If you have been looking into how to start a blog and make money, then you have come to the right place.
A few of the common factors that stop people starting a blog is they think they lack the technical skills and knowledge to be able to – I want to stop you right there and say anyone can start a blog these days. Even if you only have basic computer skills, that will not stop you. If you have the right training and support, anything is possible.
I want to you shed any thoughts like that, YOU can become a blogger that makes money even if you have no idea of how to get started. That is where I want to help you out. I will show you how simple it is to get started with a blog, and the important steps you need to take to make it profitable too.
Affiliate Disclaimer: Please Note, this post may contain affiliate links. This will only be from products we recommend, please read my disclaimer for more info.
What is a Blog?
If you search online for what exactly a blog is, it will come back with results about it being a website that gets regularly 
updated and is written in an informal style. But in essence, the key to a great blog is engaging with your audience. The way to do that is to start a blog on a subject that you are already familiar with or by picking a passion you have.
But if you want a prime example of a blog website, then you are already on one. Gem and I started this blog website to help others find their own way to making money online via a blog website and affiliate marketing.
The best thing about picking a subject you already have an interest in or are passionate about it is, you will not find it difficult to create new content as you help others and engage with others who are also interested in the same interest as you.
How to Start a Blog?
Before you can make money from a blog, the first steps you need to take are about starting that blog. We just talked about picking a subject you are already interested in. I want to dig a little deeper into that, for a very good reason.
But first, the thing you need to consider when starting a blog is being realistic about the timescales required to get it to the point where it is making money.
Blogging is a great way of earning money online, but if you think this will happen in a couple of weeks or even months, then I hate to disappoint you but that is being totally realistic.
SO, why does picking a subject that you are already interested in help?
It is a massively important decision when choosing the topic of your website, because you are going to have to work hard and engage into that blog every day, whether you choose a travel blog, a make money online blog, a blog on parenting, etc.
You are going to have to write consistently to get it noticed, because without traffic your blog will not make any money.
To get that traffic, you need to create a lot of content and prove to the search engines your blog deserves to be at the top of the search results.
But imagine if you picked a subject that you had little knowledge or interest in, but you chose it because someone said it was profitable. Do you honestly think you can stay motivated writing articles about a subject you have no interest in, when you are in the early stages where a blog isn’t making money?
Another factor to consider is, your audience will also realise you lack the knowledge or interest in a subject really easily through your writing, and this will lead to them not staying on your website for you to make money.
Now, turn that completely around…
If you chose a subject you absolutely loved, already have some knowledge in and would love to learn more around that subject.
Whatever that subject, I would find that come out in your writing. I would feel like you are a real authority in that area and trust your opinions enough to give you the opportunity to make money.
That is the opportunity I present to you around starting your own blog. You need to become an authority in whatever niche you choose.
Become an Authority with a Niche Website.
There is a little more to it than just picking a subject, the main reason is if you start too broad in a subject, you will find it extremely hard to break into it.
But if you narrow that search down to as narrow as you can and start in a smaller market of it you will find it much easier to break into the market and get that all-important traffic to your blog.
Let’s use an example, to break this down. If we took the subject photography, there are so many different types of photography:
Portrait Photography, Landscape Photography, Wedding Photography, Travel Photography, etc.
Just picking the loose subject Photography would make it extremely hard to become an authority
We would be up against all websites that are associated with photography and we would be lost in the ocean without a chance of ever getting to land.
What if we used just a smaller section of the photography market, and focused more on wedding photography?
We have narrowed this down, but I ask you “do you think we have narrowed it down enough?”
Think of the term, it is still too broad.
Are we offering wedding photography services or teaching people how to capture wedding photography?
Now, if we narrowed it down to a blog that was targeting the audience that are looking to “learn how to capture wedding photography” that is a better starting point.
Whatever the subject you love and want to start a blog in, the more you can narrow down the target audience, the better the chance you have of being successful and turning a profit.
Another example, which seems quite popular is travel blogging. That term is quite broad again, narrow it down as far as you can. It could be “essential tips for a travel blogger”.
Picking a niche is the first important step to starting a blog, if you think you are ready to get started with your own niche (authority) website you can create a free blog website in the box below. Check if your chosen website name is free now!
Once you have a blog up and running, you need to work on getting an audience. Only then will you have the opportunity to make money from it.
Why Your Blog Needs an Audience to Make Money?
Having your own blog website is a fantastic thing and is a great way of connecting with others in your niche. But before 
you can start thinking about making money from your website blog, it needs to have an audience with which to engage with and show offers to make money.
