I knew when I started blogging as a business that I would want to share my story to help others make money blogging. I remember feeling so inspired by other bloggers and what they had accomplished so I wrote this post to do the same.
If you know my story, you know this isn’t the first blog I have had. I started blogging fours years ago as a freshman in college to express myself and escape from the stress of school on a free platform.
After about a year of offering free tips and advice about writing essays I started offering them to blogging friends for cheap and surprisingly, people bought them! I built up a decent side hustle as a broke college student. I was doing what a lot of people said couldn’t be done: make money on a free platform.
After I graduated, I was living in San Francisco and was burnt out and jaded. The big city had drained me of all my creativity. I hated working in the 9-5 world. I felt like I wasn’t able to be myself and that what I wanted to give to the world, wasn’twhat “normal jobs” wanted. I worked so many crappy retail jobs and refused to go back to that world. I was left with very few options.
One night, at rock bottom, I remembered my blog.
I had made money once, I knew I could do it again.
So I started my research, and that led me to income reports. I did nothing but research for two months. I spent hours glued to the screen trying to absorb everything about blogging I could. I read and took notes, and read some more.
Then, I made a plan.
I invested the money in self hosting and was determined to make this work. $74 is a lot of money to spend on something you’re not sure is going to work out with no other job lined up, but everyone in my life was so supportive. I knew I couldn’t let them down.
I had to make money the first month.
I set a goal to make money my first month. A lot of bloggers said it wasn’t possible. I read story after story of bloggers not making money for months, some even years, but I knew I had to make money sooner than that.
I wouldn’t waste time, or money on something that I knew couldn’t support me and my family. Either I was going to succeed or I would return to 9-5 life and learn to live with it.
Even though a lot of people say it can’t be done, I did it.
I made money my first month blogging.
And you can too. Let’s talk about how.
1. I Learned Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is one the fastest and easy ways to make money blogging and I knew if I wanted to start making right away I would have to learn to get good at it. I spent a lot of my first month researching affiliates, learning how to get people to click on my links.
In that first month Affiliate Marketing is how I made all of my income and is still a big part in how I make income blogging. It is such a great way to make money because you don’t actually need to have your own product or any experience to get started right away. You simply reach out to a company, see if they have an affiliate program, and you receive a special link that when people click on it you get a commission.
Picking the right affiliates is key here because there are some programs that pay as little as $5 to $10 each purchase and while that adds up quickly when you have hundreds of readers, it’s harder when you’re just starting out. So I made sure to pick the right affiliates that payed me a larger amount each product. Before you start joining affiliate programs make sure to have at least 5 quality blog posts already up because programs usually look to see if your blog is at least established.
My guide The 30 Day Guide To Make Money Blogging is my beginners step by step to making money blogging. Along with the information in this post, it is a full break down of how to make money in your first 30 days blogging or first 30 days from buying the course.
It has the information that took me months to figure out in one place because I was so tired of reading posts that told me it wasn’t possible, that most bloggers NEVER made any money or the ones who did didn’t until years in.
I knew once I proved I could do it, I would want to share it and get the information in as many hands as possible.
It covers things like:
- How to set up and optimize your blog. There are lots of “how to start a blog” posts but this is about setting up your blog in a way that enables you to make money. I teach you the important steps to set up your blog to earn.
- How to monetize your blog. I go over the major 3: affiliate marketing, digital products, and offering services. I teach my strategy on how I make affiliate sales on repeat effortlessly using my blog posts, I even have a step by step tutorial on how I create my digital products for FREE and set up a simple sales strategy. I give you all the tools to actually start making money blogging, and I actually show you how to do it and break it down step-by-step.
- How to drive traffic to your blog. More eyes=more moolah. When you have simple but effective strategies and believe in yourself, you can make money with any size audience. But when you have those same strategies and can boost your traffic, you make even more money! I show you how to leverage Pinterest and get traffic to your blog.
- Lifetime access. I recently just added the new bonuses to the course and since I host all my courses on teachable, you will always have access to any updates at no additional cost which is pretty cool.
I believe that making money doing something we love that enables us to have freedom: time freedom, financial freedom, and freedom to express ourselves is our birthright. Starting a blog has changed my life, and I created this course to be a sheet cheat to blogging success.
