Posts go hand-in-hand
having strong relationships is key to good links and contents. The best time to start the outreach is when you have a list of 50+ contacts ready with yourself over LinkedIn or similar platforms. Simple e-mail blasting will not help you though.
Start y sharing a link to guest post on your blog as you build your relationship over e-mails. There are many lucrative templates available online that helps the fellow bloggers to signup with you as a guest blogger.
Making the template is very simple. Lookup a template or make a custom one holding certain details as this-
- Address the person who you want to invite.
- Mention your name, blog title, website details, etc.
- Express your interest in collaborating with them and praise their blog or niche (the one in target).
- Express your curiosity in link building and update the option for a guest post you have.
- Let them know that your blog is open for guest posts.
- Inform the bloggers about your interest in contributing to their blogs on topics that are not discussed yet for their audiences to enjoy.
- Share your work sample URLs.
- Leave an expectant message before sending the e-mail.
This is how you pitch your guest post request along with your relationship-building approach. However, there are certain criteria that need to be followed for pitching your guest post request.
- Pre-check with “site:blog.com topic” from Google if the topic you have in mind already exists in your target blogger’s website or blog.
- check-out their blogs, pick up the URL and check with keyword research tools and look for gaps that can be filled to enhance the SEO value of their blogs.
- Ensure the topic is the same as your expertise genre. You need to write a smart guest post to lay your influence on the target niche.
- Match the blog-style of the bloggers from their editorial instructions and prepare a guest post that meets the interest of their audiences.
Wait for some time for your guest posting and relation-building link to get accepted. You can now move on to the next phase of strategic planning to make money with blogging.
3. Guest blogging importance
With the CEO approach of moving towards scaling up your blog, one can really understand the importance of guest posting. Clearly, you will be able to see the results for yourself from 15 days onwards. If you have followed the guideline correctly so far, you are sure to see super SEO impact, domain referring, the addition of backlinks, guest posts on your blog, and many more.
65% of the people involved in digital marketing consider link-building wit guest posting as the toughest technique. But once mastered, nothing can beat the SEO impact.
This is the reason, we consider these 5 as the 5 pillar of launching a blog-
- Long formation
- SEO-optimized blogs consisting of inbound links
- Statistical report or charts
- Presence of infographics
- Real-time cast reports
All of this helps your readers and the bloggers to connect with the blog better.
Even until now, keep your focus on relationship-building more and less on what you write. It is very important to ensure that you provide a guest post on every post you get against your blog. Even if you don’t concentrate on your blog content, don’t forget to provide quality-content in your guest posts. It is always advisable to you tools for Grammar checking like Grammarly.
4. Right way to make money with blogging
When you try to make money with blogging, you will come across many options to make that happen – Affiliate marketing, Online courses, Sponsored posts, Advertisements, and many more. It is easy to get confused about the right method to monetize your blog. I recommend a step by step planning instead of falling for any traps or slow money-making procedures.
When I say plan the monetization of your blog, I mean a thorough timeline planning.
When you are just starting up, it is quite obvious that ads are not going to make you money instantly. Affiliate marketing or Link-sharing is not going to work fine yet. You need a strategy that focuses on money-making from Day 1 and increasing the revenue value with each stage.
I suggest you follow the modern approach timeline instead-
- Consulting with high-end bloggers and influencers from 1-90 days of beginning (expect about 1000 visitors monthly)
- Affiliate Marketing from 90-180 days of starting (Traffic will now range between 1000-2500 visitors per month)
- Online courses from 180-365 days (Visitors per month is expected to increase to 5000 or more)
- Course Membership from 1 year onwards (Monthly visitor count of 10000+ is expected)
The idea of consulting might seem a little doubtful to work for a beginner. But since you will be first indulging in relationship building, it’s not difficult to connect with a high-end audience for consulting.
5. Using the Sales Funnel of Your Blog to Monetize
We have already discussed how the sales funnel model works for a business. As you scale it up and increase the blog traffic, you can set the Sales Funnel for the blog with offers that are low-priced or sponsored or affiliate products.
Here are 5 hacks to make the Sales Funnel work for your blog. But before you get to that, always remember you need to meet the market demand from the 1st day. Don’t start the funnel with low offers. It makes your audience to think twice. I say start with expensive deals.
- The user checks the content quality of your blog along with the expensive offer.
- “Freebie” offers along with the -email listing gets opted by the users.
- Add in a low-priced offer along with expensive one to create trust.
- Create an automatic welcome-mail that creates interest in the visitors’ mind to set up a meeting with you.
- Create a path such that the B2B clients get to fix a meeting for the high-end consulting offer.
Along with the expensive and low-priced deals, keeping a freebie is always more attractive for e-mail marketing.
But none of this will work out if your blog doesn’t consist of a promising service to meet the market demand. The best way to do so is to write a blog spot about a topic that is unique in every way.
6. Master the high-end consultation offer set by you
We mentioned before, while choosing a niche, that you need to prepare a Sales Funnel technique with the B2B sales revenue of $3000+ in mind. Right the from the first day, make it a goal to drive high traffic to the consultation page. Create this page with the best keyword search, that will drive more high-end business organization.
This means from day 1, you need a professional CEO approach. You can start by adding a professional photo of yours in the Contact page along with the ways to get in touch with you.
Ensure every page of your blog is directly linked to the consultation page, including the links in your guest post.
7. E-mail Marketing magic to make money with blogging
Just setting up a Sales Funnel will not serve your purpose alone. You need strong tools to drive e-mail marketing with opt-in on-site tools. They are great for generating more subscriptions.
You can’t just use any random tool. If you want the magical money-making effect on your blog, you need the magic formula.
I say, use OptinMonster and ConvertKit together to get the best result.
Reason for using the magic e-mail marketing tools-
- Get an advanced sequence of e-mail marketing based on different action site along with a scope of personalizing the Sales Funnel.
- Based on the actions happening in the mail, the tools help you create a sequence of link and drip-campaigns.
- Provides a professional get up to the mail sequence.
To generate revenue from the e-mail marketing techniques, a simple and professional approach is the best way. The more text-based e-mail you send to your audience and influencers, the better relationship you develop.
General Hacks to Monetize Your Blog
So far we have discussed the modern CEO or startup approach to make money with blogging. However, even if you are not following the traditional procedure, you must be aware of it so that you make clear wise choices.
Regardless of the fact that you follow the traditional or advanced money-making procedure, it always starts with a WordPress blog creation along with a recommended web host back up like BlueHost. Apart from that, the 7 basic steps that are followed traditionally for a revenue-earning blog are-
- Online Workshops and online course for B2C and B2B clientele
- E-books and linking with similar products
- Affiliate Marketing
- Advertising
- Public speaking
- Consultation
- Trading freelance services
Modern Approach on How to Make money with Blogging
You can always follow the traditional methods of monetizing your blog. But you must remember it’s a slow process. If you want revenue within 90 days of starting your blog, you need to do it with the startup approach we discuss so far. You need to own it like your business.
Don’t forget the basics of the CEO approach – start with a WordPress blog and a trusted web host, the 5 pillars of blogging that you should promote, ensure all web pages are complete, use e-mail marketing tools to boost subscription, focus on B2B clients for high-revenue and of course, guest posting with a good relationship.
When you have it all under control, high-revenue from your blog is guaranteed in no time.
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