Blogging is a powerful tool for freelance business success. Head over to any freelancer’s website,…
How to Become a Blogger and Make Money Blogging
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It’s not difficult to learn how to become a blogger. It doesn’t even take that much time.
Lots of people blog as a hobby, just for fun. Many more people start blogging to make money or in order to promote their freelance skills.
Blogging as a hobby is very different from blogging to make money or blogging to let people know about your freelance skills.
If you want to blog as a hobby, you can blog for free on WordPress.com, Weebly, Blogger or any other free blogging platform. If you want to have a blog which will impress your freelance clients, or if you want to make money blogging, you need a more professional blog.
Starting a blog can be a smooth process, one that you can do from start to finish pretty quickly. You can start a blog even in one day, if you know what you’re doing. Keep reading and you’ll find out how to become a blogger and even make some money blogging.
How to Become a Blogger – and Even Make Money Blogging
First, exactly what is a blogger?
A blogger is someone who creates content for a blog. Most of that content is written, but it can also be videos or podcasts. The content can be posted either on the blogger’s own blog or on someone else’s blog.
7 Steps to Become a Blogger
Step 1. Choose your blogging niche
One of the hardest parts of starting a blog can be deciding what you want to blog about.
As you try to decide on your blogging niche, make sure that it’s one that you’re truly interested in and that you know something about.
If you want to earn money on your blog, you should choose a niche that’s not over-saturated. That can be super hard to do, though, because the internet is so full of blogs nowadays.
If you’ve got your heart set on a niche that already has a million bloggers, be prepared to learn all you can about blogging so you can get your blog posts to rank on page one of Google.
There are lots of blogging tips and articles on SEO which can help you do this. You can read some of my best blogging tips – which include some SEO tips – here.
Step 2. Choose a domain name.
Your domain name should fit your niche, be easy for people to remember, easy to spell and ideally end with a .com rather than any other suffix.
Once you choose a domain name, you can buy it very inexpensively from a domain registrar such as NameCheap or BuyDomains. You can also buy it directly from whichever hosting company you choose.
Step 3. Choose your hosting company
Your blog has to be hosted on a server. There are many hosting companies which can host your blog. They are not all created equal.
I use SiteGround Blog Hosting and highly recommend them. They’re the best hosting company I’ve ever used. You can read my SiteGround review here.
4. Choose your blogging platform
I personally blog with WordPress.org. I found it to be pretty easy to learn and easy to use. Other people find other platforms like Wix, Weebly and Squarespace to be easier. Of all the blogging platforms, WordPress is the most popular, yet also has a reputation as the most difficult.
If you’re having a hard time deciding which blogging platform you should use, you might want to try a couple out before you decide. SiteGround Hosting has over 250 blogging platforms and applications for building websites. After you sign up with SiteGround, you can easily start your blog using the WordPress application. If you discover you don’t like it, you can easily just switch to another application.
5. Choose a blog theme
A blog theme is what helps you design the appearance of your blog.
There are many thousands of blog themes you can choose from. Some are free, some are pro. So many themes can make it really difficult to choose one, in my opinion.
You can narrow down your choices by choosing a theme from ThemeForest. They still have thousands of themes, both free and pro. You can use their filters, though, to narrow your choices and find the blog theme that’s right for you. Check out ThemeForest blog themes here.
6. Design your blog
You don’t need an award-winning blog design. You can design something yourself, or you may want to hire a freelance designer.
I designed my blog myself. I don’t have the graphic design skills to design a really good blog header, though, so I ran a contest on 99designs.
When you run a blog design contest on 99designs, dozens of graphic designers will likely enter. They’ll create designs for you based on your specifications. If you like one of their designs, you can purchase it and use it. If you don’t like any, just don’t purchase any and you won’t have to pay anything.
7. Create your content
Now it’s time to start writing blog posts. You’ll need to write on topics in your niche.
If you want your blog to rank highly in search engine results, learn at least a little about SEO. Also, do some keyword research before you write your posts.