2. Do Your Research
I knew I wanted blogging to work for me fast so that meant I needed to do a lot of research to make sure that it did. I see a lot of new bloggers (including me when I started) focusing on things that don’t matter like:
- What their theme is
- What colors they should use on their website
- Which hosting company the best bloggers use
While these things can help your blog, they don’t actually matter when it comes to making money or not. They definitely don’t matter when it’s barely your first month. All the hosting companies work, pick the one that works for you where you’re at right now.
Instead of wasting time and energy there, it’s a better idea to learn about things like SEO, email marketing, and other business skills that will go on to help you a whole lot on the future. My first month I found bloggers I loved and admired and binged on their content. How were they doing things? How did they connect with their audience? How did they make money? It really helped me form my own opinions and learn how I wanted to structure my business.
3. Drive Traffic
Most bloggers know how important driving traffic is to their new blog. However, it can be confusing when you’ve never done it before. I knew I had to get clear on where my traffic was going to come from and how I was going to get it. After focusing on this for a couple of weeks I learned that the traffic alone wasn’t going to make me any money but instead, getting traffic to the right posts AKA the ones with affiliate links.
I go over my simple process of driving massive traffic to posts in The 30 Day Guide to Make Money Blogging. If you’re interested in learning
- What you should be posting on Pinterest and social media everyday to get massive traffic to your blog
- How to drive traffic to the posts with affiliate links and make money quickly with this simple strategy
- Which social medias are best to get blog traffic and how to leverage them to gain engaged readers to your blog!
- How to turn readers into buyers! I go over how to turn brand new readers into loving readers who love to buy your products with this simple strategy for writing your blog posts.
Then you should check out The 30 Day Guide HERE. I am so passionate about this course because its not just another blogging course, it is a step-by-step guide on how to make money blogging quickly so you can start living the life you really want to be living. It is what changed everything for me and allowed me to work online full-time and never miss another holiday or birthday again. I knew after my first two years of working full-time that I had to find a way to make money that let me be present in my own life.
I didn’t want to live for the weekends. I didn’t want to work a whole year for a two week vacation. I wanted to be able to make money from anywhere, and the stuff in this course has allowed me to do that.
In my first month I only got 1,500 pageviews which isn’t a ton but since I knew how to get traffic to the right posts, I made money anyway. I would recommend having at least 10 blog posts by the end of your first month because the more posts you have, the easier it is to get traffic. I also payed very close attention to which social medias were giving me the most traffic and for me it was Twitter and Pinterest so that’s where I focused.
4. Post Quality Content
I mentioned above that it’s easier to get traffic with more posts but this does not mean you should just post to post. Each blog posts should be informative, on the longer side (think at least 500+ words) and provide quality to your readers.
Quality blog posts provide something to your audience and don’t read like diary entries. It is fun to just write about your everyday life but this is not the quickest way to make money blogging. Writing posts that explain, inform, or entertain gets your readers to see the value you’re providing and stick around or browse your blog.
In my version of a perfect blog post I make sure to keep a balance between personal stories and information. A post that is all information is lackluster and boring to read but all personal information doesn’t work quite right either. So I try to include some of my story and spin on things while also deliver needed information to my audience.
Overtime it will get easier to write blog posts and you’ll get a feel for what works best for your audience but for now focus on not just posting to post and trying to deliver long and helpful posts.
5. Make Pinterest A Priority
I knew if I wanted to build traffic for the long run, I needed to learn how to use Pinterest. I made sure to set up my account for success in the beginning by making a business profile and enabling rich pins. You can look up a ton of tutorials and its super easy and makes your pins look so much more official and a lot less spammy.
Learning how to make Pinterest work for me was huge and I talk about in depth in The 30 Day Guide.
I go over things like:
- How to make the perfect pin that people will want to click on as well as how to create interesting titles that people will repin over and over again.
- What # of pins per day you should be posting on Pinterest when you’re new to start making money quickly.
- How to get a ton of organic traffic and turn that traffic into readers who buy!
I included all the details and made it easy for a beginner to follow along and start using Pinterest to boost their blogging income. I spent a lot of time my first month trying to find what worked and I save you the trouble in this course.
>> CLICK HERE to learn more about the guide.
Pinterest is still my #1 source of traffic and learning how to leverage it was life changing. So many of the bloggers I met on other social medias had no idea how much traffic you could get on Pinterest and were relying on things like Facebook groups. Pinterest allows you to reach millions of people with your information and it is the kind of social media platform where people come on to learn something new.
