Have you wanted to start a blog but don’t know how? Do you want to start generating passive income by starting a blog? You’ve come to the right place! Starting a blog is actually incredibly simple and can be a great side hustle. Blogs can even be used to generate more traffic to your business, social media platforms, or e-commerce platform. Blogs also don’t have to be just about writing, you can easily sell merchandise, promote your YouTube videos, and more! The possibilities are endless. Learn how much I made from my blog in September 2022 here!
You can easily get a blog up and running in 10 minutes for only $2.95/month! Keep reading to learn how.
Disclosure: I’m paid via affiliate links below. Read more here.
Steps To Start A Blog
Setting up a blog is easy! You’ll need two things to get started, which are self-hosting and WordPress. With my step by step guide here, you can easily do both in one.
- Go to Bluehost by clicking here (you get a discount so it’s only $2.95/month with my link!) and click “Get Started”
- Select any of the plans. I personally think the Choice Plus is the best deal but if you’re on a budget, the Basic plan also works perfectly.
- Create your domain name. Mine is offhourhustle.com! I highly recommend trying to think of a .com domain if you can help it. It’s the most widely used domain extension and simply the easiest to remember.
- Enter your Account Information.
- Change your Package Information based on how long you want to commit for.
- Uncheck all the Package Extras. These are unnecessary.
- Finish your purchase and login to your Bluehost account after generating a password.
- Choose a theme, or do it later. Content is much more important than the theme when you are starting off. You want to start creating content as soon as possible so that Google and other search engines start indexing your pages so that you can be found.
- On your Bluehost dashboard, click the WordPress button on the top right and you’ll be taken to your WordPress dashboard.
- You can start writing your first post by going to Dashboard -> Posts -> Add New!
- Share your domain name with your family and friends. 🙂
- Bonus: Sign up for Ezoic ads here and start displaying ads so you can earn money right away!
What Should I Blog About?
When you start a blog, make sure to find a niche that you’re passionate about. Before I started this blog, I would always be talking about personal finance and other money related topics to all my family and friends. I knew that this niche was right for me because I love everything about it. Even if I never ended up monetizing it, I would still be passionate enough about the topic that I would write for fun!
Here are some topics to get you brainstorming:
- Traveling.
- Food.
- Arts and crafts.
- Sustainable living.
- Professional student life (medical, law, graduate student, etc.)
- Coding.
- Being a mom and raising children.
- Climbing, or any other sport!
- Lifestyle.
You can talk about anything as long as there’s an audience for it. Make sure that you don’t make your niche too broad so that it isn’t focused but don’t make it too narrow that you wouldn’t have much of an audience.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why Can’t I Use Wix or Squarespace?
Having a self hosted blog on WordPress is the key to long term success with your blog. Self-hosted WordPress is by far the most popular way to create a blog for small and large creators alike, hosting 40% of all websites on the Internet. If your goal is to simply write a diary, you can try looking at Wix or Squarespace. However, if you want to scale your blog and eventually generate revenue from it, self-hosted WordPress is the way to go.
Can I Start My Blog For Free?
Plenty of platforms such as Wix and Blogger may offer you to ways to start your blog for free, but with a caveat: you have to display their ads or use their extensions. Without creating a self-hosted WordPress blog, you’ll have limited income making capability and limited flexibility for what you can do.
How To Make Money With A Blog
There are various ways to make money after you start a blog. The capabilities are endless but here are the top three most common ways to make money when you start a blog.
Ad Revenue
Some common ad platforms include Google Adsense, Monumetric, SheMedia, Ezoic, and MediaVine. Many of these have a minimum number of page views and sessions you have to reach before you can be approved to display their ads. This is a great way to make passive income!
I personally use Ezoic’s Access Now program because it doesn’t have a minimum number of page views or sessions to get approved. All you have to do is watch a couple training videos and follow their instructions on how to get ads for your site. I make around $0.50 a day with less than 2000 page views per month. It’s not much but it’s exciting to see it grow as my blog grows! Get started with Ezoic here.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the most common ways for a blog to generate revenue. Affiliate marketing is when an online retailer pays you a commission when you generate sales for them. Someone who views your blog may click on an add or link on your site, purchase a product, and then the retailer gets a sale while you get a commission!
Sponsored Posts
Sponsored posts are a great way to start generating revenue when you have a decent amount of traffic. When a company sponsors a post for you, they’ll pay you in order to promote their website, product, or application. Make sure that you aren’t taking sponsored posts too often as it might decrease the integrity of your site. Always accept sponsored posts from companies that align with your audience and from products that you would actually use yourself.
Conclusion
Remember that it’s important to build an audience and reputation before you try to monetize your blog. Learning all there is about blogging has been a lot of fun for me and I hope it can be for you too! Start a blog today and feel free to comment below with any questions. Check out my blog here!