Knowing how to make money blogging is a skill that takes a while to develop, but it shouldn’t take very long to go from starting a blog to making $1,000 every month with it.
There are a lot of people wondering how to make $1,000 per month blogging, and in this post I want to share with you some of the basic steps that you need to take if this is the goal that you have in mind.
As a safe bet, I would say that most people would be able to reach the $1,000 per month milestone in one year or less, even if you’re starting as a total beginner.
The biggest trick here is to stay dedicated, work hard, and not give up if you happen to run into any speed bumps along the way.
The process to making this kind of money is quite basic:
- Find a profitable niche
- Start your website and fill it with high quality and engaging content
- Implement one or more methods of monetization (display ads, affiliate marketing, digital products, etc)
- Drive traffic, build links, and continue to grow your site
Honestly, that’s all there is to it, and it’s in the small details when it comes to how successful your blog or website can become and whether or not you’ll be able to reach your personal financial milestones.
Now that I’ve gone over the basics, let’s take a further look at how you can make your first, and hopefully consecutive, 1K per month with your blog.
A Guide to Making $1000 a Month Blogging
Find a Profitable Niche
The most important step when you’re starting a website that you want to make money with is to find a niche, or topic, that you can actually make money from.
There are so many different niches to choose from and I would actually recommend starting off with one that you’re either passionate about or someone interested in, especially if you’re going to be writing most of the content.
The reason for this is because you don’t want to spend hours writing about french presses or automotive supplies, especially if you’re not interested in topics like that, because you’re just going to get burned out and you’ll be a lot less likely to keep working on your site even when things aren’t looking up for you.
On the other hand, if you choose something that you’re interested in or passionate about, you’re a lot more likely to be able to keep putting out content and working on your site until it starts earning you money.
Finding profitable niches is actually pretty easy once you get the hang of it, and there isn’t any need to spend more than just a few hours trying to find your niche.
For example, you can start by heading over to Amazon to see what kind of products they have for sale related to your passions or interests.
If there are products available that means that there is a demand for those products and that you can earn an affiliate commission if you happen to sell some of the products.
Alternatively, do a quick Google search for any of your interests or passions and if you come across any well-known websites or blogs that are using display advertisements or offering a service, then you know that there is money to be made.
For those of you that can’t come up with any ideas, simply do a Google search for “profitable niche ideas” and check out the different results for some inspiration.
Like I said, you don’t want to spend more than just a few hours coming up with the niche, and it’s a lot better to just dive right in so that you can get started right away, rather than wasting days or weeks trying to find the elusive perfect niche.
Start a Blog or Website
After coming up with your niche, it’s time to go ahead and start a blog or website related to it.
There is so much information and helpful guides online about starting a blog, so I won’t go into too much detail here, but I will go over some of the basics for you.
Choose Your Domain Name
The first thing you want to do is come up with a name for your blog or website.
Try to come up with something general, rather than super specific, so that you have the ability to branch out into different topics rather than getting stuck on focusing on just one specific thing.
For example, you’re going to be better off going with a website name like “OutdoorGearGuide” rather than something like “bestlightweighttents”.
There are so many different websites out there and the inspiration for choosing a domain name is all around you, so if you’re getting stuck with the name just try to make it a play on words with your niche or use one of your favorite websites as inspiration.
Setting Up Hosting
Once you have chosen your domain name, you can go ahead and set up your hosting.
For beginners I’d recommend going with Bluehost.
Bluehost comes with a free domain when you sign up, so it’s a good choice if you’re hoping to start a blog on a budget, and they always have awesome deals for cheap monthly hosting as well.
Some people have complained about the quality of Bluehost, but I never experienced many issues with them and I really like how easy it is to get everything up and running.
- Related: SiteGround vs Bluehost
Alternatively, I find that SiteGround is a great choice if you’re planning on growing your blog for the long term.
Their customer service is awesome and it’s also pretty easy to get your blog up and running online.
With SiteGround you’ll have to buy a domain name separately, and then you’ll need to point the domain nameservers to the SiteGround hosting to connect them.