You may not need for your blog to appear in search engine results. Maybe you’ll want to simply share your blog with potential freelance clients. In this case, you don’t need to use SEO or do keyword research. Just focus on creating well-written, useful content in your niche.
Optional: Study blogging.
There is a lot of information on the internet about how to blog. Most of it is free information you’ll find on other people’s blogs. If you want to go deeper and learn things other bloggers don’t know, you can always take a blogging course or two.
SkillShare has a lot of good blogging courses. You can actually get 40% off a SkillShare annual membership right now through the end of March 2021. Then you’ll have a whole year to take as many courses as you want.
If you use my affiliate link here to get a free month when you sign up for SkillShare, then I’ll earn a small commission. Affiliate links like this are one of the ways that you can make money blogging.
How can I make money blogging?
You can grow your blog and earn money in several different ways. You may just want to run your blog as a side gig so you can earn enough money blogging to create a really good income stream. You may want to turn your blog into a full-time income. Both of these goals are achievable. The former, though, is much easier than the latter.
There are many different ways you can make money blogging. The most common ways are:
- affiliate marketing
- brand partnerships
- sponsored content
- advertising
Affiliate marketing – Affiliate marketing is promoting products created by others and then earning a commission if someone purchases a product through an affiliate link on your blog.
Brand partnerships – Brand partnerships are agreements between bloggers and brands to collaborate in order to help each other grow and meet their goals. Some brand partnerships are paid, some are not.
Sponsored content – Sponsored content is any type of content that a brand pays a blogger to publish on their site.
Advertising – We all know what advertising is. You can place ads on your blog by installing Google AdSense or by applying for and being accepted into an ad network. Most ad networks require you to have a minimum amount of blog traffic before you can join.
How much money can you make blogging?
That really depends! Most bloggers earn nothing on their blogs. For some, this is because they’re not interested in making money from blogging. Other bloggers earn nothing because they don’t know how.
Bloggers who do earn money with their blogs can earn anywhere from a few cents a month to tens of thousands of dollars a month.
Are there any good blogging courses online?
There are many blogging courses that will help you learn how to become a blogger. I taught myself how to start my blog several years ago with the help of an ebook, so I can’t personally recommend any blogging courses. However, I can recommend SkillShare, which has dozens of blogging courses plus thousands of other courses. You’ll get 40% off SkillShare when you sign up with this link.
Conclusion:
Anyone can blog but not everyone can blog successfully. Now you know all about how to become a blogger who makes money. To learn more about how you can make money working for yourself, take my free mini-course here.
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Images by Junjira Konsang, Sonja Cederlund, DarkmoonArt_de, Gerd Altmann
Sabina Lohr is a lifelong freelancer turned entrepreneur who created World of Freelancers to help others discover how to work for themselves online and live the freelance lifestyle. She’s always really enjoyed the freedom that freelancing brings, including several years on and off of working online while traveling and living abroad.
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Helpful and informative post! 😄 Thank you for sharing these ideas for making money through blogging.
Thanks a lot! I appreciate it. 🙂
I’ve got my blog, but haven’t started making money from it just yet. When Covid hit and all four of my kids started doing school from home my priorities took a shift. I’m hoping to ease back in now and take steps to improving what I started, and build from there. Thanks for the tips!
You have certainly had a lot on your hands this past year! I hope you can ease back in too. I took a look at your blog. Very nice, and you have a beautiful family! 🙂
It’s good to learn how to blog. When I first started blogging. I did so much research about blogging and I learned so much. This is great information.
Yes, it is and thank you!
Great tips Sabina. Anyone can blog but not everyone blogs successfully. What a powerful observation. Anyone can buy their domain and hosting. But publishing helpful content, building bonds and seeing the journey through challenges every blogger, because it forces us to face our fears. Few tolerate these fears. Most quit.
Ryan
Hi Ryan! I think blogging is a different journey for everyone and, yes, fear is a big part of it for many. Overcoming it is definitely healthier than quitting.
Yes, so many quit. I did stop for a while but like blogging so much I created this blog and started again.