There’s a chance you know about the blogging craze that’s been taking over the internet for the past decade. Although blogs existed well before 2009, it wasn’t until the explosion of social-media-platforms like Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, where blogging became the best side hustle for somebody with half-decent-computer-skills to make some extra money on the side.
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Before those platforms, you reliws on implementing Search Engine Optimization and other advertising-gimmicks to get your articles, products, or services out in the open.
With the post-MySpace-post-Facebook-age upon us, it’s become easier than ever to set up web-hosting, create a template, and start pumping out articles faster than Google can rank them.
The real trick is doing it to where you see a return on investment.
The 21st Century Gold Rush.
You might catch the occasional article on Forbes where somebody took their middle-income (or lower-income, as in the famous, uplifting case of Sarah Titus) and turned it into a lifestyle enjoyed by those working in the financial cathedrals of Wall Street or the grungy startup-dungeons of Silicon Valley.
This is not to say they changed their lifestyle but the amount of buying power and freedom the blog granted them is something most can only dream of. Once you realize that your computer functions as your office, you can pick any place on Earth with an internet connection and travel when and where you want.
(You know, if you’re into travel).
To be fair, some of these income reports are staggering.
The ones I’m going to list are some of the superstars that even people who don’t follow the blogosphere or gather in virtual online-income-taverns like r/juststart have a passing familiarity with. There are going to be a few heavy-hitters who’ve been at their craft for a while and a few who’ve only been around for a few years. The commonality I looked for was that they were at least still active to the end of 2018 all the way up until 2019.
Through their methods—and possible madness—these bloggers have managed to rise above the rest and show what’s possible in panning for gold online:
Believe in a Budget 2018 Annual Income Report: $500,000+
Create and Go August 2019 Income Report: $111,926.06
Breaking the One Percent February 2019 Income Report: $167,390
Fin-Savvy Panda: $7498.94
Making Sense of Cents 2018 Annual Report: $1,500,000
Ryan Robinson July 2019 Annual Income Report: $39,448.92
HealthySavvyandWise May 2019 Income Report: $22,228
Entrepreneur on Fire August 2019 Income Report: $156,316.00
In my website’s previous articles, I’ve detailed different kinds of side-hustles that can build money…but it’s shocking to see how some of these people end up building an empire that almost runs on autopilot in the span of three to four years.
By publishing articles containing information in a specific niche, utilizing SEO services provided by their web-hosting provider, and marketing those posts on social media platforms, they’re able to build a following and make money…
…slowly.
The other side of blogging is that it is not a get-rich-quick scheme. What a lot of bloggers, marketers, and freelances fail to disclose is that writing a good article can take hours. Creating pictures and pins to share on Instagram and Pinterest can take even more hours. For those who plan on going whole-hog into the blogging machine, it can take months before you even start to see a return on the work you’ve been putting in.
For people who’ve thought about blogging but know they might not be the greatest writers—or conveyors of ideas—this can scare them from the thought of even trying.
After all, the people who must be good at blogging probably have doctorate degrees in their native language, right?
If they don’t have language mastery, then they likely have experience in digital marketing or website-coding, right?
Doesn’t it only make sense for blogs to get that huge if one—or both—of those statements are true?
Wrong.
After close to two decades of modern internet, we have enough information to determine that successful blogging relies not on language mastery or coding but on the blogger’s ability to provide information and services that are relevant to the information the customer is looking for. Possessing a doctorate in English is not going to help people find delicious Mediterranean recipes. Creating a website that provides delicious Mediterranean recipes will.
All of these facts bleed into a different reality that makes the idea of blogging less daunting…even if the actual art is something that has to be perfected.
The Reality.
The reality is that yes, blogging is a lot of work. It takes time to craft articles and market them across social-media-platforms. It takes even more time to ask for fellow bloggers or big-time-publications to feature their ideas on a bigger stage.
This is one of the reasons why after publishing articles during the months of May and June, I actually stopped to go research into some better ways of marketing. This is also why people who can’t afford to wait a year for cash should look at the freelance market to see if they have services related to their career or hobbies that can get them paid.
Instant cold, hard cash for something you created can be more useful than putting time into something that might not attract an audience in the long run. It’s a question of concrete evidence vs. speculation. E.g. those who can afford to invest in a blogging journey should do so…but they should make sure they take a win at all costs approach.
There’s a scene in the Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back when the hero Luke Skywalker expresses disbelief not only in what his mentor Yoda is teaching him but in his own abilities as well. After taking lessons in learning how to use the Force, Yoda instructs Luke to lift his sunken spaceship (or X-Wing, for purists) out of the water using what he’s learned. What follows is the exchange when he’s asked to do so:
“Alright, I’ll give it a try.”—Luke Skywalker.
