18 Blogging Tips for Beginners Who Want To Make Money
Does wearing pajamas while getting paid to write sound good to you? As someone who is currently getting paid to write while in her pajamas, I can tell you first-hand that it rules. Making money from blogging gives you the freedom to work from home, write about things you care about, and engage with like-minded readers.
Blogging is the new frontier for flexible, remote work, and it’s no wonder why so many people are transitioning into it. Making money as a successful blogger is possible for anyone, even as a newbie. Here are some blogging tips for beginners to get you there.
“But where do I even start?”
We got you.
First, sign up to get updates about Blogging Money Formula, a blogging course by Jasmine, Miss Millennia Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, that gives you blogging tips for beginners who want to make money. Join now!
Now that you’re on that waitlist, I’ll walk you through the first steps you need to take as a beginner in order to make money from blogging. You’ll learn how to get your work seen, build your community, and explore avenues you can use to get paid.
Grab your coffee and get ready to take some notes on blogging tips for beginners.
GET STARTED
1. Start your own blog
The first step to becoming a successful blogger is to start blogging.
A great web host to use for your first blog is WordPress, as they are extremely user friendly and have a ton of awesome features. A WordPress blog is simple to design with professional templates to utilize and easy-to-install add-ons to help you optimize your site.
Read our article How To Start a WordPress Blog On BlueHost That Makes Money to get started!
2. Pick your niche
This is one of the most important blogging tips for beginners. You need to find a specific niche to write about to boost the likelihood of people visiting your site and get paid for your content.
When you find something specific that not a lot of other people are writing about, you become a hot commodity!
How many people do you know who can write specifically about managing your finances as a theatre artist in the Florida region? Not many. Owning a niche can give you an in with other blogs as well as with the audience you are hoping to grow by writing about something few others would be able to speak on.
3. Set specific goals
The world of blogging is a large one that can take you down many different avenues. The only way to not get distracted by “shiny objects” on your blogging journey is to set specific goals for what you want to gain from blogging and stay focused on them. Decide how much you want to make every month, what type of writing you enjoy, and the kind of blog platform you want to write for.
4. Practice, practice, practice!
One of the best blogging tips for beginners I ever heard is, “Write even when nobody’s reading.”
The only way to get better at blogging is to, well, blog. Set deadlines and goals for yourself, like writing one 2,000 word article to publish every week. Once those paid offers start rolling in, you’re going to want some writing reps under your belt to give you the confidence you need to complete your assignments. This will also help you hone your own unique tone of voice and writing style that your future audience will be obsessed with.
5. Build an organic audience
Blog articles need readers, and the best readers are the consistent ones: your audience.
How do you build your organic audience?
Write about something that excites you, and then share it with groups of people who get excited about that thing as well. Paying for followers and comments might boost your numbers, but finding people who truly love what you write is what will really boost your growth.
To find your target audience, browse Facebook groups and other free blogs that you’re interested in, do some research on those people and write with them in mind.
6. Subscribe to Blogging Money Update
Blogging is hard work in and of itself, and adding the paid-gig-hunt on top of that can be overwhelming. Thank goodness Blogging Money Update exists!
Blogging Money Update is an exclusive newsletter for bloggers who are short on time but want to start making more money with their blogs. When you subscribe, you will get three emails every week with 10 to 15 PAID blogging opportunities with payouts that range from $65 to $5000.
You’ll also get two bonus features: a list of 150 blogging networks that pay you to blog AND a Blog Monetization Tracker.
This is the email subscription that successful bloggers all wish they had access to at the beginning of their money-making journey.
Sign up for this exclusive newsletter now!
You’ve got your blog up and running, you’ve decided on your niche, you’ve set some concrete goals, you’ve subscribed to Blogging Money Update…now what?
GET SEEN
7. Boost Your SEO
SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization,” and it’s the way in which your articles get boosted to the top of the search page. Your SEO rating is based on your use of keywords, images, links, and other components. There is so much information out there about how to use SEO to drive traffic to your site, so doing even just a little research on how to boost yours will yield big results.
If you use WordPress, there is an awesome add-on called SEMRush which helps to get more hits from Google, attract more visitors from social media, and increase engagement. Start your free trial of SEMRush today!
If you are looking for a free tool, try the Yoast SEO plugin. We use both at Miss Millennia Magazine. They both serve a purpose!
8. Include a Call to action
Every list of blogging tips for beginners will include adding a call to action (CTA) in your blog posts. CTA’s are a great way to get readers to check out other posts you’ve written, boost affiliate link hits, subscribe to your email list, and much more! A quick “Check this out!” link is super easy to work in and helps boost your engagement.
9. Install Google analytics
While looking to start making money with your awesome blogging skills, you want to make sure that you’re moving in the right direction. Creating a Google Analytics account and adding it to your site will give you access to all sorts of data about what’s working and what’s not.
Knowing your stats will help you set and track website goals, understand how your SEO is performing, and provide you with a comprehensive dashboard of data from the last 30 days. Your analytics will help you to focus on what’s performing well and spend less energy on what isn’t.
Views and clicks are important, but now it’s time to turn them into a money-making funnel. Running a successful blog can be rewarding on its own, but we want to make sure you’re getting paid for all your hard work.
