In this beginner’s guide on how to make money with a blog for beginners, we’re going to show you how to make your first $100 from your blog.
I know. $100 doesn’t sound like a lot of money. But it’s just the beginning. Once you get the basics down and earn your first income, you can scale it and earn as much money as you’d like.
How to start a blog
How to Make Money With a Blog (for Beginners)
First things first, it’s important for me to remind you that blog income doesn’t happen overnight. You will need to set up a blog, build an audience who trusts you and drive traffic regularly before you can start making an income.
The exotic blogger’s lifestyle that you see on social media comes with a lot of hard work so make sure you’re ready to put the work in.
As a blogger beginner, you probably don’t have tons of traffic yet and don’t have a huge email list either. So the idea here is to start small ($100) and build up from there as your blog grows in size.
By setting yourself a realistic goal of $100, you will feel motivated – as a larger goal might seem too far out of reach. And, once you do achieve your goal, you’re going to get a better understanding of what works for your blog (and what doesn’t) and use the learnings to make even more money.
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*This post may contain affiliate links. If you click on them and purchase something we get a small percentage of the sale. More info here.
Blogging For Money – For Beginners
So anyway, how DO you make money blogging as a beginner? Well, there are actually many different ways you could approach this.
Let me break them down for you.
1. Affiliate Income
One of the easiest and most common ways to make money blogging, for beginners, is affiliate marketing. You don’t need to have your own products or services. You simply promote other people’s products on your blog, and when someone makes a purchase, you make a commission off it.
Where to Find Affiliate Programs
So where do you find these affiliate programs? To be honest there are hundreds of options and it may be overwhelming when you’re getting started.
Many new bloggers start by making money with Amazon. So you sign up to become an Amazon Affiliate and use links within your blog. When someone makes a purchase on Amazon, you will make a small commission of it.
In addition to this, you can sign up to use large affiliate marketing networks. These networks have thousands of affiliate programs for a variety of brands. You can choose the brands and products you want to promote and do it from one centralised platform.
Two affiliate marketing networks we use ourselves:
ShareASale
Commission Junction
How to Start (Action Steps)
1. Make a list of products and services you love and use. Research potential affiilate marketing opportunities for these.
2. Sign up to Amazon and/or affiliate marketing networks.
3. Brainstorm and create content that will help you promote your chosen products and services.
For example, if you’re promoting a software you like you use, you could create a tutorial on how to to use the software (for newbies). Within this article, you would use your affiliate link for the software so if someone clicks through and makes a purchase, you make the commission.
You could also do product reviews as a piece of content. This is a strategy many fashion and beauty blogger use. They will write a review of products they like to use and then include an affiliate link so their readers can make a purchase.
There are many creative and effective ways to create content that brings affiliate marketing results. Do your research and see how other bloggers in your niche are promoting their affiliate partnerships.
Don’t be afraid to borrow ideas and emulate successful bloggers. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
4. Promote your content. For you to make money from affiliate opportunities, your blog needs to be read. Promote your content on social media, via your email list and anywhere else that’s relevant. The more traffic you build, the more the opportunities for you to make affiliate income.
2. eBooks
If you want to sell your own products, an ebook is a great way to make money blogging. It’s also a great way to see whether or not your audience is ready to buy from you.
Don’t get overwhelmed! An ebook is not a novel. You don’t have to write hundreds of pages. In fact, most good ebooks are concise but packed with information.
Think of an ebook as a longer form blog post. You can create an ebook about almost any topic but obviously it would make sense to make it about a topic that is relevant to your readers.
All you have to do is make sure it’s a topic you know well and can write about. And of course, it’s a topic that is interesting enough for your readers to buy from you.
Most beginner bloggers will sell their first ebooks for a very reasonable price. So, it’s a good idea to prices yours at $7 to $40 mark. That way, it’s not a huge investment for anyone to purchase and you can sell it easily.
And, for you… once you make a few ebook sales, it’s a huge confidence booster. You know you’re on the right track. You have people who want to buy from you – you are now ready to take it to the next level.
The Healthy Mummy sells a variety of e-books to her audience
Once you’ve sold some ebooks, you can take it further by creating other digital products such as webinars, video tutorials and also online courses (which we talk about next)
How to Start (Action Steps)
1. Brainstorm content ideas: Analyse what content resonates with your audience. What do they like hearing about? What topics do you have expertise in? What topic engages your audience the most?
