Blog Ideas That Make Money: How to Make More Money in 6 Months

Are you looking for blog ideas that make money?

Today’s guest author teaches people money-making strategies.

Let’s get started learning blog ideas that make money.

Blog ideas that make money.

A money-making blogger‘s secret?

Not at all.

Today’s guest author Joseph Hogue specializes in teaching bloggers how to make money.

His tips to earn money writing online cover a 6-month timeline.

This post offers a 6-month action plan. Read his plan, follow his tips, and you’ll make money blogging.

At the end of this post, you’ll have a checklist of 5 proven blog ideas that make money.

A Six-Month Plan to Make More Money Blogging

Blogging is easy… making money blogging is a little more difficult.

That’s the lesson for the vast majority of new bloggers starting their digital empires only to stop updating the website within a year.

It isn’t that making money is really that difficult, it’s that growing and monetizing an online property is something with which most are totally unfamiliar. Bloggers hear that voice from beyond, “Create it and they will come,” but it’s a little more than that.

I started freelancing for bloggers in 2012 and created my own sites in 2014. There’s no formal strategy for blogging but I’ve found one six-month plan that can help you grow your blog and make as much money as possible… fast!

3 Rules to Make Money Blogging

First, though, there are a couple of blogging rules that will help you maximize your blogging income and avoid some of the biggest mistakes people make.

• Don’t wait to make money! You’ll hear everywhere, “Focus on building traffic first. Don’t worry about making money,” You’re not going to be making millions at first, but those checks will be critical motivation to keep creating.
• Don’t rely on just one income source! Few blogging income sources make much from month-to-month. Building that stable monthly income means setting up multiple income sources to compound your earnings.
• Don’t give up! Not much of a rule but probably the one thing that will make you successful. Most of us successful bloggers…we’re not rocket scientists. We’ve just had the perseverance to keep at it and grow our digital business when everyone else gave up.

Reading through the six-month strategy and any decision you make about your blog, come back to these rules and you’ll always be successful.

Six Months to a Five-Figure Blog

Let’s be realistic. This is a great plan for making more money blogging but it’s not going to make a new blog a six-figure powerhouse overnight. That’s going to take a while, but you can easily hit that monthly $1,000 mark for some serious blogger street cred.

This blogging plan worked for me and many others, but I’d love to hear your ideas. Use the comments below to add your ideas for growing and monetizing a blog.

What to Do Your First Two Months of Blogging

Starting a new blog is frustrating, like digging the Grand Canyon with a teaspoon frustrating.

You’ll spend hours creating great content only to hear crickets chirping when you publish.

Start with a handful of articles including some in-depth posts that really cement your expertise in the niche, but you’ll want to go where the traffic is for your first couple of months blogging.

That means writing guest posts for other blogs and appearing on podcasts. Besides getting an audience for your content, you’ll be bringing people to your website and getting some all-important links that will boost your blog’s search authority.

Try posting to your own site at least once a week or bi-weekly and creating a guest post for another site each week.

• Look for blogger lists in your niche with a Google search.
• Check out the blogs in the list for ones with a similar audience to yours and note any contact information. Going after the super-stars might be wasted time but you should be able to get a guest post on the also-ran blogs in a list.
• Follow a blogger, sharing their content on social media for a couple of weeks before reaching out by email asking to contribute a guest post.
• Make sure you follow any guest post requirements they have and write a quality article. Try referencing one or two of your own posts with a link. Make sure to watch the post and answer any reader comments.

By the end of a month or two, you should start seeing some starter traffic from Google and blogs to which you posted. Now it’s time to start making money!

Month Three Blogging: Time to Start Making Money

Blog Ideas That Make Money:

Google Advertising is the easiest and first attempt most bloggers make in creating an income from their sites. It can be some great motivation to see those first few clicks produce a few bucks but it’s also not the kind of money that pays the bills.

Three months into blogging, you don’t yet have the traffic to make much money on affiliates. Instead, use my strategy for what is easily the most passive income source I’ve found.

Self-publishing was my first income source after Adwords and one of the most consistent paychecks I’ve found in blogging.

• Self-publishing is a natural fit for bloggers. You’re already creating content, why not reformat it into a book?
• Much of your book sales will come from Amazon, a site with billions of monthly visitors. That’s nice when your own digital asset is still slowly growing readership.
• Publishing your own books will help build authority in the niche and get you on more podcasts.

Start planning your books now, through your content strategy. Brainstorm the transformation you want to drive in your readers and then work backward through the main chapter ideas that will get them there.

Each of your chapter ideas will be a weekly blog post over the next month or two. Once you’re done, put it all together and reformat into a book.