“No! Do…or do not. There is no try.”—Master Yoda.
For those of us who want to experience blogging success, we need to have the exact same mindset. While I can’t teach you how to go about marketing your content—not yet anyway—I can give you evidence that blogging remains a viable side hustle in 2019.
I can also give you instructions on how to start and what I recommend to make the process easier.
What To Ask Before You Start Blogging As A Side-Hustle.
Before you start reading about finding your niche, determining web-hosting, understanding SEO, or how to write an effective blog post, you’ll need to know how high you want to set your blog’s goals. Ask yourself three main questions:
- Am I looking to supplement my current full-time job or part-time-job with some extra cash or am I looking to make a full-time-income that I can devote a work-week to?
- How many hours a week am I willing to devote to blogging?
- How long am I willing to go without seeing a return on investment?
You can probably figure out an answer to the first and second questions in a day. The third question may take you a little while to figure out. You’ll need to determine how much money you want to make from your blog and then scale your action to reach that goal.
Want to make an extra $500-$1000 a month? An easier point to reach in the grand scheme of things?
Want to earn a six-figure-income blogging? Get ready to spend every moment outside of school and work blogging your butt off. For years.
The rule of thumb operates as the higher income you want, the more hours a week you’ll need to work in order to see it through. This also ties into how fast you’re wanting to see results. Spending 35-40 hours a week blogging and marketing will yield faster results than spending 10-15 hours a week doing the same thing….assuming your content provides people value.
If you plan on blogging as a side-hustle, you’ll need to determine how long you’re going to allow theoretical growth before trying something else. I recommend using an 18-month rule that scales with how high you’re wanting to take your blog; if you’re not seeing a change in traffic, income, or outreach after a year-and-a-half, you either need to rethink your niche, approach, or writing style.
Or possibly find a different side-hustle altogether.
Don’t let the possibility that you don’t like blogging deter you from trying. If you do try blogging and end up failing, then you now know what won’t work for your short-term or long-term financial goals. However, if the idea of working crazy hours on top of school or work is making you rethink building a blog, you might want to try something else.
For those of you still undeterred…
…continue onward.
Picking A Niche.
If you’re blogging as a hobby, your selected topic would be your primary interest or whatever comes to mind. However, if you’re planning on blogging for profit, then you’ll need to pick a niche that not only has potential to reach a wide audience but also has the potential to make you money.
I regret to inform you how your love of can-openers may not provide enough content for you to write multiple articles a month—but starting a kitchen-utensil focused blog that’s about providing value to people looking for the best cooking tools will provide value. (And you can even include a whole section on can-openers if you want!).
Others, like the infamous Scrivs who runs the wildly successful Billionaire Blog Club, disagrees and says that you don’t need to be interested in a niche to blog about it. Since blogging is a game of quality content, quantity of content, marketing, and connecting with other established outlets, he is right in that you can build a great blog about pet-ownership even if you don’t particularly care for pets. I only caution you in writing about something you have little-to-no-interest in.
When the going gets tough at the launch phase and no money’s coming in, how resilient will you be to not give up if you don’t even like what you’re writing about? Know yourself before you commit to a niche.
Examples of popular niches are:
–Personal Finance.
–Cooking.
–Travel.
–Blogging (lol).
–Demographic-lifestyle-focused (like the blog you’re reading now) that cover different topics pertaining to said demographic.
–Home-Economics.
–Parenting.
Now this doesn’t mean your blog should have one topic and stay there. It generally is a good idea to have different topics that relate to your umbrella topic-in-question. It makes sense to have articles about foreign food in a travel blog. It makes less sense to have articles about Polish Dramatic Theory in a blog about home-theater-equipment.
Other niche’s you could profit from include:
–Fashion (clothes, shoes, accessories, etc.).
–Dogs/Cats (domestic care, food, health, etc.)
–Plants (gardening, cooking, etc.)
–Antiques/Collectibles (Rummage Sales, Vintage Items, Item history, etc.)
–Technology (Home theater, video games, computers, Silicon Valley, etc).
–Cars (Care, custom-builds, vintage, opinion, etc).
As you can see, the options are limitless. Even if you can’t imagine writing about one of your biggest interests day-in and day-out, at least pick a topic that you are willing to write and research on for months on end.
Because while you write about your niche for months on end, you will also need to learn to monetize it.
Methods of Monetization.