This might seem technical, but it’s a really easy process and just takes a few minutes.
For picking up your domain I’d recommend going with Namecheap.
The domains are pretty cheap and I’m a huge fan of their hosting as well, which you can try out if you’d like everything all in one package.
After signing up for hosting you’ll need to make sure your domain is ready so that you can install WordPress.
- Related: Best Blogging Platforms
With WordPress installed you’ll probably get an email with your log-in information for WordPress, make sure to keep note of this for future use.
Now, you can finally log into your site with the “yoururl.com/wp-admin/” link or just through the link you probably got in your email.
After logging in, familiarize yourself with the WordPress dashboard and spend some time after getting around to get a better idea of the different features there are and settings that you can play with.
On a new install, WordPress comes with a basic, free theme, and you might want to consider upgrading to a premium (paid) theme if you want a better-looking and more professional-looking website.
For themes, I recommend checking out Themeforest where you can find a wide range of different WordPress themes that are suitable for just about every niche.
Creating Content
With your website all set up and ready to go, it’s time to start adding content and filling out your site so people have something to read when they visit.
There are people making money with a one-page website, though I don’t find this to be ideal and I would recommend having at least 10 great pages of content before you start worrying about making money.
The long-term goal of your site should be to turn it into an authority of whatever niche that you chose, and when you’re first getting started you’re probably going to have blog posts covering a wide range of different topics as you expand into different ideas and genres of your niche.
For making money, you can write informative posts that you can promote and make money with using display advertising, or you can write things like reviews or product roundups to make money with affiliate marketing.
It’s a lot easier to write informative posts, like how-to’s and guides, but the money isn’t as good with display advertising as it is with affiliate marketing, so it’s up to you to decide which style of content you would prefer to create.
As a beginner, I recommend trying to write a blog post once or twice a week and it’s really easy to create a content calendar without having to try to come up with new blog post ideas all the time.
With a content calendar, you’re going to want to decide how many times per week you want to post new content, and you also want to come up with the blog post ideas that you’re going to write about.
Add this information to a calendar and make sure to stick to it during your writing process.
It’s a lot easier to have blog post ideas already decided so that you don’t have to spend hours trying to come up with something and you can just start writing right away whenever you have the time.
Once you have 10 posts up or so you can start to focus on monetization, getting traffic, and building up your social media platforms.
Implementing Website Monetization
At this point you should have a small website with a few great pieces of content and you should have a slight idea of how you want to monetize.
There are so many different ways that you can make money blogging, but I find that the most effective and easiest methods for beginners and even intermediate bloggers/website owners is through affiliate marketing and display advertising.
Affiliate marketing is where you recommend products or services and if someone visits your site, clicks on one of your affiliate links, and ends up buying one of the products or services that you recommended, you earn a small commission.
One of the reasons why I like this style of monetization is because you don’t need to worry about any physical products and it’s really easy to get started with, as long as you’re able to write content that’s engaging and that converts.
There are affiliate networks that cover just about every product as well as a wide range of different services, depending on what your niche is.
For example, the Amazon Associates affiliate program offers a commission on basically every product that’s sold on Amazon, and there are plenty of people making a living promoting these products.
Alternatively, there are a wide range of other affiliate programs and to find one’s related to your niche simply do Google search for something like “affiliate programs for niche” to get a better idea of what’s available.
The other method of monetization I really like is display advertisements, and this is where you get money when people view and click on the ads that you have on your site.
This method isn’t necessarily harder than if you were going with affiliate marketing, but in many cases you’re going to need more traffic to make the same amount of money.
If you’re going to be focusing a lot on driving traffic with Pinterest, and other social media platforms, then display advertising is going to work out better in your favor, but for strictly relying on SEO traffic you’re going to be better off with affiliate marketing, especially at the beginning.
One of the most popular display advertisement networks is Google Adsense, with millions of people using it on their own websites and blogs.
Getting accepted into the Adsense network is relatively straightforward and I would recommend checking out some of the many different Adsense alternatives to see some of the other networks you could work with.