This is going to keep you on schedule to finish your book and each post becomes a marketing channel you can link to your Amazon page.

Blogging Month Four: One of My Favorite Passive Income Sources

By your fourth month of blogging, you’re starting to see some articles stand out as real traffic winners for your site. This is normal for any blog. The majority of your traffic, even as high as 80%, is going to come from less than one-in-ten of your posts.

It’s on these posts that you need to focus if you’re going to make as much money as possible.

There are two ways I like to monetize a specific post, affiliates, and printables. Let’s start with printables and we’ll cover affiliates in the next month in the plan.

Printables can be from a one-page checklist to a small booklet. What makes them worth paying for is the extra information that goes beyond a simple blog post or an easy process your readers can use to accomplish a very specific task.

Printables are one of my favorite passive income ideas because they’re basically set-it-and-forget-it income sources.

• Create a separate printable for each of your most popular blog posts. Look at the ‘problem’ solved in the blog post and go a step further, giving readers something defined they can do to solve a bigger need or goal.
• Convert the document into a pdf format and use a platform like e-Junkie or SendOwl to sell through your website.
• Add a paragraph or two into each post talking about the bigger problem your printable solves or how easy it makes the process. I like to add a Call-to-Action (CTA) within the first few paragraphs and again at the end of the article.

Blogging Month Five: Making Big Money with Affiliates

Affiliates make up just over half of my blogging income, averaging just over $3,500 a month. It’s a tough income source for new bloggers but you’re getting some serious traffic by month five and ready to start making the big money.

I make commissions on 20+ affiliates on a regular basis but just four or five affiliates account for 90% of my income from the group. Again, this is normal for a blog.

• You need traffic to make money on affiliates. Only about 5% of your readers will click through a link to an affiliate and only a fraction of those will make a purchase. That means its only the most trafficked posts that will see much in terms of commissions.
• While your blog might cover a broad topic or several reader needs, it’s probably only going to rank well on Google for a smaller list of ideas. It’s the few affiliates you have that really address these niche problems that will resonate with your audience and make sales.

 

Joining affiliate networks like CJ Affiliates and FlexOffers is the easiest way to start affiliate marketing because you get access to thousands of potential offers. Go back to your most popular posts and look for affiliates that solve a very specific problem or need to be addressed in that article.

 

Just as with your printables, update the articles with a paragraph or two about how the affiliate solves the specific problem and any experience you’ve had with the product.

 

• Only promote affiliates that you’ve tested and approved. Alienating your readers with crappy affiliates isn’t worth a few bucks.
• Understand that income from printables might drop a little if they’re competing with affiliate offers in the same post. It takes a little testing to find the right mix of printables and affiliates in a post to maximize your income.

Blogging Month Six: Getting Sponsors for Your Blog

Within six months of blogging, you should start getting offers for sponsored posts on your site. We’re not talking the spammy emails for $25 but real offers for $100+ to run an article on your blog.

Sponsored posts have been just under a fifth of my blogging income on average but have grown significantly over the last few months with the addition of a YouTube channel to my digital assets. It’s an important idea to remember, the more social media channels and followers you can promise a sponsor, the more they’ll be willing to pay for a post.

• Limit your sponsored posts to a few per month. You don’t want to overwhelm readers.
• Keep your prices high to discourage sponsors that link to low-quality sites. I would recommend starting at $100 per post. Charge more if they want you to do the writing.
• Make sure sponsored posts meet the quality of writing you normally publish. The best-sponsored posts are ones that blend in naturally with your blog content.

Making money blogging doesn’t have to be just something you read about on other blogs. You can be just as successful but it all starts with a plan. That means understanding what drives blog traffic and how bloggers make money. Using multiple income sources will mean never having to worry if one source falls behind and a paycheck you can count on.

 

Author bio: Joseph Hogue worked as an equity analyst and an economist before realizing being rich is no substitute for being happy. He now runs five websites and a YouTube channel on beating debt, making more money and making your money work for you. A veteran of the Marine Corps, he now makes more money than he ever did at a 9-to-5 job and loves building his work from home business.

Author: Joseph Hogue

Host Blogger’s Comments:

Takeaways: Blog ideas that make money you can easily implement:

Joseph shared 5 proven blog ideas that make money:

• Make money with Google Adsense
• Publish an ebook
• Sell printables
• Affiliate marketing
• Sell sponsored posts

Readers, please share so other bloggers discover this action plan spanning 6 months offering 5 popular blog ideas that make money.

I look forward to your views in the comments section: Do you have any blog ideas that make money?

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