We will get into the detail about how to make money from your blog later on in the article but imagine if you had a travel blog and were advertising a holiday comparison website on your blog. If no one sees that ad, you have no chance of making any money. That is why you need an audience; you need plenty of traffic coming to your blog before having an chance of earning a living from that blog.
So, how do you get that all important traffic??
How to Get That All Important Traffic to Your Blog!
IF you start searching for how to get traffic to your blog, you will be inundated with all kinds of systems that generate free traffic for you, some of which are scams or low quality traffic systems that require you to pay and all you get is bots visiting your website. But bots will not earn you money.
No, the best strategy for your blog to get traffic is – Creating High Quality Content that Helps Others!
Think about why you searched for the term “How to Start a Blog and Make Money for Beginners?” You were looking for help with that.
If you find this article useful, then I have achieved what I set out to do. Helping people start a blog and make money!
With every article you write on your blog, you want to be helping answer a question or solve a problem and that is by the far the best strategy to get free traffic through the search engines.
Google is constantly looking for content that helps people with their questions, if you answer a question (without selling) and it is an engaging article, that is how you rank at the top of the search engines where the traffic starts to seriously flow.
The best spot to be to get a lot of traffic is at the top of the search results for Google. If you can get there, that is where you are an authority in your niche and can really turn helping people into a money-making opportunity.
Start Making Money with Your Blog
Let’s just cover off what we have been going through so far:
Pick a Niche – choose a niche that you are already interested in and can thoroughly get onboard with writing regular content in.
Create a Blog Website – This will become the foundation for your online blog and will allow you to become a true authority in your chosen niche and expand into engaging your audience on social media, etc.
Help People with Awesome Content – Create High-Quality Content that helps people. Answer Questions, Write How-to Guides, Write Product Reviews and generally engaging content in and around your niche.
Doing all of this will attract traffic to your blog and leads us nicely into two great and easy ways to start making money from you blog.
Our Personal Favourite – Affiliate Marketing
One of the best ways for a blogger to make money from their blog is via Affiliate Marketing. It might seem like a weird term, but it is a really simple way of making money by recommending products and earning a commission if someone goes and buys it.
Let’s go back to our travel blog example to show how it works:
You have a travel blog, and you are writing an article on the “best travel pillows for when flying abroad”. You write a detailed and informed article on the best travel pillows. As an affiliate partner of Amazon, you could include some links within your articles for your readers to go and buy these pillows (via Amazon) from your blog.
You readers decide to follow your recommendation on the best travel pillow and follow your (affiliate) link and go and buy it from Amazon. Guess what, you have just earned a commission from one of your readers going and buying that product. You have helped them with their purchase, and you are rewarded with a percentage of the sale price.
That is how simple Affiliate Marketing works.
Whilst the premise of affiliate marketing is simple, it does take hard work as this will not be possible without an audience coming to your website.
But is by far the most popular way for people making money online, because it allows people to explore something that they are really interested in and there is an affiliate program out there too.
The key is to help people and not sell to people. If people were ready to buy, they would just go straight to Amazon. They come to a blog because they want to check out the products before buying it.
Instore it is easy to go up and touch the product and have a look. Online, they need to check reviews and that is the power of the right product review on a blogger’s website.
If you would like to learn more about affiliate marketing, our “How Does Affiliate Marketing Really Work” guide is for you.
Selling Ad Space on Your Blog
Once you have that traffic to your blog, you can then start utilising some of the space you have on your website. Whilst adverts on a website are not everyone’s cup of tea, they are a way of monetising your website.
Google AdSense is a great starting place for bloggers as they do not impose that many restrictions on your joining. But know that you will require some traffic to be able to apply for their program. You will also need to have a lot of visitors to make this a lucrative way of earning money – Affiliate Marketing is much better route.
But when you start to get some serious traffic, you can then explore other ad networks, such as MediaVine who do pay top money for ads. But you need at least 25k sessions a month to be able to benefit from them.
My advice would be to start a blog, utilise affiliate marketing and add the ad networks when you are starting to get traffic.
If you seriously want to start a blog and make money from it, then I highly suggest you get some expert help and support for every step of the way:
Get Expert Help & Support Every Step of the Way!
I would not be where I am today without help and support. I will not lie to you; Blogging is hard work. It is fun, but it is hard work. There are elements of it that I have not covered in detail in this post, for example keyword research, or search engine optimisation that are all essential to get your blog up and running and find the traffic you need to be able to make money from your blogging.