The key with making money with these different methods is driving traffic so let’s take a look at how you can do that as a beginner blogger or new website owner.
Growing Your Blog or Website
Driving Traffic
There are quite a few different ways that you can drive traffic to your blog or website.
I recommend checking out some different guides online to get a better look at all of the different traffic driving methods that you can use, but as a blogger myself I would recommend focusing on SEO or social media when you first get started.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of optimizing your website and content to show up in search engine results when people look for more information related to specific keywords and search phrases.
It takes a while for SEO to kick in and to actually start driving traffic to your site, but in the long run it’s the best way to continually bring new visitors to your website that you can monetize.
If you don’t have any idea about what SEO is and how to implement it properly, I recommend checking out the following guides:
Another great way to drive traffic is with social media, and I know a lot of people are driving huge amounts of traffic with Pinterest and Facebook.
There are other platforms that you can use, such as Twitter and Instagram, but these are nearly as good for driving traffic as Facebook and Pinterest.
The trick with social media is that you need to be active online quite a bit and in some cases you might not be in a niche that’s suitable to use with driving traffic from these social platforms.
For Facebook, I recommend joining relevant Facebook groups where you can share your content and interact with the other users.
On Pinterest, it’s going to take a little more time but there is a lot of long-term potential for taking advantage of Pinterest traffic.
You’re going to need to create high-quality pins (images) and join relevant group boards so that you can share your pins with other relevant users.
There are plenty of online guides that go into more detail on how to drive traffic using social media, so I recommend checking those out.
Building Links
The last piece of the puzzle when it comes to making $1000 per month blogging consistently is that you need to spend a lot of time building links to your content.
Somebody else link into your blog posts or website content from a different website is basically a vote in the eyes of Google that shows them that your content is relevant, trustworthy, and helpful to other Internet users.
The more links (votes) that you get, the higher your content is going to rank in search engine results, and this is going to help drive a lot of traffic in the long run.
Link building isn’t hard, but it takes a lot of time and effort to do it right, so don’t get discouraged at first if it doesn’t seem to be working out in your favor.
For building links, I really recommend checking out the Backlinko Link Building Guide, as it’s all you need to get started and it’s full of helpful information that you can use for getting other people to link to your content.
Getting to $1000 per Month (Calculations)
Here are some practical calculations that will give you a better idea of how much money you need to make every day or the different types of products/services you need to be promoting to reach that monthly $1,000 goal.
Breaking it down, $1,000 is either $33 per day or $250 per week that you need to earn.
When you look at it that way, it doesn’t seem so daunting, and it’s definitely possible to earn $33 every day with your blog after just a few months.
For example, Bluehost as a hosting provider has their own affiliate program and they offer $65 commission on every sale that you make them.
That means to make $1,000 per month with Bluehost, you basically just need to make a sale every other day, or about 15 or 16 sales during the month to reach your goal.
With Amazon, there are a few different commission rates that you can earn depending on what you’re selling, though let’s say the average is 5.5%.
To make $33 per day on Amazon you have to sell about $600 worth of products.
Depending on what you’re niche is, this could be just one product, or you might have to sell 20 products to reach this commission amount.
As for display advertising, it’s possible to earn with both clicks and impressions.
Determining an average daily earning amount is a bit trickier with ads, so take a look at my post on making $100 per day with AdSense to get a better idea of the traffic and clicks you need to reach your financial goals.
This should give you a better idea of how relative the easy it is to reach $1000 per month, and once you reach your goal you’ll realize that it’s not as daunting as it once seemed.
Conclusion
Don’t expect to start making tons of money right away after starting your blog.
However, if you put in the work and keep with it, you’re bound to reach your goals eventually and getting to $1,000 every month isn’t as difficult as it might seem as a beginner.
There are such a wide variety of different way that you can make money blogging and start to earn a living from your website, so as long as you stick with a few techniques and tactics and keep moving forward pass any of your failures or setbacks, I’m positive you’ll be able to reach your goals in the long run.
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