Ask yourself these questions to choose an ebook topic that will
2. Write the ebook: Keep things simple. You don’t need any fancy software. Start writing and formatting your ebook in Google Docs. You can design an attractive cover using Canva and you’re ready to go.
3. Figure out where to sell: To sell your ebook, you can use a variety of different platforms:
1. On your own blog: Promote it everywhere on your blog. Put up banners in the sidebar, mention it in your blog posts and if you have an email list – definitely let them know you have an ebook for sale.
2. On Amazon: You can self publish your book and sell it on Amazon very easily.
3. On ClickBank: ClickBank is a very popular online retailer for digital products so selling your ebook on this platform can help you reach a very wide audience.
4. Set up for sales: Figure out how you’re going to accept payments and deliver the ebook to your customers. You can do this easily through a service like SendOwl (if you’re selling through your blog). Or you can sell through Amazon or ClickBank as mentioned above.
You can also do your own setup, and accept payments through a service like Paypal or Stripe and deliver the ebooks via email once you receive a payment.
Do what is the easiest for you.
5. Promote your ebook: You need to get the word out about your ebook. Promote your ebook to your email list, on Pinterest, on relevant Facebook groups and anywhere else that would be relevant. Don’t be shy to let people know you have something for sale.
3. Online Courses
The next step up from ebooks is creating and selling online courses. In fact, very often bloggers will create an ebook and then expand on the same topic in their online course.
Like ebooks, you can create an online course about almost any topic. Of course, it should be a topic that people want to learn about and one you know a lot about. At least enough to teach a course.
Some ideas… if you have a food blog, you can do a course on recipes. If you run a fashion blog, you could sell a course on fashion tips. If you write about relationships, you could sell a course on how to manage long distance relationships.
You can sell your courses at higher price point than ebooks but the price you choose will really depend on the depth of your course, your expertise and how well your audience already knows you.
I’ve seen short courses for $29, some for $47 and have also seen high level experts sell for $997. Research other courses in your niche to see what the average price point is.
Don’t overprice it but don’t undersell yourself either. Test a few prices and see what works best for you.
David from Rise To The Top has a number of courses . Some selling for $997
How to Start (Action Steps)
1. Choose a topic: Your course should be about a topic you can help your audience with. If there’s a struggle or an issue that comes up regularly, address it by creating a course about.
2. Create your content: Once your topic’s in place, do the hard work of planning and creating your course. There are many formats to deliver a course in but most are usually a combo of videos, slideshows and text.
Decide how you’re going to deliver information and create content accordingly.
You don’t need any fancy equipment to get started. You can write your scripts in Google Docs and record your vides on your phone (but use a tripod). Just choose a quiet place and start creating.
3. Figure out where to sell: There are many ways to sell a course online. Some of your options are:
1. On your own site: You can host your course on your own website
2. On Udemy (or other similar sites)
3. On Teachable ( or other similar platforms.
Where you sell your course will also depend on the complexity of it. Platforms like Teachable make it easy to create a course heavy on videos and slideshows.
4. Set up for sale: Once people buy your course, you will need a way to deliver the course to them.
At the very basic level, you can host your videos on YouTube or Vimeo and deliver it to your customers on your own website. To keep things simple, course creators often use platforms such as Teachable or ClickFunnels. These platforms help you not just host the course, but also easily accept payments for your courses.
If you’ve decided to sell on Udemy to start with, then the platform will guide you through the process of setting up and selling a course through them.
5. Promote your course: Like everything else, if you don’t promote, no one is going to know you have a course. Tell your audience via email, social media and advertise it all over your blog that you have a course. Promote on any groups and forums where potential students spend their time.
4. Freelance Writing
A blog is very good proof that you can write. Unless you enjoy writing and write well, it’s going to be very difficult for you to succeed in the blogging world.
So, keeping this love of writing in mind, you could start making money off your blog by selling freelance writing services. Use your blog as proof of your writing ability and pitch to clients in your niche.
When your blog has little traffic, freelance writing is a great way to start and make money blogging, for beginners without having to wait around.
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