GET PAID
10. Affiliate marketing
As your blogging presence grows, so will your audience, and that means you have a platform to recommend awesome things to your awesome audience. People will pay you for that via affiliate marketing!
There are multiple affiliate marketing programs you can sign up for through platforms such as Share-a-Sale. Or, you can reach out directly to brands you love and fit your niche to see if they want to work with you.
You get a kickback for promotion and you’re also providing your readers with products and services you’re excited about.
11. Write paid reviews
Similar to affiliate marketing, there are companies that will pay you to use their product or service and write a review article about it. You will get free stuff (always a plus) and, if you like it and want to promote it in that review, you can often get a percentage of those sales profits too.
12. Advertising
Selling the ad space on your blog is a great way to utilize blank digital real estate. WordPress has an ad management plug-in that makes the process of finding and implementing ads into your site much easier. You can get paid for ads in a few different ways: cost-per-click, cost-per-thousand-impressions, flat fee, and affiliates.
13. Sponsored posts
Sponsored posts are articles that a brand pays you upfront to write. Knowing your audience is important when trying to nail down sponsorships.
If you know what kinds of things resonate with your audience and the types of products they like to consume, you can pitch a sponsorship deal to those companies. They pay you (and sometimes send you free products) to promote their brand throughout your content.
It’s important to make sure it’s a company you can stand behind and get excited about, or your audience may lose trust in you.
Learn more about making money with sponsored posts by reading this article: How To Make Money With Sponsored Posts On Your Blog!
14. Join Blogging Money Formula
As a beginner blogger trying to make money, it can feel daunting and overwhelming. Jasmine Watts, the creator of Blogging Money Update, wants to help you have a successful blogging journey!
Her course, Blogging Money Formula, is your one-stop shop for making money with sponsored posts on your blog. You can join now!
Blogging Money Formula is an online program that shows bloggers how to get companies to pay them for their content—regardless of their traffic or how long they’ve been blogging. Learn how to build brand relationships, confidently set prices, and more to get the desired results.
How do you become a blogger who brands want to work with? A big part of landing paid gigs is building an attentive fanbase that trusts you. Readers can sniff out a disingenuous post from a mile away. Gain their trust and you’ll be able to create customers for companies and brands you want to work with.
There is no “quick fix” to building an organic following, but with blogging tips for beginners like these, you can learn ways to speed up the process.
BUILD COMMUNITY
15. Reply to comments
Blogging is all about communicating with your audience. Turning on your blog comments is a great way to make your readers feel like they’re part of your blog. Doing this also helps you to better understand the people who are reading your blogs so you can learn what resonates with them.
Everyone has something to say, and engaging with your target audience in the comments makes them feel valued (and want to engage with your content more). So don’t forget to reply to comments, too!
This also goes for social media. It can be easy to post something on Facebook or Instagram then forget about it. However, you want to check your previous posts for comments that you can like and reply to! This makes your audience feel important.
16. Build an email list
Creating an email list does two things:
- Helps you understand who’s devoted to your content
- Gives you a way to promote affiliates and sponsorships (that’s where the money is!)
An email newsletter makes your audience feel like they have exclusive access to you. You can increase hits on your articles by emailing your audience right when they’re published.
Promote your email sign-up link everywhere you can in order to grow your email subscribers quickly with your target audience.
17. Utilize Email marketing
There are plenty of email marketing platforms, such as ConvertKit, that offer free services if you’re under a certain number of subscribers.
ConvertKit allows you to connect with your readers by setting up a personalized welcome email for someone who joins your list. It is also easier to stay consistent with how many times you send emails and include lots of links to your other content. Having this email list is extremely attractive to sponsors and affiliates because it’s a direct way to reach more future customers.
Learn more about the importance of email marketing from our article 11 Easy Ways To Make Money With An Email List!
18. Optimize social media
Social media is one of the best ways to drive organic traffic to your blog. Everyone is on social media now, so you can share your posts with the world.
One way to optimize your social media presence is with direct messages and comments. Interacting with your followers humanizes the person behind the screen. You can learn a lot about people from their social media profiles, meaning you can reach out directly to the people who you think would enjoy your content.
Finding people on Instagram and Twitter who genuinely like and support what you write will create an organic fanbase. These fans will promote you to their friends, who will promote you to their friends, creating an organic following of your work.
Read How To Make Money With Instagram Right Now for more tips and tricks!
It will take some time and energy to build up your blog, but once you do, it’s smooth sailing to making that money!
Don’t forget to speed up that process with a Blogging Money Update subscription as well as the other tools you can find on the web. Anyone can be a money-making blogger, and with these blogging tips for beginners, that means you!
What are you waiting for? Get to it!
Brooke Benson is a freelance writer, actor, and content creator based out of Sarasota, FL. She strives to destroy the “Starving Artist” trope by sharing her personal finance research and experience with creative freelancers and runs an Instagram community/coaching platform called “Not Starving Artists.” You can follow her on Instagram @notstarvingartists.
Her love for content creation and writing began while working for the brand Margaritaville in college (she’s a huge Jimmy Buffett fan and wants everyone to live on island time). Some of her favorite things are scrapbooking, a huge stack of library books, T-Pain, rainy days, her Passion Planner, cinnamon apple spice tea, and super soft blankets.