There are several ways to go about this and it really boils down to what you plan to do—and how much work you want to put in. While some bloggers say you should focus on creating content, others say you should sell at the get-go. I think it’s good to know how you want to monetize your blog even before you begin. Your niche can determine the best ways to monetize.
After all, it’s a lot easier to do reviews for pet food or home-theater-systems than it is for trees that can sometimes take years to grow. You’ll understand what I mean in the list below.
Affiliates: This means you feature a product or service in an article, write a blurb about it, and get paid if somebody end up clicking on the link to buy it. Popular affiliate programs include products from Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy. Affiliate programs that sell digital services include ones from Blogging Services (Like Bluehost, HostGator, or Squarespace) or even programs like Turbotax.
Now there’s an entire rabbit hole of methods, terms, and practices to get affiliate marketing working. However, since this article exists to give you a beginners-guide-crash-course, the only thing you need to know right now is that affiliate marketing is a way to monetize a blog. If you do want more information, feel free to check out marketing-guru Neil Patel’s write-up on affiliate marketing.
Advertising: A more passive form of monetization is done through advertising. If you sign up for an ad network like Google Adsense, Ezoic, Mediavine, or AdThrive, then these services will automatically run ads on your website. You have little control over which ads appear but you can control how and where they’ll appear on your site.
Even though advertising is relatively simple, it takes a large amount of traffic to make any income worth writing about. (Services like Mediavine require you to have 25,000 sessions a month on your blog before they’ll approve you. Getting there is harder than it sounds and once you reach that number, you can expect anywhere between $300-$400 a month depending on your user-base demographics).
Another form of targeting advertising is Banner Advertising. This involves a specific brand or company that you’ve partnered with in promoting a specific advertisement or link that appears on a specific page. An example would be if you run a blog about backpacking and wanted to promote a specific product. This would involve you working with the company—or individuals—who own the product and create a specific advertisement-slot that is reserved for them.
So even if you have automated ads from Google Adsense flashing credit-cards on page and hamburgers on the next, an advertisement for outdoor sleeping bags can always be seen.
Sponsored Posts: These are exactly what they sound like: a person or company has you write an article promoting their product or service that they’re offering. These are usually done as a one-time-payment and it’s advised that you keep the content within the umbrella of your nice.
There’s no sense in doing a sponsored post on personal finance if your blog is about pet-care but there’s sense in doing a sponsored post on personal finance if you blog is about travel…and you want an article on how to keep your travel-budget low.
Products: Under this system you sell items you’ve created. These can be anything from e-books, to digital courses, to exclusive webinars, videos, tutorials, or anything you feel provides enough value to be paid for. Have information pertaining to your blog that would take up more than a series of articles? Great! By turning it into an e-book, you’ve put a spotlight on the information promised and can now advertise the e-book as a crash-course about your desired topic.
Services: These can involve one-on-one phone-calls, video-calls, meetings, written-analysis over numbers that your customer wants examined, etc. Services can be tricky because it’s more common to see them with companies who possess teams of people whose job it is to perform these services.
If you’re just starting out, I recommend waiting until you’ve become established until you start selling your own time. People need to trust you—or your teammates, if you plan on blogging as a team—before they’re willing to give you money on a personal basis.
These monetization methods do not include the other work people will do outside of their blog to earn money. Freelance writing or ad-revenue generated on a YouTube-channel may help establish your own personal brand per-se…but make sure you differentiate between actual web-pages generating you income and videos associated with your website doing the same thing.
If You Want To Go Ahead And Start.
There’s a forthcoming article on this blog that will walk you through the process of starting one. Although starting a blog sounds intimidating, there are a number of host-sponsored tutorials that can help put the pieces of your vision together. I recommend Bluehost for beginners because it offers the best hosting-value for newcomers in terms of price and service. It also includes an easy installation of the WordPress software that powers close to a third of all internet websites…including this one!
If you want to start a blog for a year, it won’t cost any more than about $100 after you get the recommended Sitelock Security add-on with the Domain Privacy Protection. You can even get a three-year deal worth about $250. These add-ons will help keep your business-address-information private and provide extra-security to give your customers peace of mind when they visit your website; (this is especially important if you plan on selling products and services).
Compared to other competitors, Bluehost is unmatched in terms of price, quality, and service. Other reviewers have agreed and you can even read a full-comparison guide to people who pit Bluehost against other competitors.
Click here to start a blog with Bluehost today!
(If you want my full walk-through for getting started with Bluehost, click here as well!).
Good luck!
—
Let’s crush our dreams together,
Samuel Carlton.