It is no fun if you have a blog that nobody sees, so here is where I want to offer my help and support with a training platform that will take you through every step of the way from:
- Starting your own Blog Website
- Learning How to Build it
- How to Make it Look just how you want it to look,
- Make it Google Friendly
- Getting Traffic
- Ultimately Monetising it
There is no need to do this on your own, if you really want to find success with blogging you will find no better training platform than Wealthy Affiliate. Their free starter membership includes 2 free websites, 10 free lessons on how to start your blog and how you will make money with it, how to pick the right niche for you and many other exciting factors to starting a blog.
You will also gain direct access to myself as an affiliate guide, here is a link to my profile page on WA. You will also gain access to a community of over 1 million other bloggers.
Some who are already making money, some who are just like you and getting started. Either way, you will be amazed at what you can learn and where your website could be in a year’s time.
Do not be worried about what you know and what you do not know, Kyle (WA Co-Owner) has created an amazing training course that will take you through every step of the way to creating your website.
Before I had joined, I didn’t have a clue about building a website, or even what affiliate marketing was. I didn’t even think my writing was any good, but that improves with time and the right training.
I must stress, blogging is not for everyone. I am not trying to put you off, but many bloggers fail in their goals of making money and do you want to know the main reason why.
Why Bloggers Often Fail – They Give Up too Soon!
That’s right, their expectations of how quickly affiliate marketing or ads on a blog can make them money. This website is
only 6 months old, I started it to help people get started the right way, but I have only just started to get genuine traffic to it and that is a realistic timescale to expect in a competitive niche like this one.
What I am trying to say is, the best advice I can give for when you decide to start a blog is work hard, stay focused and set yourself non-financial goals to start with. My initial goals were all about being able spend more time with my family. That kept me driven, even though my first website was not making any money. But if I had given up in month 5, I would not have seen affiliate marketing work in month 6.
Why Do You Want to Start a Blog?
I know it is to make money, but I think that our perception of making money online has been offset by all of the products out there that promise you can earn thousands of dollars overnight.
I have yet to find a genuine one that can do it, but until you fully delve into the online world you cannot always appreciate all of the scams out there and the fact is, you cannot make quick money online.
If you are in the binary options trading world, you may be able to but that is a gamble if you haven’t got a clue, like me.
If I had been only thinking about the money, I would have given up a long time ago. Give yourself a secondary motivation and my advice is “You want to help people in my niche”.
I started this blog to help people avoid the scams out there and find the right ways to make money online for them.
I love helping people, I may make money if people follow my recommendations and that is the basics of affiliate marketing. But I am helping people, whether they do it or not.
I also keep in my mind that if I achieve my goals, I will have more time to spend with my son growing up and helping more people too.
Don’t lose the fact you want to earn money, but the importance of other goals is just as important.
And when that first dollar sale comes through, you will get excited, we all do.
Just remember, if you can earn a dollar, you can earn $1000.
But without the right training and support, you will find it much harder to succeed.
Start a Blog, Get the Right Training & Support Here
If you are still with me and are serious about starting a blog with the goals of working from home and earning money from it, you will find no better platform than Wealthy Affiliate. They have helped thousands of people achieve those exact goals, but you need to commit to the following to be successful:
Work Hard – Spend time learning and putting into practice everything you have learned
Stay Consistent – Set daily, weekly and monthly goals and achieve them
Ask Loads of Questions – Whether that be direct to me, or to the WA community. No question is a silly question, because it is about clarifying your understanding.
Do Not Give Up – This is the most important one, there will be times when you think it isn‘t working. That is the point where you contact me and ask me for some advice, or just a chat to ensure you stay motivated and can see it through.
The biggest one is to NOT GIVE UP, if you ever feel like your blog isn’t right or you are stuck with what to write about, or anything at all. That is when you message me within Wealthy Affiliate and go “John, I need help!”
That is what you sometimes have to do and guess what – I will be there to help you out!
If you can learn and implement everything you can and stay focused, you will find that within a week you will have built your own website that is ready for the search engines and has already got content on it.
If you can achieve all that within a week, where do you think you could be in 6 months’ time?
Wealthy Affiliate is a great platform with training, tools and support all on offer, if you would like to learn a little more here is a link to my detailed review. (My Wealthy Affiliate Review)
If you feel you are ready to get started with your very own blog website and can commit to building an online business for your future, then why not sign up for a free starter membership with Wealthy Affiliate.
Unlike others, you are not required to enter credit card details or pay anything, the starter membership is to give you a full insight into what Wealthy Affiliate has to offer.
If you still have any questions about monetising your blog or getting started, or Wealthy Affiliate itself please write them in the comments below and I will get back to your as soon as we can.
Thanks for reading, John