One of my best Pinterest tips is to have a good amount of boards with great keywords and titles. When you have that, when someone searches something in the search bar they find your board and are more likely to follow and repin your stuff!
A great Pinterest board won’t work effectively if it doesn’t have a description so make sure you add one for yours!
For example if you have a “how to start a blog” board, in the description you would have words or phrases like: how to make money online, how to make money blogging, how to work for yourself, etc.
6. Set Yourself Up For Success
I treated my blog seriously from day 1 and before I was making a penny. Meaning I started business social media accounts, I made sure to have Stripe and Paypal accounts, and I made sure to spend consistent time on my blog.
When you treat your blog like it is already successful, you set yourself up for success and to make money your first month. Bloggers get caught up in the identity of being a “hobby blogger” and think they can’t make any money in the beginning when really, all it takes is making monetizing your blog a priority. Focus on all the ways you can make your blog profitable from day 1 and you are sure to make money a lot faster.
7. Focus On A Few Things Not Everything
I don’t know about you, but when I started blogging my head was spinning with all the things I thought I should be doing. There were days it was hard to do anything at all because I was constantly wondering “Should I be doing something else with my time?”
The answer to beating blogger overwhelm is to focus on a few things not everything. I focused on only 2 social medias at a time. I didn’t try to be perfect right away. I only wrote a blog post a week. I use to wonder just like you what bloggers even did to be successful but I make it easy in The 30 Day Guide to Making Money Blogging.
I give you my step by step everyday actions I did my first month to start making money blogging. Where I was posting on social media, how I found high paying affiliates, how I drove traffic to posts with affiliates in it, what you should be doing everyday to grow your blog.
I keep mentioning it because I remember what it was like trying to figure it out all on my own and feeling clueless as to where to start. And even when I did invest in courses, I ended up spending $25 here for a Pinterest course and $46 here on an affiliate marketing course and another $40 here on how to make a digital product and even after all that, I still had so many questions.
How should I be using social media to get traffic? How do you get people to actually click on your links and buy? How do you advertise affiliates without coming off pushy and spammy? By then I was so broke I couldn’t afford a social media course and a SEO course too. There was no course out there that I could find that had a clear and easy process on how to make money blogging as a beginner, step-by-step.
I knew if I could make this blog work I wanted to create a product that did not hold back in order to just sell more courses to people. The 30 Day Guide is a complete guide for the beginner blogger who wants to make money. It covers:
- How to set up your blog for success in the beginning
- How to pick the perfect topic
- How to make money with affiliate marketing and get people to click on your links and buy
- How many times a day you should be posting on Pinterest
- How to drive traffic with social media
- How to make your your first digital product with no design experience.
- Everyday actions you should be doing to make money as quickly as 30 days
If you’re interested you can CLICK HERE and learn more about the course and get immediate access today. The course does close after I reach capacity since I offer email support and can only get back to so many people at once so hurry!
8. Final Thoughts
Is it possible to make money blogging your first month? Absolutely, but it does take a lot of focus, dedication, and strategy. However, no matter what you are blogging about, it is possible to turn your blog into a profitable adventure that allows you to live a life you love.
Since I started my blog I have had so much more freedom in my day, and even though there are challenges about working for myself, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I truly believe when you believe in yourself and are true to yourself, you are able to be successful no matter what.
Blogging has changed my life forever.
This year I was able to do something really special.
Buy my mom, myself, and my aunt tickets to Disneyland for her birthday. She had never been because growing up she could never afford it, and I was able to gift her such a magical day and spend it together with her, not worrying about money or having to take time off work
Thinking about it makes me emotional because that’s what makes all of this worth it. The ability to take care of and spoil family, and create new opportunities for yourself and everyone around you. All the work I put into my blog, how scared I was to start, how I worried if I would ever make any money was all worth it x100.
The 30 Day Guide is all my tips and tricks and lessons in one place on how to make money with your blog from the start and turn this into a full time job.
So you can have magical days with your family.
So you can travel on a Wednesday.
So you can make money from anywhere in the world.
So you have control over your income.
So you can make money doing something you LOVE because you deserve it.
Even if you are reading this and your first month blogging has passed and you didn’t make any money, it is never too late to turn things around. I believe in you so much and if no one’s told you that know that I believe in your dreams no matter how crazy they might seem right now.
Until next time!
